Lu Xun was good at listening. He listened not only to the earth, to the people, but also to himself. There is a "voice in front" in "Passers-by", which is a voice that urges, calls, and makes it impossible to stop. It is both the voice of the times and the voice of the heart. These two voices are connected in his writings.
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Anchor | Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Hui Tianjiao
In January 1927, Lu Xun went south to Guangzhou. The following month, he was invited to Hong Kong to give two lectures: the first time called "Silent China" and the other called "The Old Tune Has Been Sung", both related to sound.
A few years ago, I compiled a collection of Lu Xun's essays for Huacheng Publishing House, and for convenience, I named it "Silent China". The book is selling well, and the editor told me it was planned to be reprinted in the near future. I took this opportunity to make major revisions: first, I included novels and other genres, and second, the content was more or less related to sound.
Lu Xun (1881-1936), formerly known as Zhou Shuren, was a native of Shaoxing, Zhejiang. When he was young, he studied in Japan and abandoned medicine to pursue literature; after returning to China, he worked in the Ministry of Education and concurrently held teaching positions in colleges and universities. During this period, he joined the "New Youth" group to create vernacular literature and advocate "ideological revolution". After leaving Beijing, he went south to Xiamen and then to Guangzhou. Coinciding with the Kuomintang's "cleansing of the party," he called it a "game of blood" and resigned in anger. He eventually settled in the Semi-Concession of Shanghai, the so-called "Jieting Pavilion", until his death.
From the Manchu Qing dynasty to the Republic of China, Lu Xun has always regarded himself as a "slave". He said: "I think that before the revolution, I was a slave; not long after the revolution, I was deceived by the slaves and became their slaves. ”
What is a slave? Lu Xun's definition has two references: one is the master, the despot, the "slave master", and the slave is the oppressed under their butcher's knife and whip, and he is also called "the writer of grief and labor" in his text. Another reference is the slave, who, in terms of identity, is just as attached, but "works less and loses his grief." Slaves find "beauty" from the life of slaves, admire, caress, and intoxicate, so that they can live in this life with themselves and others; unlike slaves, they are always fighting, uneven and struggling, trying to get rid of the shackles on their bodies.
As early as when he was staying in Japan, the young Lu Xun sought out and introduced a "new voice" outside the territory, "so that the people of China, from the old dream to the new dream, rushed to the clamor, and looked like crazy." At the end of the article "The Poetic Sayings of Moros", he asked: "Now in China, for the warriors of the spiritual world, are they safe?" Is there a sincere voice to my people to be good, beautiful and healthy? There is a warm voice, and the people who help me out of the cold are concerned! However, he could not hear the "sound of foresight" and the "depression of the Chinese", only a silence.
After the storms of the Xinhai Revolution, the Republic of China was plundered by the Beiyang warlords, and Beijing fell into a long period of darkness. At that time, he read Buddhist scriptures, copied ancient tablets, and secretly consumed his life. The editor friend of "New Youth" came to mobilize him to make an article, and there was the following famous dialogue:
"Suppose an iron house, which has no windows and is difficult to destroy, has many sleeping people in it, and soon they will suffocate, but they will go from sleep to death, and they will not feel the sorrow of death. Now that you are shouting and startling up a few of the more sober ones, and causing this unfortunate minority to suffer from irreparable dying, do you think you are worthy of them? ”
"But since a few people have risen, you cannot say that there is no hope of destroying this iron house."
This is the voice of the Enlightened.
After May Fourth, the Enlightenment receded, and the student patriotic movement and the workers' and peasants' movement rose with it. Lu Xun spent several years in the ups and downs of the student tide, and by the time of the "March 18 Massacre", he went from the empty "cry" of "saving children" to directly speaking for the oppressed, expelled, and abused students, not afraid to rebel against the government, and engaged in private debates with the "upright gentleman" of the intellectual circles. He vowed not to enter the "Palace of Art", describing his situation of fighting alone: "Standing on the desert, watching the flying sand and stones, the music laughs, the sadness screams, the anger scolds", even if "beaten by the sand and rough head and broken blood", but can enjoy the pleasure of revenge.
At that time, the political environment in Beijing was harsh, and Lu Xun came to Guangzhou, the "birthplace of the revolution", in January 1927 to teach at Sun Yat-sen University. Within half a year, he was "cleansed" by the Kuomintang, so he was "banished by dreams" and settled in Shanghai at the end of the year. At this time, on the one hand, he said that he was "stunned" by the killing, but on the other hand, he never stopped protesting. At this time, his heart was filled with "bloody songs", as he declared:
But I was calm and happy. I will laugh, I will sing. ("Weeds" inscription)
In the last decade of Shanghai, Lu Xun joined a number of groups, such as the "Great Alliance of the Chinese Freedom Movement", the "Chinese Left-Wing Writers Alliance", and the "China Civil Rights Protection Alliance". But, in reality, he has always insisted on fighting alone. At this time, the Kuomintang practiced a "one-party dictatorship" and the censorship and control of speech publications became increasingly severe. Lu Xun had to use multiple pseudonyms and began to "write implicitly" under an authoritarian dictatorship, creating a slave style of resistance that was "swallowing and spitting" and "twisting and turning" as he put it. For an intellectual writer, the loss of the right to speak freely is very painful; Lu Xun believes that this is the fate of the vast number of enslaved people.
After the 1930s, Lu Xun's situation became worse and worse, and he was oppressed even within the "Left League", so that he had to fight "sideways". After 1933, words such as "lonely", "painful", "anxious", "cold and discouraged" often appeared in Thaksin letters, which were the sounds of beasts hiding in the deep forest to lick their wounds after fighting.
As for the great changes of the times, he once described his experience of listening:
We hear groans, sighs, cries, cries, and not be surprised. When we see the fierce silence, we should pay attention; and when we see something meandering through the corpse forest like a poisonous snake, and running in the darkness like a ghost, we should pay even more attention: this is a warning that "real anger" is coming.
In his case, silence is also a sound.
Those who resist darkness are determined to be with darkness, which is what Lu Xun calls "love night." He said, "He who loves the night must have the ears to hear the night and the eyes to see the night, to be free in the darkness, to see all darkness." "He has ears to listen to the night. In the old style poems, he always remembers the sounds he hears or cannot hear: "A few springs, ten thousand quiet and melancholy"; "After drumming up the Yaoser people do not hear, taiping becomes like yingqiu gate"; "Yaoser dust is clear and complaining, poor and unsupportable Yaogaoqiu"; "The whiskers are sharp and the ice strings are absolutely broken, but the stars are strong and sounded"; "Listen to the wild chickens are lonely, and look at the stars and buckets are dry", and so on. He listened to the silence, and there was a poem that ended with the words: "The heart is vast and even Guangyu, and the thunder is heard in the silence." He also has a more widely circulated aphorism, which is still often quoted on the Internet today:
Not to erupt in silence, but to perish in silence!
Lu Xun was good at listening. He listened not only to the earth, to the people, but also to himself. There is a "voice in front" in "Passers-by", which is a voice that urges, calls, and makes it impossible to stop. It is both the voice of the times and the voice of the heart.
These two voices are connected in his writings. (Yangcheng Evening News 2022-03-01 A11 edition responsible editor: Wu Xiaopan)
Source | Yangcheng Evening News, Golden Sheep Network, Yangcheng Pie
Edit | Wooden words
Proofreading | Zhao Dandan
Audit | Zhong Chuanfang
Issue | Sun Chaofang