"Weeds": Lu Xun's aesthetics

Text / Zhang Jieyu

Lu Xun once said that "Wild Grass" contains his "whole philosophy" (Yi Ping, "Miscellaneous Talks on ancient temples (V)", Beijing Daily Supplement, 1925.03.31 .). The so-called "philosophy" here is, of course, not a complete system of thought, but refers to some important and penetrating basic issues in his thought, such as "light and darkness, life and death, past and future" that he said in poetic language, and "friends and enmity, man and beast, lovers and unloved people" (Lu Xun's "Inscriptions" - "The Complete Works of Lu Xun: Volume 2", Beijing: People's Literature Publishing House, 2005: 163.) Wait a minute. These categories are the basis and focus of "Lu Xun's philosophy", and in "Wild Grass", he has made a profound reflection and expression on them in a unique implicit way. This chapter borrows this phrase and explores "Lu Xun's aesthetics" on this basis—which is, of course, not an aesthetic idea or concept in the strict sense, but a "weed-like" aesthetic trait, including his literary thought and artistic style.

One

The prose poem "Weeds" begins with an obscure and extremely precise "opening statement":

When I am silent, I feel fulfilled; I will open my mouth and feel empty at the same time.

The "fullness" in "silence" and the "emptiness" after "opening" seem to be Lu Xun's consistent problems. There is both an acknowledgment of the darkness and complexity of the mind itself, as well as doubts about the way of expression and questioning of the act of writing itself. It can be said that the biggest problem faced by Lu Xun in the "Weeds" period is how to accurately transform his thoughts and emotions into literary language in the process of "silence" to "opening", so that it does not lose its original richness, complexity and truth, but also meets the aesthetic requirements and historical aspirations of literature. From "can't write, can't write" to the end "have to write", the writing of "Weed" reflects a difficult process, and "Weed" itself is the special result of this process. It expresses lu xun's thoughts and the deepest truth of his heart in a very subtle and special way. At the same time, the special expression and presentation of "Wild Grass" is also a writing experiment consciously carried out by Lu Xun.

In this sense, Lu Xun's choice of prose poetry in the form should be out of a deliberate necessity. Here there is not only a reference to Western modernist literature, but also a great force of contradiction in his heart. The emergence of "Wild Grass" itself embodies a profound contradiction that has to be written but does not want to be explicitly stated, which is a product of Lu Xun's inner struggle, a product of his constant tug-of-war between hiding and expression, looking for breakthroughs and liberation.

The reading of "Weeds" is always accompanied by obscurity, contradiction and tension. At the same time, the moods and images of nightmares, dead fires, graves, nights, deaths, etc., which appear many times in its content, also show nervous emotions. This tension is a holistic thing, which envelops the diverse and varied texts of "Weeds". The imagery in "Weeds" is often broken, the emotions are broken, and even the language is broken, but the overall mood is quite unified. This artistic conception is the "autumn night" that Lu Xun focuses on depicting in the first part. A quiet but not quiet night, the moon is dark and windy, the autumn wind is depressed, and the darkness is full of sword-rattling confrontations... This is the world of "Wild Grass", and it is also Lu Xun's true inner spiritual world. Since "Autumn Night", each "weed" has also formed a series that is closely related to each other" and jointly completed the mission of "testifying" for his life. In fact, even if Lu Xun did not say that "Weeds" contained all his philosophies, this pamphlet expressed his intentions with its special stylistic characteristics.

Lu Xun once said: "What is written is a problem, and how to write is another problem." This shows his high degree of self-consciousness of writing itself, which includes self-consciousness of style and form. It is worth noting that since the day "Autumn Night" was published in "Yusi", the "Wild Grass" series has been specially marked with "Wild Grass *" in the form of subtitles, that is, in the various creations carried out by Lu Xun at the same time, which belong to the "Wild Grass" series and which do not belong are different in his mind. This distinction encompasses both the so-called "whole philosophy" in terms of thematic aspect and the "special aesthetic" of the artistic way.

Two

There is a very special work in "Weeds" - "Pseudo-ancient new oil poem" "My Lost Love". The poem is more like a "joke" in terms of language style, which is not only very "unusual" in "Weeds", but also causes difficulties in interpretation. For the selection of this poem, many researchers believe that there is a certain factor of chance, but there is also its rationality outside of chance - otherwise it is impossible to explain why Lu Xun, who never arbitrarily edited the issue of compilation, retained this one when he later compiled "Wild Grass"-that is because": "My Lost Love" actually very implicitly reflects Lu Xun's unique literary view.

This is a very serious view of literature. Lu Xun made a joke to all the literary scholars who thought they were elegant and honorable, with the disparity between lovers who exchanged gifts, beauty and ugliness: If the poems with laurels—whether new or old—were elegant and beautiful and prominent things like "Hundred Butterfly Turbans", "Double Swallow Figures", "Golden Watches", and "Roses", then Lu Xun preferred that his "Weeds" — and some other works — like "Owl", "Ice Sugar Pot Lu", "Sweat Medicine" and "Red Snake", would not be elegant. Do not seek fame and leave a history, but let people feel close, or feel frightened, and their hearts are moved.

What Lu Xun subverts here is the traditional values of classical literature, and he ridicules the classic values enshrined in the temple of literature with a revolutionary attitude, especially the traditional values such as "beauty", "elegance", "nobility", "romance" and "sacredness".

It can be said that this is a revolution in the field of literature and art that "re-evaluates everything". Subverting old values, it was replaced by a new, modern, concept of "poetry and truth." That is, "truth" replaces empty "beauty", "truth" rewrites "poetry", and "truth" is connected with modern life and modern experience as the core value of literature in the modern sense.

But it's not easy to write "true"! In an article about "composition" and "argumentation", Lu Xun wrote his own unique thinking. The style of "The Theory" is light-hearted and humorous, but the problems behind it are quite serious and heavy. It can be said that this is Lu Xun's dissection of the fundamental dilemma of "saying" and "not saying" in his writing, and it is also his in-depth thinking on major issues such as "what to say" and "how to say".

The story of the Treatise is very simple. In the dream, "I", as a primary school student, asked the teacher for "the method of argumentation", and the teacher told "me" a story, a story of "a good reward for lying, saying that it is inevitable to be beaten", and "I" said to the teacher: "I am willing to neither lie nor be beaten." So, teacher, what do I have to say? The teacher then gave a "hahaha" method. "Liar" and "hahaha" are of course not "telling the truth". The former is "deception" and the latter is "concealment", both of which Lu Xun deeply dislikes, and even more is the poison and dross of old literature that he has repeatedly stressed to be resolutely removed in the new literature.

Two weeks after he finished writing the Treatise, he wrote a famous essay entitled "On Opening His Eyes", in which he once said: "Those who Chinese dare not face up to all aspects, and use concealment and deception to create a wonderful escape route, and think that they are on the right path." On this road, it proves that the national nature is weak, lazy, and slippery. "Chinese has always been afraid to face life squarely, so I have to hide and deceive, and thus I have also given birth to the literature and art of concealment and deception, and from this literature and art, Chinese have fallen deeper into the great zeze of concealment and deception, and even more that I no longer feel it." The world changes day by day, and our writer takes off his mask, sincerely, deeply, boldly looks at life and writes about his flesh and blood, and the time has come; there should have been a brand new literary field long ago, and there should have been a few fierce intruders long ago! ”

Based on this, in his own writing, Lu Xun certainly could not tolerate the existence of the two things of "concealment" and "deception". It can be said that Lu Xun's writing—in principle—must be "telling the truth."

But the problem is that "telling the truth" is not easy, which Lu Xun deeply understands. "Being beaten" is secondary—in fact, before he wrote the Treatise, he was already beaten by the "upright gentlemen" for "telling the truth"—and more importantly, the problem of "poisonous gas and ghost gas". Because he knows the "darkness" in his heart and is deeply afraid of infecting others, he once said that what he was most worried about was that "I am afraid that my unripe fruit will poison those who prefer my fruit, and the things that hate me are like the so-called upright gentlemen and gentlemen" (Lu Xun's "Written in the Back" // Lu Xun's Complete Works: Vol. 1, ). Therefore, in his view, "telling the truth" also depends on the timing and method, and in many cases, being straightforward and outspoken may not be the most correct and appropriate way of fighting, which Lu Xun has profoundly understood and summed up in many years of fighting.

Therefore, "telling the truth" is by no means a simple mechanical statement, but must be done in a wise way. Specific to literary writing, such as prose poetry rather than essays, how to "tell the truth" "literarily" is a major artistic issue related to "poetry and truth".

How not to "conceal", not to "cheat", not to tell lies, and at the same time to avoid the negative impact of simply and mechanically "telling the truth", these are the dilemmas that Lu Xun faced in writing. Further, the "Treatise" expresses not only the dilemma in this writing, but also the philosophical problems of how to understand the world and how to express oneself. At the end of the day, it's a question of how to face, recognize, process, and represent the "real." Moreover, in this "truth", there are at least three levels: "the truth of reality", "the truth of the heart" and "the truth of literature".

In the "reality", "inner" and "literary" triple "truth", Lu Xun, as a writer, of course, the focus of attention will eventually fall on the "literary truth". The first two kinds of "truth" are, in the final analysis, the question of "telling the truth", that is, the problem of "what to write"; and the "truth of literature" is the question of "how to say" or "how to write" the article. To be precise, it is how to say the truth in reality and in the depths of the heart in a literary way, on the one hand, let the "truth" be expressed, on the other hand, let the "truth" become a "literary" text with artistic value and historical significance. Here, Lu Xun's understanding of the relationship between the three "real" is involved.

In an article titled "How to Write", Lu Xun said:

Nietzsche loved to read books written in blood. But I think that the article written in blood may not be finished. Articles are always written in ink, and blood is only blood. It is more thrilling and straightforward than the article, but it is easy to change color and easy to consume. At this point, it is necessary to let literature do its best, just like the white bone in the tomb, throughout the ages, always with its perpetuity to be proud of the light red on the girl's cheeks.

This sentence is indeed very important, because it clearly and profoundly embodies Lu Xun's view of literature and writing. That is, the "truth of reality" must be reflected in terms of "literary truth". Because the "truth of literature" (articles written in ink) has more long-term historical value than "reality" (blood stains), only the "truth of literature" can truly preserve the "truth of reality". This understanding of the function and meaning of literature should also be one of the driving forces that prompted Lu Xun to resolutely "abandon medicine and follow literature" and take literature as his lifelong career.

Although Lu Xun once said when he was most angry: "The lies written in ink can never hide the facts written in blood." But he also knew more clearly: "Creation is often designed for the mediocre, with the passage of time, to wash away the old traces, leaving only reddish blood and indifferent sorrow." In this pale red blood and indifferent sorrow, he gave people a temporary life, maintaining this inhuman world. ”

Therefore, even though he is "really speechless" and even "difficult to breathe", he still "feels the need to write something" in real life, especially after the "fact of blood writing". For the only thing that can stand up to the "forgotten Savior" is the article (the truth of literature) that seems useless but will eventually be better than the blood stain (the reality of reality) that is "easy to change color and easy to consume".

Can it be said that Lu Xun's lifelong writing is actually a kind of "remembrance for forgetting.". The purpose of his "remembrance" is to retain the truth and fight against the "forgotten Savior"; to "establish this picture" for himself, for others, for the nation, and for history, and to write a "poetic history". And the only way he "remembers" is to write with pen and ink, that is, to transform the "real" and "inner" truth into a "literary" truth.

But what exactly should be "how to write"?

In Lu Xun's view, "facts" (the truth of reality) do not directly equal "truth" (the truth of literature), and vice versa. For literature "is mostly the author borrowing from others to describe himself, or to speculate on others by himself,...... Even if it is sometimes untrue, it is still true. Its authenticity is no different from when using the third person or misusing the first person.". On the contrary, those works that flaunt authenticity in the form of diaries and simplified books make people feel very contrived, and readers cannot see the author's sincerity from it, "but they see some contrivance from time to time, as if they have been deceived."

Therefore, he said: "I would rather read "Dream of the Red Chamber" than read the new "Lin Daiyu Diary", which can make me uncomfortable for half a day. The reason is that this kind of thing, under the banner of "truth", is actually "inevitably a bit pretentious", but it causes disillusionment of the reader. Therefore, Lu Xun said: "The sorrow of general disillusionment, I think it is not false, but in the false as true", "Disillusionment comes, most of them do not see the truth in the false, but see the false in the truth."

What Lu Xun criticizes and denies is the mechanical understanding of "authenticity", thus at the same time showing his own unique understanding of "literary truth". In his view, "truth" cannot rely on the "facts" that appear on the surface, let alone on the self-proclaimed. Superficial contrivance or flaunting can only reveal the author's inner falsehood, while the truth of literature depends on the author's grasp of the facts and the sincerity of the heart. As for whether or not to use literary expressions such as fiction, it will not affect or hinder the "truth" itself in the slightest.

In fact, "Weeds" is a powerful example of such a "false see the truth". Because his "truth" focuses more on the "inner" level, in order to find a suitable way to say his heart with "poisonous gas and ghost gas", Lu Xun tried a variety of ways in "Weeds", implicitly and implicitly expressing a very special "truth" with means of support, symbolism, drama and so on. The veracity of Weeds does not depend on whether it is "written in blood" or whether it is written in the first person, in a diary, documentary way. Its deformation, its painting dreams, its symbols, let people "see the truth in the false", and even more deeply reflect the complexity and profundity of the "real" state. In this sense, "Wild Grass" is a writing experiment of Lu Xun, and it is a unique, important, and successful writing experiment.

"Wild Grass" is a special text of Lu Xun's "writing himself", which writes the deepest truth in the most obscure way, and is an attempt to "see the truth in falsehood" in Lu Xun's literary writing. Unlike his way of making historical and social criticisms with "the most sober realism" in his novels and essays, the writing of "Weeds" is the process of facing his own heart at all times. Precisely because there are too many "dark" things such as contradictions, pain, despair, and nothingness in the heart, the question of "how to write" in the process of writing must become a problem that needs to be considered and dealt with more than any other writing.

In other words, for "Weeds", the question of "how to write" is more prominent, more important, and more difficult. In fact, the "truth" in "Weeds" is difficult to say directly, not only because there may be serious consequences of "being beaten" or "infecting others" after saying it, but more importantly, the "truth" itself is too contradictory and complicated for the writer himself to express it accurately in words. This is just as Lu Xun said in the "Inscription": "Heaven and earth are so quiet, I can't laugh and sing." Even if the heavens and the earth are not so quiet, I may not be able to. This shows that the difficulty of telling the truth comes not only from the pressure of the external environment, but also from the internal difficulties of writing.

In the 15th article of the Weeds, the Tomb Text, this question about the internal dilemma of writing is raised. Compared with the view of life on the front of the tomb, the text on the back of the tomb embodies the literary view and writing view that haunt Lu Xun's thought at all times: "... Eat your own food and want to know the original taste. The trauma is fierce, how can the original taste be known? ...... After the pain is settled, it is slowly eaten, but its heart is old, how can it be known? The two questions raised here are Precisely Lu Xun's thinking and discussion on the way to excavate and expose the true truth of his heart. The "original taste" mentioned here is first of all "inner truth", and "self-feeding" means to fully face, recognize and express this inner truth in the process of writing.

But the crux of the matter is: how can the "true taste" of the "heart" be faithfully and accurately retained and conveyed to the text, making it a "literary truth"? Obviously, this is an artistic issue within writing.

In Lu Xun's view, the process of "making up one's heart and eating oneself" is "painful and painful", and the results obtained may not be ideal. The reason for this is that "when the feelings are fierce, it is not appropriate to do poetry, otherwise the sharp edge is too exposed, and the 'poetry beauty' can be killed." This point of view is put forward entirely from the perspective of art ("poetic beauty"), because when the "feelings are strong", it is most likely to lose its coolness, resulting in "too much exposure", losing the distance required for aesthetics, completely becoming the catharsis of the author's subjective emotions, and losing the "permanent" and historical significance that excellent literary works should have.

And when the emotional climax of the author and the reader gradually subsides, "the love moves with the matter", and the work that simply vents the emotion will also "taste like chewing wax", which detracts from the aesthetic and historical value. This is exactly the problem of "self-eating and wanting to know the true taste" mentioned in the "Tomb Text". This question is by no means just about the poetic genre in the narrow sense, but a fundamental artistic problem. Previous studies have emphasized Lu Xun's "fierce pain" in this passage, believing that this is the embodiment of his inner contradictions and pain. But whether it hurts or not is not the most important thing, the most important question is "How can the original taste be known?" It's still a question of "how to write.".

Lu Xun himself never wrote when his feelings were at its strongest, even those sharp essays. As he said in "Remembering Liu and Zhenjun", written more than ten days after the "March 18" massacre: "... I really have nothing to say. I just think I don't live in the human world. The blood of more than forty young people, overflowing all around me, made it difficult for me to breathe, what words could there be? When a long song is crying, it must be after the pain. But is the problem solved "after the pain is settled"? Can the "long song when crying" of "after the pain" artistically reproduce the "truth" of the heart or reality? Lu Xun's answer was still suspicious: "After the pain is settled, Xu Xu eats, but his heart is old, how can he know the original taste?" ”

That is to say, when writing is separated from reality or inner pain, it is faced with another dilemma, that is, the feelings are weakening, and the "forgotten Savior" begins to come, "giving people a temporary secret life, maintaining this inhuman world." Therefore, the works thus written will again have the loss caused by the "distance" of time and emotions, because "its heart is old", so the emotional power of the author and the appeal of the text may be damaged, and it seems that the effect and goal of "wanting to know the original taste" cannot be achieved.

What Lu Xun raised here is obviously the problem he himself encountered in his writing. - How to deal with "truth" in "poetry"? How to retain "poetic beauty" and pursue art in the writing of "wanting to know the original taste"? He himself could not give a clear answer to this question. His answers—or his exploration of them—are embodied in tentative texts like The Weeds. This reminds people that Lu Xun once half-truthfully admitted that he was "accustomed to doing obscure articles, which could not be changed for a while, and when he first did it, he was determined to be open-minded, and later he often ended in obscurity, which was really infuriating." In fact, the obscurity of the next pen is not necessarily really difficult to change, but it is more likely that he consciously chooses under the constraints of a certain theme and environment, and it is his attempt and response to the problem of "poetry and truth".

We see a lot of illusory and absurd dreams in "Wild Grass", but at the same time we see the most real Lu Xun. In "Weeds", you can see Lu Xun's very real life and emotions during this period, see his "Hua gai luck", see the "female teacher's great trend", the "crescent moon faction" gentlemen's encirclement and suppression, the "March 18" tragedy, and the aftermath of his love and brother's discord in his private life... It's all visible, so it's no wonder there are all sorts of interpretations.

However, more importantly, these are not directly "seen", but presented through a kind of "painting dreams", "symbols" and "deformations". "Weeds" is a special spiritual product of his life in the darkest period of his life. The significance of "Weeds" is by no means only that it records the truth of Lu Xun's life and mental state at this time, but more importantly, it embodies Lu Xun's profound reflection and thorough cleanup of his own life during this special period, and is a literary expression of special aesthetic significance for his own life and experience.

This article is excerpted from "Intensive Reading of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literary Works" edited by Yang Lianfen and Zhang Jieyu, authorized by Chinese Min University Press)

Selected Chinese books

Intensive Reading of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature

Yang Lianfen Zhang Jieyu Editor-in-Chief

Chinese University Press

February 2022

The book "Intensive Reading of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature" consists of 11 editions and 40 chapters. The 1-9 editions take a single (volume) work as the object of intensive reading, and the style is novels, essays and dramas; the 10-11 editions are poetry topics, which briefly present the historical context of the development of new poetry while intensively reading the poems of representative poets.

This book breaks the conventional style of literary history, takes the text as the center, pays attention to case analysis, and pays attention to the "fine" and "deep" reading of the original work. The selected texts and topics are either important propositions with "origin" significance in literary history, or embody important literary trends or literary historical signs, or focus on the rheological history of a certain literary theme, and take this as a guideline to form multiple units that are independent of each other but have some echoes, and as a whole, form observation and reflection on the historical trend and artistic practice of modern Chinese literature. The authors of each chapter of this book are scholars who have made great achievements in related fields, so the textbook fully reflects the combination of classic selections and cutting-edge research. At the same time, because each chapter is relatively complete, it can enable readers to grasp the writing method of academic papers while grasping literary works, and learn to analyze the works and stimulate academic thinking.

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