【Recommendation of the Mountain Trail Literature Society】
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【Cheng Kaihua】
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In January 1940, in order to sum up the historical experience of the Chinese revolution and explore the trend of Chinese politics and culture under the new situation, Mao Zedong published "On New Democracy" in the inaugural issue of "Chinese Culture" published in Yan'an. In this monograph, Mao Zedong reviewed the history of the struggle between the old and new cultures since the May Fourth Movement, spoke highly of the great merits of the New Cultural Army, and wrote down the famous, most wonderful and moving historical evaluation of Lu Xun in one go with his vigorous pen power:
After the May Fourth Movement, China produced a completely new cultural force...... And Lu Xun is the greatest and most heroic standard-bearer of this new cultural army. Lu Xun was the chief general of China's cultural revolution, and he was not only a great writer, but also a great thinker and a great revolutionary. Lu Xun's bones are the hardest, and he does not have the slightest servility and flattery, which is the most precious character of the colonial and semi-colonial people. Lu Xun is the most correct, bravest, most resolute, most loyal, and most enthusiastic national hero who represents the majority of the whole nation on the cultural front and charges into battle against the enemy. Lu Xun's direction is the direction of the new culture of the Chinese nation. (Mao Zedong, On New Democracy, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 2, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1991, pp. 697-698)
This passage highly summarizes Lu Xun's glorious achievements, lofty position, and tremendous role in the history of modern Chinese literature, thought, and revolution, and is the most comprehensive, correct, and profound evaluation of Lu Xun. The late Mr. Li Helin, a well-known expert on Lu Xun, once said: "Since the May Fourth Movement, many people have commented on Lu Xun's works and thoughts, but no one has ever summed up his life in terms of three 'great' and three 'families' so comprehensively and profoundly. (Li Helin, "The Great Writer, Thinker, and Revolutionary Lu Xun"; Selected Papers of the Academic Symposium to Commemorate the Centenary of Lu Xun's Birth, Changsha: Hunan People's Publishing House, 1982, p. 6.) ）
Mr. Li Helin's view is in line with historical facts. Before Mao Zedong, although Feng Xuefeng, especially Qu Qiubai, made a basic Marxist evaluation of Lu Xun's writings, thoughts, and battles, there were still principled differences in Lu Xun's understanding. The question of "who is Lu Xun" has not been clearly resolved. Needless to say, those who attacked and slandered Lu Xun were that even in the progressive cultural circles, Lu Xun was only commented on as a simple writer. In the past, some people have commented on Lu Xun's thoughts, but few people say that he is a "thinker," let alone a "great thinker"; as for "great revolutionary," in the eyes of some people, it is even more difficult to talk about. In the "<鲁迅杂感选集>Preface", although Qu Qiubai summarized Lu Xun's revolutionary tradition and ideological development path, he did not mention Lu Xun as a "great writer and great thinker". The analysis of Lu Xun's miscellaneous feelings in the "Preface" is quite profound, but in Qu Qiubai's mind, Lu Xun is nothing more than a writer and thinker with profound thoughts. The glorious words "great writer and great thinker" never appeared in his pen. Mao Zedong was different. He praised Lu Xun as a great writer, a great thinker, and a great revolutionary. He did not limit himself to a one-sided evaluation of Lu Xun from a "literary perspective", but from a strategic vantage point, from the three major aspects of Lu Xun's outstanding contributions to the history of literature, ideology, and revolution, from the perspective of the trinity of "writer", "thinker" and "revolutionary", from Lu Xun's works, Lu Xun is evaluated based on the concrete facts shown in his thoughts and actions, so his arguments are undoubtedly very scientific, and this is precisely the outstanding point of Mao Zedong's discussion of Lu Xun, and it is also the place where Mao Zedong stood taller, saw farther, and expounded more comprehensively and profoundly than Qu Qiubai.
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Great man of letters
In the history of Chinese literature, Lu Xun, as a great writer, has attracted worldwide attention for his literary achievements. He has made outstanding historical contributions to the study of novels, essays, essays, prose poems, poetry, and literary history, as well as the translation of foreign literature. Lu Xun's lifetime translation of more than 700,000 words, plus diaries and letters, is more than 10 million words. Among them, there are more than 700 essays, compiled into 17 essay collections, 33 novels, which have been formed into 3 collections, 1 prose poem and 1 prose collection, more than 70 poems in old and new styles, and more than 400 letters. In addition, he has compiled and reviewed 5 collections of Chinese classical literature, written 2 monographs on the history of Chinese classical literature, and translated and introduced the works of writers and literary works from more than 10 countries. Lu Xun's works have been translated into more than 50 foreign languages and have become a valuable spiritual wealth in the literary circles of China and the world.
Here we focus on Lu Xun's novels and essays. Lu Xun <中国新文学大系>said in "Preface to the Second Collection of Novels": "From May 1918 onwards, "Diary of a Madman", "Kong Yiji", "Medicine", etc., appeared one after another, which can be regarded as showing the actual achievements of the 'literary revolution', and because of the thought at that time, 'the depth of expression and the special format' have stirred the hearts of some young readers. The "deep expression" here means that the work has profoundly exposed and violently attacked the feudal system and the old religion, and truly reflects life, which refers to the ideological content. "Formative" refers to the novel's diary form, vernacular language, and the originality of its presentation techniques. In the history of the development of new Chinese literature, "Diary of a Madman" perfectly unifies the historical tasks of opposing the old morality and advocating the new morality, opposing the old literature and advocating the new literature with a new idea and form, thus completely reforming the novel and opening a new era in the history of Chinese fiction.
From 1918 to 1925, Lu Xun wrote 25 short stories in his busy schedule, which were collected as "The Scream" and "Hesitation". These two collections of novels reflect the social reality of the mainland from the aftermath of the Xinhai Revolution to the eve of the First Civil Revolutionary War. Most of them are taken from the unfortunate people of a sick society. The intention is to expose the suffering of the disease and attract the attention of the cure. The two collections of novels raised a series of issues closely related to the anti-feudal democratic revolution, such as the peasant question and the intellectual question, and linked these issues to the Xinhai Revolution, thus revealing the historical lessons of the failure of the Xinhai Revolution and playing a role in creating public opinion for the new democratic revolution. From the general trend to the specific description, they are all consistent with the spirit of the May Fourth era, and show the characteristics of the cultural revolution and the ideological revolution.
As the initiation of the modernization of Chinese novels, the two collections of novels "The Scream" and "Hesitation" have played a huge role in the process of the modernization of Chinese novels with their strong ideological and artistic qualities, laid the foundation of modern Chinese literature, and occupied an irreplaceable position in the history of modern Chinese literature.
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Essays are Lu Xun's most outstanding literary achievements, and they are also Lu Xun's main weapons in battle. Lu Xun's essays, including those compiled by himself and supplemented by later generations, have 17 collections of about 1.58 million words. If we chronograph his essays, we can clearly see his rich historical content and distinctive characteristics of the times. It is an immortal monument in the history of modern Chinese literature, ideology, and revolution.
Lu Xun's more than 700 essays vividly and profoundly reflected the overall picture of the political struggle and ideological and cultural struggle in the 20 and 30 th century on the mainland. In the history of the Chinese revolution, a series of struggles on the ideological, political, and cultural fronts in the nearly 20 years from the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 to the eve of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1936 have all been repercussed and reflected in Lu Xun's essays; imperialism, feudal forces, bureaucratic compradors, bourgeoisie, traitors, traitors, and even the erroneous ideas of the representative bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, as well as the erroneous tendencies of the "left" and the right within the party, have all been subjected to-for-tat struggles or serious criticisms in Lu Xun's essays. Lu Xun's essays can be called the history of modern Chinese thought, culture, and revolution written in the form of essays in the twenties and thirties of the 20th century, and are epics that reflect the special form of "eyebrows of the times".
In the past, it was said that Balzac's works reflected an era, Turgenev's works reflected an era, and the works of Shakespeare and Tolstoy reflected an era...... Now we can completely say that the great Lu Xun used more than 700 highly combative essays and dozens of novels and other works with ideological and artistic power to profoundly reflect a great historical era from an important aspect, that is, a great historical era in which the Chinese people, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, opposed imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism and began to break the social chains of thousands of years of oppression. The greatness, breadth, and depth of the role that a writer and a literary work can play are most prominently demonstrated in Lu Xun. Lu Xun has made so many and such great contributions to the liberation and rebirth of his country, nation, and people, to the revolutionary cause of the people, and to the building of culture and ideology with the power of literature and as a writer. As the greatest writer in Chinese history so far, Lu Xun is also first-class even if he stands in the ranks of the world's great writers. If we do not hold the bourgeois artistic aesthetic bias, this conclusion should be said to be unproblematic.
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(Great Writer)
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Great thinker
The shift in worldview is a fundamental shift. As a great thinker, Lu Xun's world outlook underwent a fundamental transformation from revolutionary democracy to Marxism. Before the October Revolution in Russia, Lu Xun looked to the West for the truth of saving the country and the people, and was influenced by bourgeois democratic ideas and evolutionary ideas. The October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism and the revolutionary truth of saving the country and the people that he had dreamed of. From then on, Lu Xun saw the new hope of national liberation, actively threw himself into the new cultural movement led by the proletariat, and fought and shouted for the new democratic revolution that was thoroughly anti-imperialist and anti-feudal. In 1927, the defeat of the First Civil Revolutionary War played a decisive role in the qualitative change of Lu Xun's thinking. Chiang Kai-shek launched the "April 12" counter-revolutionary coup d'état and carried out a brutal and bloody massacre, which gave Lu Xun a great shock. The "lessons of facts" of blood "bombarded" the evolutionary ideas that Lu Xun once believed in. "One of my delusions was shattered," he said. To this day, I have always been optimistic that it is probably the elderly who oppress and kill young people. As this kind of elderly people die gradually, China can always be more vigorous. Now I know otherwise. It seems that the one who kills the youth is probably the youth. (Lu Xun: "Just Collected Mr. Answers") and said: "I have always believed in the theory of evolution, always thinking that the future will be better than the past, and the young will be better than the old. But then I realized I was wrong...... When I was in Guangdong, I witnessed the fact that I was a young man and was divided into two camps, either of whom sent a letter to informant or assisted the official in arresting people! Through the test of the long-term and fierce practice of class struggle, Lu Xun finally saw the "bias" of the theory of evolution, which had been used as the main ideological weapon for more than 20 years, and bravely completely denied it and discarded it without hesitation. The bloody lessons of the class struggle prompted Lu Xun to step up his study of Marxism in the combination of theory and practice, to master and apply historical materialism and dialectical materialism, and to begin to transform himself from a revolutionary democrat into a Marxist. This is a fundamental shift. This transformation is a transformation from one class to another, a transformation from one ideological system to another. With this change, Lu Xun was fundamentally distinguished from all bourgeois writers, thinkers, and revolutionaries, and thus radiated the brilliant brilliance of Marxist ideology in him.
Mao Zedong pointed out that although Lu Xun "was not a member of the Communist Party organization, his thoughts, actions, and writings were all Marxist." (Mao Zedong: "On Lu Xun", Mao Zedong's Collected Works, Vol. 2, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1993) and said: "Lu Xun was a real Marxist. (Collected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 7, p. 263).
Lu Xun was a great thinker and a great writer. Most of his profound ideas are reflected in his literary creations, novels, and essays. The central theme of Lu Xun's two collections of novels, "The Scream" and "Hesitation", which reflect real life, is "the liberation of man". Lu Xun once said that the reason why he wrote novels was because he still held the "enlightenment" ideas of more than ten years ago, thinking that it must be "for life" and that this life should be improved. Based on this creative concept, Lu Xun profoundly exposed the essence of feudal etiquette and cannibalism, dissected the sick national spirit, and shook the deep-rooted feudal ideology and feudal culture. In portraying the "silent national soul", he expressed deep sympathy for the lower classes of people, such as oppressed and exploited peasants and intellectuals. Compared with the novels of his contemporaries, Lu Xun's novels have a more profound and profound thought. Lu Xun's essays cover a wide range of topics and contain rich ideological contents, and in terms of ideology and theory, they cover almost all fields and aspects of Marxism, except for the fact that they rarely talk about the political economy of Marxism. Lu Xun's essays cover all issues of life, society, history, reality, the state, the nation, the family, the individual, philosophy, politics, culture, art, aesthetics, education, science, ethics, and religion, as well as women, youth, and children. It was a special encyclopedic work. In fact, it constitutes a complete ideological system with unique significance. On the study of essays on these aspects, some people have edited and written such monographs as "Lu Xun's Philosophical Thoughts", "Lu Xun's Literary and Artistic Thoughts", "Lu Xun's Aesthetic Thoughts", "Lu Xun's Educational Thoughts", "Lu Xun's Essays on the Art", "Lu Xun's Ideological Theses", "Lu Xun's Thought Research" and other monographs.
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Lu Xun's essays
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The carrier of Lu Xun's thoughts, in addition to the novels and the early essays in "The Tomb", is his essays. When we talk about Lu Xun's thoughts, we mainly talk about Lu Xun's thoughts. Of course, Lu Xun also has academic works such as "A Brief History of Chinese Novels", but these are not very many, and his ideas basically belong to the category of novel history. Therefore, it can be said that the main component of Lu Xun's thought is Lu Xun's essay. Lu Xun's extremely high attainment in literature made him the best at fusing profound thoughts, rich contents, and vivid forms into one furnace, and using the form of essays to express Marxist scientific theories vividly, vividly, profoundly, and solidly. As Feng Xuefeng put it, Lu Xun's essays "almost every one shines with the thought of a genius thinker, and almost every one shines with the artistic light of a typical magnitude and a genius satirist." (Feng Xuefeng: "Lu Xun's Literary Road (Collected Papers)" Changsha: Hunan People's Publishing House, 1980 edition) Lu Xun's essays are not only a sharp weapon of Marxism, but also a pearl of art. This shows a distinctive characteristic of Lu Xun as a Marxist thinker, and it is also one of his merits.
As a Marxist thinker, Lu Xun was different from Marx, Engels, and Lenin, who devoted his whole life to theoretical writings, the workers' movement, and social revolution, and created a scientific Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and unlike Mao Zedong, who was good at theory, literature, politics, and military affairs, and led the Chinese people to overthrow the oppression of the three mountains with great talent and established a great people's leader of a brand-new China. Lu Xun was a great thinker with originality and distinctive characteristics who took literature as his profession, explored the human soul and transformed the human soul all his life, and mainly based on the ideological and cultural front, and struggled for the liberation of the Chinese nation and the toiling masses all his life.
Regarding the uniqueness of Lu Xun's thought, Feng Xuefeng once had an incisive analysis. In his article "Memories of Lu Xun", he said: "Mr. Lu Xun is not willing to call himself a thinker, but he is willing to see himself as a warrior...... Naturally, objectively he was a warrior and at the same time a thinker, because his ideas were creative and systematic...... But the systematization of his thoughts, which in him is the natural result of his consistent will to engage in the battle of reality, is not the result of his desire to create a system of thought or an ism. In him, all new and reconciled ideas, all truths, are not to be used to build their own doctrines, but to use the light of truth to illuminate reality and illuminate the way forward, and to use all new and reconciled ideas in the battle of reality...... Compared with a thinker and theoretician, he is indeed more like a warrior and a rebuke, fighting and exploring the way forward, and the experience and lessons of this battle and exploration are the basic things that form the fruit of his precious thoughts. He is like a warrior or a pragmatist with regard to the doctrines, doctrines, and ideas of his predecessors, and he applies them to the extent that they are of any benefit to him, and to some extent can be used as weapons or as guides, or as circumstantial evidence, and he has no prejudices; but if he thinks that they are of no use in real battles, he does not pay much attention to them, no matter how famous they may be in history or in other countries, and how they have status. Therefore, his thinking is by no means a deduction or development of the doctrines or doctrines of his predecessors, but basically the accumulation and crystallization of his experience and lessons in the actual battle with the Chinese people. (Feng Xuefeng: Memories of Lu Xun, Beijing: People's Literature Publishing House, 1952)
The uniqueness of Lu Xun's thought is also unique in his treatise "Research on Lu Xun's Thought" by Yi Zhuxian, a professor at Wuhan University. He believes that Lu Xun's thought has four characteristics: "First, Lu Xun is a thinker who persists in fighting reality," "Second, Lu Xun is a thinker who is full of the spirit of seeking truth and is good at combining theory with practice," "third, Lu Xun is a thinker who is good at rooting profound ideas in rich knowledge and expressing them in vivid forms," and "fourth, Lu Xun is a great thinker who is strict with self-analysis." Therefore, Mr. Yi Zhuxian believes that Lu Xun, as a Marxist thinker, "is not only fully 'Sinicized', but also fully 'Lu Xun'". (Yi Zhuxian: Research on Lu Xun's Thought, Wuhan: Wuhan University Press, 1984)
The Chinese Revolution produced generations of Marxists: Marxist theoreticians, politicians, military strategists, philosophers, economists, historians, state activists, and so on. A great thinker like Lu Xun is still the only one to this day. This is the manifestation of the uniqueness of Lu Xun's thought.
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(Great Thinker)
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Great revolutionary
As a great writer and a great thinker, Lu Xun was inseparable from his long-term participation in the actual revolutionary struggle. Lu Xun always stood at the forefront of the revolutionary struggle and never left the practice of the revolution for a moment. He is not the kind of "revolutionary" who writes articles and books behind closed doors, but a "revolutionary" who constantly participates in revolutionary practical activities. All his revolutionary practice is closely linked to the great struggle of the Chinese people to overthrow the three mountains of feudalism, imperialism, and bureaucratic capitalism and seize political power. As early as before the Xinhai Revolution, Lu Xun participated in the anti-Qing revolutionary activities of the revolutionary group "Guangfuhui" led by the democratic revolutionary Zhang Taiyan in Japan. During the "May Fourth" period, Lu Xun fought in Beijing, the birthplace of the New Culture Movement, and waged a heroic struggle against reactionary and decadent imperialist and feudal culture. During the period of the First Great Revolution, he was full of revolutionary enthusiasm and threw himself into Guangzhou, the center of the revolution at that time, actively organized a cultural contingent, opened up a new front, and experienced the "April 12" counter-revolutionary coup d'état and the "April 15" counter-revolutionary massacre; during the agrarian revolution, Lu Xun chose Shanghai, the center of cultural struggle, as his combat base, and joined the "Chinese Left-wing Writers' Union," a joint organization of revolutionary writers under the direct leadership of the Communist Party of China, and became the actual leader of the "Left Alliance." He also participated in the Communist Party's peripheral organizations, such as the "Chinese Revolutionary Mutual Masonic Association", the "Great Alliance of the Chinese Freedom Movement", and the "Chinese League for the Protection of Civil Rights". In these organizations, Lu Xun has done a lot of work and played a great positive role. He fought and criticized all the main objects and enemies of the revolution at that time. In his later years, Lu Xun learned Marxism-Leninism from the practice of struggle, mastered historical materialism and dialectical materialism, and after becoming a communist, he fought more heroically. In the course of the Kuomintang's counterrevolutionary cultural "encirclement and suppression," giving a speech, attending a rally, publishing an article, or joining a group were all in danger of being arrested or assassinated; it was not uncommon for him to be slandered, spread rumors, insulted, intimidated, and slandered. But Lu Xun was righteous and awe-inspiring, brave and fearless, charged into battle, never flinched, and fought until death. His bones are the hardest, and he fully expresses the most precious character of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples. Therefore, Mao Zedong said that Lu Xun was not only a great writer, but also a great thinker and a great revolutionary. This is Mao Zedong's lofty appraisal of Lu Xun on behalf of the Communist Party of China and the people of the whole country. This assessment is correct, scientific, and expected. Lu Xun is a collection of "writers", "thinkers" and "revolutionaries", and he deserves his name.
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(Great Revolutionary)
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Mao Zedong's comprehensive and holistic viewpoint of integrating the three "families" on Lu Xun and evaluating Lu Xun has important guiding significance for our study of Lu Xun. First, when studying Lu Xun, a historical figure, it is necessary to give full consideration to the social and historical conditions in which he lived, and to examine and evaluate him in the entire history of modern Chinese literature, ideology, and revolution, and it is necessary to have a comprehensive, complete, grasp, and correct comprehensive understanding of Lu Xun from the three aspects of literary history, ideological history, and revolutionary history. Lu Xun was a writer, thinker, and revolutionary who used literature as a weapon to fight on the ideological and cultural front. He is not only a representative of the modern cultural (including literary) revolution, but also a representative of the modern intellectual revolution. Lu Xun has a high degree of value in literary history and cultural history, as well as a high value in ideological history and revolutionary history. Mao Zedong's evaluation of Lu Xun's outstanding contribution lies in the fact that he not only fully understood these values of Lu Xun, but also incisively expounded on these values of Lu Xun. It makes us understand the greatness of Lu Xun more clearly. Second, when studying Lu Xun's works, it is also necessary to have a comprehensive and complete viewpoint, and to analyze and evaluate them from the three perspectives of "literature," "ideology," and "revolution," that is to say, we should not only see Lu Xun's works in terms of their achievements in literary creation, but also see the role they played in ideological struggle and revolutionary practice activities. In this way, we can evaluate the literary, ideological, and revolutionary value of Lu Xun's works.
Any great figure in history is a specific person who lives in a certain historical environment. No one is perfect. Any great man has his great historical achievements, but he also inevitably has his historical limitations. Mao Zedong was no exception, and Lu Xun was no exception. Today, we cannot deny the evaluation of Lu Xun because of some mistakes made by Mao Zedong in his later years, still less can we deny Lu Xun who was devoted to Mao Zedong, the Communist Party of China, and the Soviet Union because of these mistakes and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union and the setbacks of the communist movement. History is history after all. All issues must be placed in the historical context of the time and analyzed in a comprehensive, concrete, and factual manner. Only in this way can the requirements of dialectical materialism and historical materialism be met.
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(Lu Xun's literary achievements)
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※ About the Author ※
【Cheng Kaihua】Former head of the Department of Chinese of Shaoyang University, Hunan Province, professor, national outstanding teacher, expert enjoying special allowance of the State Council, scholar of modern Chinese literature. (Professor Cheng Kaihua is the editor's mentor)
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[Recommended reading of the works of the Mountain Trail Literature Society]
Click the link-Shaoyang Normal College (Shanjing Literature Society)_Anthology_Urban Headlines
Click the link - Xianhe (Mountain Trail Xiao Dianqun)
Click on the link-Shanjing Literature Society's Notes (Xiao Dianqun)_Guangzhou Headlines
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[Edited by Xiao Dianqun of the Mountain Trail Literature Society]