Xue Linrong is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, engaged in Lu Xun's microscopic research in his spare time, and is committed to exploring Lu Xun's spiritual world from a daily perspective.
□ Xue Linrong
Just as modern Chinese novels began with Lu Xun, modern book binding design also inspired Lu Xun and reached a considerable height in his practice and exploration. Lu Xun can be called a pioneer in the binding design of modern books and periodicals in China.
Lu Xun is not a professional artist, but he has a superior sensitivity and talent for art. It is this kind of strangeness that makes him enthusiastically advocate emerging art, personally organize exhibitions, hold woodcut seminars, compile and print albums, collect and sort out ancient Chinese woodcut rubbings, introduce foreign art creations, train young art workers, and become the forerunner of the modern art revolution. In addition, Lu Xun also created another kind of novel in addition to the novel, another kind of essay in addition to the essay, and his binding design expressed the concept of art and modern consciousness in his mind, which is exciting.
Lu Xun's book binding design is a conscious and sober artistic pursuit, he once said: "In the past, the books produced in the past were either found in writing or celebrity inscriptions, or used lead typesetting, these are all old-fashioned, I want to change it, so I design it myself." It is precisely because of his emphasis on the art of book binding and his new concept of art that his designs stand out from the crowd and are otherworldly. According to incomplete statistics, Lu Xun designed as many as sixty or seventy kinds of book covers in his lifetime, many of which are the leaders of modern book binding design.
"Scream", which contains 14 novels written by Lu Xun from 1918 to 1922, including "Diary of a Madman", "Medicine", and "The True Biography of Ah Q", was first published by Beijing Xinchao Society in August 1923. The cover of "Scream" is Lu Xun's finest and most influential design.
The scream was printed in twenty-two editions during Lu Xun's lifetime, and the cover was designed by Lu Xun himself: the cover painting was painted on a dark red background, and the title of the book "Scream" and the author's name "Lu Xun" were divided into two layers, engraved in the form of a seal in a black rectangle, located at the upper end of the cover, decorated with a yin carved frame line. The strokes of the word "shout" are wrong left and right, highlighting the three "mouths", which are both words and quite picturesque, as if shouting in unison, and appear majestic and powerful under the background of the crimson writing. The order in which the text is arranged from right to left retains the form of ancient books, showing a certain umbilical link between modern literature and traditional Chinese culture.
The most visual impact of this cover is that the dark red background surrounds a flat black block, reminiscent of the iron house analogy that Lu Xun and Qian Xuantong said in the preface to "The Scream": "If an iron room is windowless and difficult to destroy, there are many sleeping people in it, who will soon suffocate, but from sleep to death, do not feel the sadness 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."
The cover of "Scream" is simple and powerful, quiet and solemn, meaningful and unique, which is a rare classic in the history of Chinese book binding design, and also a model for the transition of new literary covers from traditional form to modern form, which has pioneering significance for modern book binding.
Li Xiaofeng, who once presided over the Beixin Bookstore, wrote in a commemorative article that when books such as "Scream" were delivered to them, "a look at the appearance is enough to attract us, make us surprised and appreciated, and we can't bear to let go; novel binding, loose ranks, white paper, by no means comparable to the books of the same kind in the world..."
However, Lu Xun was not satisfied with the first version of the Song font, and in May 1926, when the Beixin Bookstore published the fourth edition of "Scream", Lu Xun changed the Song font printed characters to lishu fine art characters, so that the written gold and stone flavor was more sufficient, and the whole was full of Qin and Han courage and modern meaning. Because Lishu is more simple and powerful than the Song style, it can express the inner spirit of Lu Xun's novels, especially the bo brick stroke, which has both a sense of convergence and a tendency of looseness and generosity, which shows Lu Xun's profound attainment in Chinese character culture, the great importance attached to Chinese character fonts, and the accurate grasp and skillful control of different aesthetic functions of various fonts.
【Source: Yangtze River Daily】
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