Literary Remains: Death, Trauma, and Lu Xun's Refusal to Mourn

Notes

239 Notes Prologue 1 Translation adapted from Owen, Chinese Literature, 110.The poem “Funiao fu” was composed by Jia Yi (200–168 BCE) upon an owl’s visit to his lodging. Lu Xun wrote about this poem in “Jia Yi yu Chao Cuo”(Jia Yi and Chao Cuo),in his Outline of the Literary History of the Han (Han wenxue shi gangyao), LXQJ 9.403. 2 According to Shen Yimo, Lu Xun “sometimes would sit quietly in concentration, without talking or smiling, his clothes disheveled, hair in disarray. Someone gave him the nickname ‘Owl.’Lu Xun didn’t seem to dislike this bird or the gecko—in fact, he seemed to be quite fond of them.”Shen speculates that the nickname was given to Lu Xun by Qian Xuantong.“Lu Xun shenghuo,” 247–250. In an essay titled “Songs of Peace”(Taiping gejue, 1928), Lu Xun expresses a sense of injustice on behalf of the owl, which was often treated as an inauspicious sign. He criticizes revolutionary writers who were afraid of the darkness and “only picked auspicious symbols to intoxicate themselves,” “welcoming the magpie and despising the cry of the owl.”LXQJ 4.104.The magpie is regarded as a harbinger of happiness and good luck in Chinese lore. 3 Lu Xun, Fen, n.p. 4 Wang Xirong interprets the symbols on the ornate frame as a moon on the top left hand corner, clouds on both sides, and rain on the right column. Huazhe Lu Xun, 695. 5 To cite two prominent examples from his short stories: the moon in “Madman’s Diary” (Kuangren riji, 1918) could be interpreted as a symbol for enlightenment as well as lunacy (LXQJ 1.444); in “Medicine” (Yao, 1919), it is unclear whether the crow that appears and flies off into the sky at the end of the story is an auspicious or inauspicious sign (LXQJ 1.472). 6 For a discussion of the symbolic meanings of the owl in Chinese culture, see Laing, The Winking Owl, 86; and Eugene Y. Wang, “The Winking Owl,” 444. 7 Wang Xirong, Huazhe Lu Xun, 695. 8 Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece, 26–29. 9 This reading is consistent with another image that appears in several of Lu Xun’s essays—of a subject encountering his own corpse—which I examine in the Epilogue. 10 LXQJ 1.300.The same message is iterated in “On the Intellectual Class” (Guanyu zhishi jieji, 1927), LXQJ 8.223. 11 LXQJ 5.203. 12 LXQJ 6.225. 240 Notes to Pages 2–6 13 In the preface to Call to Arms (Nahan, 1923), Lu Xun noted that he often resorted to using qubi in his short stories, adding signs of hope so as not to infect readers with his pessimistic vision. LXQJ 1.441. Introduction 1 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 63; cited in Kowallis, “Festivals for Lu Xun,” 139. 2 Gao Yuanbao discusses Lu Xun’s given name in Gao Yuanbao jiang Lu Xun, 21–24. As he notes, Lu Xun’s birth name was Zhou Zhangshou 周章壽, which was later changed to Zhou Shuren 周樹人. His courtesy name (zi), Yushan 豫 山, was changed to Yucai 豫才. 3 After emerging victorious in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the RussoJapanese War in 1905, Japan was increasingly seen as a potential model for Chinese modernization. Many early translations of Western works into Chinese were secondhand translations from the Japanese. 4 For discussions of the late Qing trend of studying in Japan, see Shang Xiaoming, Liu ri xuesheng; and Huang Fuqing, Qing mo liu ri xuesheng. 5 Said, Culture and Imperialism, xiii. 6 For an examination of the image of the “sick man of Asia,” see Larissa Heinrich’s Afterlife of Images. For a discussion of the often overloaded and murky term “social Darwinism,” see Jones, Developmental Fairy Tales, 28–30. 7 For Lu Xun’s metaphor of the iron house, see “Zixu,” in Call to Arms, LXQJ 1.441; for Lu Xun’s analogy of the cannibalistic feast, see “Reply to Mr. Youheng” (Da Youheng xiansheng, 1927), LXQJ 3.474, and “Jottings under the Lamp” (Deng xia manbi, 1925), LXQJ 1.229. 8 The notable exceptions are Leo Ou-fan Lee, Iron House, 49–68, and a few recent articles, including Chou,“Literary Evidence,”and Lydia Liu,“Life as Form.” Also noteworthy is the relative dearth of scholarship on Lu Xun’s rewriting of old fables and legends in Old Tales Retold, which I examine in Chapters 7 and 8. 9 Notable works...