I felt incredibly lucky to have come across this, along with several other works of Chinese fiction at an estate sale yesterday. I’ve been meaning to read Lu Xun for some time!
The closest comparison I can think of is Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen - short jottings, roughly three pages, that express thoughts of stark sentiment. Some favorites were the ones about Opinions (if you can’t lie or be honest, all you can do is make joyous utterances oho! Hehehe!) and the one about feeling sensation after death.
Again, not one who is fond of hearing stories about dreams, but these aphoristic tales stand up on their own. Truly a great writer and I understand why he’s so renowned.
I really dug this book and want to read more by Lu Xun. It seems mystical and dreamy while at the same time being concrete. I don't know if these were short stories or prose poems and I like that I don't know.
It's a crying shame Xun Lu's writings didn't make their way to my home country, Finland, until this collection of poetic prose got translated to Finnish in the late year of 2017. I started and finished reading this short book today, and I'm already thinking it'll probably remain as one of the absolute best books I will read this year, if not even one of the best books I've read in all of my life. Xun Lu's poetic prose here is so beautifully tender, yet dark. Even the humor sprinkled here and there is written in such a delicately dismal. It's amazing to think satire could be so... graceful, moving from dream to reality and back to dream. I truly hope more of his works will be translated to my mother tongue, and I hope the translator Tero Tähtinen will do more translating from Chinese to Finnish, because his work here was fire.
Daha önce İngilizce çevirisini okumamın ardından Türkçe çevirisinin de elime geçmesi pastanın üzerindeki kiraz oldu diyebilirim. Çevirmenin eline sağlık, çok güzel çevirmiş. Çin edebiyatının farklı yönleriyle tanışmak da çok güzel. Umarım daha çok eser çevrilir.
There is definitely a lot I missed while reading this slim volume without having the history under my fingers. That being said, a number of the stories still struck me, so much so that I actually laughed aloud at "on expressing and opinion". The meaning of the prose is not tied to the history, though the addition of some thoughts surrounding the stories provided in the preface did inform my reading. The fable-like quality of "dead fire", "the dog's retort", and "the wise man, the fool, and the slave", in particular read as timeless.
I wasn't sure what to make of this collection at first, but when read through the lens of the zero-covid lockdowns, it starts to make a lot of sense. Most of his stories are allegory and they really tap into the powerlessness and despair of a very dark period in China's history.
There is also a dream-like quality to many of his stories (in fact, some are literally about his dreams). Lu Xun is apparently required reading for all Chinese high schoolers, so it's worth a look.
Em "Era Uma Vez Q", breve novela presente neste volume, Lu Xun cria uma personagem que, pela sua extrema ingenuidade, causa o riso e até alguma pena. As “vitórias morais” são uma forma de Q. se esquecer da sua condição e vulnerabilidade. A máquina política que dá origem à sua morte, pela sua implacabilidade, parece um tractor a desfazer um singelo palhaço. E isso magoa mais do que a morte de um herói consciente da sua desgraça.