My Road to Lu Xun Research

Jon Eugene von Kowallis

Guo Moruo once observed in a preface he was invited to write for the 1961 edition of the Lu Xun Shigao ［Lu Xun's Poetry in His Own Calligraphy］ that“Lu Xun never set out to be a poet，but when he did compose poems，each one was exquisite.”I've never been one to put much store in Guo Moruo's opinions of Lu Xun，but the more I study Lu Xun's poetry，the more I would concur with that observation．And that holds true for the rest of his works as well.

I first became interested in modern China's foremost author Lu Xun（1881-1936）when I was in high school in a backwater town in Pennsylvania while paging through the bibliography at the back of Edgar Snow's book The Other Side of the River，which made mention of someone called“Lu Hsn”and his True Story of Ah Q．The name“Ah Q”（and Snow's enthusiastic endorsement of Lu Xun）sparked my curiosity so much so that I chanced to suc-cessfully mail order a collection of his short stories and essays，firstreading them in English translations done by Yang Xianyi（1915-2009）and his wife Gladys Tayler Yang（1919-1999），published by the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing.

As soon as I had graduated high school I took a summer inten-sive language course at the University of Pittsburgh and my first Chinese teacher just happened to be Tai Yijian，the son of Lu Xun's own protégé and literary associate Tai Jingnong（1902-1990）．He seemed startled one day when I mentioned Lu Xun's name during a break in class—his first reaction was to tell me his father had known Lu Xun and that Lu Xun visited their home when he was small．He quickly added that once Lu Xun had spilled a cup of hot tea on him，at which point I exclaimed：“I don't believe it！”He then began to unbutton his shirt，saying“I still have a scar from it，”which he intended to show the class as proof when I hastily interjected：“That's fine．I don't need to see it！”In colloquial American English“I don't believe it！”had the connotation of“That's incredible，”emphasizing the rarity of the coincidence.

I also remember asking him about the symbolic meaning of cannibalism in Lu Xun's story Kuangren Riji“Diary of a Mad-man”．At the time I thought it must have referred to the way the imperialist powers wanted to carve up China．I remember that he just laughed and said：“No．It refers to some people in Chinese so-ciety.”I have always thought it a pity he did not elaborate，but I guess it was because that was still during the Cold War era and he may have thought it inappropriate to go into such a topic in any de-tail in a Chinese language class.

Later I majored in Chinese language and culture at Columbia University as an undergraduate and studied both modern and tradi-tional Chinese literature under C.T．Hsia（1921-2013）．Although his History of Modern Chinese Fiction contains a chapter on Lu Xun，Prof．Hsia actually said very little about him in class，other than to remark“Lu Xun was a dilettante．He spent most of his afternoons in a Japanese bookstore.”It wasn't until later that I learned from my own reading that Lu Xun received his mail at Uchiyama Kanzo's bookstore and used it as an office to interact with the public．After graduation，I went on to further study in Taiwan，which was then under martial law，and the works of Lu Xun and most other writ-ers of the May Fourth generation were banned，except for Xu Zhi-mo（1897-1931）and Zhu Ziqing（1898-1948）．I first read Lu Xun's poetry，verse by verse，in a slim volume I had brought in from Hong Kong titled Lu Xun Shi Zhu Xi ［Lu Xun's Poetry An-notated and Analyzed］，attributed to one Jiang Tian（probably a pseudonym-this was a toned-down version of what could have been a Red Guard publication originally attributed to a Jiang Tian江天and reprinted in Hong Kong under a slightly different title Lu Xun Shi Xin Jie ［New Interpretations of Lu Xun's Poetry］）．The latter tended to stress revolutionary and class-struggle angles in its interpretations．I was challenged and intrigued by the poetry but the book left more questions in my mind than it answered.

Fortunately，toward the end of my second year in Taiwan I re-ceived a scholarship from the Congressionally-funded East-WestCenter，which enabled me to return to the US and continue my study of Chinese literature for a Masters degree at the University of Hawaii under Lo Chin-t'ang．At that time I wrote a thesis on Lu Xun's classical-style poetry，although I was also drawn to the fic-tion of Chen Yingzhen（b.1937），a xiangtu（local color）author from Taiwan who influenced by Lu Xun．Later I conducted re-search at Peking University under Sun Yushi，who had published extensively on Lu Xun's prose poetry collection Yecao（Wild Grass），as part of my PhD program at the University of Califor-nia，Berkeley，where I eventually completed a dissertation on a very different subject—the Poets of the“Old Schools”during the late-Qing and early Republican eras，supervised by Cyril Birch．These included Wang Kaiyun（1833-1916），Fan Zengxiang（1846-1931），Yi Shunding（1858-1920），Chen Sanli（1856-1937），Chen Yan（1856-1937）and Zheng Xiaoxu（1860-1938）．But al-though their ideas and their poetic compositions were quite differ-ent from Lu Xun，there were nevertheless some similarities in terms of the entry of modernity through the vehicle of a classical lit-erary genre.

It was not until after I had revised my original free-verse trans-lations a number times that I published my first monograph The Lyri-cal Lu Xun：a Study of his Classical-style Verse，in which I used both literal glosses，followed by a formal rhyming translation and exten-sive annotations．Tai Jingnong，who had lived on Taiwan through decades of martial law，was kind enough to write the calligraphy for the title page at my request through Lo Chin-t'ang during thelast years of the martial law period．I have always thought it a great pity that I never had a chance to discuss Lu Xun's poetry with Tai Jingnong，but I was reluctant to approach him about a subject he was reluctant to address and which could have caused him prob-lems．Prof．Tai had been jailed several times under the Kuomintang regime on mainland China and his predecessor as head of the Chi-nese Department at Taiwan University，Xu Shouchang（1883-1948），another friend of Lu Xun，had been murdered un-der suspicious circumstances in 1948，at the beginning of the mar-tial law period.

Although the topics of my research changed over the years，my interest in Lu Xun never faded and I have always been keen to explore the untranslated or less-studied aspects of his work．That is in part what led me to his classical-style poetry and later his early es-says，which were also written in classical Chinese，but have a dis-tinctly modern orientation in terms of content．Another thing I had in mind was the idea that another more intimate and personal aspect of Lu Xun might emerge from his compositions in the old forms and old languages．In his classical poetry we see a defiant critic of the warlord and Kuomintang regimes，but at the same time we also find a concerned teacher，a lover，a family man，a humanist，a patriot-scholar，an internationalist and a poet of great sensibility，with a keen sense of tragedy and loss，but yet never losing hope for the future of China.

I am very grateful to the publishers and the editors，Mr Huang Qiaosheng，Director of the Lu Xun Research Institute inBeijing，for this opportunity to share my translations of Lu Xun's classical-style poetry with the readership in China，where book publishing continues to flourish in hard copy as well as on the inter-net．These translations were originally part of a longer monograph ti-tled The Lyrical Lu Xun：a Study of His Classical-style Verse（Honolu-lu：University of Hawaii Press，1996），which has not had direct distribution in China.

For my detailed thoughts on translating and interpreting Lu Xun's classical-style poetry，I would ask that my readers in China refer to several review articles originally published in the American scholarly journal Chinese Literature；Essays，Article，Reviews（CLEAR）．A number of these can now be read on my personal website jon-vonkowallis.com．The first was titled“Poems of Lu Xun”in CLEAR，vol.3，pp.183-188．Next there was“Lu Xun's Classi-cal Poetry”in CLEAR，vol.13，pp.101-118；A third piece was“Interpreting Lu Xun”in CLEAR，vol.18，pp.153-164．Most of them have been translated into Chinese and published in the jour-nal Lu Xun Yanjiu Yuekan ［Lu Xun Research Monthly］，an or-gan of the Lu Xun Research Institute affiliated with the Beijing Lu Xun Museum．These are under the titles：Lu Xun Jiutishi Zhushi yu Yingyi Lueshu（An Overview of the Various Exegeses of Lu Xun's Old-style Poetry and Its Translation into English）published in Lu Xun Yanjiu Yuekan，2004，no.4，pp.72-82，being a Chinese translation by Huang Qiaosheng of“Lu Xun's Classical Poetry”which appeared in CLEAR，op．cit.；and Lu Xun‘shi’yu‘yi’（Exegesis versus translation in the study of Lu Xun）in LuXun Yanjiu Yuekan，2002，no.1，pp.37-48—a Chinese trans-lation of“Interpreting Lu Xun”from CLEAR，op．cit.），which includes my views on Wolfgang Kubin's German translations．The above articles reflect my thoughts and ruminations on a number of the issues involved in translating and interpreting Lu Xun's poetry which have arisen since the first commentaries began in the 1940s．Another article on my experience as a Lu Xun researcher，written in Chinese，appears in the quarterly journal Shanghai Lu Xun Yan-jiu ［Shanghai Lu Xun Research］（Spring 2007），pp.66-81.

More recently I have edited a special issue of the English-lan-guage journal Frontiers of Literary Studies in China，vol.7，no.3（September 2013），which focusses on Lu Xun and his erstwhile teacher Zhang Taiyan（Zhang Binglin，1869-1936）and contains an article on my reflections on translating Lu Xun's book-length early essay Moluo Shi Li Shuo（On the Power of Mara Poetry）．I con-tributed a chapter in Chinese titled Lu Xun Yanjiu zai Yingyu Shi-jie：Guoqu，Dangqian，Weilai（Lu Xun Research in the Eng-lish-speaking world：the past，present and future）in the book Lu Xun Shehui Yingxiang：Diaocha Baogao（Renmin Ribao Chubanshe，2011），pp.257-276，from which an editor unfortunately re-moved all the original English book titles．My most recent contribu-tion to the field is a review article in English titled Lu Xun on Our Minds，The Post-Socialist Reappraisal in the American Journal of Asian Studies，vol.73，no.3（August 2014），pp.1-7．There I discuss the new wave of enthusiasm for Lu Xun in the West，which has brought about six new books in the last few years：EvaShan Chou's Memory，Violence，Queues：Lu Xun Interprets China（Ann Arbor，MI：Association for Asian Studies，2012）；Gloria Da-vies’Lu Xun's Revolution：Writing in a Time of Violence（Cam-bridge，MA：Harvard University Press，2013）；Eileen Cheng's Liter-ary Remains：Death，Trauma and Lu Xun's Refusal to Mourn（Hono-lulu：University of Hawaii Press，2013）；Nicholas Kaldis'the Chi-nese Prose Poem：A Study of Lu Xun's Wild Grass（Amherst，NY：Cambria Sinophone World Series，2014）；as well as related books by Andrew Jones’Developmental Fairy Tales：Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture（Harvard University Press，2011）and Julia Lovell's new translation of Lu Xun's short stories The Real Sto-ry of Ah Q and Other Tales of China（London：Penguin Classics，2009）．As this is a wholly new phenomenon in Western scholarly publishing，it may well constitute a trend.