Lu Xun's Revolution: Writing in a Time of Violence

Lu Xun (his pen name) (1881–1936) is best known for his short stories from China's New Culture period (1919–23), in which he mounted uncompromising satires of China's dead-end authoritarianism, of moribund Confucian culture for producing it, and of spineless intellectuals for accepting it. Davies (intellectual history, Monash Univ., Australia) here covers the essays and polemics of the following period, the "years on the left" (1927–36). Lu Xun argued that revolution was necessary but criticized "revolutionary literature" as "hit, hit, hit, kill, kill, kill, revolt, revolt, revolt," merely fodder for the propagandists. Davies brings to life the "hazy" intellectual politics in 1930's Shanghai; controversies with both leftist and elitist writers; the literary art of the new vernacular and denunciation of those who would deny its use to the masses; and Mao Zedong's misappropriation of his legacy.