Lu Xun: A Select Bibliography

Compiled by Ralph Dumain

Works by Lu Xun in English translation

Jottings under Lamplight, edited by Eileen J. Cheng and Kirk Denton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.

What Happens after Nora Walks Out [on Ibsen], translated by Bonnie S. McDougall.

The Real Story of Ah Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun, translated with an Introduction by Julia Lovell, with an Afterword by Yiyun Li. London: Penguin Classics, 2009.

About Lu Xun

Benton, Gregor Lu Xun and Leon Trotsky [A Review of Lu Xun and Trotsky: ‘Literature and Revolution’ in China by Nagahori Yūzō].

Note Eroshenko and Esperanto.

Cheng, Eileen J. Literary Remains: Death, Trauma and Lu Xun’s Refusal to Mourn. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013.

Davies, Gloria. Lu Xun’s Revolution: Writing in a Time of Violence. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Wasserstrom, Jeffrey. “All I See Around Me is the Same Old Darkness: Gloria Davies on Lu Xun” [interview], Los Angeles Review of Books, November 4, 2013.

Liu, Petras. “Lu Xun’s Literary Revolution in Chinese Marxism,” in After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Colleen Lye & Christopher Nealon (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 161-175.

Lu Xun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lu Xun in Chinese literature, thought, & politics

Andrews, Julia F. Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Spring Earth held an exhibition at the YMCA in late June in conjunction with a display of Lu Xun's personal print collection. Lu Xun reportedly purchased ten Spring Earth prints, including one by Jiang.[29] On July 13, as the Spring Earth Club conducted its Esperanto class, Nationalist and foreign police burst in and arrested eleven members, including Jiang Feng, Ai Qing, and the instructor.[30] Jiang Feng and the others served two years in prison, during which time they continued their studies of art and literature. A letter sent by Jiang Feng and Ai Qing to Lu Xun late in 1932 reported that they had transformed the prison into a school, every day following a set schedule for reading, painting, writing poetry, and discussion.[31] They also practiced their organizational skills by mounting three hunger strikes over food, bathing, and medical care. [pp. 15-16]

Jiang Feng absorbed many of Cai Yuanpei's theories of art, as did most artists of his generation. Mayching Kao has described a collaboration between the idealistic Cai Yuanpei and Jiang Feng's hero Lu Xun that began in 1912. Cai believed that art had no national boundaries and that artists needed a sense of social responsibility.[36] Artistic internationalism was no less important to Lu Xun than to Cai Yuanpei, as his publications of European and Soviet prints make clear. By the time Jiang Feng reached a position of influence, the "international" community to which China belonged had been reduced to the Soviet bloc. Nevertheless, within. the cramped confines of Chinese foreign policy, Jiang Feng, the former previous hit Esperanto next hit student, maintained a belief that China should strive for an international art. [p. 44]

Liu, Jianmei. Zhuangzi and Modern Chinese Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Note coverage of Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Hu Shih, Lin Yutang, Yan Lianke. Note also the hostility to Zhuangzi of early 20th century Chinese writers committed to the modernization of China.

Tam, Kwok-kan. Chinese Ibsenism: Reinventions of Women, Class and Nation. Singapore: Springer, 2019.

He [Chen Xiying] considered that social plays were great in their treatment of external events and moral issues but affirmed that Rosmersholm and The Wild Duck were even greater in the direction they provided for the psychological depiction of characters in modern drama. In regard to the development of Ibsen’s art, The Wild Duck was even more significant than was Rosmersholm. All the works preceding The Wild Duck were structurally of a lineal pattern. There were too many cause-effect relations in the plots, and the endings were too much a culmination of these relations. The Wild Duck, however, was much more complex in its plot movement than were the others. Giving up the lineal treatment of external events, Ibsen experimented with an intricate pattern involving more than ten major characters. [pp. 67-68]

Treating Ibsen in the same direction was Yuan Changying’s 袁昌英 “Ibsen’s The Wild Duck,” which was written in 1936 and collected in Yuan’s book Writings during My Stay in the Mountains (Shanju sanmo 山居散墨). Contrary to the popular treatment of The Wild Duck as a tragedy, Yuan took it as a serious comedy written with a “diabolical joy.” In this light, Yuan studied the use of comic techniques in the play. Yuan emphasized that suspense and the comic elements were the essential qualities to arrest the reader’s attention and showed how these elements were built up through the well-knit plot structure of the play. According to Yuan, “the reason for Ibsen’s plays to be qualified as exquisite works is that, like Shakespearean drama, they possess some kind of inexhaustible quality, which never fails to command the reader’s interest and imagination. The scene-by-scene analysis in Yuan’s essay showed in a convincing way that Ibsen was a first-rate dramatist. [p. 70]

An overall view of Ibsen translations in China shows that the greatest number of versions is accorded to A Doll’s House which is followed in descending number by Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, The Pillars of Society, The Wild Duck, The Master Builder, The League of Youth, The Lady from the Sea, and others (Table 1). [p. 90]

To show how individuality was repressed by society, Hu Shi cited The Wild Duck and John Gabriel Borkman. [p. 96]

Although the price of fighting for emancipation was high, Lu Xun thought that it was worthwhile for women to fight for their cause. He considered fighting for freedom the message of A Doll’s House, and he asserted that freedom required economic independence, which implied a social revolution. Envisioning the dismal prospect of women’s real liberation, Lu Xun blamed the people who awakened Chinese women to their miseries but did not show them a way to real freedom. Lu Xun regarded waking up from a dream but finding nowhere to go and nothing to do the most painful thing in life. Dreamers who lived in illusions were much happier than those who were awakened to the ugly truth of lies in life. This was the theme in Ibsen’s The Wild Duck. For Lu Xun, the important thing was not to wake them up if a meaningful waking life was not guaranteed. [p. 112]

Instead of opposing individualism, Dai [Liuling] refuted Hu Shi’s interpretation of The Wild Duck as an attempt to elucidate the importance of individuality. To Dai, The Wild Duck was nothing more than a critique of falsehood and there was no such thing as individualism in Ibsen. Concerning religion, Dai argued from a socialist viewpoint and insisted that Ibsen rejected religion and that the denial of religion was part of Ibsenism. But to Hu Shi, Ibsen did not totally deny religion and he attacked only the people who used religion to deceive others. [p. 164]

Wang, David Der-wei. Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopias: From Lu Xun to Liu Cixin, translated by Emma Xu. Lecture, Peking University, May 17, 2011.

En Esperanto

Noveloj de Lusin: Plena kolekto, trad. Elpin, I. Ko, Pandiŝo, Saint Jules Zee, Tikos, Venlo Fon, Yang Yongsen. Pekino: Fremdlingva Eldonejo, 1974. 488 p.

Lusin: Tradukita Literaturo [Don Harlow]

“La komedio de la anasoj” (1922)
“La Taglibro de Frenezulo” (1918, elĉinigis Elpin)

Lusin: Reciproka Malestimo de Literatoroj

Lu Xun - Vikipedio

“Nia trezoro: Lusin” de Aleksandr Korĵenkov en La Ondo de Esperanto

Lusin @ Ĝirafo