Jottings Under Lamplight

Editors Cheng (Literary Remains) and Denton (The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature) have assembled an often searing and sometimes startling collection of essays by renowned early 20th-century Chinese author Lu Xun. Lu Xun’s life bridged two eras: the remnants of the dying Manchu dynasty and the violent, uncertain period after the monarchy collapsed. Coming from a leftist perspective, Lu Xun records the China of 1918–1936 as wavering between a modernity tainted by Western imperialism and a backward-looking Confucian gaze. The best essays, such as the title piece or “Written Deep into the Night,” offer a Swiftian satire of China, which, like Jonathan Swift’s Ireland, was savaged by colonialism and corruption. The power of Lu Xun’s writing is in the details (regarding a woman, for example, reporting on Chinese eyes plucked out by “foreign devils,” Lu Xun writes, “She had herself seen a jar of pickled eyes piled like carp fry”) that bring interwar China to life. Animating every essay is Lu Xun’s deeply felt humanity. He relentlessly points out cruelty, be it a circus company half-starving a bear on gruel or the murder of dissident writers. While some essays are slight, the totality adds up to a portrait of a country struggling with uncertainty and transition, a picture just as relevant to the West today as to early-20th-century China. (Sept.)