China's literary hero becomes human

Lu Xun (魯迅) is widely acknowledged to be one of China's greatest 20th-century writers. Though for several decades after 1949 his books were banned in Taiwan, today they are required reading in any Chinese Literature course.

His being banned during the period of martial law in Taiwan was a direct result of his being almost deified in the mainland. And the hidden sub-text of this modest but astute biography by a prestigious Hong Kong academic is to discern what Lu Xun's stature might be when the heat of political polemic has died away, as will, of course, eventually happen.

Lu Xun was born in 1881 and died in 1936. His life consequently covered the period of China's first modernization, when eager young minds educated in Western ideas struggled to pioneer ways in which the vast and ancient Celestial Empire might remodel itself, and recover the strength it had been robbed of in the 19th century.

Lu Xun received his education in progressive ideas in Japan, a country that had taken the path of Westernization well in advance of China, with results that are clearly visible even today. He came to believe in things such as the education of the people (80 percent of whom were illiterate in his youth), women's rights, the replacement of the Chinese written character with a romanized alphabet, the prohibition of foot-binding, and so on. He himself cut off his cue, the classic sign of adherence to a feudal society, half a decade before it became obligatory in 1911.

Even so, the author believes he remained in many ways the classic scholar-intellectual, and as such the guardian of the nation's morals and well-being. During the last decade of his life, Lu Xun threw in his lot with the Communist Party in its fight against the KMT. But he was always critical of those in authority, chafed at attempts by ideologues to bring him into line, and never became a party member.

Even so, the communists, like all revolutionaries, needed heroes, and after his death they quickly adopted Lu Xun as one. Hostile criticism was not permitted, nor any discussion of his somewhat unconventional love life. He was a hero who had given his all for the people -- this was the party line.

Today, writes David Pollard, things are more relaxed. The party may still be in power, but hard-line enthusiasm for ideological purity is increasingly difficult to find. The time has come when Lu Xun can be assessed more objectively.

Pollard himself is a major figure in the world of Chinese literary studies and translation. He was formerly professor of Chinese at London University, and professor of translation at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (the publishers of this book). He is currently honorary senior research fellow at the Research Center for Translation of that university's Institute of Chinese Studies. He publishes in Chinese as well as English.

Lu Xun can be seen as a transitional figure spanning both the old and new worlds, albeit with a marked leaning towards the new. In his personal life he accepted a grotesquely unsuitable arranged marriage with an illiterate woman with bound feet, someone with whom he could neither love nor communicate. And when his work finally took him to Beijing, he moved his whole family there with him, living in three buildings in a spacious compound.

On the other hand, he took as a lover one of his female university students, Xu Guangping, living openly with her from 1927. She bore him his only child.