《伤逝》笔记
As you read the third fiction piece by Lu Xun, look out for the author’s art to represent conflicting ideas. The aborted romantic love between Zi Jun and Juan Sheng demonstrates once more the crisis of Chinese consciousness. Ideals or values, laudable and liberating though they may be, fail to matter in places where the socioeconomic conditions are not ripe for them.
- Both youths start out believing in free love and individual choices
- I can’t remember clearly now how I expressed my true, passionate love for her. Nor only now— even just after it happened, my impression was very blurred. When I thought back at night, I could only remember snatches of what I had said; while during the month or two after we started living together, even these fragments vanished like a dream without a trace. I only remember how for about a fortnight beforehand I had reflected very carefully what attitude to adopt, prepared what to say, and decided what to do if I were refused. But when the time came it was all no use. In my nervousness, I unconsciously did what I had seen in the movies. The memory of this makes me thoroughly ashamed, yet this is the one thing I remember clearly. Even today it is like a solitary lamp in a dark room, lighting me up. I clasped her hand with tears in my eyes, and went down on one knee. . . .
- But the romance seems poorly acclimatized to the Chinese environment as cohabitation in the 1920s and 30s was being frowned upon
- This was when we started going out together. We went several times to the park, but more often to look for lodgings. On the road I was conscious of searching looks, sarcastic smiles or lewd and contemptuous glances which tended, if I was not careful, to make me shiver.
- They must make a living to support their ideals for which they stand
- First and foremost, livelihood. A man must make a living before there can be any place for love.
- Juan Sheng the office clerk is as a traditional breadwinner as Zi Jun is a self-complacent house-wife
- I deliberately brought up the past. I spoke of literature, then of foreign authors and their works, of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and The Lady from the Sea. I praised Nora for being strong-minded, . . . All this had been said the previous year in the shabby room in the hostel, but now it rang hollow.
- Lu Xun warned the educated Chinese women against Ibsen’s Nora who gets replicated and translated here to show the price to pay for personal freedom
- Lastly, Juan Sheng’s hypocrisy and bad faith, his regret for the past, is an elegy for the idealistic views of history as progress while Juan Sheng moving on to new ideas to escape from the old ones that depress him:
- However, this is emptier than the new life. Now there is only the early spring night which is still as long as ever. Since I am living, I must make a fresh start. The first step is just to describe my remorse and grief, for Tzu-chun’s sake as well as for my own. All I can do is to cry. It sounds like a lilt as I mourn for Tzu-chun, burying her in oblivion. I want to forget. For my own sake I don’t want to remember the oblivion I gave Tzu-chun for her burial. I must make a fresh start in life. I must hide the truth deep in my wounded heart, and advance silently, taking oblivion and falsehood as my guide. . . .