The Shadow's Farewell

The Shadow’s Farewell

Lu Xun, 9/24/1924

Tr. Huiwen Zhang, 11/21/2010

When in sleep the time comes and one no longer feels the time, the shadow shall come to bid farewell, saying—

If there is something in Heaven that I do not fancy, I am unwilling to go thither; if there is something in Hell that I do not fancy, I am unwilling to go thither; if there is something in your future Golden Age that I do not fancy, I am unwilling to go thither.

Yet you are that which I do not fancy.

Friend, I no longer wish to follow you, I am unwilling to stay.

I am unwilling!

Woo-hu-woo-hu, I am unwilling, I’d rather wander in the middle of nowhere.

I am but a shadow, which will bid farewell to you and sink into darkness.  Yet darkness will engulf me, yet sunlight will banish me to exile.

Yet I am unwilling to wander between dark and light, I’d rather sink into darkness.

Yet I nonetheless wander between dark and light, I know not whether it is dusk or dawn.  I but raise an ash-black hand for now as if to empty a glass of wine.  When the time comes and I no longer feel the time, I will go far away alone.

Woo-hu-woo-hu, if it were dusk, the black night would surely engulf me, or I’d be banished to exile by the white day, if it were dawn.

Friend, it is about time.

I’ll go into the darkness and wander in the middle of nowhere.

You are still expecting a farewell gift from me.  What on earth can I bestow?  Nothing, only the dark and the void as usual.  Yet I nonetheless want it to be only the dark, so that it may vanish in your white day; yet I nonetheless want it to be only the void, so that it shall never take a place in your heart.

I want it that way, friend—

I am going far away alone, neither with you nor with any other shadow in the darkness.  Only I myself will be engulfed by the darkness; the world will belong to me wholly.