A Word-By-Word Close
Reading of
Lu Xun’s HOPE
The Title
“Hope”: desire combined with
expectation; feeling of trust or confidence; prospect; promise. In Wild
Grass, this title is one of the few that do not shock the reader. Not dismal as Epitaph and Dead Fire,
nor evasive as The Wanderer and The Shadow’s Farewell, nor provoking as Revenge and Better Hell Lost. On the
contrary, Hope allures the reader to
dive into it. The title is a temptation.
The Date
Hope was written in 1925: Lu
Xun was 44 years old. It was also
written on New Year’s Day; on that day, Lu Xun wrote a newspaper article, Enemies of Poetry. On Jan 4, Lu Xun translated into Chinese three
poems of Petofi; on Jan 12, another two.
Later in the month, Lu Xun composed three likewise ‘mildly’ entitled Wild Grass pieces: Snow (Jan 18), The Kite (Jan
24), and A Wonderful Tale (Jan 28). This info, however, is not available to a
non-researcher reader. The close reading
below will only take it into ‘marginal’ consideration.
¶ 1: My heart is exceptionally
lonely.
“My heart is”: not “I am.” An
opening of double effect: distance and intimacy. “My heart” is technically a third person, whom
the narrator observes, whose situation the narrator tries to understand, and with
whose story the narrator chooses to begin.
The one-dimensional first-person narrative gains a sub-dimension; a ‘twosome’
comes into being: “my heart” feels, “I” empathize; “my heart” speaks, “I”
write. On the other hand, the uniqueness
of “heart” enhances the intimacy of the twosome and hence the intimacy between
the text and its reader: the reader is offered an occasion to share a personal moment
and listen to a dialogue between one and one’s heart. This creates the reader’s sympathy with and loyalty
to a stranger—the first-person narrator.
Subversive intertextuality
(presented here at the risk of premature conclusion): Lu Xun’s Epitaph confronts the reader with a
dilemma of the heart’s “true taste”:
“… dug out my heart to eat, yearning to know its
true taste. The torment too ruthlessly intense, so how to know the true taste?
...
“… once the torment dulled, ate my heart
tranquilly. Already too stale, so how to know the true taste? …”
If so, how to know the heart’s
true sentiment?
“exceptionally lonely”: exception involves comparison and contrast. Is “my heart” at this moment “exceptionally
lonely” in comparison to that of “my” past self who has always been lonely yet
never to this extent? Or is “my heart”
at this moment “exceptionally lonely” in contrast to those of others who,
though living in the same world, are not at all lonely? Both.
Then what makes this moment so
exceptional in “my” life? And what makes
“me” so exceptional among “my”
contemporaries? At any rate: whereas the
title gives an outlook, the opening
line, i.e. the 1st paragraph, ends with an introverted gaze. It is a
gentle subversion of the title, for it replaces the title’s promise with an
unexplained desolation. But it is also
in harmony with the title, for loneliness can beget contemplation, and
contemplation can beget, among others, hope.
¶ 2: Yet my heart is very much
at peace: no love or hatred, no mourning or joy, and no color or sound.
“Yet”: a conjunction characteristic of Lu Xun—of his writing and thinking,
both of which are winding routes with endless turns. At each turn there is
a line on the shield—the question asked by The
Wanderer:
“What kind of place is that ahead?”
The narrator of the wanderer’s spirit does not stop at his heart’s sign,
“I am exceptionally lonely;” rather, he heads in a different direction to
explore what inside of his heart coincides with its loneliness.
“at peace”: if “exceptionally
lonely” gives a first impression of desolation, “very much at peace” offers at
first sight a state of serenity that justifies the conjunction. However, any reader who is familiar with Lu
Xun would approach “yet” with caution; an obvious turn is usually intertwined with an invisible re-turn.
“:”: the punctuation itself
is a prompt, suggesting a specification of the phrase “at peace.”
“no love or hatred, no mourning
or joy, and no color or sound”: three pairs of spiritual-sensual counterparts. While the intensity of the contrast between
complementary sentiments declines, the problematic of “very much at peace”
grows: if the state of tranquility leads to the utter absence of even the most
elementary instincts and tones, is it still truly a blessing? The preceding turn “Yet” is reversed back to
desolation.
¶ 3: I am probably old. My hair is already pale; is that not a very
clear thing? My hands are trembling; is that
not a very clear thing? Thus my soul’s
hand is surely, too, trembling, its hair, too, surely pale.
“I am”: the first-person
narrator comes to the front. Is he going
to offer an explanation of his heart’s loneliness and peace?
“probably old”: the narrator’s
statement does sound like an explanation; but he does not offer it with the
confidence of absolute certainty. Does
being or getting “old” make him exceptional in comparison to his past? Does being or getting “old” make him
exceptional in comparison to his surroundings?
Or is it something else—something related but more complicated? The adverb “probably” not only questions the
propriety of the explanation, but also prompts the reader to ask himself: in
what situation would I not be sure
about my age, my aging, my self?
“My hair” & “My hands”: the narrator withdraws anew to
study his body, as if trying to convince himself that he is old indeed: the
color of his hair, the movement of his hands.
What happens in Paragraph 1 happens here: a silent, intimate
conversation between a conscious observer and his unconscious parts—only from internal to external.
“is that not a very clear thing?
[…] is that not a very clear thing?”: the narrator is seeking
evidence—anything that could clarify his situation. Had “probably” been erased from the preceding
sentence, the parallels would be rhetorical questions. But here, both the narrator and the reader
have doubt. Moreover, they doubt their doubt: why can we not be convinced by what we see? What makes the situation so very unclear?
“Thus […]”: A, thus B: A, therefore B; or A, because of B; indication of a two-way conclusion: either the body’s
downfall leads to the soul’s, or the other way around.
“my soul’s hand” & “its hair”: an uncanny scene: the
narrator looks into a mirror to study his body; then, all of a sudden, he looks
into his mirrored body and ‘sees’ his soul.
The portrait of the soul’s pale hair and trembling hand sharpens the
narrator’s sensitiveness and vulnerability in the reader’s eyes. In addition, the precise body-soul resonance
speaks to the reader for the narrator’s honesty and credibility.
Resonant intertextuality: a similar uncanny scene in The Shadow’s
Farewell—
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.
[…] 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.
In both texts, the “soul” and the “shadow” are portrayed as a Doppelgänger.
“surely, too […] too, surely”:
echoes of the repeated “is that not a very clear thing?” Both parallels are foreshadowed by “probably”
and prompt the reader to ponder the absent
clarity and certainty (and the cause of their absence).
¶ 4: Yet this is a thing of many
years ago.
“Yet”: the second visible
presence of the conjunction. A turn, but
to what direction?
“this is a thing of many years ago”: ambiguity of the pronoun “this”:
it can refer back to the narrative
above: the lonely heart, the pale hair, the trembling hands, and the aging
soul. This possibility is supported by
the combination of “Yet” and “this” that creates an immediacy between Paragraph
3 and 4—an immediacy that makes “this” sound like a backward reference. “This is a thing of many years ago,” then, implies:
all this has been so for many years—an exceptional situation, whose unclearness
and uncertainty has been haunting the narrator.
But “this” can also
refer ahead to the narrative below:
Paragraph 5—a, new different situation.
This possibility, though at first sight against the text’s natural flow,
is supported by the contradiction between “a thing of many years ago” and the
previous text’s present tense and its agreement with the following text’s past
tense. Instead of completing what has
been told, “this is a thing of many years ago” opens an untold chapter of the narrator’s
earlier life.
The ambiguity of “this” turns the one-sentence paragraph into a bridge across the narrative.
¶ 5: Before
this, my heart, too, brimmed once with the bloody singing voice: blood and
iron, flame and poison, restoration and revenge. Yet suddenly this all became empty, only now
and then, having no alternative, did I deliberately stuff it with self-deceiving
hope. Hope, hope, using this shield of
hope to rebel against that attack of the dark night in the emptiness, although
behind the shield was still the dark night in the emptiness. Yet just this bit by bit exhausted my youth.
“Before this”: the ambiguity of “this” continues, complicated by the
preposition “before”: if “this” refers back to the narrator’s current
situation—the unclear, unsettling aging of his body and soul, then “before
this” means one chapter before. If “this” refers ahead to the narrator’s
earlier situation to be revealed in Paragraph 5, then “before this” means two chapters before, i.e. a third stage of
the narrator’s life:
Now: what happens—>
“this”: what happened—> “before this”: what had happened
“my heart”: when telling the
stories of his earlier and still earlier life, the narrator goes back to the initial
approach: he withdraws behind his heart to create a distance for observation,
conversation, and reflection. This
invites the reader to an intimately shared retrospection.
“too”: the word looks
superfluous: wouldn’t the sentence without it be smoother and cleaner? A second look at the adverb, however, appreciates
its relevance: “too” expresses likeness: in the very manner of something else.
“My heart, too” implies that “my heart” used to be like the heart of somebody else, to whom “I” bore affinity. The suspicious “too” reaches out in truth to an
earlier soul mate of the narrator.
“brimmed once with the
bloody singing voice”: a precise counterpart of Paragraph 2: “brim with” vs. repeated “no…or…;”
“the bloody singing voice” vs. “no color or sound.” Furthermore, “the bloody singing voice” illustrates
the younger narrator’s affinity to his then soul mate.
“:”: an echo of the “:” after “at peace.” The punctuation promises the reader a specification
of “the bloody singing voice.”
“blood and iron, flame and
poison, restoration and revenge”: three pairs of opposites: the first item
of each pair is ‘hot’ or related to physical and mental warmth, the second is ‘cold’
or associated with a sense of chill. However,
they can also be viewed as three pairs of equivalents: blood and iron are
connected through sword and war; flame and poison are equal in violence and
torture; restoration sometimes involves revenge, and revenge sometimes aims for
restoration. Whether opposites or
equivalents, the tensions in and among these pairs suggest vibrancy and vitality:
they are the lyrics of the heart’s long-elapsed ‘bloody songs.’
“Yet suddenly”: the 3rd
appearance of the perplexing “yet,” dramatized by “suddenly”: why “sudden”? What has happened? What could happen? An unexpected turn to where?
“this”: unlike the ambiguity
of the previous “this”, its reference here is clear: “blood and iron, flame and
poison, restoration and revenge.”
“empty”: in Chinese, the
word kong-xu (“empty, emptiness”) is
easily confused with the word xu-kong (“the
void”): both contain the same Buddhism-Daoism-colored characters, kong and xu, only in reverse order. Regardless
of their crossed etymologies, the two words are nuanced in Lu Xun’s writings. For instance, “empty” or “emptiness” appears in
Wild Grass. Dedication:
When I am silent, I feel whole; once I open my
mouth, I feel empty.
The past life has already died. From this
death I attain Euphoria, because through this I know it once existed. The
dead life has already decayed. From this decay I attain Euphoria, because
through this I know it is not yet empty.
“The void” appears in The Shadow’s
Farewell and Revenge II:
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.
The cross arose; he was suspended in the
void.
A simplified,
preliminary comparison: “emptiness” is hollow;
“the void” is substantial.
“This all became empty,” therefore, addresses the simultaneous evaporation of all the substances with
which “my heart” once brimmed.
“only”: the conjunction (meaning:
“with this restriction, drawback, or exception; but (adversative); on the other
hand, on the contrary”) instantly promises a way out of the emptiness.
“now and then, having no
alternative, did [I] deliberately stuff [it] with self-deceiving hope”: following
the drastic, ruthless evaporation and
a nonetheless promised way out, “hope”
rises to the text surface; every word between, however, undermines its ground:
“now and then” indicates inconsistency and unreliability; “having no
alternative” indicates frustration and helplessness; “deliberately stuff …
with” indicates hollowness and superficiality; “self-deceiving” indicates
temporary illusion and ultimate futility.
Compelled by this specific context, the reader has to reconsider the
title concept and reevaluate its character and force as a temptation.
“I” & “it”: in the Chinese original, both
pronouns are left out. The absence of
“I” deepens the narrator’s passivity and disheartenment; the absence of “it” enhances
the reference’s ambiguity: “hope” is used to stuff both the empty heart and the emptiness itself. As
mentioned before, emptiness is hollow.
“Hope, hope, […] this shield of
hope”: triple repetition of the title concept immediately after its first
emergence. Ironically, not the power and
finality of “hope,” but its weakness and vanity stand out. “Shield,” in addition, defines the nature of “hope”
as defensive-reactive (vs. aggressive-initiative).
“using […] to rebel”: like the previous sentence,
the subject is cut off. The narrator certainly
fits in, but so does everybody else who uses
“hope.” In this sense, “rebel”
characterizes whoever wears “hope” as
armor to protect himself from “attacks”.
Intertextual reading:
in Such a Warrior, the title figure
has no “shield”—
He has no armor that
prays to cow-hide and scrap-iron for help; he has only himself, but seizing
what barbarians use: a single-throw spear.
Neither does the warrior “rebel;” he declares war:
Above
those heads is every kind of banner, embroidered with every form of grand
title: philanthropist, scholar, writer, elder, youth, nobleman, gentleman…
Beneath those heads is every form of garment, embroidered with every style of
grand pattern: knowledge, virtue, national legacy, public opinion, logic,
justice, Eastern civilization…
But he hoists the spear.
[…]
He
smiles, aims to the side for a single throw that does strike right into the den
of their hearts.
The contrast between
“spear” and “shield”—between “warrior” and “rebel”—recalls Nietzsche’s
differentiation between master and slave morality.
Another comparable argument
see Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Of War and
Warriors:
To rebel—that is the nobility in a slave. (Auflehnung—das
ist the Vornehmheit am Sclaven.) [...]
So live your life of obedience and of war! What matters about long life! What warrior wishes to be spared! (So
lebt euer Leben des Gehorsams und des Krieges! Was liegt am Lang-Leben! Welcher
Krieger will geschont sein!)
“that attack of the dark night in the emptiness”: if “the emptiness” is
hollow and to be stuffed, “the dark night in the emptiness” sounds paradoxical;
“the emptiness in the dark night” would make more sense. However, not only does “attack” work better
with something more substantial, “the dark night” also distinguishes a unique
perception of “the emptiness”—an intertextual ‘reversal’ of the paradox in Epitaph, “In all eyes saw nothingness.”
This is a ‘reversal’ within the same text as well: the ability to penetrate
“the emptiness” and perceive “the dark night” revises the solely passive image
of the narrator or whoever uses hope for self-defense. Their piercing eyes remind of Such a Warrior who, in “a formation of
nothingness,” sees in every “nod” the enemy’s weapon and in every “vow” and
testimony the enemy’s lies.
“although”: similar to “yet (only, but)”: a sign for turn; unlike
“yet (only, but)”: a backwards shifted focus—
A, yet (only, but) B: in spite of A, nevertheless B!
A, although B: in spite of B, nevertheless A!
“behind the shield […] still the dark night in the emptiness”: the
vagueness of “behind the shield” and the repetition of “the dark night in the
emptiness” create ambiguity—
- The narrator predicts the attack of the dark night from one direction and gets ready with his shield of hope, only to find the same dark night attacking him from behind. No matter how many times he turns, he fails; because he has only one shield, yet the dark night attacks him in all directions. The rebel is thus caught by “the dark night in the emptiness,” just like the warrior trapped “in the formation of nothingness”: both are fighting in vain an invisible, unpredictable foe.
- The narrator stands behind the shield of hope to protect himself from the dark night’s attack, only to find the shield penetrated and his own self transformed and integrated into the dark night, so that his continued rebellion is rendered useless—nothing but a self-deceiving posture.
- An even more devastating scenario: the narrator hoists the shield of hope to rebel against the attack of the dark night outside himself, only to find the dark night at the same time in himself. The emptiness has long been internalized, so that the attack is also from within and the rebellion is also against oneself.
All three
possibilities, intensified by the adverb “still,”
point out the fatality of “the dark night in the emptiness;” the conjunction “although,” however, transfers the whole
power back to “using this shield of hope to rebel.” The contrast between the futility of attempting
to rebel and the persistence in attempting it anyway makes the rebel remarkable, for the conviction of the
futility of his attempts somehow redeems
his futile attempts.
An intertextual echo of
the paradox in Epitaph:
[In all eyes saw nothingness;] in hopelessness found salvation…
“Yet just this”: to follow a nonetheless affirmative statement with
the turn sign “yet” undermines the affirmative. The pronoun “this,” intensified by “just,”
refers back to the attempt of “using this shield of hope to rebel” and its foredoomed, foreknown futility.
“bit by bit exhausted my youth”:
the absent subject returns to the text surface, but not as the first-person
narrator, but as his “youth.” The
previously told stories of “my heart,” “my hair,” “my hands,” “my soul’s hand”
and “its hair” bestow “my youth” an intimacy and vulnerability, which makes its
bit-by-bit exhaustion—its bite-by-bite
consummation—graphic and fierce.
¶ 6: Before,
did I not know that my youth had already gone? But I believed that the youth outside my body still
existed: stars, moonlight, dead falling butterflies, secret flowers, owls’
ominous words, cuckoos’ weeping blood, laughter’s elusiveness, love’s soaring
dance. Although a desolate, illusory
youth, yet after all: youth.
“Before, did I not know that my youth had already
gone?”: before what? The vagueness of the adverb resonates with
the beginning of Paragraph 5. The rhetorical
question, however, clarifies the sequence: the rebel’s consummation of youth accelerates
aging. “I [knew],” in addition, enhances
the self-reflection suggested in “using […], although […].”
“But”: the turn sign, like
“yet” and “only,” suggests a way out of the grave of “my youth.”
“believed”: the Chinese yi-wei (believe, assume, think, take for [usually mistakenly]), in
contrast to zhi (know, realize) in
the previous sentence, implies the narrator’s illusion and encourages the
reader’s suspicion. It renders
unreliable the way out promised by “But.”
“the youth outside my body”: the
distinction between “my youth” and “the youth outside my body” resembles the distinction
between “the dark night” in- and outside “me”.
“: stars, moonlight, dead falling
butterflies, secret flowers, owls’ ominous words, cuckoos’ weeping blood,
laughter’s elusiveness, love’s soaring dance”: the colon’s third
appearance, like the previous two, announces a specification or contextualization; the images chosen to exemplify “the
youth outside” all speak against its ordinary codes: “stars, moonlight” instead
of sunshine; “dead falling butterflies, secret flowers” instead of butterflies hovering
above flowers; “owls’ ominous words, cuckoos’ weeping blood” instead of birds’ innocent,
pleasant songs; “laughter’s elusiveness, love’s soaring dance” instead of
laughter’s exultation and love’s undying rhythm. Deprived of his own youth, the narrator
perceives “the youth outside” to be cold, remote, obscure, solitary, damaged, ruined,
morbid, mortal, uncanny, unsettling…, as if he sees them all against the
background of “the dark night in the emptiness”—a background that renders
everything deceptive and hollow. Here,
“youth” encounters “hope.”
“Although
a desolate, illusory youth, yet after all: youth”: the adjective couple
“desolate” and “illusory” confirm the message of the filtered or ‘lensed’ images;
but the combined conjunctions “although” and “yet” turn the subversive
statement back into an affirmative.
¶ 7: Yet
now: why so lonely? Is even the youth
outside my body, too, all gone? Are the
world’s young people, too, all aging?
“Yet”:
the conjunction turns the affirmative back again into a negative.
“now”:
the explicit time frame brings the text and its reader back to the present.
“why
so lonely”: an echo of the opening line, “my heart is exceptionally
lonely.” The absence of the subject
blurs the distinction between “my heart” and “me.” The unspoken question in the first two
paragraphs is now spoken, as if the retrospect of the past urges the narrator to confront the present. Also, the question is not only raised as the
narrator’s self-dialogue, but also to the reader.
“Is […] too, all gone? Are […] too, all
aging”: echoes of Paragraph 3: the repeated “is that not a very clear
thing?” and “surely, too […] too, surely.”
They echo both syntactically and thematically: in Paragraph 3 an
implicit response to the unspoken question, “why is my heart exceptionally
lonely?” Here an explicit response to
the spoken question, “why so lonely?” In
contrast to the pseudo-rhetorical questions and the semi-sureness in Paragraph
3, the paralleled pseudo-questions here convey a scary recognition strengthened
by the adverb (that comes first in the Chinese original) “even.”
“the youth outside my body” & “the world’s young people”: the former
reaches back to Paragraph 6; the latter introduces a new element. The parallel structure indicates that the
latter belongs to the former and exemplifies it, just as the images listed above. “The world’s young people,” therefore, are
not linked to “the bloody singing voice” (that characterizes the young
narrator), but to “dead falling butterflies,” “cuckoos’ weeping blood,” etc.:
their “aging” is as unnatural and unpredictable as the chosen samples of “the
youth outside.”
Intertextual
readeing: Lu Xun’s 1931 Preface to an English translation of Wild Grass by Feng Yusheng that has
never been printed:
“Astonished and shocked at the young
people’s dullness and depression, I composed Hope.”
Preliminary conclusion: Lu Xun, like Hope’s narrator, considers his youth
“already gone” and himself “probably old;” at the same time, he is provoked by
the young people’s lack of young energy and spirit—lack of “blood and iron,
flame and poison, restoration and revenge,” which he associates with other ‘morbid
phenomena.’ This, in turn, proves that Lu
Xun is indeed still young at heart—the reason why, while surrounded by
‘premature elders,’ he feels “exceptionally lonely.”
¶ 8: I
have no choice but myself to wrestle the dark night in the emptiness. I lay down the shield of hope, I hear Petǒfi Sándor’s (1823-1849) song
of “Hope”:
Hope is what? A
prostitute:
Bewitching all, devoted to all;
Wait until you sacrifice considerable treasure – your youth
– she abandons you.
“I have no choice but myself to wrestle the dark
night in the emptiness”: the opening is a striking contrast to that of Paragraph 3, “I am
probably old”: right at the dead end
of a full—powerful, eventful, colorful, and faithful—life, the narrator regains
his youth and hope by discovering the way
out in himself.
“Have no choice but”
sounds first passive as “having no alternative” in Paragraph 5; but “myself to
wrestle” instantly reverses the tone and manner: from the forced resignation to
a bold decision, from the rebel with “this shield of hope” to a naked war. The choice of the verb is crucial: not “face”
or “confront,” because “the dark night in the emptiness” is, as revealed above,
everywhere and invisible; not “grasp” or “hold,” because the enemy is, like the
“thing of nothingness,” intangible and evasive, never to be comfortably
contained within one’s hands; still not “challenge” or “fight,” because that would
be less concrete, immediate, and primitive.
Only “wrestle,” as Mary Carol comments, “manages to reach down to the
eternally barbaric-naturalistic core of man and implies an ongoing struggle of
which I think a ‘Warrior Poet’ would approve.”
Also, only “wrestle” delivers a graphic portrait of the narrator’s
simultaneous war against “the dark night” out-
and inside his body, i.e. “the dark night” and his dark self.
As a whole, the opening
line of the paragraph stresses not only the fatality
of “the dark night in the emptiness,” but the finality of the narrator’s anti-fatality war as well, which
consequently confirms the preliminary conclusion that it is the aging narrator
who, alone, possesses the young energy and spirit. Up to this point, the narrator’s life can be
outlined as—
The bloom of youth: a heart brimmed with “the bloody singing voice”
The doubt of youth: a heart deprived of all ‘substances’
The consummation of youth: an empty heart stuffed with “self-deceiving
hope”
The elapse of youth: an empty heart whose hope lies only in the “youth
outside”
The revival of youth:
an empty heart refilled with a self-imposed task
“I lay down the shield of hope, I hear Petofi Sandor’s
song of ‘Hope’”: paired sentences addressing the coincidence of two happenings.
The first sentence is
related to the preceding line in two ways—as cause and consequence: because
the elapse of “the youth outside” dissolves the last temptation of “the shield
of hope” (Paragraph 6-7), “I have no choice but myself to wrestle the dark
night.” Or: “my” self-imposed mission to start a ‘naked war’ like a barbaric
warrior requires that “I” shall not use any protection—not even a false shield.
The second sentence brings
up an apparently new figure who in reality recalls the ‘soul mate’ hinted in
Paragraph 5: “Before this, my heart, too,
brimmed once with the bloody singing voice.”
The affinity is reinforced by the coincidence: the moment “I lay down
the shield of hope,” Petofi’s song of “Hope” becomes audible to “me.” The
narrator comes through his own experience to the conclusion of Petofi’s poem:
hope is a prostitute who abandons you once you sacrifice your youth (Paragraph
5).
Moreover, the
narrator’s experience expands
Petofi’s poem in two directions: first, his act of laying down “the shield of
hope” is not a gesture of surrender, but an expression of abandonment—once he realizes hope’s nature, instead of allowing
himself to be abandoned, he abandons her first.
Second, the contrast
between the “dullness and depression” of “the world’s young people” and the
young energy and spirit of the “probably old” narrator renders an alternative
to Petofi’s original, which defines both youth
and hope anew:
Hope is what?
A prostitute:
Bewitching all, devoted to all;
Wait until you sacrifice considerable treasure
–your youth
–she abandons you.
Youth is what? A
prostitute:
Bewitching all, devoted
to all;
Wait until you
sacrifice considerable treasure –your hope
–she abandons you.
¶ 9: This great lyric
poet, Hungarian patriot, for the sake of his fatherland died on the spear of
the Cossacks, already 75 years ago. Tragic
is his death, yet more tragic, that to this day his poetry has not died.
“This great lyric poet, Hungarian patriot, for the sake of his
fatherland died on the spear of the Cossacks”: this line manifests the
narrator’s admiration of Petofi, whom Lu Xun quoted in his article written on
the same day, “Enemies of Poetry,” and whose poetry Lu Xun translated 5 times in
the same month. The prompt of the line is
primarily the tone: it shares the passion, vigor, and firmness of the opening
of Paragraph 5 and 8:
[…] my heart, too, brimmed once with the bloody singing voice: blood and
iron, flame and poison, restoration and revenge.
I have no choice but
myself to wrestle the dark night in the emptiness.
There is also a word
choice that attracts attention: “spear.” In Chinese, dun, the shield, and mao,
the spear, build a new word, mao-dun,
which means (self-)contradiction and paradox.
To lay down the shield and expose oneself distinguishes the life of a ‘warrior poet,’ but also leads
to his death on the spear of his
enemy. This resonates the Dead Fire’s dilemma: “freeze to death”
or “burn out”?
“[…] already 75 years ago. Tragic is his death,
yet more tragic, that to this day his poetry has not died”: the 7th
appearance of “yet” begets a perplexing logic: don’t most poets wish their
poetry never to die? Don’t most poets
write so as not to die? Why is the survival of poetry “more tragic”
than a poet’s death?
One possible approach: if a literary work addresses ‘timely observations’
or contemporary problems, it shall ‘die’ as time goes by and the problems are
solved. “That to this day his poetry has
not died,” on the contrary, suggests that the same problems addressed in Petofi’s
poem are still alive at present—that “75
years” are gone for nothing. His song of
“Hope,” in particular, applies to today’s young people: they allow themselves to
be bewitched by the prostitute Hope
and keep squandering their treasured Youth
for her, until she impoverishes them and abandons them. “Tragic” is, from this point view, not the
continued life of Petofi’s poem, but the continued
up-to-dateness and soundness of the message conveyed by his poem: lessons
are revealed, but not learned.
¶ 10: But miserable is life! A man as daring and valiant as Petǒfi eventually, facing
the dark night, stopped walking and gazed back at
the boundless East. He said:
Despair
is as hollow and deceptive as hope.
“But”: the conjunction suggests a turn from the double tragedy—the tragic death of the warrior poet
Petofi and the tragic endurance of his poem Hope’s
message.
“miserable is life!”: the Chinese ke-can, miserable, is a synonym of ke-bei, tragic; the exchangeability of
the two adjectives suggests the sequence: tragic is death—>yet more tragic
is the endurance of problems—>but tragic is life! The combination of “But” and the exclamation
mark turns lamentable complaints into stoical acceptance and indisputable
affirmation.
“A man as daring and
valiant as Petofi eventually, facing the dark night, stopped walking and gazed
back at the boundless East”: the line is a forced flash back.
After informing the reader of Petofi’s death as a self-sacrificing “patriot,”
the narrative jumps back to the turning point of Petofi’s life and lights up
the other side of his personality: “daring and valiant” is no longer in the
sense of romantic heroism, but in the sense of self-reflection and –skepticism. Proof of maturation is not to take a blind
dive, but to simultaneously face the dark night and gaze at the rising sun.
“He said: Despair
is as hollow and deceptive as hope”: the quote from a letter of Petofi to his friend on
1847.7.17 (2 years before his death) is dramatized by the narrator as a line
spoken with the ‘gaze back.’ The message
of this line reverses the message of the 1845 poem and reinforces the preceding
line’s affirmation.
The essay could have ended here.
[To Be Continued!]
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