The Shadow’s Farewell (update 2014)

The Shadow’s Farewell

Lu Xun, 9/24/1924

Tr. Huiwen Zhang, 11/21/2012, updated 11/17/2014

When in sleep the time comes that man no longer knows the time, there will be a shadow coming to bid farewell, saying—

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

Yet you are that which I do not fancy.

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

I am unwilling!

Woo-hu-woo-hu, I am unwilling, I would rather wander on the ever-receding ground.

             I am but a shadow, wanting to bid you farewell and drown in darkness.  Yet darkness again will engulf me, yet sunlight again will make me fade away.

Yet I am unwilling to wander between light and dark, I would rather drown in darkness.

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

Woo-hu-woo-hu, if it were dusk, black night would surely come to drown me, or I would be faded away by white day, if it were dawn.

Friend, the time is near.

I will dive into darkness and wander on the ever-receding ground.

You are still expecting my farewell gift.  What on earth can I bestow?  Nothing, or no more than the dark and the void as usual.  But I want to be only the dark, so I may fade away in your white day; I want to be only the void, so I shall never occupy the ground of your heart.

I want it this way, friend—

I am venturing far alone, neither with you, nor with other shadows in darkness.  Only I am drowned in darkness; the world belongs to me, myself, wholly.