Reading Lu Xun Through Carl Jung By Carolyn Brown

publications that carried the news and served as vehicles for social and cultural debates. It was in these new venues that Lu Xun and the young intellectuals poured forth their ideas. The pivotal cultural awakening that occurred among urban intellectual youths from approximately 1915 to 1925 came to be known somewhat anachronistically as the May 4th Movement.⁶

1918 marked a turning point in Lu Xun’s life. A friend requested that he write something for a new journal. With some reluctance, he agreed. Now in his late thirties, Lu Xun wrote “A Madman’s Diary,” a story that expressed the mature sensibility of one who understood complexities not apparent to the radical, fervently optimistic young. That story, which is generally considered the first modern Chinese short story, characterized Chinese society as a cannibalistic feast in which all were implicated. This and other stories that followed used the spoken language as a literary medium, created literary forms without precedent in China, expressed a new sensibility that contrasted with that of the recent past, and most of all denounced the deeply rooted features of normative Chinese society as inhumane. During this time Lu Xun was also writing subtle yet trenchant essays that echoed many of the same themes, and these essays further cemented his position as a keen social observer and critical voice demanding change. Lu Xun’s essays added to his growing fame as he unmasked ignorance, cruelty, and hypocrisy prevalent at multiple levels in society. Between 1918 and late 1925 he published the short stories that cemented his reputation as a writer of powerful fiction.

By 1926 Lu Xun, who had become more outspoken, so offended the warlord government that he was forced into hiding. Concerned for his physical safety, he left Beijing, briefly taking up university posts in Xiamen and Guangzhou before settling in Shanghai. In 1906, at his mother’s insistence, he agreed to a loveless traditional marriage. He dutifully supported his wife and mother the rest of his life, but in Shanghai he set up home with a common-law wife, Xu Guangping 许广平 (1898–1968), who was his former student, and they later had a son.