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宁，而后思撄也
thea 发表于 2008-10-08 03:05:00
修道院里，现代文学课seminar的第一篇周记，贴一下，为了纪念，也为了一个无聊的人，累得眼皮打架却依然不想睡觉的人，睡觉也不敢关灯的人。
Weekly response: Lu Xun and Moluo Shili Shuo
Lu Xun bases the essay primarily on his understanding of traditional Chinese culture, which serves as both the source and target of his criticism. In Chapter 2, he highlights the words such as “Peace” (Pinghe) and “No Disturbance” (Buying) with repetitions. These two words both have their long histories in traditional China. Peace is a term related to the imported Indian religions, traceable to Upanishads. And “No disturbance” comes from a very famous phrase “Yingning” 撄宁 in Zhuangzi (庄子·大宗师). Ning also has a similar meaning as Peace. What is special in Lu Xun’s context is that he differentiates these two words and puts them in oppositions, while Zhuangzi integrates them into a unity. Zhuangzi says, it is because of and after disturbance that accomplishments are possible. The intended accomplishments certainly are the conditions of Ning, and on the highest level, “Yutaiding” 宇泰定 (庚桑楚), universal peace and prosperity. And in this sense Ning could only be reached in the circumstances of Disturbance rather than in another time or space. As a result, Zhuangzi actually has expelled the pure serenity or peace from the human world and considered Disturbance a common element. However after history has gone through two thousand years, Lu Xun presents a very different attitude to the seeking of Ning, despite his similar assumption that absolute peace is an illusion. He uses the negative form Buying, instead of Ning (which is also an interesting change that seems to have avoided the passive meaning of this beautiful word), to address the methodologies which are used to create the image of Ning, and which, therefore, fatally went wrong as they were intentionally blind to the necessary Ying, or disturbance. In another word, Buying did not bring out peace but instead enslaved people's mind, preventing them from confronting the disturbing realities. He radically criticizes the ill intentions behind this kind of seekings. Thus, he distinguishes himself from the ancient master, and his concern with the level of pragmatism from ontology. I recognize the different goals of those two, but I still want to make sense of the difference. Both explanations include two aspects: Ying and Ning, which respectively inspires Zhuangzi and Lu Xun to their distinctive but yet closely related ideas. For Zhuangzi, this is disturbance and noise behind. But Lu Xun is more troubled with peace and silence. Thus, while Zhuangzi looked forward to finding peace in the unchangeable noise, Lu Xun now wants to ruffle the waves in the intolerable peace.
The cultural context besides, I am also interested in the psychological situation of Lu Xun when he was writing this essay. In 1907, Lu Xun was in a foreign city as a young man. I just have doubts about his real life, which can slightly reveal itself in some lines of his memorial essays such as Tengye Xiansheng. He was obliged to get married in the last year. Then he discarded his original hope to be a doctor and failed in the project of editing Xinsheng. Nothing seemed satisfying in this year in Lu Xun’s Chronicle. Is it possible that Lu Xun lived in solitude and isolation, which led him to welcome any power that could provide changes? And among all the powers, that of Satan is rather enchanting for the young, and destructive enough to the society. Especially, it is also because Lu Xun is a person who has passions for life, including daily-life. The similar situation can be found in the time when he was copying antique books in the house of Shaoxing Association. Otherwise, Qian Xuantong’s simple metaphor achieved its aim too easily.
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