Lu Xun Complete Works/en/Shuxin
shuxin
Chapter 3: Barbicane Leads a Torchlight Procession Through the Cities — The Observatory Sends a Letter on Astronomical Questions
It is told that the chairman sat among the audience, watching wide-eyed as they shouted wildly. When he tried to speak again, the crowd paid him no attention. Someone struck the bell to calm the masses, but the clamor drowned it out entirely. They rushed forward, surrounding the chairman with praise and admiration. Following American custom, the club members formed ranks, lit pine torches, and paraded through every street. The foreigners residing in Maryland all joined in — as though after Washington, Barbicane was the greatest man alive. The weather conspired: a flawless blue sky, brilliant stars, and a luminous full moon illuminating the chairman with particular clarity.
At midnight the excitement continued unabated. The entire city populace was in uproar — scholars, merchants, students, down to coachmen and porters — all marveling at this enterprise that would shake the ages. The chairman was pulled, pushed, and hoisted like a roly-poly doll amid the cheers. Only at two in the morning did things quiet down.
The next day, discussions multiplied. Americans are by nature resolute. Napoleon once said: “Because ‘impossible’ exists in the dictionary, people are deceived — but is there anything on earth that cannot be accomplished!” Five hundred newspapers commented. Learned societies from Boston, Albany, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington all sent congratulations. The chairman's reputation rose like the morning sun.
After returning home, the chairman could neither eat nor sleep. He sent a letter to the Cambridge Observatory in Massachusetts. The reply contained five propositions on astronomical questions: on the possibility of sending a projectile to the moon; on the precise Earth-Moon distance (maximum: 247,552 miles, minimum: 218,657 miles); on the flight time (97 hours 13 minutes 20 seconds before the moon arrives); on the most favorable moon position (December 4th next year, perigee and zenith passage simultaneously); and on aiming direction (between equator and 28 degrees latitude, 64-degree angle). After reading, all doubts dissolved like ice in the sun.
On Play — Written for the Journal of the National Art Exhibition
Since the first issue of “Creation,” Schiller’s “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” has been published in translation, prompting me to share thoughts on the problem of play. When we plunge into practical life, we are constrained from both material and spiritual sides. Yet within us exists a surplus of vital force, and with it we seek a more perfect, harmonious realm — where sense and reason, duty and inclination, are in accord. This is play. Art arises from this play impulse. This state is called the “beautiful soul.”
Spencer explained Schiller’s play theory more scientifically: when there is surplus energy, one wants to discharge it outward — that is play. Professor Groos of the University of Basel offered a newer interpretation: play arises not as an aftereffect of activity but as preparation for it. Humans and animals do not play because they are young; they are young because they play. Both theories must be employed together to explain the true significance of art as play.
Beyond what is called profession, labor, and practical life, we still have a life sustained by the surplus of vital force. Compared with the old and the adult, youth and children are far richer in vigorous, exuberant vitality; the richer this vitality, the greater the surplus of force. When we wish to use this surplus to create a freer, more harmonious, more beautiful, and better life than the present one, that is upward striving, that is progress. Not art alone — all intellectual life is, in this sense, a serious game.
Between labor and play, there is originally no essential difference. Whether one paints or plays the piano, it may become either play or professional labor depending on the circumstances and attitude of the person doing it. Sweaty gardening is labor for the gardener, but for the wealthy gentleman it is an excellent game.
The difference between labor and play, as Schiller puts it, lies merely in the fact that in the former, inclination and duty are not properly reconciled, while in the latter, both are fittingly aligned. In other words, in labor one does not work from a self-generated inner need, while in play one works for oneself, to exercise one’s own vital force and find satisfaction therein.
Even in primitive times, there was no such strict distinction between professional labor and playful creation. All could work joyfully from inner motivation. When kneeling before the altar to perform the ritual, they performed the so-called “divine play”: making music, dancing with masks, and offering beautiful songs.
In short: play is an activity arising from the pure, unadulterated inner need; it transcends all constraints deriving from money, duty, morality, and other social bonds, and creates a life of the pure self. Schiller says in the fifteenth of his Letters: “Man only plays when he is human in the full sense of the word, and he is only fully human when he plays.” In my view, there is nothing in the world that is a more serious matter than so-called play.
Since the beginning of mankind, art has fulfilled an essential function in social life. The religious ceremonies of primitive times, the war dances, the songs of the community — all of these were simultaneously play and preparation. Art was never a mere luxury but a necessity of human existence. The connection between the surplus-force theory and the preparation theory lies precisely here: play satisfies inner force while simultaneously preparing for life. Art as the highest form of play unites both aspects.
Because humor is born from the “rational flight” from sorrow, however, it often drives people further toward cold mockery of the world. When confronted with everything outrageous, instead of becoming honestly angry, one puffs on a cigarette and merely sneers — that is easy enough. In John Stuart Mill’s words, there is the sentence: “Despotic government makes people cynical.” This is because under despotic rule, honest and sensitive people perish from anger. The honest person is killed as a martyr. The dishonest person takes refuge in humor and lives on with a cold smile.
Therefore humor is like fire, like water: properly used, it can enrich life and bring happiness to the world; but in excess, it burns houses and hinders the progress of society.
What prevents humor from descending into cold mockery is, above all, genuine sympathy. Sympathy is the cornerstone of all things. Anatole France said that the cornerstone of genius is sympathy; Tolstoy also regarded sympathy as the essential condition of true genius.
Humor may be abundant; only sympathy must not be lacking. To treat life as child’s play and spend one’s days smiling is cold mockery. To feel deeply the dignity of life, not to lose profound love for humanity, and yet to smile — that is humor.
What commonly goes by the name of “humor” is often merely a mask for cowardice and indifference. True humor, however, requires courage: the courage to see the suffering of the world, and the strength to bear it with a smile. Therein lies the greatness of the humorist.
If satire strikes with the sword of anger, humor caresses with the hand of compassion. Both are necessary, yet humor is harder to achieve because it demands two things: the sharpness of intellect and the warmth of heart.
Similar things can be said about caricature. Caricature is drawn humor, pictorial satire. It exaggerates in order to make truth visible. Great caricaturists like Daumier and Hogarth were also great humanists who pointed to the suffering of the world through exaggeration.
The artistic form of caricature has a long history in art. From the cave paintings of the Stone Age to the political cartoons of the present, a thread of humorous commentary on human existence runs through. In modern literature, humor has acquired special significance. From Mark Twain to Chekhov to Lu Xun himself: the great humorists of world literature are at once the keenest observers of human weakness and the warmest defenders of human dignity.
On March 29th of this year, the sixtieth birthday of the revolutionary writer Maxim Gorky and the thirty-fifth anniversary of his literary career, festive celebrations were held throughout Russia for an entire week, reaching an unprecedented scale. Prior to this, representatives from all fields had been assembled to form a celebration committee. Rykov, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, proclaimed Gorky’s great services to the working class and the Soviet Union and announced to the entire nation the significance of the celebration.
An entire epoch of Russian literature is inseparably linked with the name of Gorky; his art reflects the great social significance of that era. When Gorky appeared on the literary stage, Russia was in the midst of economic transformation: capitalist forces were triumphing over the feudal system, and the working class stepped onto the stage of social history for the first time. From that moment on, Gorky’s fiery revolutionary call resounded in an era of stormily expanding revolutionary movement; even during the reactionary period, it never fell silent.
Gorky is the only writer who, as a revolutionary author in pre-revolutionary Russia, won worldwide fame. Other talented artists connected with earlier revolutionary movements — Andreyev, Kuprin, Chirikov — where are they now? They live abroad, cursing the success of their homeland’s revolution and wasting away in exile. Gorky alone remained faithful to the revolution.
Gorky’s special achievement lies in fostering young writers from the working class. He paved the way into literature for countless autodidacts. His significance for the development of Soviet literature cannot be overestimated. He was not only a great artist but also a great organizer and promoter of literary life.
Gorky’s work is characterized by a deep bond with common people. His stories always depict the lives of those on the margins of society. He gave a voice to the voiceless and a face to the forgotten.
Gorky himself testified that between 1906 and 1910, he had read over four hundred manuscripts by self-taught writers. “The majority of these manuscripts” — said the author of “Chelkash” — “are by people who have barely grasped a little of literature. These manuscripts will probably never be published; yet in them is imprinted the soul of living people, the voice of the masses sounds directly through them.”
“Almost every time” — Gorky wrote — “when the postman delivers the gray notebooks filled on two-kopeck paper with hands unaccustomed to holding a pen, a letter is enclosed. In it, strangers and barely known people ask me to ‘look over’ their works and to answer: ‘Do I have talent? Do I have the right to draw people’s attention?’ Their heart is squeezed by joy and sorrow at once, and within them great hope burns.”
Elsewhere Gorky said: “I am firmly convinced that the working class will be able to create its own art — through great hardship and with great sacrifice — just as it once founded its own daily newspaper. This conviction grew from long observation of the efforts of hundreds of workers, craftsmen, and peasants who try to put their own view of life onto paper.”
Numerous well-known writers of modern Russia owe their literary careers to Gorky — this is openly confirmed by everyone. According to the Central City Library of Leningrad, among the two thousand seven hundred authors in the library’s collection, only seven hundred had any readers at all; the remaining two thousand were entirely unnoticed. Of those seven hundred, only thirty-eight authors were read daily. Among these thirty-eight, Gorky always stood in first place.
Gorky’s influence extended far beyond Russia. In China, Japan, Turkey, India, and many other countries, his works were translated and enthusiastically received. His novel “The Mother” became one of the most influential novels of proletarian world literature. Gorky proved that great literature need not originate in the ivory tower but can grow from the life of the people.
Thus Garshin was one who gave his sympathy to the sorrows and sufferings of others and described in his short stories the pain that arose within himself as a result. That is why in his simple and spare tales one hears the cry of a passionate person that stirs the heart.
The protagonist of his story “The Red Flower” was himself. In his madness, in the courtyard of the asylum, he plucked that red flower in which all the evil of the world was concentrated.
The one who experienced the agony of a soldier lying on the battlefield for four days as his own agony was also he.
In a letter to Afanasyev, he wrote that he created each word with a drop of blood.
An intelligent woman once described to Pavlovsky the circumstances under which Garshin wrote about the lives of prostitutes; it was as follows:
Garshin belonged to the more tender and sensitive natures of Russian literature. His fate was tragic: he was consumed by compassion for the suffering of others. While other writers could observe and describe misery without perishing from it themselves, Garshin was incapable of maintaining distance. He felt the suffering of his characters as his own.
This quality made him one of the most authentic writers of Russia, but also one of the most vulnerable. His short life and tragic end — he died young by suicide — bear witness to a man who was broken by his own compassion.
Garshin’s literary output is not extensive, yet each of his stories is a masterpiece of compression. He did not write much, but what he wrote was of an intensity unmatched in Russian literature. Turgenev recognized his talent at once and supported him; Chekhov admired his prose.
Garshin’s significance lies less in his literary influence than in the example he set: the example of a writer who paid for his work with his entire life. He embodied that tradition of the Russian intelligentsia which feels the suffering of others as its own moral obligation — a tradition reaching from Belinsky through Nekrasov to Garshin, and which still characterizes great Russian literature today.
But apart from Stachelsky, no one knew of Levinson’s wavering. In the detachment, probably no one knew that Levinson, too, could waver. He did not share his thoughts and feelings with any other person, but always answered with ready-made “yes” and “no.” Therefore, to everyone — except those who knew his true worth, such as Tubeyev, Stachelsky, and Goncharenko — he appeared to be an especially correct type of person. All the partisans, especially the young Baklanov, who wanted to imitate the commander in everything, down to his outward manner, generally thought: “I, of course, am an ordinary person, but Levinson — he is different.”
Since Levinson had been elected commander, no one could imagine him in any other position — everyone felt that only he could command the detachment, and that this was his foremost characteristic. If Levinson had told how as a child he helped his father sell secondhand goods, and how his father dreamed of getting rich until his dying day yet was afraid of mice and played a mediocre violin, everyone would probably have thought it was just a fitting joke. But Levinson never told such things. Not because he was secretive, but because he knew that everyone regarded him as a special kind of person, even though he himself was well aware of his own shortcomings.
On a damp night in early August, a mounted courier arrived at the detachment. He had been sent by old Soweykov-Kovtun, the staff chief of the partisan detachments. Old Soweykov-Kovtun wrote that the village of Yanuchino, where the main partisan forces were concentrated, had been attacked by Japanese troops; that in the desperate fighting near Istvotka, over a hundred people lay dying; that he himself had taken nine bullets and was hiding in a hunter’s winter cabin; and that his own life would probably not last much longer.
The rumor of defeat spread with ominous speed along the valleys. But the courier still outran it. The messengers sensed instinctively that this was the most terrible courier since the movement began. The people’s agitation spread to the horses as well. The shaggy partisan horses bared their teeth and galloped along the gloomy wet village roads from one village to the next — mud-water splashing under their hooves.
Levinson met the courier at half past twelve at night. Half an hour later, the small cavalry squad under the herdsman Medjeriza had already ridden past the village of Krilovka and was fanning out in three directions along the hidden paths of Sikhote-Alin — sending anxious messages to the detachments in the Svagen combat zone.
Then he stretched his weary limbs, yawned, and went to the backyard. In the stable, horses were stamping their hooves and chewing fresh grass. The night watchman slept under the tent canvas, clutching his rifle tightly. Levinson thought: “What if the other sentries are sleeping like this too?” He stood for a while, struggling to overcome his own drowsiness, led a stallion out of the stable, and put on its harness. The guard still had not awakened. “Look at that, son of a dog” — Levinson thought. He carefully took the guard’s cap, hid it in the hay, swung into the saddle, and rode off to inspect the sentries.
He rode along the bushes to the gate. “Who goes there?” the sentry asked roughly, clicking the rifle bolt. “Comrade…” “Levinson?… Why are you riding around at night?” “Just so, can’t sleep” — Levinson answered briefly.
He rode out into the field, into the damp darkness. The autumn wind blew cold. The stars flickered distantly and indifferently above the sleeping land. The grass rustled softly under the horse’s hooves.
Levinson inspected the sentries one by one. Some were awake and alert, others were dozing, still others were fast asleep. He did not wake the sleeping ones but memorized their faces, intending to hold them accountable the next day.
When he returned to the camp, it was nearly three in the morning. The night was still and peaceful, as though there were no war, no danger, no death. But Levinson knew better. He knew that the enemy was nearby, that the situation could change at any moment. He tied up his horse, went into his hut, and lay down without undressing. Thus he fell asleep — half-waking, like a wolf, ready to spring up at the slightest sound.