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且介亭杂文末编

Käthe Schmidt was born on July 8, 1867, in Königsberg, East Prussia. Her maternal grandfather was Julius Rupp, the founder of the local Free Religious Congregation. Her father had been a candidate for the judiciary, but his religious and political views left him with no prospect of appointment. This impoverished jurist therefore did as the Russians say: he "went to the people" and became a carpenter. It was only after Rupp's death that he took over as the leader and teacher of the congregation. He had four children and gave all of them a careful education, yet did not at first recognize Käthe's artistic talent. Käthe first learned the craft of copperplate engraving. In the winter of 1885, she went to Berlin, where her brother was studying literature, to study painting under Stauffer-Bern. She then returned home and studied under Neide, until "boredom" finally drove her to study with Herterich in Munich.

In 1891, she married Karl Kollwitz, a childhood friend of her brother's. He was a practicing physician, and so Käthe settled among the "little people" of Berlin. It was then that she set aside painting and took up printmaking. When her children had grown, she turned her energies to sculpture. In 1898, she completed the celebrated series A Weavers' Revolt, comprising six prints, based on the historical events of 1844, sharing its title with the earlier play by Gerhart Hauptmann. In 1899, she engraved Gretchen; in 1901, Dance Around the Guillotine. In 1904, she traveled to Paris; from 1904 to 1908, she produced the seven-print series Peasants' War, which brought her great fame and won her the Villa Romana Prize, enabling her to study in Italy. She and a woman friend walked from Florence to Rome, but this journey, she herself said, seemed to have had no great influence on her art. In 1909, she produced Unemployment; in 1910, Woman Seized by Death and small prints on the theme of death.

When the Great War began, she produced almost nothing. On the last day of October 1914, her very young elder son died as a volunteer on the Flanders front. In November 1918, she was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts — the first woman ever so honored. From 1919 onward, she seemed to awaken as from a great dream and resumed her work in printmaking. Notable works include her woodcut and lithograph commemorating Liebknecht from that year; the woodcut series War (1922-23); and later three prints of Proletarians, also a woodcut series. In 1927, for her sixtieth birthday, Hauptmann — then still a militant writer — wrote to her: "Your silent lines cut to the marrow, like an anguished cry: a cry unheard in the days of Greece and Rome." The Frenchman Romain Rolland said: "The work of Käthe Kollwitz is the greatest poetry of modern Germany; it illuminates the misery and sorrow of the poor and the common people. This woman of manly courage has gathered all this into her eyes and into her motherly arms, with a somber and delicate sympathy. It is the silent voice of a people who have made the sacrifice." Yet now she can neither teach nor paint; she can only live in genuine silence with her son in Berlin — her son, who, like his father, is also a physician.

Among women artists, there is hardly one in modern times who has shaken the art world more profoundly than Käthe Kollwitz — some praising her, some attacking her, and some defending her against attack. As Avenarius truly said: "In the early years of the new century, when she first exhibited her work, the press was already clamoring. From then on, one person says: 'She is a great printmaker'; another person makes the fatuous and absurd remark: 'Käthe Kollwitz belongs to a new school of printmakers that contains only one man.' A second says: 'She is a propagandist for social democracy'; a third calls her 'a painter of pessimistic misery.' And a fourth considers her 'a religious artist.' In short: however people may each interpret this art according to their own feelings and thoughts, however they may see in it only one meaning — one thing is universal: no one has forgotten her. The moment anyone hears the name Käthe Kollwitz, they seem to see the art before their eyes. This art is somber; though it is always in resolute motion, concentrated in tenacious strength, this art is unified and simple — overwhelmingly so."

But in our China, introductions have been few. I can only recall that the now-defunct magazines Xiandai and Yiwen each once published a single woodcut of hers; original works have of course been even rarer. Four or five years ago, a few of her works were exhibited in Shanghai, but I fear not many people paid close attention. Of the reproductions published in her own country, the finest I have seen is the Käthe Kollwitz Portfolio (Kaethe Kollwitz Mappe, published by Kunstwart-Verlag, Munich, 1927), though the later edition changed its contents, with more melancholy pieces and fewer militant ones. Less finely printed but with more plates is the Käthe Kollwitz Werk (Carl Reisner Verlag, Dresden, 1930). One need only leaf through this collection to know that with the deep and boundless love of a mother, she grieves, protests, rages, and fights for all who are insulted and injured. Her subjects are mostly hardship, hunger, displacement, disease, and death — but there is also outcry, struggle, solidarity, and uprising. Later another new collection appeared (Das Neue K. Kollwitz Werk, 1933), with still more works of clarity and light. Wilhelm Hausenstein, criticizing her middle-period works, noted that while there were occasional agitational and masculine prints, frightening in their violence, they were fundamentally connected with a rather deep life, and the forms emerged from rather intense entanglements — so that the form grasped tightly the shape of worldly affairs. Nagata Kazunobu went further, taking her later works as well, finding this critique insufficient. He said that Kollwitz's work, unlike that of Max Liebermann, did not merely find its subject matter interesting and then depict the lower world; she was moved by the wretched life surrounding her, and therefore could not help but paint — this was boundless "rage" against those who exploit humanity. "She depicts — as Nagata said — the masses of the dark earth, according to her present feelings. She does not confine phenomena within forms. That it sometimes appears tragic, sometimes heroic, is unavoidable. Yet however somber, however sorrowful she may be, she is decidedly not anti-revolutionary. She has not forgotten the possibility of transforming present society. And as she grows older, she increasingly departs from tragic, or heroic, or somber forms."

Moreover, she not only fought against the wretched life around her but was not as indifferent to China as China was to her. In January 1931, after six young writers were killed, when progressive writers from all over the world jointly submitted a protest, she was one of the signatories. Now, reckoning her age by the Chinese method, she is approaching seventy. The publication of this book, though limited in scope, may serve as a small tribute to her.

The selection comprises twenty-one prints, with original impressions as the primary source, supplemented by reproductions from the 1927 Portfolio. The following catalogue is based on the descriptions by Avenarius and Louise Diel, with some additions of my own:

(1) Self-Portrait (Selbstbild). Lithograph, date uncertain; judging from the order in the Werk, it was probably completed around 1910. Original impression, actual size 34 x 30 cm. This is a portrait the artist herself selected from among many printed self-portraits to give to China. One can faintly discern her compassion, her anger, and her gentleness.

(2) Poverty (Not). Lithograph, actual size 15 x 15 cm, from original impression; the following five prints likewise. This is the first plate of the celebrated A Weavers' Revolt (Ein Weberaufstand), made in 1898. Four years earlier, Hauptmann's play The Weavers had premiered at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, drawn from the 1844 Silesian linen weavers' uprising. The artist may have been influenced somewhat by this work, but the point need not be belabored, for one is a play and the other is a picture. Through it we enter a poor household: cold, broken down. The father holds a child, sitting helplessly in the corner. The mother is careworn, her head propped on both hands, watching her dying son. The spinning wheel stands silent beside her.

(3) Death (Tod). Lithograph, actual size 22 x 18 cm. The second plate of the same series. Still the icy room. The mother, exhausted, has fallen asleep. The father still stands helplessly, brooding over his helplessness. A candle on the table still glimmers, but Death has already drawn near, stretching out his bony hands to seize the frail child. The child's eyes are open wide, gazing at us. He wants to live; even unto death he still hopes that human beings possess the power to change fate.

(4) Deliberation (Beratung). Lithograph, actual size 27 x 17 cm. The third plate. After the silent endurance and anguish of the first two plates, here a scene of the struggle for survival emerges. In the darkness we see only a table surface, a cup, and two men — deliberating how to shake off the fate that has trampled them.

(5) Weavers on the March (Weberzug). Etching, actual size 22 x 29 cm. The fourth plate. The column advances toward the factory that sucks their marrow. In their hands they clutch pitifully meager weapons; their hands and faces are gaunt, their expressions dejected, for they have always gone hungry. There are women in the column, also exhausted, barely able to walk. In the masses this artist depicts, there are nearly always women. One carries a child on her back, who has fallen asleep on her shoulder.

(6) Assault (Sturm). Etching, actual size 24 x 29 cm. The fifth plate. The factory's iron gates were long since locked, but the weavers try to break them down with their feeble hands and pitiful weapons, or perhaps hurl stones inside. The women are helping, clawing up cobblestones from the ground with convulsive hands. A child is crying — perhaps the one who was sleeping on the march. Among the six plates, this is generally considered the finest; it is sometimes used to demonstrate the artistic heights achieved in the artist's Weavers series.

(7) The End (Ende). Etching, actual size 24 x 30 cm. The sixth and final plate. We are back once more in the weavers' home, with the loom standing silent. Beside it lie two corpses; a woman crouches over them. At the doorway, another body is being carried in. This was the outcome, in the 1840s, of the German weavers' struggle for survival.

(8) Gretchen (Gretchen). 1899, lithograph; from the Portfolio, actual size unknown. In Goethe's Faust, Faust loves Gretchen, seduces her, and she conceives. At a well, she hears from a friend that a neighbor girl has been abandoned by her lover, and thinking of herself, she offers flowers and prays to the Holy Mother. This print depicts the wretched girl crossing a very narrow bridge, seeing in the water a phantasmal vision of her future. In the play, she later drowns the child she bore with Faust and is imprisoned. The original stone has been shattered.

(9) Dance Around the Guillotine (Tanz um die Guillotine). 1901, etching; from the Portfolio, actual size unknown. A scene from the French Revolution: the guillotine has been erected, and the crowd surrounds it, howling the song "Let us dance the Carmagnole!" (Dansons la Carmagnole!), and dancing. Not one alone, but a throng made equally terrible by the same cause. The surrounding ruined buildings rise like precipices of accumulated misery, with only a patch of sky above. The flailing arms of the frenzied crowd blaze like purgatorial flames, illuminating nothing but darkness.

(10) The Ploughmen (Die Pflüger). Actual size 31 x 45 cm. This is the first plate of the celebrated historical series Peasants' War (Bauernkrieg), comprising seven etchings made between 1904 and 1908. The prints reproduced here are all from original impressions. The Peasants' War was one of the greatest social reform movements in early modern Germany. Around 1524, it broke out in the south, where the peasants lived in a state of servitude, oppressed by the feudal privileges of the nobility. When Martin Luther championed the new faith, he simultaneously spread the gospel of liberty, and the peasants awakened, demanding the abolition of their lords' cruel exactions. They published declarations, burned churches, attacked landowners, and the disturbance spread throughout the country. But then Luther turned against them, declaring such destructive conduct a grave offense against humanity that should be suppressed. The princes thereupon crushed them without restraint, exacting cruel revenge, and by the following year the peasants had all been defeated, their condition more wretched than before — which is why they later called Luther "Doctor Liar." The print shows, beneath a sunless sky, two ploughmen working the field — brothers, perhaps. They are harnessed with ropes, dragging the plough, crawling forward on all fours, like oxen or horses; one seems to see their sweat, to hear their panting. Behind them there should be a woman guiding the plough — probably their mother.

(11) Raped (Vergewaltigt). The second plate, actual size 35 x 53 cm. The men's suffering has not yet provoked rebellion, but a peasant woman has been subjected to a shameful outrage. Her hands are bound behind her back; she lies face up, her chin toward the sky, her face invisible. Dead or unconscious, we do not know. Along the path, the wild grass has been trampled flat, showing signs of a struggle. A little farther off stand charming little sunflowers.

(12) Whetting the Scythe (Beim Dengeln). The third plate, actual size 30 x 30 cm. Here appears the woman who has tasted suffering to the full. Her large, rough hands use a whetstone to sharpen the great scythe's edge. In her small eyes burn the uttermost loathing and fury.

(13) Arming in a Vaulted Room (Bewaffnung in einem Gewölbe). The fourth plate, actual size 50 x 33 cm. Everyone is arming themselves beneath a dark vaulted archway, surging up narrow Gothic stairs: a great mass of desperate peasants. The higher the light, the scarcer it becomes; an eerie half-darkness, sinister faces.

(14) Outbreak (Losbruch). The fifth plate, actual size 51 x 50 cm. Everyone rushes headlong across the field. In the lead are the young men; the one giving the command is a woman. From the entire composition surges the fury of vengeance. Her whole body is strength; she waves her arms and stamps her feet, and not only does the sight of her fill one with the impulse to charge forward, but the clouds in the sky seem to shatter in response. Her figure is one of the most powerful images of womanhood in all of the great paintings. As in A Weavers' Revolt, women always participate in extraordinary events, and with tremendous force — this is the spirit of "this woman of manly courage."

(15) Battlefield (Schlachtfeld). The sixth plate, actual size 41 x 53 cm. The peasants have been defeated; they were no match for the soldiers. What remains on the battlefield? One can barely make anything out. Only in the dimness of a night strewn with corpses, a woman holds a lantern, illuminating one work-hardened, sinewy hand as it touches the chin of a dead body. All the light is concentrated on this small patch. This is probably her son; this place is probably where she once guided the plough — but what flows here now is not sweat but blood.

(16) The Prisoners (Die Gefangenen). The seventh plate, actual size 33 x 42 cm. The captive survivors: some barefoot, some in wooden clogs, all powerful men — yet among them, even children. All have their hands bound behind them, confined in a rope corral. Their fate is easy to imagine, but their expressions vary: some have given up hope, some remain defiant or furious, some are lost in thought — but none shows weakness or submission.

(17) Unemployment (Arbeitslosigkeit). 1909, etching; from the Portfolio, actual size 44 x 54 cm. He is idle now, sitting at her bedside, thinking — yet no solution comes to mind. The mother and sleeping children are depicted with a beauty and sublimity rare in the artist's work.

(18) Woman Seized by Death (Frau vom Tod gepackt), also known as Death and Woman (Tod und Weib). 1910, etching; from the Portfolio, actual size unknown. Death emerges from her own shadow, attacks her from behind, entangles her, pins her arms behind her back. The frail child is left behind, unable to call back his loving mother. In the blink of an eye, they face each other across two worlds. Death is the world's most formidable boxer; death is the most moving tragedy of present-day society; and this woman is the greatest figure in all of the artist's work.

(19) Mother and Child (Mutter und Kind). Date uncertain, etching; from the Portfolio, actual size 19 x 13 cm. Among the one hundred and eighty-two prints I have seen in the Käthe Kollwitz Werk, no more than four or five can be called joyful — this is one of them. Avenarius notes that from the deliberately depicted dopey expression on the child's face in profile, set off by bright light, one cannot quite suppress a smile.

(20) Bread! (Brot!). Lithograph, date uncertain, presumably after the Great War; from original impression, actual size 30 x 28 cm. The desperate pleading for food by hungry children is what most shatters a mother's heart. Here the children stretch out their eyes, sad and fervently hoping, in vain, while the mother can only bend her powerless back. Her shoulders are hunched — she is weeping, turned away. She turns away because those willing to help are as powerless as she, and those with power will never help. She does not wish the children to see that this is the only love she has left to give.

(21) Germany's Children Are Starving! (Deutschlands Kinder hungern!). Lithograph, date uncertain, presumably after the Great War; from original impression, actual size 43 x 29 cm. They all hold out empty bowls, and in the wide-open eyes of their gaunt faces burns a fiery, blazing hope. Who will extend a hand? There is no way to know from here. This was originally a horizontal print, with the words now used as the title written alongside — probably a fundraising poster of the time. Later printings retained only the image. The artist also made a lithograph entitled Never Again War! (Nie wieder Krieg!), a slightly earlier work that I was unfortunately unable to obtain. And those children of that time who survived are now all young people over twenty — and are about to be driven once more as fodder for the fires of war.

I recall a time when we could learn very little about conditions in the Soviet Union from our own country's publications. Even in the realm of literature, certain respectable writers and scholars shied away from it like a young lady of good family recoiling from a patch of tar — not only refusing to touch it, but already wrinkling their noses while still at a safe distance. These past year or two, things have been different. Naturally, one still occasionally sees satirical cartoons lifted from foreign publications, but far more common now are sincere introductions to the achievements of construction, making one lift one's head and see airplanes, sluice gates, workers' housing, and collective farms, instead of forever staring at the ground, brooding over worn-out shoes and shaking one's head in sighs. These introducers are by no means people with so-called dangerous political tendencies, but they are incapable of schadenfreude; seeing a neighbor's peaceful prosperity, they are genuinely glad and share this gladness with the Chinese people. For the sake of both China and the Soviet Union, I think this is an excellent phenomenon: on the one hand, the truth becomes known to us and understanding is achieved; on the other, there is no more misunderstanding, and moreover it proves that China truly possesses many people who "cannot be subdued by force nor swayed by poverty" — people who must tell the truth.

But those introductions have all been in the form of articles or photographs. This year's print exhibition, however, has placed art directly before our eyes. Among the artists are several whose names are already familiar to us through reproductions of their work, but now, seeing their hand-made originals for the first time, we feel an even greater intimacy.

Among the prints, woodcuts were invented by China long ago, but they declined along the way. The woodcuts that rose anew five years ago were modeled on European practice, bearing no relation to the ancient Chinese woodcut. Before long, this new movement faced suppression, and it lacked teachers, so to this day no particular progress is visible. In this exhibition we have at last obtained excellent and abundant models. First to be noted is the great master Favorsky, who reformed the woodcut during the Civil War and has advanced without ceasing, and his school: Deineka, Goncharov, Echeistov, Pikov, and others. In their works, each expresses a sincere spirit, and their successors show how, following the path the master pointed out, they nonetheless employ different methods — demonstrating that so long as the content is the same, the methods may freely differ, and that imitation and dependence can never produce genuine art.

The works of Deineka and Echeistov have never been introduced in China, and regrettably they are scarce here too. Of Pavlinov, whose work is close to Favorsky's, we had seen only a single woodcut; now that shortcoming is remedied.

Kravchenko's woodcuts have on a few fortunate occasions reached China, and only one has been reproduced for introduction. Now at last everyone can see more of his originals. His romantic coloring will kindle the enthusiasm of our young people, and his attention to backgrounds and fine detail will also benefit the viewer. In our Chinese painting, since the Song Dynasty, "freehand expression" has been the vogue — two dots for the eyes, without knowing whether they are long or round; a single stroke for a bird, without knowing whether it is a hawk or a swallow. The pursuit of lofty simplicity has become empty vacuity, and this malady is still commonly seen in the works of our young woodcut artists today. Kravchenko's new work The Building of the Dnieper Dam (Dneprostroy) is an alarm bell to rouse us from this lazy daydreaming. As for Piskarev, he was probably the first woodcut artist introduced to China. His four illustrations for The Iron Flood have long been admired by many young readers; now we see for the first time his illustrations for Anna Karenina — the other end of his cutting style.

Here too are Mitrokhin, Khizhinsky, and Mochalov, all previously known in China, along with many artists seen for the first time — from those already famous before the October Revolution to young artists born at the turn of the twentieth century. Their works all speak to us of collaboration and advance along the road of peaceful construction. Regarding the other artists and works, the exhibition catalogue provides brief descriptions for each, and at the end it states the essential point of the whole: "a general socialist content and a fundamental striving toward realism." There is no need for me to elaborate here.

But there is something else we should note: among the works are those by artists from Ukraine, Georgia, and Byelorussia. I think that without the October Revolution, these works would not only have been unable to meet us here, but might never have come into existence at all.

Now, over two hundred works have appeared together in brilliant array in Shanghai. Speaking of prints alone, to our eyes they do not resemble the frequent delicacy of French woodcuts, nor the frequent boldness of German woodcuts. Yet they are sincere without being rigid, beautiful without being sensual, joyful without being frenzied, powerful without being brutal — and yet they are not static. They make one feel a tremor — a tremor like the sound of a great friendly column's footsteps, marching with solid tread, step by step, upon the solid, vast black earth, advancing toward construction.

Postscript: The prints in the exhibition are of five types. First, woodcuts; second, linoleum cuts (the catalogue translates this as "oil-cloth cuts," which is rather odd) — the names are self-explanatory. Two types are made by etching copper plates and stone with acid: calling them "etchings" and "lithographs" is fine, or following the catalogue and calling them "acid-etchings" and "stone prints" is also acceptable. Then there is monotype — a painting made on a plate and then printed — so that although it is a print, only one impression exists. I think it can only be translated as "single-impression print." The exhibition catalogue translates it as "mono," which amounts to no translation at all; elsewhere it is rendered as "single-type study," which is even harder to understand than not translating it. In fact, the unsigned explanatory notes in the exhibition are remarkably concise and to the point; regrettably, the translation is very difficult to follow. If someone were to retranslate them, even after the exhibition's close, they would still be of great use to anyone interested in printmaking.

February 17.

When exhaustion reaches the point of utter helplessness, one occasionally admires writers who transcend the mundane world and tries to imitate them. But it doesn't work. The transcendent mind, like a mollusk, must have a shell around it. And it needs clear water too. Near Mount Asama there are surely inns, but I doubt anyone goes there to build an "ivory tower."

Seeking temporary peace of mind as a last resort, I have lately devised a different method. It is this: deceiving people.

Last autumn or winter, a Japanese sailor was assassinated in Zhabei. Suddenly the streets were full of people moving house; the cost of renting a car for the purpose went up several times over. Those moving were naturally Chinese; the foreigners stood at the roadside, watching with apparent amusement. I too often went to watch. At night it grew extraordinarily quiet, with no more food vendors about; one only heard, from time to time, the distant barking of dogs. But after two or three days, moving house seemed to be prohibited. The police beat the cart-pullers and rickshaw-pullers hauling luggage with all their might. Japanese newspapers and Chinese newspapers alike bestowed upon those who had moved the title of "ignorant rabble." The meaning was this: the world is perfectly peaceful, and it is only because of such "ignorant rabble" that a perfectly good world has been thrown into chaos.

From start to finish, I did not stir; I did not join the ranks of the "ignorant rabble." But this was not from wisdom — only from laziness. I had once been caught in the line of fire during the Shanghai battle of five years earlier — which the Japanese side, it seems, prefers to call an "incident" — and my freedom had long since been stripped away. Those who had taken my freedom then flew off into the sky with it, so that no matter where one ran, it was all the same. The Chinese people are suspicious. Every foreigner points to this as a laughable defect. But suspicion is not a defect. To go on suspecting without ever reaching a verdict — that is the defect. I am Chinese, and therefore I know this secret well. In truth, a verdict is being reached, and the verdict is: in the end, one still cannot trust. But subsequent events have generally confirmed this verdict. The Chinese do not doubt their own suspicion. So my not moving house was not because I harbored any conviction of peace on earth; in the end, it was merely because the danger was the same everywhere. Leafing through the newspapers five years earlier and seeing the sheer number of dead children recorded, while never once seeing any report of prisoner exchanges — even now, when I think of it, the grief is overwhelming.

Mistreating those who move house and beating cart-pullers — these are still very minor matters. The Chinese people habitually wash the hands of those in power with their own blood, making them once again clean and respectable persons. That things ended this time with merely such a spectacle is, all told, quite fortunate.

But while everyone was busy moving, I had no mind either to stand at the roadside all day watching the spectacle or to sit at home reading a history of world literature. I walked a little farther — to a cinema, to take my mind off things. There, truly, was paradise on earth. This was the very place where everyone had moved. Just as I was about to step through the door, a girl of twelve or thirteen seized me. A schoolgirl, collecting donations for flood relief, her nose tip red from the cold. I said I had no change. She expressed extreme disappointment with her eyes. I felt guilty, so I took her into the cinema, and after buying my ticket, gave her one dollar. This time she was extremely happy and praised me: "You are a good person." She even wrote me a receipt. With this receipt, wherever one went, there was no need to donate again. And so I, the so-called "good person," walked lightly inside.

What film did I see? I can no longer remember a single thing. It was probably something about an Englishman who, for his country's sake, conquered a cruel Indian chieftain, or an American who went to Africa, made a fortune, and married a matchlessly beautiful woman — something of that sort. After killing time this way, I returned home at dusk and walked back into the silent surroundings. The distant barking of dogs again. The girl's satisfied expression appeared once more before my eyes, and I felt I had done a good deed. But immediately my mood soured again, as though I had chewed on a bar of soap or something of the kind.

It is true that two or three years ago there had been a terrible flood — unlike the Japanese floods, ours do not recede for months, or half a year. But I also knew that China has an institution called the "Water Conservancy Bureau," which collects taxes from the people every year and carries out its work. Yet this enormous flood occurred nonetheless. I also knew that a certain group had staged a play to raise money, but because the proceeds amounted to only twenty-odd dollars, the authorities grew angry and refused to accept it. I had even heard that refugees, driven in droves to safe areas by the flood, had been machine-gunned on the grounds that they were a threat to public order. Most of them were probably long since dead. Yet the children did not know this: they were still desperately collecting living expenses for the dead — disappointed when they failed, happy when they succeeded. And in truth, one dollar was not even enough to buy a single day's cigarettes for a Bureau official. I knew all this perfectly well, yet I behaved as if I believed the money would actually reach the disaster victims — when in fact I had simply bought the artless, innocent joy of a child. I do not like to see the look of disappointment on people's faces.

If my eighty-year-old mother were to ask me whether heaven truly exists, I would probably answer without the slightest hesitation: yes, it truly does.

But my mood for the rest of that day was not comfortable. I seemed to feel that a child is not the same as an old person — that deceiving her was wrong. I thought of writing an open letter to explain my true feelings and dispel the misunderstanding, but then realized there was nowhere to publish it, and so I abandoned the idea. It was already midnight. I went to the door and looked out.

Not a single human shadow was to be seen. Only under the eaves of one house, a wonton vendor was chatting idly with two policemen. He was a particularly wretched peddler, rarely seen in ordinary times, and his supply of ingredients was untouched — clearly he had no business. I bought two bowls for twenty cents, and my wife and I shared them — just to let him earn a little money. Zhuangzi once said: "The crucian carp in the dried-up rut moisten each other with their spittle, breathe upon each other with their damp breath." — But then he also said: "It would be better to forget each other in the rivers and lakes." The sad thing is that we cannot forget each other. And I have only grown more reckless in my deceiving of people. If this schooling in deception does not end — either through graduation or through abandonment — I fear I shall never be able to write a satisfying essay.

But unfortunately, before either graduation or abandonment, I encountered President Yamamoto. Because he asked me to write something, I answered, as a matter of courtesy, "Certainly." Because I had said "certainly," I was obliged to write — I did not want to disappoint him. And yet, in the end, what I wrote was still a deceptive essay.

Writing such essays does not make for a comfortable state of mind. There is a great deal I want to say, but it must wait for the time when "Sino-Japanese friendship" has advanced still further. Before long, I fear, this "friendship" may reach such a degree that in our China, opposing Japan will be considered treason — on the grounds that the Communist Party exploited anti-Japanese slogans to destroy China — and on execution platforms everywhere, the solar disc will be glittering. But even when that day comes, it will still not be the time to lay bare one's true heart.

Perhaps this is only one person's excessive worry. To see and understand each other's true hearts — if this could be accomplished as conveniently as using pen and tongue, or, as the religious say, washing the eyes clean with tears, that would be splendid indeed. But such easy bargains, I'm afraid, are very rare in this world. This is cause for sorrow. As I write this rambling, formless essay, I feel once again that I am failing the earnest reader.

In closing, let me add a few lines of personal premonition, written in blood, as a return gift.

February 23.

Let me begin by quoting a few lines from an old book — perhaps I do not remember them quite accurately — Zhuangzi said: "Fish stranded in a drying rut, moistening each other with spittle, breathing dampness upon each other — far better to forget one another in the rivers and lakes."

It was in September 1934, under just such circumstances, that Yiwen came into the world. At the time, grand undertakings like World Literature and World Library had not yet been born, so in this interval between harvests, one might say it was something like an oasis in the Gobi: a handful of people stealing moments from their spare time, translating short pieces, reading each other's work, and if there happened to be readers, letting everyone have a look — finding a bit of pleasure for ourselves, and hoping perhaps to be of some small use — though of course this was far from the vastness of rivers and lakes.

Yet even this modest little journal, so uncontentious with the world, could not avoid bidding farewell to everyone with a "Final Issue" last September. Though they were only wildflowers and weeds, no small effort had gone into transplanting and watering them, and naturally we could not help privately thinking it a pity. But we also gained courage and solace: the tributes that many readers paid to Yiwen with pen and tongue.

We know to be grateful; we know to spur ourselves on.

We also never ceased hoping for its revival. But the rumor circulating at the time about the reason for its demise was: financial loss. Although publishers are generally in the business of "spreading culture," running at a "loss" is the mortal wound of "spreading culture," and so for half a year the journal lay quite irretrievably dead. Only this year has the theory of financial loss finally begun to waver, granting a chance for resurrection, so that it may meet everyone once more.

The content remains as described in the "Prefatory Note" of the inaugural issue: no restrictions on source material; no fixed categories; illustrations added alongside text — some related to the text, intended to enhance interest, and some unrelated, which may be considered our small gift to the reader.

This time, what will its future fate be? We do not know. But this year the literary scene has undergone a sudden transformation, and there is now much talk of tolerance and magnanimity. We sincerely hope that in this tolerant and magnanimous literary world, Yiwen too may find shelter and enjoy a comparatively long life.

March 8.

More than half of spring is already gone, and it is still cold; add to that a whole day's rain, drizzling ceaselessly, and sitting alone deep into the night, listening — it makes one feel rather desolate. Also because in the afternoon I received a letter sent from far away, asking me to write something by way of preface to the posthumous poems of Bai Mang; the letter began: "My late friend Bai Mang — I expect you knew him..." — This made me all the more melancholy.

Speaking of Bai Mang — yes, indeed, I knew him. Four years ago I wrote an essay called "In Memory of Forgetting," in which I sought to put them out of mind. It has already been a full five years since they were executed, and upon my memory many fresh bloodstains have accumulated; at this mention, his youthful face appears before my eyes once more, as if he were alive — in hot weather wearing a great padded robe, his face streaming with oily sweat, saying to me with a smile: "This is the third time. I got out on my own. The first two times my brother bailed me out, and every time he bailed me out he'd interfere with me, so this time I didn't notify him..." — In my previous article I had guessed wrong: this brother was Xu Peigen, Director of the Bureau of Aviation, who in the end became a brother taking a different path to the same destination. His own name was Xu Bai; his more common pen name was Yin Fu.

If a person still possesses friendship, then keeping the manuscripts of a dead friend is like clutching a ball of fire — one constantly feels unable to eat or sleep in peace until one has made some attempt to have them published. I understand this feeling perfectly and know the obligation of writing a preface and such things. What makes me melancholy is that I simply do not understand poetry, nor have I had poet friends; on the rare occasion I did, it always ended in a falling-out — except with Bai Mang, where there was no falling-out, perhaps because he died too quickly. Now, regarding his poems, I shall say not a single word — because I cannot.

The birth of this Tower of Babes into the world is not meant to compete for a day's laurels with present-day poets; it carries a meaning of another kind. This is the faint light of the East, the whistling arrow in the forest, the bud at winter's end, the first step of an advancing army, the great banner of love for the vanguard, and also the towering monument of hatred for the destroyers. All those so-called works of mellow refinement, of serene and distant tranquility, need not be brought up for comparison, for these poems belong to another world.

In that world there are very, very many people, and Bai Mang is their late friend too. This alone, I think, is sufficient to guarantee the existence of this collection — so what need is there for a preface from me?

Night of March 11, 1936, recorded by Lu Xun at the Qijie Pavilion in Shanghai.

This happened on March 10. I received a letter from a stranger in Hankou, claiming to have been a classmate of Bai Mang's at Tongji School and to be in possession of his manuscript Tower of Babes, which was currently being prepared for publication. However, the publisher had one requirement: that I write a preface. As for the manuscript, since the papers were loose and miscellaneous, he would not send it, though if I wished to see it, he could forward it as a supplement. In fact, the manuscript of Bai Mang's Tower of Babes, along with scattered posthumous writings of several others who perished at the same time, were all in my keeping — among them his own hand-drawn illustrations. But it was entirely possible that his friends had a separate early draft. As for a publisher wanting a preface, that was the most ordinary thing in the world.

In recent years, a grand fashion has opened up for printing and selling posthumous works; even in periodicals, the dead and the living frequently collaborate. But this is no longer the old so-called "fascination with bones" — rather it is the living leaning on the lingering radiance of the dead, hoping to use "a dead Zhuge Liang to scare off a living Zhongda." I have little admiration for these living operators. But this time I was genuinely moved, for when a person has suffered calamity or been wronged, his so-called former friends who keep dead silent are common enough; those who rush to throw a few stones to demonstrate that they belong to the victorious side are hardly rare either. But to guard the posthumous manuscripts, and after many years still seek to publish them in fulfillment of one's obligations of friendship to the deceased — of such cases, given my own limited knowledge, I truly know very few. Just recovered from serious illness, barely able to sit up, with the night rain drizzling, filled with sorrowful thoughts, I forced myself through my weakness to write a short piece, and the next day sent it off by post. Fearing it might bring trouble to the person arranging the printing, I omitted his name; a few days later, I submitted it to Literary Bulletin, and fearing it might hamper circulation, I again concealed the title of the poetry collection.

Not many days after this, I saw in the Social Daily that Shi Jixing, that accomplished trickster, had now adopted yet another alias: Qi Hanzhi. Only then did I realize I had been duped, for the sender of the letter from Hankou had signed himself none other than Qi Hanzhi. He was still playing his old game of swindling manuscripts. Tower of Babes was not only never going to be published — he most likely did not even possess the early draft; he merely knew that Bai Mang and I were acquainted and the name of the poetry collection.

As for my correspondence with Shi Jixing, that goes back much further — eight or nine years, in fact, when I was editing Threads of Talk and the Creation Society and the Sun Society had joined forces to lay siege to me. He wrote claiming to be a student at an art academy; his letter appeared before my eyes, accompanied by a submission: several items of scandalous behavior on the part of the so-called revolutionary literary lions of the day, with assurances in his letter that such material could be supplied in a steady stream. But Threads of Talk had no "Scandals Column," and I had no wish to associate with this kind of "writer," so I refused him on the spot. Later he adopted the pen name "Chichu" and fabricated rumors about me in publications; or he would suddenly transform into "Tianxing" (Threads of Talk also had a contributor by the same name, but that was a different person) or "Shi Yan," and in humble language solicit my manuscripts — I invariably ignored him. This time, I had heard he was in Hankou, but I could not, merely because one Shi Jixing happened to be in Hankou, treat every letter from an unknown person in Hankou as a contemptible trap. Though I have been reproached by honorable gentlemen for excessive suspicion, my suspicion had not yet reached such a degree. Unfortunately, one really cannot afford to be careless; the one time I let down my guard, the one time I was moved by friendship — it became my weakness after all.

Today I saw yet another issue — the second — of the so-called "Hanchu" edition of Les Contemporains, with "edited by Shi Tianxing" printed at the end, and in the preview of coming attractions for the next issue, sure enough there was my "Preface to Tower of Babes." But the masthead also announced that starting from the next issue the name would be changed to Northwest Wind, so my preface would naturally be swept up in the first gust of "Northwest Wind." And the first piece in this second issue was yet again an article of mine, titled "Preface to the Japanese Translation of A Brief History of Chinese Fiction." The original was written by me in Japanese; here it had been translated by some unknown person, and though the piece was only a single page long, it was riddled with errors and ungrammatical passages — yet prefixed with a declaration: "This piece was originally written by me as a foreword for the Japanese edition of A History of Chinese Fiction..." — mimicking my voice, impersonating me as the translator. To translate one's own Japanese and produce a page full of errors — is this not the most extraordinary thing under heaven?

China has always been a place where "people are not treated as people"; even if someone is baselessly accused of surrender or conversion, traitor to the nation or collaborator with the enemy, society does not find it the least bit strange. So Shi Jixing's little tricks are an even more trifling matter. What I wish to specifically declare is only this: I ask those readers who, having read my preface, hoped for the publication of Tower of Babes, to withdraw that hope — for I was first deceived, and this in turn became my deceiving the reader.

Finally, I wish to add a few words of conclusion born of "excessive suspicion": even if a "Hanchu" edition of Tower of Babes truly appeared, the poems within it would still be suspect. I have never wished to say a word about Shi Jixing's great enterprise, but since this time I did write a preface, and it has moreover been published, I have both the obligation and the right — now and in the future — to distinguish the genuine from the spurious.

April 11.

I. The Introduction of Professor Kollwitz's Prints

In the wilds of China there is a heap of burnt paper ash; on an old wall there are a few scratched drawings. Passersby generally pay no attention, yet each of these conceals a certain meaning — love, sorrow, fury... and often a meaning more fierce than anything cried aloud. A few people understand this meaning.

In 1931 — I have forgotten the month — the first issue of the magazine Beidou, which was banned shortly after its founding, carried a woodcut: a mother, her eyes closed in sorrow, giving up her child. This was the first plate from Professor Kaethe Kollwitz's woodcut series War, titled Sacrifice; it was also the first of her prints to be introduced into China. I had sent this woodcut as a memorial to Rou Shi's death. He was my student and friend, a fellow introducer of foreign literature, particularly fond of woodcuts, who had edited and printed three volumes of European and American artists' works, though the printing was not very good. Then, for no one knew what reason, he was suddenly arrested, and soon afterward was shot at Longhua together with five other young writers. The newspapers at the time carried not a word about it — presumably they dared not, and could not, report it. Yet many people understood perfectly well that he was no longer in this world, for such things were common. Only his mother, blind in both eyes — I knew she must still believe her beloved son was in Shanghai, translating and proofreading. When I happened upon this Sacrifice in a German bookshop's catalogue, I sent it to Beidou as my wordless memorial. Afterward, I learned that quite a number of people had grasped the meaning it contained, though most of them assumed the memorial was for the entire group of victims.

At that time, Professor Kollwitz's portfolio of prints was on its way from Europe to China, but by the time it reached Shanghai, the devoted introducer was already sleeping in the earth, and we did not even know where. Very well — I would look at them alone. In these prints there was poverty, disease, hunger, death... and naturally also struggle and resistance, but comparatively little of these; just as in the artist's self-portrait, where the face shows loathing and fury, but even more compassion and pity. These were images of the heart of every mother among "the insulted and the injured." Such mothers also exist in the Chinese countryside where fingernails are not yet dyed red, yet people often mock them, saying a mother only loves her useless sons. But I think she loves her capable sons too; only since they are strong and able, she sets her mind at ease about them and turns her attention to the "insulted and injured" children.

Now here are twenty-one reproductions of her works as proof; and for China's young art students, there are further benefits — First, in recent years woodcuts have become quite popular, despite constant persecution. But of other forms of printmaking, more substantial collections have been limited to a single book on Anders Zorn. What is presented here consists entirely of etchings and lithographs, letting readers know that within the realm of printmaking there exist such works as these, which can be even more widely disseminated than oil paintings and the like, and allowing them to see techniques and subject matter entirely different from Zorn's.

Second, people who have never been abroad often imagine that all white people are either preaching the gospel of Jesus to others or running foreign trading houses — well-dressed and well-fed, kicking people with leather boots the moment they are displeased. With this collection of prints, one will understand that in reality there are still "insulted and injured" people in many parts of the world — friends who share the same breath as we do — and that there are artists who grieve for these people, cry out, and fight.

Third, Chinese newspapers these days love to print photographs of Hitler with his mouth gaping wide in a shout; though the moment is fleeting, in photographs it is forever this pose, and looking at too many of them induces fatigue. Now, from a German artist's portfolio, one sees another kind of person — not heroes, to be sure, yet people one can feel close to, sympathize with, and who, the longer one looks, appear ever more beautiful and ever more deeply moving.

Fourth, this year marks the full fifth anniversary of Rou Shi's death, and also the fifth year since the artist's woodcuts first appeared in China; and the artist herself, calculated in the Chinese manner, is now seventy — this too may serve as a commemoration. Although the artist at present can only maintain her silence, her works are appearing ever more widely in the skies of the Far East. Yes — art for humankind cannot be stopped by any other force.

II. A Brief Discussion of Dying in Darkness

Only in the last few days have I come to realize that to die in darkness is, for a person, an utterly wretched thing.

In China before the revolution, condemned prisoners on their way to execution were first paraded through the main streets. There, one might cry out his innocence, or curse the officials, or recount his heroic deeds, or declare his fearlessness of death. When the performance reached its peak, the watching crowd would shout "Bravo!" and the story would spread afterward. In my youth I often heard of such things, and I always thought the spectacle was barbarous and the practice cruel.

Recently, in a magazine called The Cosmic Wind edited by Dr. Lin Yutang, I read an essay by a Mr. Zhutang that took quite a different view. He held that this cheering of condemned prisoners was worship of failed heroes and the championing of the weak — "the ideal cannot but be called lofty. Yet for the organization of human society, it is truly unacceptable. To champion the weak against the strong means never wishing there to be anyone strong. To worship failed heroes means refusing to acknowledge successful heroes." The result is that "every emperor who has succeeded throughout history, in order to maintain his power for several centuries, has invariably had to slaughter tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people, just to win a temporary submission."

Having slaughtered tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands and still only able to "win a temporary submission" — thinking of this from the standpoint of the "successful emperor," it is truly cause for great grief: there is no good solution. However, I have no intention of devising strategies for them. What I have come to realize from this is that allowing condemned prisoners to speak publicly before execution was, in fact, a benevolence on the part of the "successful emperor," and evidence of his confidence in still possessing power — which is why he had the nerve to let the condemned man open his mouth, granting him, before death, a moment of self-glorifying intoxication, and letting everyone know his ending. When I had previously thought only of "cruelty," that was not quite the accurate judgment; contained within it was a measure of benevolence. Whenever a friend or student dies, if I do not know the date, or the place, or the manner of death, my grief and unease are always greater than when I know; and reasoning from this to the other side, to meet one's end in a dark chamber at the hands of a few butchers must surely be lonelier than dying before the public.

Yet the "successful emperor" does not kill in secret. He keeps only one thing secret: the amorous play with his wives and concubines. Only when he is about to fail does he add a second secret: the amount and whereabouts of his fortune. Further still, he adds a third: killing in secret. By this point, like Mr. Zhutang, he too has begun to find the common people — with their own likes and dislikes, indifferent to success or failure — rather frightening.

So this third method, the secret one, is one that will always be adopted sooner or later, even without a strategist's counsel — and perhaps in some places it is already being practiced. By then the streets are civilized, the populace tranquil; but if we try to imagine the hearts of the dead, they must surely be far more wretched than those who died openly. When I first read Dante's Divine Comedy and reached the Inferno, I marveled at the cruelty of the author's imagination. But now, with more experience, I realize he was actually rather merciful: he had not yet imagined a hell so commonplace today — a hell of wretchedness so extreme that no one can see it.

III. A Fairy Tale

I saw in the DZZ of February 17 a piece written by Willi Bredel to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of Heine's death, called "A Fairy Tale." I liked the title very much, so I too shall write one.

Once upon a time, there was a country like this. The rulers had subdued the people, only to discover that these people were all formidable adversaries after all — the phonetic alphabet was like a machine gun, woodcuts like tanks. They had seized the land, but at designated stations one was not allowed to get off the train. One could no longer walk on the ground either; one had to fly about through the air. Moreover, their skin's resistance had weakened; whenever anything pressing arose, they caught colds, which at the same time spread to the ministers, and everyone fell ill together.

Large dictionaries were published — not just one — yet all were useless in practice. If one wished to know the truth, one had to consult dictionaries that had never been printed. These contained some remarkably novel definitions, such as: "Liberation" means "execution by firing squad." "Tolstoyism" means "running away." Under the entry for "official" it noted: "Relatives, friends, and lackeys of high officials." Under "city wall" it noted: "A tall, solid brick wall erected to prevent students from entering or leaving." The entry for "morality" noted: "Forbidding women to bare their arms." Under "revolution" it noted: "Flooding fields with water; using airplanes to carry bombs and drop them on the heads of 'bandits.'"

Large volumes of law were published, compiled by dispatching scholars to various countries to survey current statutes, extract the essence, and edit the whole — so that no country in the world could match this body of law for its completeness and precision. But at the front was a blank page, and only those who had seen the unprinted dictionary could read the words on it. There were three articles: First, the case may be handled with leniency; Second, the case may be handled with severity; Third, or the law may at times not be applied at all.

Naturally there were courts of law, but any defendant who had read the words on the blank page would never offer a defense at trial, for only bad people love to argue, and arguing invariably led to "handling with severity." Naturally there was also a high court, but anyone who had read the words on the blank page would never file an appeal, for only bad people love to appeal, and appealing invariably led to "handling with severity." One morning, a large contingent of soldiers and police surrounded an art school. Inside, several men in Chinese dress and Western suits were jumping about, rummaging, searching, followed by policemen, all holding pistols. Before long, a man in a Western suit seized the shoulder of an eighteen-year-old student in the dormitory.

"The government has now sent us here to your school for an inspection. Would you please..."

"Go ahead and search!" The young man immediately dragged his wicker trunk out from under the bed.

These young people had accumulated years of experience and had become rather clever — they dared not possess anything. But this student was after all only eighteen, and in the end some letters were found in a drawer — perhaps because those letters mentioned his mother's death in poverty and he could not bear to burn them. The man in the Western suit read them with extreme care, word by word, and when he reached "...the world is a banquet of cannibals; your mother has been devoured, and countless mothers everywhere will be devoured too..." he raised his eyebrows, produced a pencil, drew wavy lines under those words, and asked: "What is the meaning of this?"

"......"

"Who devoured your mother? Is there such a thing as cannibalism in the world? Did we devour your mother? Well!" He bulged his eyes as if they were about to turn into bullets and shoot across.

"Not at all!... This... Not at all!... This..." The young man grew agitated.

But the man did not fire his eyeballs. He simply folded the letter, stuffed it into his pocket, gathered the student's woodblocks, carving knives, prints, copies of The Iron Flood and And Quiet Flows the Don, and pasted-up newspaper clippings, put them all in one pile, and said to a policeman: "I'm handing these over to you!"

"What's in these things that you're taking them?" The young man knew this was not a good sign.

But the man in the Western suit merely glanced at him, immediately pointed with a casual gesture, and ordered another policeman:

"I'm handing this one over to you!"

The policeman sprang like a tiger, seized the young man by the clothing on his back, and hauled him out through the front door of the dormitory. Outside stood two more students of similar age, each with a mighty, enormous hand gripping his back. Around them, a dense crowd of teachers and students had gathered.

IV. Another Fairy Tale

Twenty-one days after that morning, a hearing was held at the detention center. In a gloomy little room, two gentlemen sat above — one to the east, one to the west. The one to the east wore a mandarin jacket; the one to the west wore a Western suit — the optimist who did not believe there was such a thing as cannibalism in the world — and was taking the deposition. Policemen barked orders and half-dragged, half-shoved an eighteen-year-old student in: pallid face, filthy clothes, standing below. After Mandarin-Jacket had asked his name, age, and native place, he asked: "Are you a member of the Woodcut Study Society?"

"Yes."

"Who is the president?"

"Ch... is the president, H... the vice-president."

"Where are they now?"

"They were both expelled from the school. I don't know."

"Why were you inciting disturbances at school?"

"Ah!..." The young man could only cry out in alarm.

"Hmph." Mandarin-Jacket casually produced a woodcut portrait and showed it to him. "Did you carve this?"

"Yes."

"Who is it a portrait of?"

"A man of letters."

"What is his name?"

"His name is Lunacharsky."

"He's a man of letters? — What country is he from?"

"I don't know!" The young man, trying to save his life, lied.

"You don't know? Don't try to fool me! Isn't this a Russian? Isn't this obviously a Russian Red Army officer? I've seen his photograph with my own eyes in a history of the Russian Revolution! You dare deny it?"

"Not at all!" The young man, as if struck on the head with an iron mallet, cried out in despair.

"It's only natural — you're a proletarian artist, so of course you carve Red Army officers!"

"Not at all... This is completely not..."

"Stop arguing. You are simply 'incorrigible'! We know very well that life in the detention center is hard for you. But you must tell the truth, so that we can send you to the court for sentencing sooner. — Life in prison is much better than here." The young man said nothing — he understood perfectly well that speaking and not speaking amounted to the same thing.

"Tell me," Mandarin-Jacket gave another cold laugh, "are you CP, or CY?" "Neither. I know nothing about such things!"

"You can carve Red Army officers but don't understand CP or CY? So young, yet so cunning! Get out!" And with a casual wave of the hand forward, a policeman, clever and practiced, grabbed the young man and led him away.

I must apologize: having written this far, it seems somewhat unlike a fairy tale. But if I do not call it a fairy tale, what shall I call it? The only distinctive feature is that I can name the year in which these events took place: 1932.

V. A Real Letter

"Dear Sir:

You ask me what happened after I was released from the detention center? I shall briefly narrate below —

On the last day of the last month of that year, the three of us were transferred by the xx Provincial Government to the High Court. We were brought before the examining magistrate immediately upon arrival. This examining magistrate's questioning was most peculiar — he asked only three questions:

'What is your name?' — the first; 'How old are you this year?' — the second; 'Where are you from?' — the third.

After this most peculiar hearing was concluded, we were transferred by the court to a military prison. Does anyone wish to see the full range of a ruler's art of governance? Then one need only visit a military prison. In his slaughter of dissidents and massacre of the people, nothing less than the utmost cruelty will satisfy him. Whenever the political situation grows tense, a batch of so-called important political prisoners is dragged out and shot — sentences and terms mean nothing. For example, when Nanchang was in critical danger, twenty-two were killed in three quarters of an hour; when the Fujian People's Government was established, quite a number were also shot. The execution ground was the five-acre vegetable garden inside the prison; the corpses of the inmates were buried with dirt right there in the garden, and vegetables were planted on top, using them as fertilizer.

After approximately two and a half months, the indictment arrived. The judge had asked us only three questions — how could an indictment be drawn up from that? It could! Though the original is not at hand, I can recite it from memory; unfortunately, I have forgotten the specific legal articles — '...The Woodcut Study Society organized by Ch... and H... is a body under Communist Party direction for the study of proletarian art. The defendants are all members of said society... Examination of their carvings shows that all depict Red Army officers and scenes of labor and hunger, thereby inciting class struggle and demonstrating that the proletariat shall one day exercise dictatorship...' Not long after, the trial was held. Five gentlemen sat in a row upon the bench, most imposing. Yet I was not particularly flustered, for at that moment a picture floated up in my mind — Honore Daumier's The Judges — and I truly marveled!

On the eighth day after the trial, the final sentencing hearing was held and the verdict read. The crimes listed in the verdict were the same few sentences from the indictment; only in the latter half was there —

'Examination of their conduct warrants punishment under Article x of the Emergency Law for Crimes Endangering the Republic, and Article x hundred and x-ty-x, Clause x, of the Criminal Code, each to serve five years of imprisonment... However, as the defendants are all young and ignorant, having gone astray through error, and are not without cause for pity, by special application of Article x thousand x hundred and x-ty-x, Clause x, of the xx Law, the sentence is reduced to two years and six months of imprisonment. Within ten days of receipt of the written judgment, if dissatisfied, an appeal may be filed...' and so on.

Did I still need to 'appeal'? I was perfectly 'satisfied'! After all, it was their law!

To sum up: from my arrest to my release, I toured three slaughterhouses for the massacre of the people. Now, aside from my gratitude to them for not chopping off my head, I am even more grateful for the knowledge they added to my store — I don't know how much. In the matter of punishments alone, I learned that present-day China has: First, rattan cane beating; Second, the tiger bench — these are still the lighter ones; Third, the bar press: the prisoner is made to kneel, an iron bar is placed in the crook of his legs, and brawny men stand on both ends, starting with two and gradually increasing to eight; Fourth, kneeling on hot chains: iron chains heated red-hot are coiled on the floor and the prisoner is made to kneel on them; Fifth, there is another called 'feeding': pouring chili water, kerosene, vinegar, and spirits through the nostrils; Sixth, there is also tying the prisoner's hands behind his back, binding his two thumbs with thin hemp cord, suspending him high, and beating him while he hangs — I cannot name this punishment.

I believe the most pitiful case was a young peasant who shared my cell in the detention center. The gentleman insisted he was a Red Army general, but the man denied it to the death. Ah — here they came: they pushed sewing needles into his fingernail beds and hammered them in with a mallet. They hammered in one — he did not confess; they hammered in a second — still he did not confess; a third... a fourth... until all ten fingers were full. Even now, that young man's deathly white face, his sunken eyes, his two hands covered in fresh blood, still often float before my eyes and will not let me forget! They torment me!... Yet the cause of the imprisonment only became clear to me after my release. The root of the trouble was our students' dissatisfaction with the school, especially with the Dean of Discipline, who happened to be a political informant for the Provincial Party Bureau. To suppress the entire student body's discontent, he seized the three remaining members of the Woodcut Study Society and made sacrificial examples of them. And that Mandarin-Jacket gentleman who insisted Lunacharsky was a Red Army officer — he was the Dean's brother-in-law. How very convenient!

Having finished this rough account, I raise my head and look out the window — a stretch of ghastly white moonlight — and my heart cannot help but gradually turn to ice. And yet I believe I am not really so cowardly, and yet my heart has turned to ice... May you be in good health!

Ren Fan. April 4, in the small hours of the morning."

(Postscript: From the latter half of "A Fairy Tale" to the end of this piece, all is based on Mr. Ren Fan's letter and his "Brief Record of Imprisonment." April 7.)

In January of this year, Tian Jun published a short piece titled "On the Dalian Maru," recounting how, more than a year earlier, the couple had been fortunate enough to escape Dalian, which had been a land of thorns and brambles for them —

"The next day, when our eyes first caught the green hills of Qingdao, our hearts finally began to stir back to life from their frozen state.

"'Ah! The motherland!'

"We cried out as if in a dream!"

Their return to the "motherland" — had they come back as someone's entourage, naturally no one would have objected; had they come to suppress bandits, naturally even less would anyone have objected. But they merely came back and published Village in August. This brought them into the orbit of the literary world. In that case — hold off on "stirring back to life from the frozen state." In March, "someone" said coolly in the concessions of Shanghai:

"Tian Jun should not have come back from the Northeast so early!"

Who said this? Just "someone." Why? Because in Village in August "some parts are not quite authentic." My report of these words, however, is "authentic." I cite as proof the article by Mr. Di Ke in the Star Literary Forum, one of the strange glimmers of the supplement Torch to the Great Evening News — "Village in August, taken as a whole, is an epic, but some parts of it are not quite authentic; for example, the situation after the People's Revolutionary Army attacks a village is not authentic enough. Someone said to me: 'Tian Jun should not have come back from the Northeast so early' — meaning he felt Tian Jun still needed a long period of study; had he enriched himself further, this work would have been even better. In technique and content alike, there are many problems — why has no one pointed them out?" These words certainly cannot be called wrong. If "someone" were to say that Gorky should not have stopped being a dock worker so early, otherwise his works would have been even better; that Kisch should not have fled abroad so early, and if he had stayed in Hitler's concentration camp, his future reportage would have been even more promising — if anyone attempted to argue with this, that person would surely be a moron. But in the concessions in March, it was still necessary to say a few words, for we had not yet arrived at the blessed era of having sufficiently "enriched ourselves" to be spared the indignity of playing the moron.

At such times, people are easily impatient. Take this example: Tian Jun came back too early to write novels, and they are "not authentic enough"; Mr. Di Ke, upon hearing "someone's" words, immediately agrees and reproaches others for not pointing out the "many problems" — and he too cannot wait to "enrich himself further" before delivering his "correct criticism." But I think this is not wrong: if we have javelins, we use javelins; there is no need to wait for the tanks and incendiary bombs that are just now being manufactured or are about to be manufactured. Unfortunately, this being the case, Tian Jun no longer has any offense of "not having come back from the Northeast early enough." Establishing a proposition on firm ground is truly not easy. Besides, judging from Mr. Di Ke's article, knowing what is "authentic" apparently does not require a long sojourn in the Northeast; this "someone" and Mr. Di Ke are presumably still sitting right there in the concessions, having come back no later than Tian Jun, without studying in the Northeast, yet they know whether something is authentic enough or not. Moreover, helping writers to improve does not require "correct" criticism either, for before anyone pointed out the "many problems" of technique and content in Village in August, Mr. Di Ke had already declared: "I believe someone is now writing, or preparing to write, works better than Village in August, because readers demand it!"

And so the tanks are just about to arrive, or are on their way — why not break the javelin first?

And here I should add the title of Mr. Di Ke's article: "We Must Carry Out Self-Criticism."

The title packs quite a punch. Although the author does not claim this itself constitutes "self-criticism," he is carrying out the task of obliterating Village in August under the rubric of "self-criticism" — a task that will only be discharged when the formal "self-criticism" he hopes for is published, at which point Village in August might regain some vitality. For this kind of vague head-shaking is more harmful to an opponent than enumerating ten major crimes: enumeration at least has specific items, while vague reproach invites speculation of boundless badness.

Of course, Mr. Di Ke's "call for self-criticism" is well-intentioned, because "those writers are ours." But I believe one must also never, ever forget the "them" beyond "us," nor single out only the "them" within "us." If there is to be criticism, then both sides should be subjected to it, with virtues and defects alike pointed out. If, on a literary scene where "us" and "them" still exist, one engages exclusively in self-blame to display one's "correctness" or fairness, then in reality one is currying favor with "them" or laying down one's arms for "them."

April 16.

No sooner had my historical sketch "Passing Through the Pass" appeared in Haiyan than it attracted no small amount of criticism, though most critics modestly called their pieces "impressions after reading." Whereupon someone remarked: "This is on account of the author's fame." The remark is not wrong. Nowadays many new writers' painstaking works receive nothing like this attention from critics; if one of them happens to be discovered by readers and sells a thousand or two thousand copies, then it is all "fame and fortune!" and "should not have come back!" and "mumble-grumble" — they pounce upon him en masse, terrified he might still have a breath of life in him, determined to render him silent forevermore, and only then is all right with the world and long live the literary scene. And yet on the other side, the passionate and indignant gentleman also makes his appearance, shaking his finger and bellowing: "Does China have half a Tolstoy? Half a Goethe?" To our shame, truly not. But there is really no need for such vehemence, for since the earth's crust solidified and living things gradually appeared down to the present day, Russia and Germany have produced only one Tolstoy and one Goethe apiece.

I have been ten-thousand-fold fortunate not to have suffered such blows and intimidation, yet this time I wish to break my long-standing rule of keeping silent about criticism and say a few words. There is no other purpose in this: I merely hold that just as a critic has the right to judge an author through his work, so too has the author the right to judge the critic through his criticism — so let us have a little chat.

Looking at all the criticism, there are two kinds that take my originally small work and shrink it still further, or simply seal it shut.

The first kind assumes that "Passing Through the Pass" is an attack on a specific individual. Such talk, among friends chatting casually and joking at will, is naturally permissible in any direction, but to commit it to writing, display it to readers, and think one has captured the soul of the work — that rather resembles Old Lady Dog from the back alley, who knows only, and delights only in hearing, others' private scandals. Unfortunately, my "Passing Through the Pass" fails to satisfy the palate of this breed of person, and so one tabloid review reads: "This seems to be satirizing Fu Donghua, and yet it isn't." Since "and yet it isn't," then clearly it "is" not "satirizing Fu Donghua," and one ought to look elsewhere for the point, no? But no — the reviewer therefore finds the piece utterly tasteless; only if it truly "is satirizing Fu Donghua" would he detect any flavor.

People who read this way are not few. I remember when I was writing "The True Story of Ah Q," there were petty politicians and petty officials who grew agitated, insisting it was satirizing them — never realizing that the model for Ah Q lived in another small town, and was in fact pounding rice for other people at the time. But does fiction contain no actual So-and-So? It does. If it did not, it would not be fiction. Even if what is written are monsters — the Monkey King somersaulting a hundred and eight thousand li, Pigsy marrying into the Gao household — there are probably people in the human race who resemble them in spirit. Whoever resembles a character has unwittingly served as a model; but since it was unwitting, one may equally say that the real person has happened to resemble the character. Our ancients realized early that fiction requires models. I recall a work of jottings which says that Shi Nai'an — let us for the moment accept the existence of this author — commissioned a painter to paint one hundred and eight heroes of Liangshan Marsh, pasted them on the wall, contemplated each one's expression, and thus wrote Water Margin. But this particular author was probably a man of letters, and therefore understood the tricks of men of letters while remaining ignorant of the painter's abilities, assuming the painter could create from nothing and had no need of models.

There are two methods by which a writer takes a real person as a model. The first is to use a single person exclusively — not only speech and behavior, but even minute habits and styles of dress are left unchanged. This method makes description comparatively easy, but if the character in the book is loathsome or laughable, in present-day China most people would assume the author is settling a personal grudge — called "individualism," a crime of wrecking the "united front" — making life very difficult thereafter. The second is to combine traits from various people into one, so that looking among persons connected with the author, one cannot find an exact match. But because "various people" are drawn upon, partially resembling persons become more numerous, and broader indignation is provoked. I have always employed the latter method; at first I thought it would avoid offending any one person, but later discovered it offended more than one — truly "a regret beyond remedy," and since beyond remedy, I ceased to regret. Besides, this method accords with Chinese custom: painters painting figures, for instance, also observe quietly and deeply, internalize completely, then concentrate and create in one stroke, and have never used a single model.

However, I do not say here that Mr. Fu Donghua could not serve as a model: if he entered a novel, he would have every qualification to represent a type. Nor do I in the least disdain this qualification, for the number of people in the world who cannot get into a novel is far greater. And yet even if someone entered a novel in his entirety, provided the author's craft is superb and the work endures, readers would see only the character in the book, and the once-real person would no longer matter. For example, the model for Jia Baoyu in Dream of the Red Chamber is the author himself, Cao Xueqin; the model for Ma Erjun in The Scholars is Feng Zhizhong. But what we perceive now is only Jia Baoyu and Ma Erjun; only a specialist scholar such as Mr. Hu Shi keeps Cao Xueqin and Feng Zhizhong reverently in mind — and that is what is meant by the saying that human life is finite, but art is comparatively eternal.

There is also a second kind, which assumes that "Passing Through the Pass" is the author writing about himself. Since self-portraiture must always claim the upper hand, I must therefore be Laozi in the story. The most heart-rending version comes from Mr. Qiu Yunduo:

"...As for the impression left in the mind after reading, it is only the figure of an old man whose entire body and soul are steeped in loneliness. I truly feel that readers will plunge into loneliness and sorrow, following our author. If so, then the significance of this story will be imperceptibly diminished. I believe that the real intention of Mr. Lu Xun and writers like Mr. Lu Xun does not lie here..." (from "Notes After Reading Haiyan" in Weekly Literature)

This makes matters quite serious indeed: a great many people all "plunge into loneliness and sorrow" — first an old Laozi, then behind the blue ox's hindquarters the author, then "writers like Mr. Lu Xun," then many readers including Mr. Qiu Yunduo — swarming like a hive of bees through the pass. But if this were so, Laozi would no longer be "only the figure of an old man whose entire body and soul are steeped in loneliness." I think he would not have passed through the pass at all, but would have come back to Shanghai to treat us to dinner, solicit articles by putting out topics, and write five million words on the Dao and virtue.

So now I wish to stand at the pass and, from behind Laozi's blue ox's hindquarters, hold back "writers like Mr. Lu Xun" together with many readers including Mr. Qiu Yunduo. First: please do not "plunge into loneliness and sorrow," for the "real intention does not lie here" — Mr. Qiu already knows this, but has not said where it does lie, and perhaps cannot see where. If it is the former case, then truly "the significance of this story will be imperceptibly diminished"; if the latter, the fault lies in my poor writing, which fails to convey the "real intention" clearly enough. Let me now briefly say a word, as a respectful sweeping-away of the "impression left in the mind" from two months ago — Laozi's westward exit through Hangu Pass on account of a few words from Confucius was not my discovery or invention; I heard it thirty years ago in Tokyo from the lips of Master Zhang Taiyan. Later he wrote it in his Brief Account of the Philosophers, but I do not take it as established fact. As for the contest between Confucius and Laozi with Confucius winning and Laozi losing, that is my own view: Laozi valued softness; "Ru means soft" — Confucius also valued softness, but Confucius used softness for advance, while Laozi used softness for retreat. The crux is that Confucius was a man who "knew it was impossible yet did it anyway," a doer who let nothing slip, no matter how small, while Laozi was a man of "doing nothing yet leaving nothing undone" — doing nothing at all, uttering only grand empty words. To leave nothing undone, one must do nothing, for the moment one does something, there are limits, and one can no longer claim to "leave nothing undone." I agree with the mockery of Gatekeeper Yin: he was a man who could not even manage to take a wife. So I caricatured him and sent him out through the pass without the slightest affection — only to discover, to my surprise, that this provoked such heartrending sorrow in Mr. Qiu. I think this must be because my caricature was not yet extreme enough; but if I had whitened his nose further, it would have done more than merely "imperceptibly diminish the significance of this story" — so I had no choice but to leave things as they were.

Let me quote one more passage from Mr. Qiu Yunduo's soliloquy: "...I furthermore believe that they will certainly continue to apply their intellectual and literary powers, pouring them into endeavors more beneficial to social transformation, concentrating all forces that are beneficial, strengthening them, and at the same time converting all forces that could potentially be beneficial into beneficial forces, thereby joining them into one immeasurably vast force."

To act and "form one immeasurably vast force" — this ranks only one degree below "doing nothing yet leaving nothing undone." "We" do not possess this kind of mystical ability, yet the point at which "we" differ from Mr. Qiu lies precisely here: "we" do not "plunge into loneliness and sorrow," while the crux of Mr. Qiu's "truly feeling that readers will plunge into loneliness and sorrow" also lies here. He conceived a thought favorable to Laozi, and thereupon could not help writing an "immeasurably vast" abstract seal to close shut my concrete work that was unfavorable to Laozi. But I suspect: the real intention of Mr. Qiu Yunduo and writers like Mr. Qiu Yunduo perhaps lies precisely here.

April 30.

I remember that after the Great War, when many newly emerging nations appeared, we were exceedingly glad, for we too were a people who had been oppressed and had struggled to break free. The rise of Czechoslovakia naturally filled us with great joy; yet strangely, we also remained very remote from one another. I, for instance, had never met a single Czech, nor seen a single Czech book. It was only a few years ago, when I came to Shanghai, that I first set eyes on Czech glassware in a shop.

It seems we have both been rather forgetful of each other. But considering the general state of affairs today, this is not necessarily a bad thing. The way nations nowadays keep each other constantly in mind is, I suspect, largely not on account of any great friendship between them. Naturally, it would be best if all of humanity could live without barriers, caring for one another. Yet the most just and level road to that end is through literature and art — a pity, then, that so few choose to walk it.

Quite unexpectedly, the translator has bestowed upon me the honor of being among the first to undertake this task. That my works can thus be laid before Czech readers gives me, in truth, greater joy than being translated into any other, more widely spoken language. I believe that our two nations, though different in ethnicity, separated by geography, and with so little contact between us, can nonetheless understand and draw close to one another — for we have both walked the road of suffering, and we walk it still, seeking the light as we go.

July 21, 1936. Lu Xun.

Mr. Lu Xun:

Has your illness improved? I have been thinking of you constantly. Ever since you fell ill, compounded by the disputes in literary circles, I have had no opportunity to receive your instruction in person, and the thought of it often fills me with melancholy.

Due to financial hardship and physical frailty, I must now leave Shanghai. I plan to go to the countryside to compile and translate a few books that might bring in ready cash, after which I shall return to Shanghai. Taking this opportunity to stand temporarily outside the Shanghai "literary scene," I may perhaps think through all these issues more clearly.

At present, I cannot help but feel that your words and actions of the past half year have unintentionally fostered pernicious tendencies. Given the deceitfulness of Hu Feng's character and the sycophancy of Huang Yuan's conduct, you have failed to discern these clearly and have forever been claimed by them as their private property, used to dazzle the masses, as though you were an idol. And so the movement of division, springing from their personal ambition, has become utterly uncontrollable. The actions of Hu Feng and his circle are clearly motivated by selfish ends — an extreme form of sectarianism — and their theories are riddled with self-contradictions and errors. Take, for instance, the slogan "Literature of the masses for the national revolutionary war": at first it was proposed by Hu Feng to stand in opposition to "National defense literature"; later it was said that one was the general slogan while the other was subsidiary; still later it was said that one represented the slogan of left-wing literature at its present stage of development — such vacillation that even you, sir, cannot make their case coherent. As for striking against their words and deeds, that would in itself be quite easy; yet solely because you serve as their shield, and since everyone cherishes you, both the practical resolution and the battle in writing present enormous difficulties.

I know your intentions well, sir. You fear that left-wing comrades joining the united front will abandon their original position, and you find in Hu Feng and his like a semblance that is still lovably "leftist," and therefore you have endorsed them. But I must tell you, sir, that this is because you do not understand "the basic policy of the present." The current united front — in China and throughout the world alike — naturally takes the proletariat as its main body, but its being the main body rests not upon its title, its special status or its history, but upon the correctness of its grasp of reality and the magnitude of its fighting capacity. Therefore objectively, the proletariat's position as the main body is a matter of course. But subjectively, the proletariat should not pin on conspicuous badges or, relying solely on special qualifications rather than actual work, demand the right to leadership, to the point of frightening away comrades from other classes. Therefore, at the present juncture, to raise a left-wing slogan within the united front is an error — it is harmful to the united front. And so, sir, your recent "Replies to a Visitor During Illness," in which you explain that "Literature of the masses for the national revolutionary war" is a development of proletarian literature to the present stage and then say this should serve as the general slogan for the united front — this is incorrect.

Furthermore, the "comrades" who have joined the "Writers' Association" are not necessarily all rightward-drifting and degenerate, as you fear; moreover, since the "comrades" gathered around you include the likes of Ba Jin and Huang Yuan, do you, sir, really believe that every member of the "Writers' Association" is inferior to Ba Jin and Huang Yuan? From newspapers and magazines I have learned that the "Anarchists" of France and Spain are as reactionary and destructive of the united front as the Trotskyists, and the behavior of China's "Anarchists" is even baser. Huang Yuan is a person fundamentally devoid of ideas, who lives solely by flattering celebrities. When he once ran about at the doors of Fu and Zheng, his obsequious manner was no different from his present displays of loyalty and respect toward you, sir. That you, sir, would keep company with such people while disdaining to cooperate with the majority — this logic truly baffles me.

I feel that looking only at persons rather than at matters has been the root of your errors these past six months, sir. And moreover, you misjudge the persons you look at. For instance, I do have many shortcomings, but for you to regard my sloppy handwriting as a major defect strikes me as truly laughable. (Why on earth would I deliberately write the three characters "Qiu Yunduo" to look like "Zheng Zhenduo"? Is Zheng Zhenduo someone you are fond of?) To cast a person a thousand li away over such a trifle is, I truly believe, quite wrong.

I leave Shanghai today; in the haste of departure I cannot write more, and perhaps I have already written too much. What I have said above is not meant as an attack on you, sir; I truly and earnestly hope you will think carefully about all these matters.

My translation of the *Biography of Stalin* will soon be published; upon publication I shall send you a copy. I very much hope you will read this book carefully and offer your criticisms of both the original meaning and the translation. Respectfully wishing you a full recovery.

Maoyong. August 1st.

---

The above is a letter Xu Maoyong sent to me. I have published it here without obtaining his consent, because it consists entirely of admonitions directed at me and attacks on others; to publish it does no harm to his dignity, and perhaps it is even a piece of writing he prepared with the expectation that I would make it public. But naturally, people will also be unable to avoid discerning from this that the sender of the letter is rather a "pernicious" sort of young man!

Yet I have one request: I hope that Messrs. Ba Jin, Huang Yuan, and Hu Feng will not follow Xu Maoyong's example. If, because there are attacks on them in this letter, they retaliate tooth for tooth and eye for eye, they will be falling squarely into his trap. In this national crisis, are not those who deliver fine-sounding speeches by day and carry on the business of alienation, provocation, and division in the dark of night precisely these very people? This letter was calculated; it is their new challenge hurled at those who have not joined the "Writers' Association," hoping those people will take up the gauntlet, so that they may then brand them with the crime of "wrecking the united front" and the epithet of "traitor." But we shall not. We are determined not to direct our pens exclusively at a few individuals. "First pacify the interior, then repel the foreign foe" is not our method.

But here I have some things to say. First, my attitude toward the anti-Japanese united front. In truth, I have already stated this in several places, yet Xu Maoyong and his ilk appear unwilling to go and look, but persist in biting at me, insisting on the slander that I am "wrecking the united front" and insisting on lecturing me that I have "no understanding of the basic policy of the present." I do not know what "basic policy" the Xu Maoyongs possess. (Is not their basic policy simply to bite me a few times?) But the policy of the anti-Japanese united front proposed to the entire nation by China's present revolutionary party — I have seen it, and I support it. I join this front unconditionally, and my reason is that I am not merely a writer but also a Chinese, so that this policy strikes me as absolutely correct. In joining this united front, naturally my weapon remains a pen, and what I do is still to write essays and translate books; but when this pen is of no further use, I can assure you that when I take up other weapons, I shall in no way fall behind the Xu Maoyongs of this world! Secondly, my attitude toward the united front in literary circles. I support the proposal that all writers, of whatever school, unite under the banner of resistance against Japan. I have also put forward my opinions on how to organize such a united body, but those opinions were naturally quashed by certain self-styled "directors," who then immediately, as if descending from heaven, fastened upon me the crime of "wrecking the united front." This was the first reason I refrained from joining the "Writers' Association" — for I wanted to wait and see just what sort of business they were about. At the time I was genuinely somewhat suspicious of those self-proclaimed "directors" and of young men in the Xu Maoyong mold, because in my experience, those who put on a "revolutionary" face on the surface while readily slandering others as "traitors from within," as "counter-revolutionaries," as "Trotskyists," and even as "national traitors," are for the most part not people on the right path. For they deftly annihilate the revolutionary and national forces, disregard the interests of the revolutionary masses, and merely exploit the revolution for private gain — to be frank, I have even suspected whether they might be agents dispatched by the enemy. I thought it better to avoid for the time being dangers that serve no one, and not to submit to their commands. Of course, facts will eventually reveal their true colors. I absolutely do not wish to pronounce what manner of people they are; but if their devotion is truly to revolution and the nation, and their fault lies only in dishonest methods, incorrect ideas, and clumsy tactics, then I do think they urgently need to correct themselves. As for my attitude toward the "Writers' Association": I regard it as an anti-Japanese writers' organization that, despite containing people of the Xu Maoyong type, also includes some fresh members. But one must not suppose that the establishment of the "Writers' Association" means the literary united front is accomplished — it is far from that; it has not yet brought writers of all schools together. The reason lies in the "Writers' Association's" still very pronounced sectarianism and guild mentality. To look at just one thing: its charter imposes far too stringent conditions on would-be members; even requiring one yuan for enrollment and two yuan for annual dues betrays the attitude of a "writer-aristocracy," not an anti-Japanese "popular" one. In theory, the articles on "the question of alliance" and "national defense literature" published in the inaugural issue of *Wenxuejie* (Literary World) are fundamentally sectarian. One author quoted words I spoke in 1930 and took them as his point of departure; thus, though he speaks endlessly of uniting writers of every school, he nonetheless unilaterally dictates conditions and restrictions for joining. This author has forgotten the times. I hold that the unity of writers on the question of resistance to Japan is unconditional: as long as a person is not a traitor and is willing to support resistance, then it matters not whether they call each other brother and sister, write in classical or vernacular, or favor the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly school. But on questions of literature, we may still criticize one another. The author also cites the example of the French People's Front, but I think he again forgets the country, for our anti-Japanese people's united front must be far broader than France's People's Front. Another author, explaining "national defense literature," says it must have a correct creative method and then says that what is not "national defense literature" is "traitor literature" — wishing to unify writers under the single slogan of "national defense literature" while already preparing the label "traitor literature" for future use in condemning others. This is truly exemplary sectarian theory. I hold that writers should unite under the banner of "resistance" or of "national defense"; one cannot say writers unite under the slogan of "national defense literature," because some writers do not take national defense as their theme and yet may still participate in the anti-Japanese united front from other angles — and even if, like me, they have not joined the "Writers' Association," that does not necessarily make them "traitors." "National defense literature" cannot encompass all literature, for between "national defense literature" and "traitor literature" there most certainly exists literature that is neither one nor the other — unless they can also prove that *Dream of the Red Chamber*, *Midnight*, and *The True Story of Ah Q* are either "national defense literature" or "traitor literature." Such literature exists, but it is not the "Third Kind of Literature" of Du Heng, Han Shiheng, Yang Cunren, and their ilk. I therefore very much agree with Mr. Guo Moruo's view that "national defense literature and art is patriotic literature in the broad sense" and that "national defense literature is a banner for relations among writers, not a standard for the principles of their works." I propose that the "Writers' Association" should overcome its theoretical and practical sectarianism and guild mentality, widen its bounds, and at the same time transfer the so-called "right of leadership" to those writers and young people who are genuinely capable of serious work, rather than letting people of the Xu Maoyong type monopolize everything. As for whether I personally join or not — that is of no great importance.

Next, my relationship with the slogan "Literature of the masses for the national revolutionary war." The sectarianism of the Xu Maoyong faction is also manifest in their attitude toward this slogan. They call it "eccentricity for its own sake" and say it is set up in opposition to "national defense literature." I truly had not expected their sectarianism to reach such depths. Provided the slogan "Literature of the masses for the national revolutionary war" is not a "traitor's" slogan, it represents an anti-Japanese force; why then is it "eccentricity"? Where do you see it opposing "national defense literature"? Those who reject reinforcements for the friendly army, who secretly murder the anti-Japanese forces — it is you yourselves, with a pettiness more cramped than even that of the "White-Robed Scholar" Wang Lun. I hold that on the anti-Japanese front, every anti-Japanese force should be welcomed, and at the same time, in literature, each person should be permitted to bring forward new ideas for discussion — even "eccentricity" is nothing to fear. This is not like a merchant's monopoly; besides, the slogan "national defense literature" that you yourselves previously put forward was never registered with the Nanjing government or the "Soviet" government either. But now the literary world seems to have split into two "brands" — the "national defense literature" brand and the "Literature of the masses for the national revolutionary war" brand — and the responsibility for this should fall on Xu Maoyong and his people. In my essay replying to a visitor during my illness, I did not treat the two as rival brands at all. Naturally, I must still speak about why the slogan "Literature of the masses for the national revolutionary war" is valid and about its relationship to the slogan "national defense literature." — I must first say that this slogan was not proposed by Hu Feng. It is true that Hu Feng wrote an article about it, but he did so at my request, and it is also true that his article did not explain it clearly. Nor is this slogan my personal "eccentricity": it was agreed upon after deliberation among several people, and Mr. Mao Dun was one of those who took part. Mr. Guo Moruo was far away in Japan, under surveillance by detectives, so it was inconvenient even to write and consult him. The only pity is that the Xu Maoyongs were not invited to join the discussion. But the question is not who proposed this slogan, but whether it contains any error. If it was proposed in order to push left-wing writers, long confined within the bounds of proletarian revolutionary literature, onto the front lines of the national revolutionary war of resistance; if it was proposed in order to compensate for the lack of clarity in the literary-theoretical meaning of the term "national defense literature" itself, and to correct certain erroneous opinions that have been injected into the term "national defense literature" — then it is justified and correct. If one thinks not with the soles of one's feet but uses a modicum of brain, one cannot simply dismiss it with the phrase "eccentricity" and be done with it. The term "Literature of the masses for the national revolutionary war," in itself, is more precise, more profound, and richer in content than the term "national defense literature." "Literature of the masses for the national revolutionary war" is directed principally at those progressive writers formerly called left-wing, urging them to press forward; in this sense, for Xu Maoyong to say such a slogan cannot be raised in the present united front is nonsense! "Literature of the masses for the national revolutionary war" may also be advocated to writers in general or of every school, expressing the hope that they too will press forward; in this sense, to say that such a slogan cannot be put to writers in general or of every school is also nonsense! But this is not the standard for the anti-Japanese united front. For Xu Maoyong to say I "said this should serve as the general slogan for the united front" is yet more nonsense! I ask Xu Maoyong whether he has actually read my article. If people have read my article, and if they do not interpret this slogan through the lens that Xu Maoyong and his ilk use to interpret "national defense literature" — the error committed by Nie Gannu and others — then this slogan has nothing whatever to do with sectarianism or closed-doorism. The "masses" here may be understood in the conventional sense of "the masses" or "the people," and all the more so now, when it naturally carries the meaning of "the great masses of the people." I said "national defense literature" is one of the concrete slogans of our present literary movement, because this slogan is quite popular, already familiar to many; it can extend our political and literary influence, and moreover it can be interpreted as "writers uniting under the banner of national defense" or as "patriotic literature in the broad sense." Therefore, even if it has been incorrectly interpreted and the term itself has defects, it should still continue to exist, because its existence benefits the anti-Japanese cause. I believe the two slogans can coexist; there is no need for Mr. Xin Ren's distinction between "periodical" and "temporal." I am even less in favor of people imposing various restrictions on "Literature of the masses for the national revolutionary war." If one absolutely insists that "national defense literature," having been proposed first, is the orthodoxy, then let the claim to orthodoxy go to those who want it — for the issue is not in wrangling over slogans but in actual work. Shouting slogans and fighting over orthodoxy can admittedly be turned into "articles" to earn some manuscript fees and make a living; but even so, it is hardly a long-term plan.

Finally, I must speak of a few personal matters. Xu Maoyong says my words and deeds of the past half year have fostered pernicious tendencies. Let me then examine my words and deeds of this half year. As for "words," I have published four or five essays; beyond that, I have at most chatted idly with visitors and reported my symptoms to the doctor. As for "deeds," there is a bit more: I have printed two volumes of woodcut art, one collection of miscellaneous essays, translated a few chapters of *Dead Souls*, been ill for three months, signed one name — and beyond that, I have not been to any salted-meat restaurant or gambling house, nor attended any meetings. I truly do not understand how I have been "fostering" — let alone what "pernicious tendencies." Is it because I fell ill? Apart from blaming me for falling ill yet failing to die, I can think of only one explanation: blaming me for being ill and unable to fight against pernicious tendencies of the Xu Maoyong variety.

Next, my relations with Hu Feng, Ba Jin, Huang Yuan, and others. I came to know them all only recently, and in each case through literary work. Though I cannot yet call them intimate friends, I may certainly call them friends. Those who, without producing genuine evidence, wantonly slander my friends as "traitors from within" or "base persons" — I shall defend them against it. This is not merely a matter of loyalty in friendship but also the result of examining both the persons and the facts. Xu Maoyong says I look only at persons and not at facts — this is a falsehood. I first looked at certain facts, and then I saw persons of the Xu Maoyong type. I was not well acquainted with Hu Feng before. One day last year a certain celebrity invited me for a talk; when I arrived, an automobile drove up, and from it leaped four men: Tian Han, Zhou Qiying, and two others — all in Western suits, bearing themselves grandly — who announced they had come especially to inform me that Hu Feng was a traitor from within, an agent sent by the government. When I asked for evidence, they said it came from the mouth of Mu Mutian, after his "conversion." That the Left League should take the words of a turncoat as holy writ — this left me truly dumbfounded. After several rounds of questioning, my answer was: the evidence is flimsy in the extreme; I do not believe it! The occasion ended in discord, of course, but afterward I heard no more talk of Hu Feng being a "traitor from within." Yet strangely, from then on, whenever the tabloid press attacked Hu Feng, they invariably dragged me in as well, or moved from me to Hu Feng. The most recent instance: after *Xianshi Wenxue* (Realist Literature) published a record of my views taken down by O.V., the *Shehui Ribao* (Social Daily) said O.V. was Hu Feng and that the record did not match my original intent. An earlier instance: when Zhou Wen protested to Fu Donghua about the bowdlerizing of his novel, the same paper said the people behind it were Hu Feng and I. The most sinister case was in the same paper, in winter of last year or spring of this one: a prominently boxed news item declared that I was about to defect to the Nanjing government, that Hu Feng was the intermediary, and that it would happen sooner or later depending on his methods. And then I looked at facts beyond my own case: was there not a young man who, having been branded a "traitor from within," saw all his friends cut him off, until he wandered homeless in the streets and was finally arrested and tortured? And was there not another young man, similarly slandered as a "traitor from within," who — precisely because he had joined in valiant struggle — now sits in a Suzhou prison, his fate unknown? These two young men are the living proof: neither of them produced the kind of grandiloquent recantation that Mu Mutian did, nor did either of them, like Tian Han, perform their plays to great applause in Nanjing. At the same time, I looked at the persons involved: even granting that Hu Feng cannot be trusted — yet as for myself, surely I can still trust myself, and I have done no such thing as negotiate conditions with Nanjing through Hu Feng. I therefore came to understand clearly that Hu Feng is forthright and easily makes enemies, and that he can be trusted; whereas toward Zhou Qiying and others of his kind — young men who carelessly slander others — I came to feel suspicion and even revulsion. Naturally, Zhou Qiying may have other merits, and may perhaps have changed since then and may yet become a genuine revolutionary. Hu Feng too has his faults — nervousness, pedantry, a certain rigidity in theory, and an unwillingness to popularize his style — but he is manifestly a promising young man who has never participated in any movement against resistance to Japan or against the united front. This is something that even the Xu Maoyongs of this world, try as they might, cannot obliterate.

As for Huang Yuan, I consider him a conscientious and aspiring translator, with the solid journal *Yiwen* (Translations) and several other translated works to prove it. Ba Jin is a passionate writer of progressive thought, one of the few truly good writers — a writer who can be counted on one's fingers. He does indeed bear the label "Anarchist," but he has never opposed our movement; on the contrary, he has lent his name to the militant declarations jointly signed by literary workers. Huang Yuan has signed as well. If such a translator and such a writer wish to join the anti-Japanese united front, we welcome them. I truly cannot fathom why the Xu Maoyongs must call them "base." Is it because the existence of *Yiwen* offends the eye? Must Ba Jin be held accountable even for the Spanish Anarchists' sabotage of the revolution?

Moreover, there is something that in China today has come to be regarded as commonplace, though it does not merely "foster" but positively constitutes "pernicious tendencies": fastening upon one's opponent a vile epithet without a shred of evidence. Xu Maoyong's characterization of Hu Feng as "deceitful" and Huang Yuan as "sycophantic" are cases in point. When Tian Han and Zhou Qiying said Hu Feng was a "traitor from within," it turned out he was not — because they were out of their minds, not because Hu Feng had deceitfully pretended to be a traitor and then turned out not to be one, thereby making them into liars. When the *Shehui Ribao* said Hu Feng was pulling me toward defection and I have not defected to this day, it was because the writer deliberately slandered, not because Hu Feng deceitfully pretended to pull me but actually did not, thereby turning the reporter into a rumor-monger. Hu Feng is not "lovably leftist," but I do think his personal enemies are "frighteningly leftist." Huang Yuan has never written an essay praising me, nor composed a biography of me; he merely edits a monthly magazine, rather conscientiously at that, and public opinion has not been unfavorable — so how is this "sycophancy," and how does it constitute "loyalty and respect" toward me? Is *Yiwen* my personal property? When Huang Yuan "ran about at the doors of Fu and Zheng, his obsequious manner" — Xu Maoyong was doubtless informed of this by edict, but I did not know and never witnessed it. As for his dealings with me, I have seen no "obsequious manner," and Xu Maoyong was never present on any occasion. On what grounds does he determine that it is "no different" from his supposed obsequiousness before Fu and Zheng? On this particular matter, I am myself the witness, and yet Xu Maoyong, who was never present, dares to speak such brazen falsehoods about me, who was — to spit blood in people's faces with such wild recklessness and wanton violence is truly the extreme of outrage. Is this perhaps the result of having "understood" "the basic policy of the present"? "The same throughout the world"? Then truly, one might die of fright!

In truth, "the basic policy of the present" is by no means so all-encompassing a dragnet. Is it not so that anyone who supports "resistance to Japan" is a comrade-in-arms? What does "deceit" matter, what does "sycophancy" matter? And why must one insist on annihilating Hu Feng's writings and toppling Huang Yuan's *Yiwen* — are these perhaps filled with "the Twenty-One Demands" and "cultural imperialism"? What should be swept away first are those who raise high the great banner and use it as a tiger skin to wrap around themselves and intimidate others; who, at the slightest displeasure, rely on their position(!) to pronounce verdicts on people, and terrifyingly severe verdicts at that. Naturally, a front will be established — but a front formed through intimidation cannot fight. There have already been such precedents, yet the ghosts of overturned carts never learn their lesson even in death. And now, before my very eyes, one has appeared inhabiting the flesh of Xu Maoyong.

Around the time the Left League was being formed, certain so-called revolutionary writers were in reality the drifting sons of declining families. They too harbored grievances, resistance, and combativeness; but these amounted to nothing more than transferring to the literary world the feuds between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, the intrigues between uncle and sister-in-law, from their ruined households — gossip and backbiting, stirring up trouble, spreading tales, never seeing the larger picture. This lineage has passed down unbroken. Take, for example, my relations with Mao Dun and Guo Moruo: in some cases we are acquainted, in others we have never met; some of us have never clashed, others have crossed pens. But in the great struggle, we all fight for the same goal, and never spend our days and nights tallying up personal grudges. Yet the tabloid press delights in reporting how "Lu compares with Mao" or "What Guo thinks of Lu," as if we did nothing but fight over seating and compete in magic powers. Even with *Dead Souls*: after *Yiwen* ceased publication, *Shijie Wenku* (World Library) published the entire first part, yet the tabloids said "Zheng Zhenduo cut *Dead Souls* in half at the waist" or that Lu Xun, in a fit of anger, stopped translating. This is truly a pernicious tendency — using rumors to scatter the forces of the literary world, behavior approaching that of a "traitor from within." And yet this is precisely the last road left for the degenerate litterateur.

I see that Xu Maoyong is already a gossip-mongering author with connections to the tabloid press, though he has not yet sunk to the very last road. But he is already confused to a remarkable degree. (Otherwise, it would be sheer arrogance.) For instance, in his letter he says: "As for striking against their words and deeds, that would in itself be quite easy; yet solely because you serve as their shield... both the practical resolution and the battle in writing present enormous difficulties." Does he mean to strike at Hu Feng's "deceit" through morality, or at Hu Feng's essays and Huang Yuan's *Yiwen* through literary criticism? I am in no great hurry to learn the answer; what I want to know is: why should my acquaintance with them make it "enormously difficult" to "strike"? I certainly would never abet rumor-mongering, but if the Xu Maoyongs were truly righteous and stern in argument, could I single-handedly cover the eyes and ears of all the world for them? And what is meant by "practical resolution"? Exile? Or beheading? Under the grand heading of "united front," is such fabrication of charges and toying with authority really permissible? I truly hope that "national defense literature" will produce great works; if not, perhaps that, too, will be laid at my door as a crime of "fostering pernicious tendencies" these past six months. At the end, Xu Maoyong tells me to read the *Biography of Stalin* carefully. Yes, I shall read it carefully; if I survive, naturally I shall continue to learn. But at the end, I also ask him to reread it carefully himself a few more times, for he seems to have gained nothing from translating it and truly needs to read it afresh. Otherwise — to snatch up a banner and fancy oneself head and shoulders above everyone else, to strike the pose of a slave overseer whose sole achievement is the cracking of the whip — that is a disease beyond remedy, and for China it is not merely useless but positively harmful.

August 3–6.

Some time ago, the officials and gentry of Shanghai held a memorial service for Mr. Taiyan. Fewer than a hundred attended, and it closed in desolation; whereupon someone lamented that the youth showed less zeal for a scholar of their own country than for a foreign writer like Gorky. This lament is in truth misplaced. Gatherings of officials and gentry have always been places the common people dare not approach; moreover, Gorky was a combative writer, whereas Mr. Taiyan, though he once appeared as a revolutionary, later retreated into the serenity of a scholar and, by walls of his own making and those built by others, cut himself off from the age. Those who commemorate him will naturally exist, but he will perhaps be forgotten by the great majority.

I believe that the achievements Mr. Taiyan left to the history of revolution are in fact greater than those he left to the history of scholarship. Recalling more than thirty years ago: the woodblock edition of *Qiu Shu* had already been published; I could not get through it, let alone understand it, and I suspect many young people of that time were the same. I came to know that China had a Mr. Taiyan not because of his classical studies or philology, but because he refuted Kang Youwei and wrote the preface to Zou Rong's *The Revolutionary Army*, and was consequently imprisoned in Shanghai's Western Jail. At that time, Zhejiang students studying in Japan were publishing the magazine *Zhejiang Tide*, which carried poems written by Mr. Taiyan in prison — and they were not hard to understand. This moved me, and I have not forgotten it to this day. Let me transcribe two of them here:

• To Zou Rong, in Prison*

Zou Rong, my little brother, / hair unbound, descended to the Isle of Ying. / With sharp scissors he cut his queue; / on dried beef he made his provision. / When a hero enters prison, / heaven and earth turn to autumn's sorrow. / At the hour of death, let us clasp hands — / in all the universe, just we two remain.

• In Prison, on Hearing of the Killing of Shen Yuxi*

Long have I not seen Shen — / by rivers and lakes he hid his traces. / Mournfully I grieve for a brave man, / now at the Gate of Yi Jing. // The demon-dragon is shamed to compete in flame; / the written word ever breaks the soul. / In the bardo he shall wait for me; / north and south, how many new graves.

In June 1906, upon his release from prison, he crossed to Japan that very day. Before long he took charge of *Min Bao* (The People's Journal). I loved reading *Min Bao*, not for the archaic obscurity of his prose, with its difficulties of interpretation, or his discourses on Buddhism and "co-evolutionary progress," but for his battles: against Liang Qichao, advocate of constitutional monarchy; against ×××; and against ×××, who "took *Dream of the Red Chamber* as the essential path to Buddhahood" — he was truly irresistible, and the effect was electrifying. My going to hear his lectures was at this same time, and again not because he was a scholar, but because he was a learned revolutionary; so to this day his voice and countenance remain before my eyes, while of his lectures on the *Shuowen Jiezi*, I cannot recall a single sentence. After the revolution of the first year of the Republic, his aspirations were realized, and he should have been able to accomplish great things — yet he remained unfulfilled. This, too, is utterly unlike the living veneration and posthumous honor bestowed upon Gorky. The reason the two men met such different fates, I believe, is that Gorky's earlier ideals all became reality; his person was one with the masses — joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, all shared. Whereas with Mr. Taiyan, though his ambition to overthrow the Manchus was achieved, what he regarded as most essential — "first, using religion to inspire faith and elevate the morals of the citizenry; second, using the national heritage to stir the racial spirit and kindle patriotic fervor" (see *Min Bao*, issue 6) — remained merely a lofty fantasy. Soon afterward, Yuan Shikai usurped the reins of state to pursue his private designs, which left Mr. Taiyan further bereft of solid ground, with nothing but empty words; so that to this day, only our designation "Republic of China" still traces its origin to his essay "An Explanation of the Republic of China" (first published in *Min Bao*), and stands as a great memorial — though I fear that those who know of even this case are already few. Having become estranged from the masses and gradually sunk into despondency, his later participation in pitch-pot games and acceptance of gifts did draw criticism — but these were merely blemishes on white jade, not the ruin of his later years. Examining his life: to use his grand decoration as a fan-pendant and stand before the gates of the Presidential Palace, publicly reviling Yuan Shikai for his concealed treachery — there was no second person in his generation who did this; seven times pursued and arrested, three times imprisoned, yet never bending in his revolutionary resolve — there was likewise no second person: this is the true spirit of the sages and the model for posterity. Recently, certain literary hacks, in league with tabloid papers, have also written articles mocking Mr. Taiyan so as to congratulate themselves — truly it may be said that "the petty man does not wish others to achieve greatness" and "the ant tries to shake the great tree — laughable in its self-delusion!"

Yet after the revolution, Mr. Taiyan gradually concealed his sharpness, mindful of posterity. The *Collected Works of Mr. Zhang* published in Zhejiang was edited by his own hand, and presumably because he felt that polemics and invective, carried to the point of abuse, violated the Confucian ideal and might invite ridicule from the multitude of scholars, many of his combative essays previously published in periodicals were struck out — and the two poems quoted above are likewise absent from his *Poetry Collection*. In 1933, the *Sequel to the Collected Works of Mr. Zhang* was printed in Beiping; it contained little, was even more circumspect, and drew only on recent works — naturally omitting all combative writing. Thus Mr. Taiyan, clad in the splendid robes of scholarship, became purely a patriarch of Confucian learning; those who came bearing gifts to seek discipleship were so numerous that a *Register of Fellow Students* had to be hastily compiled. Recently I noticed in the daily papers a copyright notice and a report about a third sequel; evidently more posthumous works will be published, but whether the earlier combative essays will be restored, one cannot know. The combative essays are the greatest and most enduring achievement of Mr. Taiyan's life. Should they remain uncollected, I believe they ought to be gathered, collated, and printed one by one, so that the master and posterity may reflect each other, alive in the hearts of those who fight. Yet at this time and in these circumstances, even this hope may perhaps not be fulfilled — alas!

October 9.

There was once a time when it was trumpeted abroad that a number of distinguished figures all intended to translate *Das Kapital*, from the original, of course, with one person going so far as to say he would also consult the English, French, Japanese, and Russian translations. By now at least six full years have elapsed without a single chapter appearing in print — which gives some idea of the difficulty of such an undertaking. Toward Soviet literary works, there was an equal degree of enthusiasm at the time: when an English translation of a short-story collection arrived in Shanghai, it was like a shoulder of mutton dropped among wolves — instantly torn to pieces, its characters transformed into "Ashipu with the flying legs" or "Osheibo with the flying hair"; yet by the time a second English translation, *The Azure City*, was imported, the zealots had already lost much of their fervor, and some had long since concluded that "Ivan" and "Peter" were, after all, not as interesting as "Yi Dong" and "Ba Suo."

Yet there were also those who did not join in the stampede. They appeared to lag behind at the time, but precisely because they did not scatter with the crowd either, they later became the mainstay. Jinghua was one such person — silent, translating without cease. Over twenty years he had devoted himself to mastering Russian, and quietly produced *Three Sisters*, produced *White Tea*, produced *The Pipe* and *The Forty-First*, produced *The Iron Flood*, and a good many other individual pamphlets besides. But he was not given to advertising, and to this day enjoys no blazing fame; moreover, he has suffered exclusion, being subject to blockades from two quarters. Yet he continues, undeterred, to revise his earlier translations, and his translations remain alive in the hearts of readers. This is partly, to be sure, because the self-proclaimed "revolutionary writers" of the time were so deplorably frivolous that the solid worker was left standing as the last fruit on the tree; but in truth it is largely because China's reading public has made progress, and readers have developed sound judgment and can no longer be hoodwinked by hollow grandees.

Jinghua was a member of the Weiming Society; the Weiming Society had always been based in Beijing — a small group that labored in earnest, disdaining clamor. Yet it still suffered some undeserved calamities, and rather ludicrous ones at that. It was shut down once on account of a telegram from Zhang Zongchang, the warlord of Shandong — though the instigator, I am told, was actually a fellow man of letters. Later the matter was cleared up and the seal was lifted. After the ban, two novels translated by Jinghua had been stored at Tai Jingnong's house, and were confiscated together with a "new-style bomb." Though it was subsequently proved that this "new-style bomb" was in fact merely a machine for manufacturing cosmetics, the books were still not returned — and so these two volumes became rare treasures between heaven and earth. On account of the burning of my *Call to Arms* in the Tianjin library, Professor Liang Shiqiu's expulsion of my translations from the Qingdao University library when he served as its director, and the Weiming Society's unjust misfortune, I felt at the time that the officials of the north were more rigorous than those of the south. In the Yuan dynasty, slaves were ranked in four grades, with northerners placed above southerners, and this, it seemed, was not without reason. Later, however, I learned that Professor Liang, though residing in the north, was in fact a southerner, and that when Jinghua tried to publish his novels in the south, they were likewise suppressed for a considerable time — whereupon I realized my conclusion was, in fact, incorrect. This, too, is what is called "learning knows no end."

But now the opportunity for publication has at last arrived, and idle talk may cease — that goes without saying. To return to the matter at hand: this book combines two translated collections of short stories; two pieces have been removed and three added, so in terms of number, there is a net gain. The subjects treated, though mostly drawn from twenty years ago — so that one finds here no construction of dams, no collective farms — are still works that retain their vitality in the Soviet Union, and from our Chinese perspective, they are all congenial and flavorful writing. As for the translator's thorough command of the source language and the reliability of his renderings, the reading public has long reached its verdict, and I need say no more.

Jinghua, not disdaining me, has expressed the wish that I write a few words of preface on the occasion of publication. But I have been gravely ill for a long time; my strength is spent and I cannot write properly. What I have set down above amounts almost to a mere formality. Yet Jinghua's translations, do they truly need a preface? Hereafter as heretofore, they will silently benefit Chinese readers — of this there is no doubt. Rather, it is I who have profited from the chance to fire off a few stray shots — that is my good fortune and my pleasure indeed.

Having written the title, I already feel some hesitation, fearing that the idle talk will outweigh the text proper — what is colloquially called "loud thunder, small raindrops." After writing "On Two or Three Matters Concerning Mr. Taiyan," I felt as though I could still dash off a few more casual lines, but I no longer had the strength, and had to stop. The next morning, when I woke, the daily paper had already arrived. I pulled it over and, glancing at it, could not help rubbing the top of my head and exclaiming: "The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Double Tenth! So the Republic of China has already passed through a quarter of a century — how swift!" But this "swift" I mean in the sense of "rapid." Later, leafing idly through the supplement, I happened upon an article by a new writer expressing hatred of old people, and it was as though half a ladle of cold water had been poured over the crown of my head. I thought to myself: old people are perhaps truly tiresome to the young. Take me, for instance: my temperament grows daily more perverse. Twenty-five years and no more, yet I insist on saying "a quarter of a century" to make it sound like a great deal — I really don't know what the hurry is about. And this gesture of rubbing the top of my head is, in truth, decidedly outmoded.

This gesture, which I use whenever I am startled or moved, I have already been performing for a quarter of a century — meaning "the queue is gone after all," originally a sign of victory. This sort of feeling, too, is something today's young people cannot share. Suppose there were a man in the city still wearing a queue: a man of around thirty and a youth of about twenty, seeing him, would probably think him merely quaint, perhaps even find him amusing. But I would still feel hatred and fury, because I myself once suffered on account of it — having regarded the cutting of the queue as a great public matter. My love for the Republic of China, my parched lips and hoarse voice fearing for its decline — much of this was precisely so that we might enjoy the freedom to cut our queues. Had we preserved them in the beginning, for the sake of keeping up antiquities, leaving the queue uncut, I would assuredly not have loved the Republic so. Whether it was Zhang Xun who came or Duan Qirui, I confess I am far inferior to certain gentlemen in magnanimity.

When I was still a child, the old people of that time taught me this: the barber's pole, three hundred years ago, was used for hanging heads. When the Manchus entered the pass and decreed the wearing of queues, the barbers went about the streets seizing people to shave — whoever dared to resist had his head chopped off and hung on the pole, whereupon they went and seized others. The shaving in those days — first wetting with water, then scraping with a blade — was stifling indeed, but the tale of hanging heads did not alarm me, for even had I disliked the shaving, the barber would not have cut off my head; on the contrary, he would reach into the canister on the pole, produce a candy, and say I could eat it when the shaving was done — the policy having shifted to one of conciliation. What one sees often one ceases to find strange; toward the queue, too, one no longer noticed its ugliness — especially since the styles were so varied. In terms of form: the queue could be loosely braided or tightly braided; the braid cord could be three-stranded or loose-threaded; around the edges one could have "framing hair" (what is now called "bangs"), and the bangs could be long or short — long bangs could moreover be woven into two slender braids looped around the topknot, and one could admire one's own reflection as a handsome man. In terms of function: in a fight it could be pulled; in cases of adultery it could be cut; actors could hang from it on an iron rod; fathers could flog their children with it; jugglers, by shaking their heads, could make it whirl like a dragon or a serpent. Just yesterday, on the road, I watched a constable apprehending men — one in each hand, two caught per constable — but had this been before the revolution of 1911, one handful of queues could have snagged at least ten or more; for the purposes of governing the people, it was extremely convenient. The misfortune was that with the so-called "opening of the sea-gates," scholars gradually read foreign books, gained a basis for comparison, and even without being called "pigtails" by Westerners, realized that a head neither fully shaved nor fully haired — shaved around the edges, a tuft left at the top, braided into a tapered queue like the sprout of an arrowhead plant — was, on reflection, devoid of reason and quite unnecessary.

I should think that even young people born under the Republic would all know this. In the middle of the Guangxu reign, a certain Kang Youwei attempted a reform; it failed, and the backlash produced the Boxer Uprising, followed by the Eight-Nation Allied Expedition's entry into Beijing. The year is easy to remember: it was exactly 1900, the close of the nineteenth century. Thereupon the Manchu officialdom and populace resolved upon reform once more. Reform followed the old script: send officials abroad to investigate, and send students abroad to study. I was one of those dispatched to Japan by the Viceroy of Liangjiang at that time. Naturally, the doctrines of anti-Manchu revolution and the crimes of the queue and the broad outlines of the literary inquisition were already somewhat known to me; but the first inconvenience I actually experienced in practice was that queue.

All Chinese students, upon arriving in Japan, were eager above all to acquire new knowledge. Besides studying Japanese and preparing to enter specialized schools, they went to guild halls, browsed bookshops, attended gatherings, and listened to lectures. The first event I experienced was in a meeting hall whose name I have forgotten, where I saw a young man, his head wrapped in white gauze, lecturing on anti-Manchu revolution in the Wuxi dialect with great valor. I was filled with solemn respect. But as I listened further, and he said "I stand here cursing the Old Lady, and the Old Lady is surely over there cursing Wu Zhihui" — whereupon the audience burst into laughter — I felt deflated, feeling that these overseas students were, after all, nothing but grins and giggles. The "Old Lady" referred to the Qing dynasty's Empress Dowager Cixi. That Wu Zhihui was holding a meeting in Tokyo to curse the Empress Dowager was an undeniable present fact; but to say that at this very moment the Empress Dowager was also holding a meeting in Beijing to curse Wu Zhihui — that I could not believe. Lectures may well include laughing denunciation, but idle buffoonery is not merely useless but positively harmful. However, Mr. Wu was at that time locked in battle with the minister Cai Jun, his name ringing through academic circles; beneath the white gauze lay the honorable wounds of fame. Before long, he was deported back to China; as the escort passed the moat outside the Imperial City, he jumped in — but was immediately fished out again and sent on his way. This is what Mr. Taiyan later referred to in his polemics against Wu as "not jumping into the abyss but jumping into a ditch, with face exposed above the water." In fact, Japan's Imperial moat is not narrow at all, but when escorted by police, even if his face had not been "exposed above the water," he would certainly have been fished out. This polemic grew more and more fierce, until it was laced with virulent abuse; this year, when Mr. Wu mocked Mr. Taiyan for accepting the National Government's honors, he still brought up this incident — a thirty-year-old score, unforgotten to this day, showing the depth of the grudge. Yet in his self-edited *Collected Works of Mr. Zhang*, none of these polemical essays were included. Mr. Taiyan strenuously rejected the Manchu oppressors while revering several Qing-era scholars, apparently aspiring to the stature of the ancient sages, and therefore unwilling to sully his writings with such texts. But in my view, this was actually a loss and a blunder: such scruples of decorum merely allow things to slip from view, bequeathing harm to a thousand ages.

The cutting of the queue was also a great matter at the time. When Mr. Taiyan cut his hair, he wrote "On Unbinding the Queue," in which he said: "... In the 2741st year of the Republic, the seventh month of autumn, I was thirty-three. At that time the Manchu government was tyrannical, slaughtering courtiers, provoking powerful neighbors, killing envoys and merchants, beset from all four sides. Indignant at the Donghu barbarians' outrages and the Han people's exclusion from office, I shed tears and said: I am past thirty and still wear the garb of the Rong-Di barbarians; so close at hand, yet I cannot cut it away — that is my crime. I would don the scholar's cap and bind my hair to restore the ways of recent antiquity, but the days are not enough, and the proper garments cannot be had. Thereupon I said: In former times, Qi Bansun and the monk Yinxuan, both as loyalist remnants of the Ming, cut their hair and died thus. The *Guliang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals* says 'the people of Wu shaved their heads'; the *Book of Han*, 'Biography of Yan Zhu,' says 'the Yue people cropped their hair' (Jin Zhuo comments: 'the character *jian* is what Zhang Yi considers the ancient form of *jian*, to cut'). I am originally a man of the Wu-Yue region; to remove it is but to follow the ways of antiquity..."

This text appears in both the woodblock first edition and the typeset second edition of the *Qiu Shu*; but when it was revised and retitled *Jian Lun* (Critical Essays), it was deleted. My own cutting of the queue, however, was not because I was a man of Yue and Yue in ancient times practiced "cutting the hair and tattooing the body," which I now emulated to demonstrate the rites of my ancestors — nor did it contain the slightest revolutionary significance. At bottom, it was simply a matter of inconvenience: first, inconvenient for removing one's hat; second, inconvenient for physical exercise; third, coiled atop the fontanel, it made one feel stifled. In practice, many a queueless fellow, upon returning to China, silently grew it back and became an obedient subject. And Huang Keqiang, when he was a normal-school student in Tokyo, never cut his hair at all, never loudly proclaimed revolution; the only slight display of his Chu-born spirit of defiance was this: the Japanese supervisor warned students not to go about bare-chested, but he insisted on walking bare from the waist up, a porcelain washbasin tucked under his arm, from the bathhouse across the great courtyard, swaggering into the study hall.