不爲人知的魯迅:開現代小說先河的中國作家(1)

It's hard to find a precise Western analogue for Lu Xun (1881-1936). He is China's Dickens, for his mercilessly sharp portrayals of the era he lived through; he is Joyce, a re-maker of language and form. He has a good deal of Orwell, too, for his political commentary and the plain vernacular style that he championed. And, as a writer who in his final years became a figurehead of the literary left and was sanctified by his the Chinese communist leadership after his death, he has a touch of Gorky.

要在西方找到一個與魯迅（1881-1936）完全對等的人物並非易事。他是中國的狄更斯，因他以尖銳的筆觸無情地抨擊了他生活過的那個時代；他又是中國的喬伊斯，因他改革了文學作品的語言與形式。他常撰寫政治評論、倡導自然樸實的白話文體，因此亦可以說是中國的奧威爾。作爲一名在人生的最後歲月中成爲“左翼”文學領袖人物、在死後作品又被共產黨領導層所禁的作家，他又與高爾基有些許相似之處。

Lu Xun owes his immense literary reputation in mainland China primarily to his satirical fiction but also to the prose poems and polemical essays that he wrote in the last two decades of his life. In 1918, his surreal first short story in vernacular Chinese, 'Diary of a Madman,' portrayed Chinese culture as cannibalistically eating its young. Its iconoclastic premise propelled him to the center of the New Culture Movement of the late 1910s. The two volumes of short fiction he produced between 1918 and 1925, 'Outcry' and 'Hesitation,' were admired for their portrayals of a China in a state of spiritual emergency: backward, impoverished and complacent.

魯迅在中國大陸的崇高文學聲望主要源自他的諷刺小說，他在人生最後二十年中撰寫的散文詩和評論文章也功不可沒。其發表於1918年的第一篇白話文短篇小說《狂人日記》爲超現實主義風格，將中國文化描繪爲“吃人”的文化。該篇小說打破舊習的主題將魯迅推到了1919年新文化運動的中心位置。他在1918年和1925年間創作的兩部小說集《吶喊》和《彷徨》備受讚譽，描繪了陷入精神危機的中國──她落後、貧窮又自大。

In the story 'Kong Yiji,' a crowd of thuggish revelers delight in humiliating the village failure, roaring with laughter at the discovery that his legs have been broken by the local magistrate. In 'Tomorrow' and 'Medicine,' children die of superstition: A 3-year-old with typhoid is diagnosed by a respected doctor of Chinese medicine as having a 'blocked stomach'; a tubercular boy is fed a supposedly miracle cure岸a bread roll dipped in the blood of an executed revolutionary. 'The Real Story of Ah-Q'岸Lu Xun's best-known fictional re-creation of the doltish Chinese everyman岸sardonically follows the stupidities of its subject, a man too idiotic even to realize that he is going to his own execution. Within years of his invention, Ah-Q had entered the Chinese language as shorthand for the national character in all its less appealing aspects: its obsession with face, its superiority complex, its servility before authority and cruelty toward the weak.

在《孔乙己》這篇小說中，一羣經常在小酒館飲酒的粗野村夫以羞辱孔乙己這個潦倒漢爲樂，在發現他的雙腿被當地舉人打斷後更是爆發出狂笑。《明天》和《藥》則講述了孩子因迷信而喪命的故事。在《明天》這篇小說中，一個染上傷寒的三歲孩子被一名受人尊敬的中醫診斷爲“中焦塞着”。在《藥》中，一個患肺結核的男孩被家人餵了一種據傳很神奇的藥方──浸了被處決的革命黨鮮血的饅頭。魯迅最知名的小說《阿Q正傳》再現了愚昧的中國普通百姓，以諷刺手法記述了主人公阿Q的各種愚昧行爲，而其竟愚蠢到不知自己將被處決。在“阿Q”這個詞被創造出來的數年間，它成爲漢語中指代所有讓人厭惡的國民性──好面子、迷戀權勢以及畏強凌弱──的統稱。

In the People's Republic of China today, 'Luxunology' keeps an army of researchers and publishers busy. Lu Xun remains a touchstone against which other authors are judged, however inappropriately. After the young celebrity novelist-racing driver Han Han launched his hugely popular satirical blog in 2006, pundits labeled him 'the new Lu Xun.'

在當今的中國，“魯學”讓一大批研究者和出版社忙前忙後。他還是被用以評判其他作家的標杆，無論這麼做有多不恰當。知名青年作家兼賽車手韓寒在2006年開設其人氣超高的諷刺性博客後，有評論人士將其譽爲“當代魯迅”。

No Anglophone trade publisher has yet commissioned the comprehensive biography that Lu Xun deserves. Gloria Davies's dense and careful study, 'Lu Xun's Revolution,' passes quickly over the short fiction that first made him famous and concentrates on Lu Xun's response to China's revolutionary turmoil of the late 1920s and 1930s. Ms. Davies does not, therefore, offer a full overview of the writer's dramatic life, but she does illuminate his inner conflicts during his last, most contentious decade岸particularly his hesitation between the aristocratic literary tradition with which he had grown up and the radical modern egalitarianism to which he aspired.

目前英語世界尚未有出版商委託他人編寫一部魯迅應得的全面綜合的傳記。黃樂嫣(Gloria Davies)密集而細緻的研究作品《魯迅的革命》(Lu Xun's Revolution)對最早讓魯迅聲名鵲起的短篇小說一筆帶過，集中關注了他對上世紀20年代末和30年代革命動盪局勢的反應。因此，黃樂嫣並未全面展示這位作家引人注目的一生，但她確實闡述了魯迅在其最具爭議的人生最後十年中的內心掙扎，特別是描繪了他在伴隨其成長過程的上層文化傳統與其嚮往的激進的現代平等主義之間的彷徨。

The grandson of a high-ranking member of the Beijing civil service, Lu Xun was born into the fraying, fin de si豕cle world of late imperial China. As a boy, he was educated in the cultural archaisms of the Chinese classics. During his teens, however, Lu Xun's family sank from gentility into poverty and disgrace. His grandfather was imprisoned for trying to bribe a civil-service examiner, while his father destroyed his health (and the family finances) with a liquor and opium habit.

魯迅出生於19世紀末分崩離析的清王朝末期，其祖父是北京一名高級文職官員。他在童年時期接受的是中國儒家經典的舊式教育，在十幾歲的時候，其家道中落，從富貴人家陷入貧窮和羞辱。他的祖父因試圖賄賂科舉主考官而鋃鐺入獄，父親則因酗酒和抽鴉片的惡習毀掉了健康（及家族財富）。