Lu Hsun/ Lu Xun: A Madman's Diary

Lu Hsun or Lu Xun (his stories and poems appear under both names) is a new name to me.  I just happened to run across him while browsing the shelves of a used bookstore (can't count the number of times this has happened).  The title of the book is Selected Stories of Lu Hsun.  It was while I was searching for information about him and other works by him that I discovered that his works show up under two names.

"A Madman's Diary" is just what it purports to be, for the most part, anyway.  However, there are some disquieting elements to it that appeared only after I had finished the story.  It is the journal kept by a man who was suffering from a persecution complex and was convinced that all around him were cannibals, just waiting for the chance to sink their teeth into him.  At one point he even catches a dog eying him strangely.

The journal depicts his slow disintegration, from the early stages when he wonders about the strange look the dog casts his way and his suspicion that his neighbors had a inexplicable grudge against him to when he was convinced that all, including his older brother, were just waiting for a chance to eat him.

What makes me wonder though is the frame to the story.  The first chapter of the story is a first person narrative in which the anonymous narrator tells us that one of two brothers that he had been friend with was ill.   He had to be in the neighborhood, so he stopped by to see him.  At the house, he was met by the older brother who said that "my brother recovered some time ago and has gone elsewhere to take up an official post."  He then laughed and showed him the younger brother's diary in which he said he could see the nature of the younger brother's illness.  The older brother then gave him the diary, saying there could be no harm in giving it to him since he was a friend.

This sounds strange to me.  If I had become mentally disturbed in this way and had kept a diary, I should want to keep it with me when I recovered, or perhaps destroyed it if I found it too disturbing to be reminded of what had happened.  I doubt if I would give it to my brother.  Secondly, if my brother had been ill, recovered, and left his diary with me, I would never have given it to someone else, regardless of how good a friend that person might be.

The third point that bothers me is the present status of the younger brother.   According to the older brother, whom the younger brother was convinced he was a cannibal, "he recovered some time ago and has gone elsewhere to take up an official post."  Why was the older brother so vague about where his younger brother was and what that official post was?   

I've been accused in the past of over-reading, and this, possibly, could be another example.  But, I see no reason why the older brother couldn't have simply said what city his brother was now living in.  It is this point and the relinquishment of the diary that makes me wonder what really happened to the younger brother.

I've also toyed with the idea that there is a political message behind the story and the cannibalism is a mask to avoid getting afoul of government censors.  His reference to cannibalism could be symbolic of his insistence on being independent and not just part of a faceless community.  After all, cannibalism is the most extreme form of being absorbed by the community.   Unfortunately, I know too little of the political situation in China when this story was written in 1918.

In any case, I find the story intriguing and shall definitely go on to the others in the collection and perhaps, go looking for more by him.



September 4, 2014:  Late comment.  I should read intros and informational flyleaves more often--might learn something.  


From the flyleaf of Selected Stories of Lu Hsun:

"A Madman's Diary" was Lu Hsun's  " 'declaration of war' against China's feudal society, and the first short story in the history of modern Chinese literature."