For Lu Xun's grasp, it cannot be in a simple dimension. At the same time, he had a dialogue with the ancients, with foreign art, and with the times. Knowing him requires many angles. I myself feel that Lu Xun is seen by many people as a reference today. People who engage in modern literature may not know Lu Xun better than people in other fields. Contemporary writers and scholars occasionally see wonderful theories when talking about Lu Xun, and the Lu Xun tradition, like the Confucius tradition, is inherited and carried forward in some communities. This shows his richness. Therefore, we must not only pay attention to what Lu Xun is, but also look at the fate behind him, that is, what he is not. ”
In an interview with Li Yuyang, a lecturer at the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University, Sun Yu, a professor at the School of Literature of Chinese University, first talked about the discursive dimension of Lu Xun's research, and combined with his work experience and academic experience, described his mental journey of engaging in Lu Xun's research, and frankly and deeply presented his path and method of Lu Xun's research and the social care contained therein.
Professor Sun Yu has been engaged in Lu Xun research for many years and is unique in the field of Lu Xun research with his unique problem awareness, broad vision and unique style. Today, Movable Character Jun and book friends shared the interview made by Professor Li Yuyang to Professor Sun Yu, "Tracing the Living Lu Xun Tradition and Chinese Context - Interview with Professor Sun Yu".
Trace the living Lu Xun tradition and Chinese context
——Interview with Professor Sun Yu
—
This article was first published in Appreciation of Masterpieces, No. 4, 2022
Sun Yu, professor at the School of Letters, Chinese Min University
Grasp Lu Xun in the structure of dialogue
▍ Li Yuyang (hereinafter referred to as "Li"): Teacher Sun, the past 2021 is the 140th anniversary of Lu Xun's birth. You are a veteran Lu Xun researcher and a leading figure in the field of Lu Xun research, perhaps our interview will start with your recent Lu Xun research.
Last year, you published the book "In the Afterglow of Lu Xun" (Guangdong People's Publishing House, 2021 edition). The book focuses on a group of contemporary writers and scholars who "take Lu Xun as a reference", the former such as Lin Jinlan, Shao Yanxiang, Mu Xin, Chen Zhongzhong, Mo Yan, Liu Heng, Jia Pingwa and Zhang Wei, and the latter includes Li Helin, Wang Yao, Ren Wanqiu, Qian Liqun, Wang Furen, Wang Xiaoming, Gao Yuandong and Gao Yuanbao. Of course, this is still an incomplete list, because you affirm that "In the Afterglow of Lu Xun" is a "sequel" to your book "Lu Xun's Legacy" (Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, 2016 edition), and the number of writers and scholars involved in "Lu Xun's Legacy" is even greater.
In my opinion, from "Lu Xun's Legacy" to "In the Afterglow of Lu Xun", a different history of Lu Xun's reception and interpretation is written, highlighting the rich and complex existence of Lu Xun as a "living tradition" in contemporary literature and scholarship. I noticed that in fact, before writing "Lu Xun's Legacy", you had already begun to clean up the relevant cases, and after the publication of "In the Afterglow of Lu Xun", you continued to write such articles. It can be seen that capturing, excavating, depicting and elaborating the "Legacy of Lu Xun" is a highly conscious research work and writing plan for you. So, could you first talk about when you started using it as a writing series, and why you chose to devote yourself to it?
▍ Sun Yu (hereinafter referred to as "Sun"): Before I went to work in the Lu Xun Research Office of the Lu Xun Museum, literary criticism has always attracted me, and the excitement is in the field of contemporary literature. But after working in the research office, I began to think about the relationship between Lu Xun and contemporary literature. Gradually, it was discovered that there was a Lu Xun tradition in contemporary literature. Therefore, my writing is on the one hand in the field of Lu Xun's thought research, and on the other hand, it takes into account the investigation of contemporary literary phenomena. Later, when I went to the newspaper as a reporter, I had more contact with contemporary literature, and the time of disappointment also came, and there were few writers who felt that there was weight. Because there is a contrast, it is often necessary to look for the spiritual connection between generations of writers. Ten years later I returned to work at the museum and was exposed to a wealth of materials, which facilitated my writing. But at that time, it was also found that Lu Xun's research had a tendency to gradually ivory tower. At this time, I hope that my work can form a dialogue relationship with contemporary literature.
In the process of passing on the classics, a tradition will be formed. This way of circulation not only affects literary creation, but also influences academic concepts to a certain extent. The new traditions brought about by the new classics constitute a landscape of literary history, and the study of this phenomenon gives us a dynamic aesthetic. This also allows us to avoid closing Lu Xun off, whose works have been a living form from birth to the present.
On March 16, 1928, Lu Xun lived in Jingyunli apartment in Shanghai
Li: The reason why I asked the previous question is because although Lu Xun's history of acceptance and interpretation is an important part of Lu Xun's research, to some extent it belongs more to the category of academic history or contemporary criticism. The study of Lu Xun's literature, thought and the "ontology" of life equality has always been the core of Lu Xun's research. At the same time that you are writing "Lu Xun's Legacy" and "In the Afterglow of Lu Xun" relatively intensively, you have also completed "Lu Xun and Russia" (People's Literature Publishing House, 2015), a large book that systematically explores Lu Xun's ideological resources and literary experience. It is reported that your series of studies on "Lu Xun and Guoxue" will also be published soon. I wonder, how do you deal with the relationship between the two that unfold at the same time—the investigation of Lu Xun's history of reception and the history of interpretation, and the study of Lu Xun's ontology? In particular, for the collection of "relics" and "afterglows", what specific help will it be for you to recognize and understand Lu Xun's literature and thought?
▍Sun: I studied Lu Xun because of my inner needs to solve my own problems. For example, servility, A Q phase, essentialism and other spiritual diseases. Compared with Lu Xun, you will find many deficiencies in yourself. However, it is not easy to enter his world, and to understand the context, you must know his knowledge structure.
Lu Xun did a lot of work in his life, one was to create, the second was to translate, the third was to sort out the national history, the fourth was to edit and publish, and the fifth was to support writers and artists. These involve many fields and content, and there are many topics that are derived.
Therefore, he should open the bow left and right, and also absorb the knowledge and research results of different disciplines. For example, Lu Xun focused on translation throughout his life, during which time he had a deep relationship with Russia. I myself have read a lot of Russian literature, but my generation understands Russia differently from Lu Xun's generation, and "Lu Xun and Russia" explores Lu Xun's process of absorbing extraterritorial resources and sees how he can get out of a new way. Among them, I also want to answer a challenge: What kind of relationship is between Lu Xun and Leninism? Why, when he turned to the left, did he become estranged from the pursuers of the Chinese Leninists? This involves the difficult problem of revolutionary culture, and my thinking is still at a shallow level, and I am not satisfied. The text can tell us what Lu Xun is, and the radiation behind his legacy inspires us to realize what Lu Xun is not. The variations and ambiguities in Lu Xun's communication, the invariances in change, have the problems of modern literary history and contemporary literary history. Thinking about this, we can also see the problems of our generation itself.
▍Li: I personally like your series of articles on Lu Xun's "legacy" and "afterglow", and I also think that this is your very unique academic contribution. Your "Lu Xun as a reference" for the study of contemporary writers and scholars is both "learning" and "criticism", and because you have many contacts with many discussion subjects, you have a unique warmth and goodwill. This reminds me of Professor Chen Pingyuan's recent pursuit of "both learning and human feelings, but also articles". How did you position yourself in this series of writings? What was the biggest difficulty you felt when completing this batch of articles?
▍Sun: The grasp of Lu Xun cannot be in a simple dimension. At the same time, he had a dialogue with the ancients, with foreign art, and with the times. Knowing him requires many angles. I myself feel that Lu Xun is seen by many people as a reference today. People who engage in modern literature may not know Lu Xun better than people in other fields. Contemporary writers and scholars occasionally see wonderful theories when talking about Lu Xun, and the Lu Xun tradition, like the Confucius tradition, is inherited and carried forward in some communities. This shows his richness. Therefore, we must not only pay attention to what Lu Xun is, but also look at the fate behind him, that is, what he is not. In lu xun's dissemination, many things were attached, and they were also delayed. This is very similar to the fate of Confucius. Some analysis is needed to see the cause.
Reading Nietzsche and Belinsky's articles in college, I found this way of thinking about problems very pleasant. Later, when I came into contact with ancient literary theory, I liked the intuitive epithesis, and felt that there was also a beauty that the translation of literary theory did not have. I have always hoped to find a balance between ancient literature and foreign literature, without losing the expressive characteristics of Chinese and logical. But because the foreign language is not good and there is no translation experience, the integration of multiple contexts is a failure, and it has become the current four different.
▍ Li: Most of the contemporary scholars you discussed "in the afterglow of Lu Xun" have done Lu Xun's research, so most of them have a relatively direct spiritual relationship with Lu Xun. But your contemporary writers include most of the best writers. Because of Lu Xun's status as a "national writer", it is difficult to find contemporary writers who have nothing to do with him; but some writers, although they also have some aspects of Lu Xun's experience, may belong more to other literary traditions (such as the "Beijing school"). When they are unified into a group of people who have been benefited by the "Legacy of Lu Xun", is there a suspicion of generalization?
Sun: The genes of some contemporary writers are also diverse. For example, some belong to the Beijing school, but they are also entangled with the Lu Xun tradition. Like the abolition of the name, Wang Zengqi was not close to Lu Xun in the early days, but in his later years, his remarks repeatedly involved Lu Xun's legacy, and Lu Xun became an unavoidable topic. Xiao Qian belonged to the Jing faction in his early years and later became a supporter of Lu Xun. I sometimes pay attention to the works of Jingpai figures in order to form a contrasting relationship. The inclusion of these figures in the discussion is to put the horizon into the literary ecology, which may restore the original landscape. But there must also be some limitations. The reason why it gives people a feeling of generalization may be that the boundaries are not accurately grasped.
Resources, Contexts, Grassroots
▍ Li: Since "The Most Troubled Soul of China in the 20th Century" (Qunyan Publishing House, 1993 edition), you have published more than ten works of Lu Xun's research so far. Among them are three books in the series "Lu Xun and His Contemporaries" ("Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren", "Lu Xun and Hu Shi", "Lu Xun and Chen Duxiu"), a series of studies on the history of Lu Xun's reading ("Lu XunShu Photo Record" and "Lu Xun's Collection of Paintings"), and two anthology mentioned above that trace Lu Xun's "legacy" and "after-shadow". If I focus on your recent research on Lu Xun, I find that there are three "key words", namely "resource", "context" and "grassroots". So I'd like to ask you for some advice on this.
Your aforementioned research on contemporary literature and scholarship that "takes Lu Xun as a reference" is naturally an effort to examine the resourced Lu Xun. When you talk about "using Lu Xun as a resource", you also contain another meaning, that is, Li Zehou's experience. I remember that when I was studying at Peking University, I took a "Lu Xun Research" class by Teacher Gao Yuandong, and he especially felt that Li Zehou was the only important scholar who formally wrote Lu Xun into the history of ideas. Coincidentally, you also particularly emphasized that "in the 1980s, Li Zehou studied the history of Chinese thought and referred to a large number of Lu Xun's writings", so that he "bypassed the soviet context, integrated Lu Xun's thought from the teachings of Kant and Jung, and established the theory of cultural accumulation". In your opinion, "this is an attempt to regroup Lu Xun's resources." Of course, you are particularly sorry that "Li Zehou's thinking has not been extended." (Lu Xun's Legacy: Afterword) What do you think is the main resistance between them? Why is this experience so difficult to respond to?
1994 with Gao Yuandong in Zhangjiajie (Photo courtesy of Professor Sun Yu)
▍ Sun: Lu Xun's generation brought us rich resources, and the later youth did not ingest these enough because the context changed. We are in different environments from Lu Xun's generation, and the way of discourse is different. Lu Xun paid attention to grassroots culture because there was a wild nature that was not found in the culture of scholars, and this wildness was also an element of aesthetics. Therefore, when examining modern literature, these keywords cannot be left untouched.
I myself was systematically educated in the history of ideas in the eighties. At that time, the study of Western philosophy and modern Chinese philosophy found that the process of ideological emancipation was limited, and ancient thought had a limited influence on young people, but extraterritorial thought and the May Fourth tradition were the most attractive to the youth at that time. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, I reflected on the past, using the ideas of early Marx and the resources of Russian Tolstoy and others to promote humanitarianism, but this entered the same language repetition and was still within the scope of essentialism. Li Zehou, on the other hand, grafted German philosophy with May Fourth Thought, ending the ideas of the Cultural Revolution and the Soviet model of thought that had been popular for decades. The spirit of Kant, Jung, and Lu Xun is a heterogeneous resource, which is integrated by Li Zehou to form a new paradigm of thought. In ancient times, the country and the mountains changed from generation to generation, society rose and fell, and the resources for bridging the spirit were often Confucianism. But in modern times, things have changed. The Lu Xun tradition, like Confucianism, became an important symbol of national culture. The ups and downs of Lu Xun's tradition behind him already illustrate this point.
Li Zehou borrowed the resources of Kant and Lu Xun and others to subvert the ideological logic of essentialism. This spirit is not easy to see in Confucianism, and left-wing intellectuals are also lacking. In the Atmosphere of Confucianism and Nationalism, Li Zehou is lonely. Sometimes, his ideas may be opposed to popular ideas. I think he later faded out of the public eye for a similar reason.
Li: On the one hand, you pointed out that "practice has proved that looking at Lu Xun outside the Russian and Soviet traditions may have a richer space for spiritual dialogue" ("Lu Xun's Legacy: Afterword"), but on the other hand, you have devoted yourself to the undesirable topic of "Lu Xun and Russia" with great enthusiasm and courage. The sense of the problem may be responded to by the opening chapter of the book "Lu Xun and Russia": "The study of Lu Xun's relationship with Russia is related to the painful history of modern Chinese intellectuals." There is not only the problem of absorbing foreign art, but also the difficulty of left-leaning values and ideas. I noticed that words like "pain" and "suffering" are often used when discussing related issues (the titles of your book include "A Hundred Years of Bitter Dreams" and "Shadow of a Bitter Road"). Does this constitute some kind of premise when you entered the world of Lu Xun's literature and thought? How do you deal specifically with the relationship between yourself (the subject of research) and the object of study, who is also immersed in the spiritual history of modern Chinese intellectuals?
Sun: Russian literature is very rich and broad, but at the same time poisonous. A concrete analysis of the sense of suffering in the midst of suffering is to be made. My generation is familiar with Russian literature and has been greatly influenced. For example, Tolstoy, whose pain and compassion are very touching, but at the same time he is caught in the preaching of preaching, and if he does not grasp it well, he will fall into the mode of political correctness. For these, Lu Xun has a process of understanding. Left-wing writers accepted Russian literature for its certainty, but Lu Xun was not, often paying attention to contradictory texts. His translation of the Harp is full of confusion and hesitation, and this kind of opposing aesthetic thinking in the period of great change is important for reflecting on human nature. Therefore, in discussing Russian literature, we can also illuminate our own problems. In addition, Russian art, which absorbs modern European philosophical thought, owes itself to a kind of openness that once existed. It is strange that the young people of the left, when they admired Russian literature, actually solidified their works to understand. Discerning this phenomenon helps us to come out of the confusion.
▍ Lee: "Context" is a high-frequency word you wrote. You have said many times, "A big problem facing our research today is how to bypass the popular linguistic logic and get close to the context of Lu Xun." ("In the Afterglow of Lu Xun: Preface") A dissertation dedicated to your lu xun research also specifically marked that "Lu Xun in the context" is a major academic focus of yours. (Ren Hui's "On Sun Yu's Study of Lu Xun") "Close to the context of Lu Xun" is not difficult to remind people of Mr. Wang Furen's most well-known proposition - "go back to Lu Xun". However, whether it is Mr. Wang's "Lu Xun there" or the "Lu Xun context" you talk about, both aim to restore Lu Xun's original face and fully "historicize" it, but also have distinct "contemporary" characteristics, during which the sense of dialogue with the times is almost needless to say. Lu Xun's research always seems to face the tension of returning to history (scientific inquiry to seek truth from facts) and dialogue with the present (intervening in the era through contemporary transformation). What do you think about that?
▍ Sun: After Lu Xun's death, the atmosphere of the times changed greatly, and when he was alive, the left-wing discourse was marginal and suppressed, which was naturally an expression of resistance and combat. But when left-wing culture dominates, the discourse's description of reality and history may leave out something or create a dark spot. For example, when people are oppressed, it is no problem to talk about class struggle, it has the characteristics of a rebellious discourse. But after the victory of the revolution, the situation changed, and the discourse of the class struggle could produce repressive or destructive results for the existence of differentiation. During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Soldiers bombarded intellectuals with Lu Xun's quotations, which made many people very disgusted and misread Lu Xun's original intentions. The reason for this is that the context imposed on Lu Xun in today's context is naturally a deviation from his understanding. Therefore, we must understand that Lu Xun's language is the expression of a specific context, and if it is separated from that context, it will lose its original meaning when used. He went to the left, but not a Leninist; criticized Confucianism, but was the promoter of the ancient spirit of compassion; satirized the skeptical school, but intervened in the earliest archaeological activities in China. In the past, people who studied traditional culture were in the time and space of the temple, Lu Xun saw that tradition was different from his predecessors, he had a sense of cultural heritage, and put the tradition in the field and the time and space of the museum to investigate. He was the first person in China to intervene in the cause of museums, and his mentality and experience in examining the relics of the old and worshipping Chinese in temples in museums were different. Therefore, when we see that today's people still look at Lu Xun with old-fashioned eyes, time and space are misplaced, that is, the context is different.
▍ Li: In your recently published article "Lu Xun in the Folk", you recounted Li Guodong's "Do We Still Need Lu Xun" and other folk Lu Xun research works, and proposed that "there are high-ranking people in the folk, they walk into the books with the questions of life at the grassroots level of life, and there is a feeling of the initial experience of life in that demeanor, and the sensitivity to words and social cognition are beyond the reach of many of us in the bookstore." The discussion of this article can take over your article "Lu Xun in the Grassroots Context". There is indeed a "grassroots" line in Lu Xun's acceptance history and interpretation. Teacher Qian Liqun also published a special article entitled "(Lu Xun's) Zhiyin in the Folk". For Li Guodong and others, he also praised it. But the paradox of reality is that such a large group of "folk acquaintances" who integrate Lu Xun into life and daily life are usually "speechless" and "unseen". When "grassroots" is used to identify them, they are incorporated into some sort of intellectual or academic discourse. How did you resolve this contradiction?
▍ Sun: In Lu Xun's time, there was a big folk, and later the situation changed, and the space of the folk gradually shrunk. Around the time of May Fourth, under the influence of folklore, intellectuals ingested many folk elements, and new literary writers also intervened in the construction of new folk. Therefore, when talking about the folk, we must pay attention to the difference between the new folk and the old folk. "New Youth", "Yusi" and "Mangyuan" all belong to the platform of the new folk. The people of this platform also focus on the world of the field, absorbing ideas outside the ivory tower. But later, the civil forces weakened, and after the Yi Dynasty, the social structure underwent great changes. When society is rigid, the penetration of popular ideas is often problematic. Thoughtful people have to take in nutrients from non-mainstream society and non-popular ideas. The same is true of Lu Xun's research. During the Cultural Revolution, popular research only discussed problems in a few single dimensions, and folk intellectuals had a bad idea about it. After the 1980s, the intellectual community continued to seek resources from the repressed spiritual community, and the mind became much more active. Li Helin found Wang Dehou, who worked in the factory, and after Wang Dehou was transferred to the Lu Xun Museum, he first noticed the academic thought of Lin Xianzhi in Guangdong. These are all interesting things to savor. Chen Danqing, who later resigned at home, went to the Lu Xun Museum to talk about "Laughing and Talking about Mr. Big", which is also a good story. Qian Liqun believes that the most weighty discussion of Lu Xun in China that year was written by this person who drifted outside the academic system. Those who are in the opposition, the unruly words, keep the temperature of the mind. And the articles of some people in the system are too cold and frosty. Folk thought enters the ivory tower, and the popularization of ivory tower thought has always existed, which is a very complicated phenomenon.
October 15, 1999 with Fei Xiaotong at Sanlian Bookstore (Photo courtesy of Professor Sun Yu)
How thought and poetry interpenetrate
Li: Let's temporarily separate the topic from Lu Xun and Lu Xun's research. In addition to Lu Xun, there are three other writers you discussed in the weight of a monograph—Zhou Zuoren, Zhang Zhongxing, and Wang Zengqi, whose main image in literary history is that of an essayist. (Wang Zengqi's novels, you mostly interpret them from the perspective of "articles") All of Lu Xun's works, you also weigh them in terms of "articles". So when you say "literature", you mean "prose" in many cases. In modern literature, poetry is often the vanguard, and the novel occupies a central position, and the vast majority of literary historians, critics and even readers will devote more energy to novels and poetry. So why did you "get acquainted" with prose? And why is there a special attachment to prose?
Sun: I myself started writing new poems as a teenager and took a detour. Later, when I read philosophy books, the way I thought about problems changed slightly. But on the way to thinking, I encountered many problems, and I couldn't have a dense logic like some scholars, so I hoped that I could get rid of the overly emotional text. Later, I found that writing in a translated style was a kind of flattery and a convenience, but many things were missed. When we look at scholars such as Wang Guowei and Chen Yinke writing articles, there is no Europeanization, and the articles of Ma Yifu and Xie Wuliang are all meaningful. They all understand some extraterritorial scholarship, but they have not given up the superiority of their mother tongue, and the words of the narrative have a deep rhyme. Here, the Chinese context is not interrupted, and there is poetry in the thought, which is the characteristic of Chinese expression.
In March 1997, he was with Wang Zengqi and Lin Jinlan (Photo courtesy of Professor Sun Yu)
China's good novelist is also an essayist. The original novel is part of the fragment of the article, and the works copied in Lu Xun's "Ancient Novel Hook Sinking" do not take off the smell of the article. This is a shortcoming of the old novel, but it maintains the tone. When the novel style does not come out of the article routine, it inhibits the narrative of the story, but it also reveals the rich connotation of the Chinese language. The works of Lu Xun and Wang Zengqi have such traces. Articles and literature seem to belong to different categories, but in the entanglement of each other, there are also aesthetic mysteries. Novels and poems often have the possibility of being avant-garde, and prose probably does not, Wang Zengqi said. I think the prose can see the author's basic sensibility and thinking ability, and it is not easy to hide his shortcomings. Many Chinese novelists are very good at making up stories and have imagination, but as soon as they fall on the text, they become rough and the texture of life is thin. Looking at a person's cultivation, the prose is more direct, and from here you can glimpse a person's basic ability to speak. In addition, prose is also a form of existence that can balance academic and aesthetic, and paying attention to it is also related to my profession.
Li: Your recognition of the Zhou brothers, Zhang Zhongxing, Wang Zengqi and others is related to their "language" consciousness as vernacular writers. "Language" is a category that you are particularly sensitive to. What is linked to "language" is "thought". You wrote a big article, "Lu Xun's Tradition in The Vernacular Text." It seems to me that this article has a certain "programmatic" nature in your writing. You wrote that "Lu Xun profoundly influenced the later cultural process in poetry, philosophy, and history," and the medium and background in which this "influence" could occur was "vernacular literature." Of course, this judgment of yours is a historical analysis, but the implications of philosophical thinking are also obvious, especially the dialectic of "language" and "thought". Can you please talk about it?
▍Sun: Zhou Zuoren, Zhang Zhongxing, and Wang Zengqi were all members of the Jing Sect. Their thoughts, knowledge, and articles also have similar pulses. I initially paid attention to and wanted to study them, which was related to the experience of editing supplements. At that time, I wanted to make a few good articles, but there were very few good authors. In the limited interaction with Wang Zengqi and Zhang Zhongxing, the aesthetic style has changed a little, and the value of the Beijing school writers has been realized. I also slowly learned to write a little newspaper article. This also inadvertently influenced later literary criticism and research. From Zhuangzi, Sima Qian, Su Shi to the Zhou brothers, poetry and thought are interpenetrated. Zhang Zhongxing wrote a book "Literary Language and Vernacular", talking about the topic of "old for new use", which opened up the ancient and modern, and he liked Kant and Russell, so the article had the meaning of extraterritorial words. I think this is a continuation of the tradition of the Zhou brothers' generation, and both scholarly and writer-writers should pay attention to this issue.
At Zhang Zhongxing's home in October 2005 (Photo courtesy of Professor Sun Yu)
How thought and poetry permeate each other is a big issue.
Nietzsche and Heidegger both noticed this. Japan's Nagai Hokaze and Tanizaki Junichiro's formulations also pursue this realm. Since May Fourth, very few people have been able to have this ability, but in fact, it is possible for Chinese to have this ability. From Sima Qian to Lu Xun, there were many beautiful and thoughtful texts left for a long time, but many contemporary writers and scholars did not absorb this kind of experience, which I think is a pity.
▍Li: You have edited and selected "Excellent Essays in China (1978-2008)" (Modern Publishing House, 2009 edition), which mainly includes scholarly essays. You think that "the writing of scholars was all the rage in this period". In the History of Contemporary Chinese Literature, Professor Hong Zicheng also regarded "scholars' prose essays" as an important phenomenon in literature in the 1980s and 1990s. In the last decade or so, the publication of scholarly essays seems to have become more prosperous and diverse. However, the older generation of essayists are also gradually withdrawing. In your opinion, is prose writing since 2008 still the "scholar's essay" leading the way?
Sun: I don't think that a scholar's essay is necessarily better than a writer's essay. Non-scholarly texts like Xiao Hong and Li Juan are not bookish and are very raw and beautiful. When I pay attention to scholarly prose, I actually think that contemporary writers do not have enough cultivation of ancient literature and do not have a broad field of vision. My own writing is not good enough, and I know the need to learn from textured thinkers. The selected essay i compiled was criticized by some people, who thought that the Beijing school was too strong. This criticism is correct. Scholars' texts have a sense of history and mixed knowledge, but if they are too ivory towering, they are easy to twilight. Zhou Zuoren's articles in his later years were more twilight than aura, not as vivid as Lu Xun.' Therefore, if people in the academic world do not care about the existence of society and human nature, they will imprison themselves in small cages. The prose since 2008 has been in different forms, zhao yuan and Li Jingze's essays are literary, knowledgeable and poetic; the articles of Yang Zhishui and Zhi'an also have a deep potential, and the bookish atmosphere and agility are preserved, which is very rare. I recently read Chen Fumin's "Forty Degrees North Latitude" and was attracted by the author's thoughts and poetic expressions. As a critic, Chen Fumin's historical prose is both academic and temperamental, which is quite rare. Zhang Xinxin and Mao Jian in Shanghai, Wang Yao and Ding Fan in Jiangsu, and others all write anti-scholarly texts, bringing vitality to the single academic writing.
Work for the establishment of a sound cultural ecology
Lee: The last set of questions is about you personally. You said in Lu Xun and Russia's Afterword that "if you hadn't taught at a university," you wouldn't have written this book." Your "Lu Xun's Memoirs of Sorrow" (Chinese Min University Press, 2012 edition) is also revised on the basis of your teaching manuscript. Not to mention the popular "Fifteen Lectures on Literature of the Republic of China" (Shanxi People's Publishing House, 2015 edition), which is also a product of your classroom. You started classes at Chinese University in 2006, and your "teaching experience" has been more than fifteen years. What has been the biggest impact of your teaching career on your research and writing?
▍Sun: Before I went to college, my writing was mostly about feeling things, and I developed a habit in newspapers and museums, thinking about problems was mostly improvised, not very systematic, and the articles lacked logic. However, teaching is not enough, and it is necessary to give students more systematic knowledge, and the knowledge imparted should be precise and the scope is limited. Over the years, I have been slowly correcting the loopholes in my writing, but the effect is not very good, and it is still mostly in the inertia of the past. The natural path of imparting knowledge and expressing ideas is different, but I sometimes feel that some questions have not been thought through and are not easy to express. After arriving at college, I was timid and felt more and more that my skills were insufficient. So my writing sometimes has hesitations, and it is also a kind of inner self-conflict. However, after writing a long article, I found that there were eight dangers, and I was afraid that I would be more ingenious. You see, I'm such a contradiction.
▍Li: Because you are a famous researcher of Lu Xun, everyone will remember your work experience in the Lu Xun Museum. And because you are good at writing essays, you are also known for your former status as an editor of the Beijing Daily. In contrast, teaching is the profession of the vast majority of scholars who have entered the academic arena since the "new era", and it is not particularly noticed. But because your experience is relatively rich, what I want to know is, in the switch between the three identities of "curator", "editor" and "teacher", do you have any unique experience? The mutual achievements of the three in you are obvious, so are there any rifts and conflicts?
▍Sun: I have worked as a young intellectual, a librarian of the Cultural Center, a museum librarian, an editor, and a teacher. After the career of Zhiqing, other careers are voluntarily chosen. The Cultural Center introduced me to folklore, the museum exposed me to many cultural relics, the editors immersed me in the field of contemporary literature, and the university gave me the opportunity to organize literary history and self-experience. Although the nature of the work is different, it has not left the literary research and writing, especially the interest in Lu Xun's research, and has not been interrupted since graduating from graduate school. It also allows me to draw nourishment from different knowledge communities, and I am less willing to close myself off and write a little of the words I am most willing to write. But there is also a problem, which distracts a lot of time and does not go deep enough to think about the problem. Therefore, it is often between professional and non-professional, literary and non-literary.
Lee: You have talked many times about your early years of growth and reading experience. In your self-description, you also often relate to your spiritual relationship with your parents' and contemporaries. Whether from the perspective of academic history and literary history, or in terms of the broader historical genealogy, the image of your generation is very prominent. I wonder how you see your intergenerational experience? If you borrow Lu Xun's concept of "intermediates", what do you think is the most necessary to inherit, undertake or open now?
▍ Sun: For political reasons, my childhood memory was not good, when I was asked to draw a clear line with my father, and I did not have the ability to distinguish for a long time. Our education tells people that the old-fashioned characters are mostly bad, and as a result, the spiritual dimension of the educated is very single. The result is an inability to gain insight into history or to build one's own awareness of particular issues. This is a big lesson. After entering the 1980s, under the influence of the ideological emancipation movement, he began to make up for knowledge and learned things that he did not know in the past, but the foundation was still weak, and he could not get rid of his innate deficiencies. I later discovered that when the cultural ecology is single, literature is not easy to have multiple possibilities. So for me, I hope the younger generation doesn't become what we were then. All I can tell the youth is my own lesson, and it is difficult to say anything special about it.
▍ Li: You have published two anthologies of a chronicle nature, "Changes in the Old and New" (Fudan University Press, 2010 edition) and "The Past Is Difficult to Pursue: My Reading and Memory" (People's Literature Publishing House, 2018 edition). Through these two anthologies, you can see your "interaction" with the literary and academic trends of different periods along the way. Over the past four decades, there has been a variety of debates in the intellectual community, some of which are even directly related to your research subjects. You rarely speak directly, so it's hard to see you on the cusp. But reading your articles in chronological form reveals that you have always been "present," reacting only in a relatively personal and subtle way, such as reconstructing the context of a topic or seeking the possibility of dialogue in the resources of ideas in history. Finally, I would like to ask, is this something you did on purpose? How do you understand the relationship between "knowledge (molecules)" and "society"?
▍Sun: After May Fourth, the intellectual circles were divided, Lu Xun was a brave man who faced life head-on, and Hu Shi was a moderate reformer. But they are all on the road to the construction of new culture, cleaning up the old heritage and injecting a new wind of thought. Both of these legacies are very important and deserve our serious study. But for a while, we felt that the intellectual world had only one reference, and everything else was reactionary and backward. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s, Lu Xun's research mostly appeared in the form of defending Lu Xun, and all intellectuals who were different from Lu Xun's thought had problems. Now it seems that those articles have no value anymore. When I presided over the work of the Lu Xun Museum, I proposed that the task of the research office was not to defend Lu Xun, but to study his basic problems in depth. This caused a misunderstanding among individual friends. In the past, researchers had no problem maintaining Lu Xun's dignity, but when Lu Xun was narrated in mainstream culture, defending Lu Xun would constitute a repression for intellectuals who were different from Lu Xun's tradition. Later, people alienated Lu Xun, in fact, they hated the way of speaking that described Lu Xun. There was an exclusivity in lu xun's research community, and I was worried that those of us who wrote with a righteous posture might go in the opposite direction. Naturally, in the face of right and wrong, researchers are to stand up and express their own views, not to swallow, which is necessary. In this sense, the intellectual community needs warriors, and some predecessors such as Qian Liqun are outstanding representatives. But we must also pay attention to the problem that criticizing others cannot borrow public power, otherwise it will lead to an unfairness. In the system, we must pay attention to such problems, some units have public power, and it is dangerous to integrate public power with academic thinking. In the past, literary research and literary criticism once resorted to public power, which resulted in an imbalance in dialogue. This was also what Lu Xun was wary of.
When the space for dialogue has not been established, intellectuals must not only have the spirit of a fighter, but also do some work for the establishment and improvement of a sound cultural ecology. There are big trees and small grasses in this world, but the fundamental thing is to have a good soil. Therefore, countless people are needed to engage in soil cultivation work, and Lu Xun also emphasizes this. Every kind of work we have now has the possibility of opening up space, just to see if we can consciously move towards this goal. For example, when I worked at a newspaper, some sharp topics were not easy to talk about, but my friends and I paid more attention to the elements of dialogue, recruiting people from different backgrounds on a platform, and many topics collided. When I was at the Lu Xun Museum, I hosted a series of lectures and seminars, including the painter Chen Danqing, the writer Mo Yan, the cultural relics experts Shan Jixiang and Luo Wenzhe, the museum expert Su Donghai, the archaeology expert Li Zero, etc. In these activities, lu Xun also insisted on the civilization criticism and social criticism emphasized by Lu Xun. People of different professions come together and inspire each other. After arriving at the Renmin University of Literature, he has also adhered to this practice. Management does not engage in single-value things, and hopes that different genres will appear. Looking back on my own writing over the years, the lack of sharpness and sharpness is a big flaw. I also learned that I was never a warrior, but only an echo of the spirit of the new culture. I have received many inspirations from the scholars and thinkers of my predecessors, and I am grateful to them.
Lee: Your writing is always prolific. What does writing mean the most to you? Do you prefer to think of yourself as a "scholar" or a "writer"? Thank you for the interview.
Sun: I can't be considered a scholar in the true sense of the word, just a writer. Because I do not yet have many qualities of an excellent scholar, not only can I not study the West, but I cannot talk about the foundation of Traditional Chinese studies. My essays and reading notes are the product of thought lessons, and they are records of experience. The process of writing is the process of trying to overcome blind spots, which is full of curiosity and pleasure. All my life, I was always confused by my profession, and when I was a journalist, I envied the life of the bookstore, because the text was hurried in the environment of the text. But after arriving at the university, I hope not to become a technical writer, and those who engage in humanistic research cannot but pay attention to the life of the times. So they constantly change their perspectives to face their hearts and the times. This is where I am conflicted, and one of the reasons why I am constantly in dialogue with society.
(Author Affilications: College of Literature, Beijing Normal University, College of Literature, Chinese Min University.) ）