Small preface

This little book is a retranslation of the Japanese translation of Akebosake.

The characteristics of the book and the tasks of the author are now explained in the fourth paragraph of the original preface, and I cannot add much more.

The author's life experience when he was a child, everyone doesn't seem to understand it very well. Some say that the father is Russian and the mother is Polish; Some say that he was born in 1878 in a poor family in the Kiaf area; Some of them were born in 1876 in Poltaiba, and their parents were large landowners. Otherwise, he graduated from Kiyav High School and could not go on to higher education because of his new thinking. Later, he traveled to study Germany and France, returned to China after the Chinese Economic Examination, was exiled once, and then went overseas. It was not until the March Revolution that he was freed and returned to his mother country, and now he is the chairman of the People's Education Committee.

He was a revolutionary, an artist, a critic. Among his works, there are "The Image of Literature", "The Reaction of Life", "Art and Revolution", etc., which are the most well-known in the world, and there are also many operas. There is also a volume of "Foundations of Empirical Aesthetics", a total of five articles, although published as early as 1903, it is an important book. For, as the author says in his own preface, it is "in the most compressed form that the general body of the aesthetics with all its conclusions" is transmitted, and it has become the basis of his thoughts and actions hitherto.

The publication of "On Art" is new, but it is only a new edition. I don't know about the first three or two articles, the second one was originally in "Art and Revolution"; The last two articles include almost all of "The Foundations of Empirical Aesthetics", which are now compared as follows-

"The Basis of Empirical Aesthetics" "Art Theory"

1. Life and Ideals 5. Art and Life (1)

2. What is aesthetics?

What is 3. What is beauty? 4. Beauty and Its Kinds (1)

4. The Most Important Types of Beauty (2)

5. Art 5. Art and Life (2)

That is to say, there is only one article, which I now translate and attach to the following, that is, it becomes the whole of "On Art" and "The Foundations of Empirical Aesthetics", and if you look at it in the order listed above, it is equivalent to reading that one. The conclusions of each article, although sometimes different, are not in general. In addition, the original preface talks about the brilliant article "Life and Ideals", but there is no such title in the book, and after comparison, I know that it is the first chapter of "Art and Life".

From what I can see, I feel that the arrangement and title of this article are certainly more neatly crowned, but to readers, I am afraid that it is easier to understand according to the arrangement of "the basis of empirical aesthetics". The first three articles are all available to read first and then again.

Originally, it was a book compressed into a quintessence, but it was based on biological sociology, which involved biology, physiology, psychology, physics, chemistry, philosophy, etc., and the scope of knowledge was very vast, let alone aesthetics and scientific socialism. Whenever the translator is suffocated and unintelligible, he refers to the translation of Shiro Tomura and Tetsuya Baba in the translation of "The Basis of Empirical Aesthetics" by Matsushi Shishi, who is often suffocated and unintelligible, and when he encounters a problem, he still has a long time to understand, and it is still only a book of resignation and dryness, and as for mistakes, it is inevitable. If there are people who are devoted to research, it is good to dissolve the original syntax and change the terminology to be shallower and paraphrased to be close to explanation; Or translated from the original text, so much the better.

In fact, to know the author's claim, it is enough to read "The Foundations of Empirical Aesthetics". But this title may discourage current readers, so I chose this one. In the end, I couldn't translate a better text, I just hope that readers will be willing to be patient and watch, and probably always know the general idea and have some understanding. As we have discussed, the unity of art and industry, the unity of reason and emotion, the unity of truth, goodness and beauty, the necessity of fighting, the necessity of ideals at the bottom of reality, the necessity of clinging to reality, and even the monarch as a virtuous person over the high-minded, are all extremely alarming. The whole book is at the end, so I won't list it here.

Translated in Shanghai on April 22, 1929. Lu Xun.

Literature and Criticism

Translator's note

It is much more beneficial to have a preface to a book that outlines the author's career, thoughts, ideas, or the main points contained in the book. But this kind of work is beyond my reach, because I have only read a very small part of what this author has written. Now, from Keiji Ozase's "The Art of Revolutionary Lucia", translating a short essay at the front is actually not a solid work. - I'm afraid he only relied on a copy of "Research,—— but I can get a glimpse of it, and it's better than nothing.

The first is a retranslation of the appendix to Tolstoy and Max by Tsunesaburo Kaneda, which he originally translated from an Esperanto book, so this translation is heavy and heavy. The question of why art happened is a major one, but unfortunately there are not many words in this article, so reading the final chapter, it seems that there is a sense of inadequacy. However, the fundamental concepts of his artistic outlook, such as those exerted in "The Foundations of Empirical Aesthetics", are almost all concretely and subtly stated in it, and after comprehending it, although it is only a general idea, it is also a general understanding. Looking at the tone, it seems to be a speech, but I don't know what year it was said.

The second is published in February 1911, the year after Tolstoy's death, in New Age and later in Literary Images. In January of this year, I retranslated Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto from the Japanese edition of Tolstoy as the Marxists saw it, and it was published in the third issue of the first volume of the monthly magazine Spring Tide.

There is a little bit of a short story at the end, briefly reinterpreting the meaning of this article, and now it is recorded below-

"First, when Tolstoy died, the Chinese did not seem to think much, but now go back to it, and from this article, you can see the famous people in Western European literature at that time - A in France

atole F

a

ce, Ge in Germany

ha

t Haupt^ma

。 Giova in Italy

i Papi

i, and the young writer D'A

The criticisms of these opinions by Celis et al., and by a scientific socialist, the author of this paper, are clearer and less laborious than if they were collected one by one.

Second, we can know that the situation is different, and it is often difficult to make arguments that are not immune to change, and it is very difficult to predict things. In this article, the author only judges Tolstoy as a friend and foe, but an irrelevant person; By the time of the 1924 speech, however, he was considered to be a "troublesome opponent," although not the first camp of the enemy, probably because the majority had already seized power, and the Tolstoyites were gradually feeling the inconvenience of rule. By last year, on the occasion of the centenary of Tolstoy's birth, the same author had another article called "The Significance of Tolstoy's Memorial", which was not as harsh as the speech, and if it was not because it was to show the world that the Soviet Union was not unique, but because it was consolidating internally, the argument would have calmed down: it would have been very good.

From the translation, Lunakarsky's argument is clear enough and painful. However, due to the lack of translator's ability and the shortcomings of the Chinese text, the translation is obscure, and even difficult to understand. If the sentence is removed, it will lose its original concise tone. In my case, apart from this hard translation, there is only one way to 'tie your hands' - that is, the so-called "no way out" - and the only hope left is that the reader is willing to read it hard. ”

At about the same time, Wei Suyuanjun's direct translation from the original text was also published in the second volume of the semi-monthly magazine "Unnamed". He has been lying in a hospital bed for many years and still translating such laborious papers, which really gives me a lot of encouragement and gratitude. As for the translation, it is sometimes no less obscure than mine, but a few more sentences, and naturally more accurate, I have not revised this translation on the basis of which I have not yet revised, and the reader who is interested can refer to it for himself.

The third is the 1924 lecture at Mesco mentioned above, which was retranslated from the Japanese translation by Tsunesaburo Kaneda, and was published in the seventh and eighth editions of last year's "Rushing Stream". Originally, there were no subtitles, but they were added by the translator to make it easy for the reader to read them, but they are still being changed. There is also a short preface, on the differences and conflicts between these two worldviews, which is very concise, and it is also abridged here-

"There are two major currents that have become the ideological circle of human beings in the modern world, one is materialistic thinking, and the other is idealistic thinking. These two ideas are interspersed with ideas that have been deformed and sprouted from these two kinds of ideas, and they often restrain each other to form the ideological life of modern human beings.

In order to express these two forms of representational ideas, Lunakarsky called the former's non-propertied materialism Marxism, and the latter's non-propertied spiritualism Tolstoyism.

"In Russian Tolstoyism, in the dictatorship of the proletariat, there is still a strong ideological foundation between the peasantry and the intellectual class. ……

This is very inconvenient for the proletarians' Marxist state system. Therefore, it was only natural for Lunakarsky, who was in the high position of the Russian people to be educated, to make this speech for the sake of tolstoyism, which was the ideological obstacle of majoritarianism in Russia.

Lunakarsky, however, did not see Tolstoyism as a complete frontal enemy. This is because Tolstoyism is denying capitalism, chanting compatriotism, and asserting that the point of equality of human beings can be one or some degree of fellow travelers. Then, in "Don Quixote Liberated", which can also be regarded as a dramatic version of this speech, although the author is ridiculing the humanitarian, the embodiment of Tolstoyism, the old man Quixote, he is by no means malicious. The author uses the poor humanitarian knight Don Quixote as an obstacle to the revolution, but he does not want to kill him to sacrifice the banner of the revolution. We are here to see a lot of Lunakarski's humanity and magnanimity. ”

The fourth and fifth chapters were both translated from Mansson's New Art, and the original text was collected in Art and Revolution, published by Mesco in 1924. The two are a series of speeches in three rounds, and only the first half of the latter is "written at the end of 1919", and the rest is not dated, but judging by its tone, it was also shortly after the October Revolution, when it was difficult and difficult. In particular, in the case of the decline of art in Russia at that time, the labor of the instructor to preserve, inspire, and advocate is very concise and to the point. The thinking was so far-reaching that it even took into account the peculiar style of preserving the peasants because of the economy. This is really a good medicine for the "righteous men and gentlemen" who suddenly sang about liberalism this year, and the "revolutionary writers" who shouted "send them away" last year. However, because of the differences in time and place in his views on Russian literature and art, the conservatives who pretend to preserve the ancient name in China and protect themselves cannot be cited as truth.

The last article was published in the magazine New World in July 1928, and in September of the same year, it was translated by Yuhito Kurahara in Japan and published in Battle Flag, which is now retranslated. The original translator said: "This is an important essay by the author that shows the benchmark of Marxist literary criticism. If we take into account the differences in the stages of social development in the Soviet Union and Japan, we can learn a great deal from this. I hope that the fandom who is interested in the literary movement will get a lot of inspiration from this paper to move towards a proper solution. "This can also be transferred to readers in China. In addition, we have had critics who pretend to be Marxist literary criticism, but in the verdicts they wrote, they also denounced themselves. This synopsis can be used to criticize the so-called "criticism" of the same kind in China recently. There must be more genuine criticism, so that there is real hope for the emergence of new literature and art.

The content and source of this book are as mentioned above. Although it is only a few miscellaneous flowers and fruits, it may also be possible to deduce the roots of the origin of some flowers and fruits. But I also think that in order to get to the bottom of it, it is still necessary to devote ourselves to the great source of social science, because a paper of 10,000 words is nothing more than a tributary that has evolved in a deep understanding of the theory and the history of art in the world.

Of the six, two and a half have been published in journals, and the rest are newly translated.

I think the most important thing is especially the last one, and anyone who wants to know a little about the new critics must read it carefully. It's a pity that when I look at it, it's still very difficult, which is really nothing in my strength. There are also quite a few typos in the original translation, and everything that can be known has been corrected, and in addition, it can only be inherited, because the power of one person cannot be detected. However, I still hope that readers will criticize them if they have any opinions, so that I will have the opportunity to correct them in the future.

As for my translation, due to haste and negligence, it was also physically exhausted, and there were many errors and omissions. First of all, I would like to thank Xue Fengjun, who corrected a lot of mistakes for me during the proofreading.

On the night of August 16, 1929, Lu Xun was in the wind and rain in Shanghai, crying, singing and laughing.

"Literature and Art Policy"

postscript

This book is based on the book compiled and translated by Shiro Tomura and Yuhito Kurahara in Japan, and it was translated in May of the previous year (1928) and published in the monthly magazine "Rush" one after another. In the first "Postscript" of the editor, there were some words like the following-

The controversy over literature and art in Russia was introduced in "The Literary and Artistic Polemics of Soviet Russia", and the "Literary and Artistic Policy of Soviet Russia" here can really be regarded as a sequel to that book. If you have read the previous book, it will be even clearer to read this one. Although there are three different positions in the preface, there are only two factions in the reduction. That is, with regard to class literature and art, one faction is biased towards literature and art, such as Valangsky, etc., and the other faction is biased towards class, and it is the people of "Nabasto", and Bukharin naturally advocates supporting proletarian writers, but they also think that the most important thing is to have creation. Among those who spoke were several members of the council, such as Valangsky, Bukharin, Jacovulev, Torozki, Lunakarsky, etc.; There was also a faction of 'forges,' such as Pletenev, and the most numerous were the people of Nabastu, such as Vajin, Liewech, Averbach, Rotov, Persenmensky, etc., which were translated at the end of an article entitled "Literature and Art" in "The Literary and Artistic Polemics of Soviet Russia," all signed there.

"The attacks of the 'Nabastu' faction were almost concentrated on one Valangsky, the editor of The Red New Land. Regarding his "Art as the Knowing of Life", Liewech once wrote an article "Art as the Organization of Life", quoting Bukharin's definition, using art as the method of 'universalizing feelings', and criticizing Valangsky's art theory as supra-class. This is also evident in the debates of the Council. Later, however, Kurahara Yuhito said in Critical Literature in Modern Russia that the positions between the two men seemed to be somewhat closer, and Valansky recognized the importance of the class character of art, and the fierce and powerful attacks were slightly more tempered than before. Now that Torozky is in exile, and Valonsky is about to retire, the situation may be very different.

From this record, we can see that the theory and practice of Russian literature, which is the stronghold of the literature of the working class, is probably not useless in China today; There are a few blank words in it, which are the case in the original translation, and because there is no translation from another country, we dare not make up for it, and if the original book is available, the circular letter will be sent to teach or correct its errors, and it must be corrected at any time. ”

But until now, in the first and last three years, I have not received a letter like this, so the shortcomings are still exactly the same as before. On the contrary, there are quite a lot of ridicule and scolding of the translator himself, which has not ceased to this day. I mentioned a little rough point in "Hard Translation" and "The Class Nature of Literature", which was published in the third book of "Sprout", and I will excerpt a few paragraphs below-

"Since the beginning of the year, there have been many attacks on me personally, and the name 'Lu Xun' has been seen in every kind of publication, and the author's tone, at a cursory glance, probably looks like a revolutionary writer. But after reading a few articles, I gradually felt that there was too much nonsense, and the scalpel did not hit the body, and the place where the bullet hit was not a fatal wound. …… So I think there are too few such theories for reference, so everyone is a bit nonsense. For the enemy, dissecting, chewing, is now inevitable, but there is a book of anatomy, there is a book of cooking, according to the law, then the structure of the taste, can always be more clear, taste. People tend to take the mythical P

Ometheus thought that stealing fire from others was the same as stealing fire, and although he was abused by the Emperor of Heaven and did not regret it, his generosity and perseverance were the same. But I stole fire from other countries, but I was cooking my own meat, thinking that if it tasted better, I would get more benefit from it on the side of the chewer, and I would not waste my body in vain: the starting point was all individualism. And it is also mixed with the luxury of the petty citizenry, and the 'revenge' of slowly pulling out the scalpel and stabbing it into the heart of the dissecter. …… However, I am also willing to be of some use in society, and the result of what the viewer sees is still fire and light. In this way, the first thing to start with is the "Literary and Artistic Policy", because it contains the opinions of various factions.

Mr. Zheng Boqi...... In the edited "Literary Life", I laughed at my translation of the book, which was unwilling to decline, but unfortunately it was whipped by others. It's so easy to be a revolutionary writer when you flip a book, I don't think so. There is a tabloid newspaper that says that my translation of "On Art" is "surrender".

Yes, surrender is a common occurrence in the world, but at that time, Marshal Cheng Fanggo had already climbed out of the hot springs of Japan and stayed in a hotel in Paris, so who did he confess here? This year, it's a different story,...... It is said to be a 'change of direction'. I've seen that some Japanese magazines have added these four characters to the previous neo-sensory Kataoka Tetsubing, which is a good term. In fact, these dissenting talks are still old diseases that don't even want to think about it. Translation of a book on proletarian literature is not enough to prove the direction, and if there is a mistranslation, it is enough to do harm. My translations are also dedicated to these quick proletarian literary critics, because they have the obligation not to be greedy for 'refreshing' and to endure hardships to study this theory.

"But I am confident that I do not deliberately distort the translation, I laugh when I hit the wounds of critics I don't admire, and I endure the pain when I hit my own wounds, but I never add or subtract them, which is also one of the reasons for always 'hard translation'. Naturally, there will always be better translators in the world who can translate texts that are neither crooked, nor 'hard' or 'dead', and then my translations will of course be eliminated, and I will just fill in the space from 'nothing' to 'better'. ”

Since there has been no updated translation yet, I still organize the old manuscript and print it into the appearance of the book, hoping to continue his survival for as long as possible. But compared to the first draft, self-confidence is less disadvantageous. First, when Xue Feng was compiling, he compared the original translation with me and corrected a few mistakes; Second, he attached his translation of Hidetora Okazawa's History of the Development of Proletarian Literature in Russia with Theory as the Center at the End of the volume, and changed some of the words from my translation examples, so that after the overview, the origin and context of this "Literary and Artistic Policy" can be more clearly distinguished. These two points are at least worth mentioning.

On the night of April 12, 1930, Lu Xun was recorded in the small pavilion of northern China.

III. Preamble and Afterword(3)