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How did Lu Xun contribute to the League of Left-Wing Writers?
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Chinese literature
Zhang Fei on the Long Sloped Bridge Turning Away One Million Wei Troops with a Powerful Stare, woodblock colour print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1884. It depicts a scene from the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
In 1930, Lu Xun became the nominal leader and prime organizer of the League of Left-Wing Writers, a position he held throughout the organization's five-year period of activity.12
His contributions to the league and the broader communist cause included:
- Recruitment and Influence: He actively recruited many writers and countrymen to the communist cause, positioning himself as a tongluren (fellow traveler) despite his refusal to officially join the Chinese Communist Party.1
- Translation: He translated Marxist literary theories into Chinese, which served to disseminate these ideas among Chinese intellectuals.1
- Political Writing: He directed his creative energy toward writing bitingly satirical random essays known as zawen, which he utilized as a form of political protest.12
While he was a central figure in the league, Lu Xun maintained an independent intellectual stance. He famously criticized Shanghai communist literary circles for their embrace of propaganda and described his political position as hengzhan ("horizontal stand"), signifying his struggle against both the right and the left, as well as against both cultural conservatism and mechanical evolution.1