O lobo dentro da criança: Otimismo e hesitação na literatura evolucionária de Lu Xun

The Wolf Inside the Child: Optimism and Hesitation in Lu Xun’s Evolutionary Literature

Abstract

In this work, we propose the image of the wolf, symbol of brutality and violence, as a key to understanding the evolutionary literature of Lu Xun (1881-1936), particularly the shift in tone between his first book of short stories, Call to Arms (Nahan, 呐喊, 1923), and his second, Hesitation (Panghuang, 彷徨, 1926). The wolf, whose days were numbered in the first book with the arrival of the new human, appears in the second work roaming free and devouring the children of China. Lu Xun’s pessimism, generated by his later experiences, devoured his early optimism. We will demonstrate how the wolf symbol is connected to and can be interpreted in terms of Lu Xun’s belief in the ethical evolution of humans and in the new humanity, as in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This interpretation explains Lu Xun’s critique of Confucian traditional culture, which would be fundamentally static and focused on the models of the past.

Keywords: Lu Xun; Wolf; Evolutionary ethics; Confucian culture; Nietzsche