Editing Lu Xun (section)

== Legacy ==
[[File:Lu Xun Kiskőrös.JPG|thumb|Bust of Lu Xun in [[Kiskőrös]], Hungary]]

Lu Xun has been described by Nobel laureate [[Kenzaburō Ōe]] as "the greatest writer Asia produced in the 20th century."<ref>{{cite journal|title= Interpreting Lu Xun|author=Jon Kowallis ([[University of Melbourne]])|journal=Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews|pages=153–164|year=1996|doi=10.2307/495630|volume=18|jstor= 495630}}</ref> Shortly after Lu Xun's death, Mao Zedong called him "the saint of modern China", but used his legacy selectively to promote his own political goals. In [[Yan'an Rectification Movement|1942]], he quoted Lu out of context to tell his audience to be "a willing ox" like Lu Xun was, but told writers and artists who believed in freedom of expression that, because CCP areas were already liberated, they did not need to be like Lu Xun. After the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, CCP literary theorists portrayed his work as orthodox examples of communist literature, yet every one of Lu's close disciples from the 1930s was purged. Mao admitted that, had Lu survived until the 1950s, he would "either have gone silent or gone to prison".<ref>Lovell 2009 xxi–xxxiii</ref>
[[File:Luxunguju zhengfang.JPG|thumb|Lu Xun Museum in Beijing]]

Party leaders depicted him as "drawing the blueprint of the communist future" and Mao Zedong defined him as the "chief commander of China's Cultural Revolution," although Lu did not join the party. During the 1920s and 1930s Lu Xun and his contemporaries often met informally for free-wheeling intellectual discussions, but after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 the Party sought more control over intellectual life in China, and this type of intellectual independence was suppressed, often violently.

Finally, Lu Xun's satirical and ironic writing style itself was discouraged, ridiculed, then as often as possible destroyed. In 1942, Mao wrote that "the style of the essay should not simply be like Lu Xun's. [In a Communist society] we can shout at the top of our voices and have no need for veiled and round-about expressions, which are hard for the people to understand."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_08.htm|title=TALKS AT THE YENAN FORUM ON LITERATURE AND ART|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> In 2007, some of his bleaker works were removed from school textbooks. [[Julia Lovell]], who has translated Lu Xun's writing, speculated that "perhaps also it was an attempt to discourage the youth of today from Lu Xun's inconveniently fault-finding habits."<ref>{{Cite news
 | last = Lovell
 | first = Julia
 | title = China's conscience
 | newspaper = Guardian
 | date = 2010-06-12
 | url = https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/12/rereading-julia-lovell-lu-xun
}}</ref>

During the Cultural Revolution, the CCP both hailed Lu Xun as one of the fathers of communism in China, yet ironically suppressed the very intellectual culture and style of writing that he represented. Some of his essays and writings are now part of the primary school and middle school compulsory curriculum in China.<ref name="Goldman">{{cite journal|last=Goldman|first=Merle|date=September 1982|title=The Political Use of Lu Xun|journal=The China Quarterly|publisher=Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies|volume=91|issue=91|pages=446–447|jstor=653366|doi=10.1017/S0305741000000655|s2cid=154642676 }}</ref>

Lu completed volumes of translations, notably from Russian. He particularly admired [[Nikolai Gogol]] and made a translation of ''[[Dead Souls]]''. His own first story's title, "Diary of a Madman", was inspired by [[Diary of a Madman (Nikolai Gogol)|Gogol's story of the same name]]. As a left-wing writer, Lu played an important role in the development of modern Chinese literature. His books were and remain highly influential and popular today, both in China and internationally. Lu Xun's works appear in high school textbooks in both China and Japan. He is known to Japanese by the name Rojin ({{lang|ja|ロジン}}; {{lang|ja|魯迅}}).

Because of his leftist political involvement and the role his works played in the subsequent history of the People's Republic of China, Lu Xun's works were banned in Taiwan until the late 1980s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chen |first=Fangming |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dYd5AAAAIAAJ&q=%E9%AD%AF%E8%BF%85+%E2%80%9C%E5%9B%9B%E5%8D%81%E2%80%9D |title=典範的追求 |date=1994 |publisher=聯合文學出版社 |isbn=978-957-522-076-1 |page=318 |language=zh |trans-title=The Quest for Paradigm |quote=一九四九年國民黨逃亡到台灣,展開積極的反共政策,從此出現了以後長達四十年的反魯迅傳統。}}</ref> He was among the early supporters of the [[Esperanto]] movement in China.

Lu Xun's importance to modern Chinese literature lies in the fact that he contributed significantly to nearly every modern literary medium during his lifetime. He wrote in a clear lucid style, which was to influence many generations, in stories, prose poems and essays. Lu Xun's two short story collections, ''Nahan'' (''Call to Arms'') and ''Panghuang'' (''Wandering''), are often acclaimed as classics of modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun's translations were important at a time when foreign literature was seldom read, and his literary criticisms remain acute and persuasively argued.

Lu Xun was also a leader of the Woodcut Movement in China (1930–1950) and widely recognized as a pioneer of the rise of the [[woodcut]] print in China.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Gan Zhenglun {{!}} Lu Xun and Uchiyama at the Woodblock-Printing Class {{!}} China |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/77150 |access-date=2024-01-17 |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art |language=en}}</ref> After encountering new printmaking techniques in Japan, Lu embraced the art form, envisioning it as a medium to promote social change and "an alternative socialist road to art."<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Corban |first1=Caroline |last2=Art |first2=Bowdoin Journal of |title=Lu Xun (1881-1936) and the Modern Woodcut Movement |url=https://www.academia.edu/13157636 |journal=Bowdoin Journal of Art}}</ref> Through writings, lectures, and woodcut print publications, Lu Xun was instrumental in inspiring a generation in China towards the black-and-white woodcut.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-01-20 |title=Lu Xun's Legacy: Printmaking in Modern China {{!}} SOAS |url=https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/lu-xuns-legacy-printmaking-modern-china |access-date=2024-01-17 |website=www.soas.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref>

The work of Lu Xun has also received attention outside China. In 1986, Fredric Jameson cited "Diary of a Madman" as the "supreme example" of the "national allegory" form that all [[Third World]] literature takes.<ref name="Jameson">{{cite journal|last=Jameson|first=Fredric|date=Autumn 1986|title=Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism|journal=Social Text|publisher=Duke University Press|volume=15|issue=15|pages=65–88|doi=10.2307/466493|jstor=466493}}</ref> Gloria Davies compares Lu Xun to Nietzsche, saying that both were "trapped in the construction of a modernity which is fundamentally problematic".<ref name="Davies">{{cite journal|last=Davies|first=Gloria|date=July 1992|title=Chinese Literary Studies and Post-Structuralist Positions: What Next?|journal=The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs|publisher=Contemporary China Center, Australian National University|volume=28|issue=28|pages=67–86|doi=10.2307/2950055|jstor=2950055|s2cid=155250111}}</ref> According to Leonardo Vittorio Arena, Lu Xun cultivated an ambiguous standpoint towards Nietzsche, a mixture of attraction and repulsion, the latter because of Nietzsche's excesses in style and content.<ref name="Arena">{{cite book|last=Arena|first=Leonardo Vittorio|year=2012|title=''Nietzsche in China in the XXth Century''|publisher=ebook}}</ref>
* A major literature prize in China, the [[Lu Xun Literary Prize]] is named after him. 
* [[233547 Luxun|Asteroid (233547) 2007 JR27]] was named after him.
* [[Lu Hsun (crater)|A crater on Mercury]] is named after him.
* The artist [[Shi Lu]] chose the second half of his pen name to reflect his admiration for Lu Xun.<ref>{{cite book|last=King|first=Richard|title=Art in Turmoil: The Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966–76|date=2010|publisher=Hong Kong University Press|location=Hong Kong|isbn=978-9888028641|page=62|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y_VLkX4tjAMC&pg=PA62}}</ref>