Wild Grass: A Black Hole for Meaning and the Action to “Approach the Vanity”

Abstract: Wild Grass was the product of Lu Xun’s self rearrangement. The present paper relates the following pieces of work, namely The Passer-by, After Death, The Shadow’s Farewell, The Beggars, The Lost Good Hell, Hope, Trembles On Decline, Revenge, Revenge II, The Epitaph and A Warrior As Such, with an explanation of the inner logic. An individual who has no escape in between the heaven and the earth or between the life and the dead, wandering aimlessly, has no choice but take the process as the end. Nothing is real but darkness and nihil. Despair is vainity, and so is hope. The nirvana of meaning begets the philosophy of action to “approach the vanity” (“肉薄虚妄”), which in the end leads to the “revenge” on the crowd and himself. The paper pionts out that Lu Xun has combined the action generated by the “impossible” (“必无”) of “self” and the action expectedly summoned by the “possibilities” (“可有”) of “the others” into a rebellious force. Such a structure worked for Lu Xun until his last days, as validated by an analysis into his posthumous manuscript “Soirnal” (“夜记”).