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Lu Xun

> Mourning Fan Ainong > To O.E. on taking Orchids        back to his country > I have grown used to endless        nights in Spring > By night and day the mighty        stream flows East > Strong grows the grass > An inscrption for the Sanyi        Stupa > Two poems for a friend > Dreams

Last Modified 30.0601

Lu Xun (1881 - 1936) was a revolutionary poet.  He took part in the 1911 democratic revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty and later, still disillusioned with the government, supported the communists. Much of his poetry relates to the decay he saw in his country under the hands of its rulers, and to the injustices and deaths his friends had to suffer.  Lu Xun had little time for his esoteric colleagues remarking " They may write an untitled poem on passing the burial ground of some palace maid, or on their reflections on seeing a withered tree".  His work comes from a very alive soul rooted in the reality around him.  His metaphors belie the times around him and translate the beauty of the China he was trying to save.  His time was an end of the imperialism that had governed for so long and an emergence of China into the modern world. His surviving poems come in general from pieces of calligraphy he written down and given to friends.