Chapter 3: In the Name of Prometheus

At the end of the 1910s, Lu Xun was no longer a young man. In the years of the New Culture Movement that swept over China, his short story “A Madman's Diary” made him a prominent practitioner of the nascent New Literature, and his polemic essays its avant-garde warrior. He became a founding father of modern Chinese literary, cultural, and intellectual tradition. When Lu Xun wrote an essay titled “Women xianzai zenyang zuo fuqin” 我們現在怎樣做父親 (What is required of us as fathers today) in the fall of 1919, he contemplated more than the empirical question raised in the title. Referring to an old Chinese legend, he conveys a profound feeling for those symbolic fathers of his generation who were bound by the old tradition the generation attempted to sweep away. According to legend, in the war to overthrow the corrupt rule of the Sui Dynasty, a giant lifted a heavy gate to allow his fellow rebels to retreat. The giant was crushed under the weight, but among the survivors was the founding emperor of the Tang Dynasty. Revolting against the old China that both fostered and fettered him, Lu Xun writes, both at the beginning and the end of the essay, that the father will Burden himself with the weight of tradition and shoulder up the gate of darkness. Let him give unimpeded passage to the children so that they may rush to the bright, wide-open spaces and lead happy lives henceforward as rational human being.自己背著因襲的重擔,肩住了黑暗的閘門,放他們到寬闊光明的地方去;此後幸福的度日,合理的做人。1Reiterating the famous outcry of “saving children” from “A Madman's Diary,” Lu Xun portrays the father, both heroic and tragic, as an Atlas, a brother of Prometheus. In Aeschylus's play Prometheus Bound, Prometheus sympathizes with the fate of Atlas, another victim of Zeus's tyranny, who suffers eternal punishment of holding up the heavens with his head and hands (PV 349–50).2 But a reader of Friedrich Nietzsche would recall his energetic praise of Atlas, for lending not only his physical strength to humanity's existence but also his spiritual power in the dichotomy of Dionysus and Apollo. When Apollo “prescribes the course and extent of each individual wave,” there is “the flood-tide of the Dionysiac”: That sudden swell of the Dionysiac tide then lifts the separate little waves of individuals on to its back, just as the Titan Atlas, brother of Prometheus, lifted up the earth. This Titanic urge to become, as it were, the Atlas of all single beings, and to carry them on a broad back higher and higher, further and further, is the common feature shared by the Promethean and the Dionysiac. In this respect the Prometheus of Aeschylus is a Dionysiac mask.3In turn, Atlas is a Promethean guise. In his discussion of the Aeschylean tragedy, Lu Xun's revered master4 merges the image of Atlas with that of Prometheus, who “commits a great wrong and suffers”5 in his transgression between the two worlds of humans and gods, opposing “the will of Apollo to bring rest and calm to individual beings precisely by drawing boundaries between them, and by reminding them constantly, with his demands for self-knowledge and measure, that these are the most sacred laws in the world.”6 The Chinese disciple of Nietzsche, in his portrayal of this colossal figure, likely anticipates his famous analogy, made a decade later, between Prometheus and a who to bring In the essay titled and “the of he to a between the Prometheus and a for that he for humans and the punishment is and from with an to that it on the of its they would and not Lu Xun's and that of for the of The the father, is Prometheus and a in the cultural, and of modern This modern Prometheus was a but he was more as Lu Xun a to the of Prometheus and his in modern China, in the years of modern Chinese by Lu Xun's with Prometheus, not only Chinese the of Prometheus, but they also him in further In and the story in the Titan a in the of with each but In modern Chinese to the of and in But this will the in a to those who to with from the the Chinese in at the end of the The on the Prometheus in China and to the intellectual the that by Prometheus. the Chinese and a of the modern Promethean is not a Chinese In as “the Titan was so to and of the modern Prometheus to the image of the and the of the story in on and The that of the the of the in and were and the between Prometheus and his Chinese was in a The and the each in the with the Chinese at the of the modern and the and the and the will as the of this was by Chinese and became the in the the of Prometheus in Chinese praise at the end of the of his is the most and in the became a The and the of Prometheus. Prometheus is from a and so were his in the of Prometheus both the and in In Lu Xun's portrayal of the who the as “the to the gate of that the children and the giant in they are all is a In The of Nietzsche is the Promethean in to the of the of the He in the Aeschylean of of the great for eternal is a to the of the this is the and the of in of the boundaries between humans and him to a with Apollo and him with the of The of Nietzsche a on the of Prometheus. This from the Titan is in the from his play at the of to his of Prometheus is on the famous to But he not to that as a only to us by the in the of his to and to and Prometheus, by is in The Prometheus a modern The of in his Prometheus is as a of a tradition that the Prometheus, as a and a his fate with and the power of the to him and his will Aeschylus Prometheus in his to and in of Zeus's But it is who his and his The young wrote the as as his famous to he was an of The and the of Prometheus. Prometheus and he in the all of the (PV is this tradition that in Prometheus the for all and who not human as the The Prometheus is then to and by and more and to the Chinese and Xun this Prometheus a in his essay the power of Nietzsche as a Lu Xun as an to the to the in his of the He to to a of in modern those and the of and lead this to these he a from as an to his will of the and He to the in those China was its at the end of an Lu Xun these as us and of the Prometheus to a Chinese for Lu The Lu Xun for is an in a to the in the and its as single that is only He the of in in the human and in the the and of the the also in and Lu Xun's discussion is But the and and by is likely to his The this is but as he it in a for the of a The of the no than a between and at the of and that the existence of its This is the of the founding of Lu Xun in his of the to Lu Xun in and in the Chinese tradition at to a tradition and the of Xun's for this his In the the of to Chinese an Lu Xun was no in his than in his He and and and as the Tang but was the the a the in the to a for of in the of both its and those who the Lu Xun were by both and in the that In his against the is the that the He also the Chinese by this and the in that an energetic and tradition. back to the essay, back this for he and his all Lu Xun's are against and Prometheus, they and of is the of his Lu Xun the for his Prometheus. to the Titan is his discussion of Prometheus The in the an image of a from the in of the and in the that were to The a story of the with the of with in “the of the so by the and of Prometheus, would he the of to and his of the over the In this Lu Xun the in the that to the image of Prometheus, and to the between the and the of his of and are all to they are as as Prometheus to in of the of with his in the Prometheus and with the Titan in Lu Xun's not only to the but also to the the The and the to a are and the these and with each this a is as as his was a Chinese tradition to to all by a of as the of The of and Chinese also the in its and was an But the in Lu Xun's is the on as He a as is and is a as a for the and a to and them the as Lu Xun in his against from the of his on the is a of the and they not the of Lu Xun the as the of his was against the of his and his and his to the When to to the at the the that was an of the short of years to Lu Xun writes, the of was a years of Lu Xun was in as a young is and as his essay of more than Chinese is for famous for and The is to urge the Chinese to the on the for the of who the of the and a to the of would the in the a decade Lu Xun was on his that he to In to he that was no by and a the The that the essay was all to the himself at the of its Lu Xun would more on it to a Prometheus. 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