Wild Grass () is a collection of prose poetry by Lu Xun, published in July 1927. It comprises twenty-four pieces (including the preface), written between 1924 and 1926. Among the best-known are "Autumn Night", , "Snow", "The Passer-by", and "The Epitaph". All of them first appeared in serial form in the magazine (Threads of Language). The collection was composed during Lu Xun's courtship of Xu Guangping, against the backdrop of the and the March 18 Massacre; these events left a deep imprint on its content. Wild Grass levels a critique at the darkness of contemporary Chinese reality, while also expressing the author's personal philosophical concerns and recording his emotional life. The pieces fall broadly into two thematic groups: one set comprises the author's self‑analysis of his own darker psychological states—for instance, "The Shadow's Farewell", "The Passer-by", and "The Epitaph"; the other depicts Lu Xun's struggle against conservative forces, as in "Autumn Night", "Revenge", and "In the Faint Light of Bloodstains", In terms of genre, the collection belongs to the category of prose poetry: it is concise, poetic, and occasionally rhymed. The prevailing mood is gloom and darkness, reflecting the poet's depression, grief, and disappointment with the masses. Technically, Wild Grass draws on modernist artistic methods such as symbolism, metaphor, and allegory, creating a rich tapestry of imagery and sometimes touching on the absurdity of surrealism. The work was inspired by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's My Prose Poems (或る散文詩), as well as by the writings of Kuriyagawa Hakuson, Natsume Sōseki, Mikhail Artsybashev, Charles Baudelaire, and Ivan Turgenev. It is widely regarded as a masterpiece of Lu Xun's individual creative output and is generally acknowledged as one of the great works of modern Chinese literature.
Background In July 1923, Lu Xun severed relations with his younger brother Zhou Zuoren and moved out of the extended Zhou family residence at in Beijing. At the time he had hoped to separate from his wife, , with whom he had no romantic attachment; this proved impossible, however, because she insisted on remaining with him. In May 1924 he moved to a new home on Xisan Tiao Hutong—a traditional siheyuan (courtyard house)—where a small room was built onto the north side of the south‑facing main hall to serve as his study and bedroom. He called this space the "Tiger's Tail" (老虎尾巴). From its window he could see the backyard and two jujube trees; the scenery of this courtyard is described in the first piece of Wild Grass, "Autumn Night." After moving to Xisan Tiao, Lu Xun published a large number of articles; all of the twenty‑three "Wild Grass" pieces were written in the "Tiger's Tail." The years 1924 and 1925, during which he wrote Wild Grass, represent the most prolific period of Lu Xun's life. Between 1924 and 1926, he completed over two hundred writings and translations.
By the end of 1923 his A Brief History of Chinese Fiction was finished, freeing him from the burden of preparing lectures. From October 1923 he began teaching at the Women's Normal College (which became the following year), and the enthusiasm of the young female students helped to rekindle "the dying embers of youth and creative desire in the depths of Lu Xun's heart." Wild Grass was written precisely during the period of Lu Xun's acquaintance and romance with Xu Guangping, an event that strongly influenced his writing. Lu Xun and Zhu An had a marriage in name only. Before he began composing Wild Grass he already knew Xu Guangping well, and by the summer of 1925 they had established a romantic relationship. Xu's love rescued Lu Xun from despair, but it also confronted him with a difficult choice between personal affection and moral responsibility. Roughly half of the pieces in Wild Grass were written after Lu Xun and Xu had begun exchanging letters and meeting, and they contain some of his most intimate emotions; it was indeed Xu's love that supplied the inspiration for parts of the collection.
Between September and October 1924, Lu Xun translated Kuriyagawa Hakuson's The Symbol of Anguish (苦悶の象徵) and found it deeply resonant. This work gave him both a method and a theoretical basis for creating Wild Grass, powerfully facilitating its birth. At the time Lu Xun was employed at the Ministry of Education while also teaching at Peking University and several other institutions, lecturing on the history of Chinese fiction and literature. In November 1924 a student movement erupted at Beijing Women's Normal University; the following May six members of the student autonomous association were expelled, and Lu Xun became embroiled in disputes with the university's president, , and with the professor . That summer he found himself deeply involved in the turmoil at the Women's Normal University, engaging in fierce debates with the faction behind the . In August he was dismissed from his official post by the Minister of Education, Zhang Shizhao, leaving him isolated and with a sense that justice had vanished; this forms the background for "On Making a Stand" and "After Death." Zhang Shizhao held a high position in the warlord government, and the bullying attitude that Lu Xun observed in him inspired "The Dog's Refutation." After the March 18 Massacre in 1926, when the Beijing government of Duan Qirui ordered troops to fire on peaceful demonstrators, killing forty‑seven and wounding more than a hundred and fifty, Lu Xun wrote the final two pieces of Wild Grass as a political response. Throughout the period of composition his health was poor; he suffered from tuberculosis and made frequent visits to the doctor. Facing illness and aging, the poet's depression surfaces repeatedly in Wild Grass.
Publication Lu Xun wrote "Autumn Night" on 15 September 1924; it was published in Yusi on 1 December that year, becoming the first piece in the "Wild Grass" series. From "Autumn Night" through to "Awakening" in April 1926, he wrote a total of twenty‑three "Wild Grass" pieces, all published in Yusi. In April 1927 he added the "Preface," compiled the collection, and it was published by in July of that year.
Contents
The opening piece, "Autumn Night," describes the jujube trees in the backyard. The silent night is filled with tension; the trees stubbornly challenge the strange, lofty sky and force it to retreat. The protagonist returns indoors and sees insects crashing against the lampshade, feeling deep affection and pity for them; he sees them as metaphors for revolutionary youth and silently mourns them. "The Shadow's Farewell" pictures a shadow that, while the person is fast asleep, wishes to leave, rejecting heaven, hell, and the "golden world"; it knows it will vanish in the light, yet chooses to be swallowed by the darkness. "The Beggar" finds the protagonist walking in wind and dust, encountering two begging children, but feeling no impulse to give; he thinks that if he were to beg he too would adopt a posture of wuwei (non‑action) and silence. The piece describes a world of numbness and estrangement. "My Lost Love" is a parodic doggerel verse that mocks the popular love‑lament poetry of the day by imitating Zhang Heng's "Four Sorrows." The protagonist gives his beloved an owl, candied haws, aspirin, and a "red‑banded snake," and receives only indifference in return.
"Revenge" portrays a man and a woman standing naked in the wilderness, as if about to embrace or to kill. Passers‑by rush to watch, but the couple simply stands motionless; the crowd grows bored and disperses, and the couple feel great joy. The work satirises a society obsessed with spectatorship. "Revenge (Part II)" draws on the Gospel of Mark to recount the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus refuses the anaesthetic offered to him and stays fully conscious in order to observe how the people of Israel treat the Son of God; this is his revenge on those who crucify him.
"Hope" gives voice to loneliness and the sense of aging, lamenting even the despondency of the young. It quotes the Hungarian poet Sándor Petőfi's "Song of Hope" and his dictum that "despair is as much a sham as hope," expressing a solitary struggle against despair. "Snow" depicts the beautiful snowscapes of Jiangnan, with children building a snow Buddha; the snow of the north is like powder or sand, scattered on houses and the ground, rising and swirling in the wind. "" recalls how, as a boy, the protagonist despised his younger brother for flying a kite and once angrily destroyed a kite his brother had secretly made. As an adult he feels deep guilt and wishes for forgiveness, but his brother has entirely forgotten the incident, so no forgiveness is possible. "The Good Story" remembers the beautiful rural scenery glimpsed from a boat on near the author's childhood home. Reflections swayed and divided in the water; red flower‑shadows floated and scattered. Just as the protagonist is absorbed in the scene, he wakes suddenly, overcome by loss and regret.
"The Passer‑by" is a short drama. The passer‑by walks forward without knowing his destination, his feet wounded and bleeding. He meets an old man and a girl; he rejects the old man's advice to turn back, but accepts a piece of cloth from the girl to bandage his wound. The old man tells him that the road ahead leads only to a graveyard, yet he insists on continuing. The passer‑by is an embodiment of the wandering Lu Xun. "Dead Fire" tells of the protagonist's fall into an ice valley, where he discovers frozen "dead fire." Revived by his body heat, the dead fire hopes to leave the ice valley with him even though it knows it will burn out; but the protagonist is crushed by a large stone cart at the valley's mouth.
In "The Dog's Refutation," the tattered protagonist scolds a dog for barking at him, calling it "snobbish." The dog retorts that it is "ashamed to be inferior to humans" because it cannot distinguish between officials and commoners, or masters and slaves, leaving the protagonist too ashamed to face it. The work satirises human snobbery and the slave mentality. "The Lost Good Hell" tells how the devil once defeated the heavenly god and ruled over heaven, earth, and hell. Many years later humanity rises up and overthrows the devil, taking control of hell and renovating it, only to inflict even harsher torments on the ghosts. The piece views Chinese society itself as a kind of hell. "The Epitaph" describes a tombstone whose front is carved with words: "There is a wandering soul, it is a long snake, devouring itself." The tomb is ruined, the corpse exposed, heart and liver gone; the back of the stone reads "Cutting out the heart to eat it, wishing to know its true taste." Finally the corpse sits up inside the tomb. "The Trembling of the Decaying Line" recounts the protagonist's dream of a widow who sells her body to raise her daughter; the daughter, once grown and married, despises her mother along with her husband. The old woman walks naked into the wilderness, her grief unfathomable, her decaying body trembling together with the heavens. The story symbolises the author's repeated experience of being ruthlessly betrayed.
"On Making a Stand" features a teacher who instructs his students in the art of argument by telling a story: praising a newborn child for future wealth and office earns gratitude, while telling the truth—that the child will die—earns a beating. Therefore it is best to keep one's opinions to oneself. "After Death" recounts a dream in which the protagonist dies on the road, unable to move but still conscious, is discovered by passers‑by and placed in a coffin, whereupon a bookseller even comes to sell him ancient books. The work satirises the numbness and coldness of onlookers, using flies to target the hypocrisy of , who was engaged in polemics with the author at the time.