Crazy Dionysus Song And Dance Of "Xing Tian"

Nietzsche has great influence on Lu Xun's literary personality, while Lu's literary tastes also have a strong similarity with the thoughts of Nietzsche. Nietzsche and Lu Xun are all members of a large family belonging to culture of life, and they have family resemblance.Nietzsche represents an extreme development of romanticism in the 18th century, and he is also the pioneer of existentialism. He has elevated reflection, criticism on rationalism and worship of life based on romanticism to a new height, and opened the curtain of existentialism. Lu Xun's acceptance of Nietzsche, has gone beyond the general sense of influence and acceptance, reaching a strong degree of resonance. In various periods Lu Xun has not only quoted the language of Nietzsche, but also inherited a distinct Nietzsche's style, that is, Lu Xun's essays of instant impression have strong resemblance with Nietzsche's motto prose style. Therefore, Lu Xun is always called"Chinese Nietzsche". The Prose Poem Wild Grass is shorter thanNietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but they are exactly alike both in structure and style, and even obviously cross-cutting, concerning with thoughts and spirits. In general, the ideas in Lu Xun's Essay are similar to Nietzsche's thoughts in many ways. Nietzsche's understanding of world and life is Dionysus'style as he said, that is to say, the world is constantly generated, changeable, endless, full of chance and uncertainty, and showing a type of ring structure——eternal cycle. All kinds of things are produced and destroyed continuously while the same ones appear repeatedly. The world is full of contradictions and conflicts. All kinds of wills and powers crash constantly and endlessly. Based on such belief on the world, Nietzsche insisted on reviewing it with willpower of life and art instead of morality. To completely eliminate the sense of original sins and suffering raised by Schopenhauer, the world should be looked upon as Heraclitus did, that is, a game among children. In such a world, people's real value is to fulfill personal value in a Superman-style——improving and surpassing oneself. The humanitarian idea of continuing to go beyond oneself, taking strength of will or The Will to Power as the axis, is accompanied by strongly negative spirit. The realization of the will to power is not static or harmonious, but in the constant state of struggle. Emphasis on the struggle makes Nietzsche reverse the traditional moral values. He valued evil as good, even called himself demon, and constantly fought against deep-rooted opinions about value. Nietzsche's aim is to lead people to face the tragic fate of the world and human life boldly, to raise courage and strength, to revaluate all values in the past.Nietzsche denied knowledge rooted in the Western tradition from Socrates, knowledge of rationality, the modern worldview and outlook on life. In his view, there is neither universal reason nor universal truth. Truth does not objectively exist there, waiting to be discovered, but does need to be created. As different people look at things from their own viewpoint, there is no eternal perspective. Truth is related with many complex factors, as for individual will, in particular the will to power. Nietzsche denied the traditional Christian ethics and worldview. The widely accepted ethical values such as universal love, or love their neighbors, etc., are immoral because these values suppress the outstanding individuals, making them submerge in a group without characteristics, and erase their personal value. Thus, Christian morality is representation of degradation and declined vitality. The real morality is confirming and displaying oneself. It also belongs to minority, that they are noble and be their own masters. On the contrary, it is slavery morality of denying oneself and mixing oneself among most of the mediocre ones. The fierce denial and reflection on traditional Western culture makes Nietzsche's thoughts have a profound impact.From youth Lu Xun has begun to think that the world is changing constantly, full of contradictions and struggles, and these thoughts run through all his life. After the May Fourth Movement, Lu Xun has constantly expressed this thought in his novels, essays and prose. In Lu Xun's eyes there is absolutely no harmonious satisfactory golden world, nor a happy ending. Life, as a journey, is a long distance overcoming many obstacles. One is just like a"traveler" who is always walking on the road. Lu Xun wants people to open their eyes to see and face the world and life directly, to abandon the empty dream of a golden world. This fluctuant experience of the world is especially obvious in Lu Xun's historical feelings. Lu Xun is not the sort of simple progressionist or evolutionist. He was often hesitant and doubtful about any evolutionary doctrines. And he displayed a historical opinion of cycling: the past time unceasingly reappears in reality. Lu Xun's action of constant rebellion and spirit of pursuing revolution, are all related with this historical opinion.Lu Xun's pursuit of the ideal personality has an essential similarity with Nietzsche. Lu Xun respected the stronger just as Nietzsche the Superman. No matter in the early time, the May Fourth Movement, or 1930's, the ideal personality for Lu Xu is the type of self-discipline, with the quality of the will to power as the core. Lu Xun's emphasis is on individual's self-selection, beyond the general public or social psychology. This kind people always have courage and fear nothing. Truth is subjective self-judgments, so is ethics. Lu xun's ideal of personality, such as "the Spiritual Soldier", "This Kind of Soldier," "Rebellious Warrior", and"Traveler", is completely similar to the temperament of Nietzsche's Superman. The images of The Lunatic, The crazy, The Idiot, etc, are all highly consistent with Nietzsche's Dionysian spirit, and are the spiritual portrayal of the "Rebellious Warriors". Nietzsche took craziness as the necessary quality of rebelling and fighting. The characters of the above-said all have a fighting and rebelling spirit. They all show the indomitable willpower of life in fighting and rebelling. Lu Xun likes to fight and his fight is the fullest proof of the willpower. Lu Xun's fighting spirit manifested a tendency for"evil is good", either explicitly or implicitly. Images of The Lunatic, The Crazy especially the type of Yanzhiao in Lu Xun's writings, are obviously consistent with the demon characteristic of Nietzsche. It is also a clear exposure of Lu Xun's evil character as he said more than once that his thoughts were dark.The most important element in Lu Xun's ideas of reforming the country and criticism on spectators, is to deny and attack tameness and enslavement, according with denial of moderate and reconciling personality. This idea of transformation of national character is alike with Nietzsche's intention of changing the humans as a whole. They all call for the sprit of resistance and rebellion of individuals and want to make their lives more powerful. Both Lu Xun and Nietzsche tried to replace the patient, reasonable, moderate, and reconciling type of personality in traditional society with personality with the will to power. However, Lu Xun did not go so far as Nietzsche did as about masses criticism. Nietzsche completely denied the masses, while Lu Xun is contradictory in doing so. On one hand Lu Xun criticized and showed contempt for the masses, on the other hand had sympathy with them because Lu Xun absorbed the humanitarian of Byronic hero in the writings of Byron. The conflict between Lu Xun and intellectuals of Hu-Shiian intellectuals is just like conflict between Nietzschean will of life and modern reason. In the issues of 3·18 Tragedy, debate about human rights, literature and class character, etc, intellectuals from Hu Shi Group laid emphasis on common justice, social and scholar order. Their intention was to promote the universal values, as well as eternal human nature, through common justice. But Lu Xun stressed on individual position and the rebellious spirit of individual life. From Lu Xun's point of view, Hu Shi Group has made compromise to the powerful class and was always eager to "help ". Lu Xun denied common justice, and his criticism on this and eternal human nature was obviously show Nietzsche's epistemology and view on human nature. In Lu's eyes, the so-called common justice must be combined with individual will. Lu Xun's was against Liang Shiqiu's literary theory of human nature from class-consciousness. His intention is not discerning whether literature has nature of class-consciousness but opposing the unchanged eternal human nature.Lu Xun's critique on traditional culture and social reality is permeated with a spirit featuring with "revaluation of values". It reflects a fully high-spirited will of life. Lu Xun fiercely opposed Chinese traditional culture and eyed the Confucian culture base on family system was man-eating culture. From his view, Chinese history is only the cycling of two kinds of social status: era of stability as slave and era as non-fulfillment as slave. Lu Xun viewed Chinese society as kitchen preparing for man-eating feast and the phenomena were everywhere around the country. Lu's view, concerning with spiritual temperament, is highly in line with Nietzsche's critique and reflection of Western culture.The general similarity of Lu Xun and Nietzsche is they all boast a strong passion from life culture. However, Lu's life cultural spirit has a traditional Chinese cultural root of Taoism. Lu xun liked articles of Wei and Jin Dynasties, he also liked intellectuals of that era, especially Ji Kang and Ruan Ji. This inclination reflects Lu Xun's preference to Taoist culture. This culture has two tendencies, on one hand the "static", on the other hand the "active". The former is featured as restraint, calm, quiet, and detached, while the latter passionate, impulsive and uninhibited. However, under the suppression of the unified culture, the initiative and passionate factors of the Taoist culture has been constantly depressed, weakened, and even totally ignored. Lu Xun always hated and opposed the "static" kind of Taoism. On the contrary, he inherited the "active" spirit of Taoism.