The real story of the Ah Q
The true story of Ah Q (also: The true story of the Lord Everyman ) ( Chinese 阿 Ｑ 正傳 , Pinyin Ā Q zhèngzhuàn ) is a novella by the Chinese writer Lu Xun .
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Using the example of an underdog, the story draws a psychogram of Chinese society in the early 20th century.
The novella consists of nine chapters, which can be roughly divided into two parts.
Until the 5th chapter, Ah Q is portrayed as an unsympathetic villain.
Then the first-person narrator makes a jump in time and lets Ah Q disappear between the 5th and 6th chapter before he tells of his arrest and execution.
The first-person narrator is not one of the characters involved and distances himself from Ah Q by saying, for example: “ But I'm not Ah Q! "
The omniscient narrator takes a superior position, recounting the thoughts of the Ah Q and commenting on its story through blending.
The main character Ah Q (or AQ) - the name is deliberately so unusual - dreams of the revolution without doing anything for it and is therefore overwhelmed by the events.
The day laborer Ah Q and his friend Wang swing big speeches and want to change the world, but persist in their little misery for fear of endangering themselves. In the chapters dealing with his victories , he presents every chastisement he deserves as a personal achievement. Eventually Ah Q will be executed. It reads like this with Lu Xun:
Ah Q was lifted onto an open cart and several men in short jackets sat down beside him. The cart drove off immediately. Soldiers and militiamen marched in front with strange rifles, spectators stood on both sides and gazed with open mouths, but what was behind him - Ah Q couldn't see that.
Suddenly it became clear to him: “They want to cut my head off!” He saw black before his eyes, and his ears roared as if he had passed out. For a while he was in complete despair, but there were also moments when he was calm. He began to believe that there must be unfortunate people in this world who were unlucky enough to be beheaded.
He recognized the street and was surprised because they couldn't get him straight to the place of execution. He did not know that he was being led through the streets as a warning. But if he had known, he had probably only thought that it was the fate of certain unfortunate people in this world to serve as a public warning.
The crowd was only a spectator of the tragedy, which, as it was ridiculously staged, regarded it as a farce :
Weizhuang public opinion left no doubt that Ah Q must have been a villain. The fact that he had been shot was valid evidence for everyone. If he wasn't a villain, how could he have been shot? In the city, however, the public was outraged and dissatisfied, most people said that a shooting was by no means as great a spectacle as a decapitation. And what a ridiculous delinquent that was! To be led through so many streets without singing a single note from an opera - they had followed the train for nothing.
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The protagonists of the true story of Ah Q are all from the lowest classes.
Although Ah Q is the subject of ridicule, he looks down on everyone else with contempt. He has the ability to interpret every humiliation as a psychological victory. Lu Xun created this trait with regard to Chinese society: The inert mass had not yet internalized how backward China was compared to the foreign powers.
The True Story of Ah Q was originally intended as a humorous series for the literary supplement of the " Beijing Morning Newspaper" (Chenbao), but has increasingly become a social satire. As the sequel story had less and less to do with humor, it no longer appeared under the "Humor" column, but in the supplement for "New Literature". When Lu Xun finally had enough of the story, he let his hero die.
Lu Xun's uncertainty is reflected in the first chapter, in which the first-person narrator reports on his difficulties in finding a suitable heading for the biography of the casual worker Ah Q.
Lu Xun wanted to mock those who could not or did not want to understand the humiliation of China by the colonial powers and hold up a mirror to them with the figure Ah Q. Regarding Ah Q's attitude towards the revolution, Lu Xun writes:
- “ I figured that Ah Q would not become a revolutionary as long as there was no revolution in China, but would do so as soon as it did. "(" How 'The True Story of Ah Q' Was Written ", 1926)
The novella gives an insight into the conditions in the countryside at the end of the Qing Dynasty . Ah Q, who doesn't even have a name of his own and is therefore called with the nickname 阿 Q because he has no identifiable relationship. He is the embodiment of China at the transition from the Empire to the Republic of China . A real revolution is not taking place. The old structures remain because people's consciousness does not change.
Even in the deepest humiliation, Ah Q believes he is the greatest and thereby becomes " living proof of the superiority of Chinese culture over the rest of the world ".
In town he saw " the great sight of the heads of revolutionaries ", but then he joined the revolutionaries. His dream of revolutionaries, " with white helmets, with white mail shirts, with broadswords, steel whips, bombs, foreign cannons, bayonets and halberds " does not come true. Instead, Ah Q is brought to justice for a robbery he was not involved in and, in his ignorance, signs a confession. Even his execution is not a great spectacle, to his disappointment, as he is shot and not beheaded.
reception
The real story of Ah Q is considered a masterpiece of modern Chinese literature and has been translated into dozens of foreign languages.
People recognized the antihero as the embodiment of a national disease. This phenomenon of repressing unpleasant defeats has been branded as Ah-Q-ism . Ah Q's " victories " are deserved chastisements, which he presents to himself as great personal achievements.
Lu Xun castigates the Chinese tendency towards self-deception and self-confidence and writes in his treatise " How 'The True Story of Ah Q' Was Written ":
- " I wish I had, as people say, represented a period from the past, but I'm afraid that what I saw was not the past, but the future ..."
When in 2007 the cultural authorities wanted to take The True Story of Ah Q from the literary canon of Chinese school books and instead wanted to include the kung fu story " The Fighters on the Snow Mountains " by Hong Kong-born Louis Cha ( Jin Yong ), they did not expect the violent reaction of the Chinese public. Daily newspapers and the Internet took up the subject of " Lu Xun versus Jin Yong " and criticized that " classic modern literature and thought-provoking novels are being replaced by fast food ".
The southern Chinese weekly " Nánfāng Zhōumò " calls Lu Xun's novella indispensable. You have a "key role of enlightenment, which penetrated deep into the psyche of the nation". China's national character is in the fate of the " Ah Q ", while Jin Yong is " second and third class literature ."
China's intelligence newspaper " Guangming Ribao " pleads for a middle ground without Lu Xun and without Jin Yong:
- “ We don't need to fall from one extreme to the next. We used to politicize our school books with Lu Xun. Now we vulgarize them with Jin Yong ”.
See also
literature
- Lu Xun: The True Story of the Ah Q. Narrative. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 1982, ISBN 3-518-01777-2 .
Secondary literature
- Paul B. Foster: Ah Q Archeology: Lu Xun, Ah Q, Ah Q Progeny and the National Character Discourse in Twentieth-Century China. Lanham 2006, ISBN 0-7391-1168-X .
- Book, Hans Christoph; Wong, May (Ed.): Lu Hsün: The Collapse of the Lei-feng Pagoda - Essays on Literature and Revolution in China. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1973, ISBN 3-499-25032-2 .
- Raoul D. Findeisen (Ed.): Lu Xun (1881–1936) - texts, chronicles, pictures, documents. Stroemfeld, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-86109-119-4 .
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- ↑ Lu Xun: Applause. (= Works. II). Edited by Wolfgang Kubin. Unionsverlag, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-293-00490-0 .
- ↑ a b c Johnny Erling: China: With Kungfu against the modern classics. In: The world. September 6, 2007, accessed May 13, 2014 .
Web links
- 阿Q正传 (Chinese text in abbreviation )
- The True Story of Ah Q (English translation)