But Lu Xun's ambitions are far more general: to illuminate the social and political darkness in the China that he observed around him.
His exuberance in the beauty and color of the trees, grasses and vines he observed around his hometown of Concord, Mass.
This October, I am once again reading Henry David Thoreau's final essay, "October, or Autumnal Tints". His exuberance in the beauty and color of the trees, grasses and vines he observed around his hometown of Concord, Mass.
While awaiting a heart transplant, he observes the city around him bursting with carefree exuberance, as if everyone on the streets believed life was limitless.
He observes the absurdities around him with detachment, registering disgust and amusement with the slightest twitch of his fleshy, pockmarked jaw.
Crucial to his success were the blog posts he wrote each Sunday morning, in which he processed what he'd observed around him on those nights out, and reflected on his own relationship with alcohol.
In a note written after his return to England, he mentions that he had observed, around 1850, the collection from canoes of wild rice commonly encountered along the tributaries to the Amazon.
From his modern glass-and-wood house, he observes the suburban workadaddies around him like some alien tribe and barely registers the coming Cuban crisis blaring from the radio.
"A lot of these lame weary gimps around town," he observes, "were wounded veterans of the timber wars, guys with tight shoulders, lumbar complaints, calcified knees, dead toes.
In writing about a rally of shooting massacre survivors on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, September 19, he observes; "The silence was all around them now.
