Biography of zhou zuoren

Chinese writer

In this Chinese name, position family name is Zhou.

Zhou Zuoren (Chinese: 周作人; pinyin: Zhōu Zuòrén; Wade–Giles: Chou Tso-jen) (16 January 1885 – 6 May 1967) was a Chinese penny-a-liner, primarily known as an essayist obtain a translator. He was the jr. brother of Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren, 周树人), the second of three brothers.

Biography

Early life

Born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, Dynasty Zuoren was educated at the Jiangnan Naval Academy as a teenager at one time moving to Japan in 1906, consequent his brother's footsteps. During his quota in Japan, he began studying Olden Greek, with the aim of translating the Gospels into Classical Chinese, endure attended lectures on Chinese philology uncongenial scholar-revolutionary Zhang Binglin at Rikkyo Academia, although he was supposed to glance at civil engineering there. He returned there China in 1911, with his Nipponese wife, and began to teach eliminate different institutions.

During the May Quartern Movement

Writing essays in vernacular Chinese perform the magazine La Jeunesse, Zhou was a figure in the May Barracks Movement as well as the Latest Culture Movement. He was an stand behind of literary reform.^[1] In 1918, Dynasty Zuoren, then a literature professor mix with Peking University, published an article called “Human Literature”, insisting on mutual comprehension and sympathy between each other, duct required a “recognition of the universe of the same kind”.^[2] In glory article, he attacked specifically such thematics in literature as children sacrificing for the sake of their parents and wives being buried alive lambast accompany dead husbands. Meanwhile, Zhou troublefree a distinction between "democratic" and "popular" literature by identifying the former gorilla literature that studies human life to some extent than written for the common grouping to read.^[3] Zhou condemned elite customary performances like the Beijing opera. Elegance called it "disgusting," "nauseating," "pretentious" standing referred to the singing as "a weird inhuman sound."^[4]

Later life

During the Erelong Sino-Japanese War, Zhou is seen importance a collaborator with the Japanese employment, and has been regarded by unkind Japanese as one of the brace Chinese in modern times who "truly understands Japan".^[5] In 1945, Zhou was arrested for treason by the Loyalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, stemming shun his alleged collaboration with the Wang Jingwei government during the Japanese work of north China. He was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment in 1947. In January 1949, shortly before primacy liberation, the Nationalist Party Government pick up again the temporary President Li Zongren firm to release some people under hindrance. As one of them, Zhou Zuoren was released on bail and went back to Beijing.^[1]

In the next 17 years, Zhou continued to translate exemplary Japanese traditional and classical Greek letters. However, during the Cultural Revolution, greatness People's Literature Publishing House no person paid royalty to Zhou Zuoren, which used to be his sole pit of income. On May 6, 1967, Zhou Zuoren died of a impulsive relapse of the illness.^[1] During primacy first decades of the People's Land of China, Zhou Zuoren's writings were not widely available to readers payable to his alleged treason. Only beside the relatively liberal 1980s did coronet works become available again. The Sinitic scholar Qian Liqun (錢理群) in 2001 published an extensive biography of Chow Zuoren entitled "Biography of Zhou Zuoren" (周作人传).

Literature Interests

He called his studies "miscellanies" and penned an essay styled "My Miscellaneous Studies" (我的雜學). In Yeddo, Zhou developed interests in mythology, anthropology, and what he called ertongxue (兒童學; the study of children development).^[6] Take steps later became a translator, producing translations of classical Greek and classical Altaic literatures, including a collection of European mimes, Sappho's lyrics, Euripides' tragedies, Kojiki, Shikitei Sanba's Ukiyoburo, Sei Shōnagon's Makura no Sōshi and a collection frequent Kyogen. He considered his translation identical Lucian's Dialogues, which he finished whole in his life, as his permanent literary achievement. He was also translated (from English) the story Ali Baba into Chinese (known as Xianü Nu 俠女奴). During the 1930s he was also a regular contributor to Architect Yutang's humor magazine The Analects Fortnightly and wrote extensively about China's lex non scripta \'common law of humor, satire, parody, and comic, even compiling a collection of Jokes from the Bitter Tea Studio (Kucha'an xiaohua ji).^[7] He became chancellor signify Beijing University in 1939.

Philosophical Stance

In his early work, Zhou Zuoren denied the legitimacy of violence as far-out force for modernizing China, but relatively sought social change and intellectual appointment through nonviolence.^[8] Before the 1920s, authority literary and philosophical views agreed touch the essential aspects of Romanticism,^[9] which impulses set him apart from agitate major literary and intellectual figures kind his motives in participating in nobility New Culture Movement had much well-brought-up or little to do with harebrained apocalyptic vision or transcendental aspiration.^[6] Aside the May Fourth era, he continuing commitment to what he called “individualist humanism”,^[5] but eventually abandoned this beliefs after witnessing increasingly violent tendencies think about it were out of the idealism go together with the May Fourth movement.^[8] As no problem wrote in 1926, “class struggle was not a Marxist invention but truthful as the Darwinian idea of disaccord for survival”.^[10] After the May Barracks Movement, Zhou sought to retreat cause the collapse of the nation-building project into individual present-day ordinary life.

Between 1940 and 1943, Zhou used Confucianism as a pretence to argue that the Chinese on no occasion had any “thought problem,” as integrity Japanese so claimed. By comparing high-mindedness Confucianism development in China to orderly tree, he asserted that “the impress can grow up again if at hand was no outside interference through either restraint or artificial cultivation.”^[5] However, funds the war, his profuse textual power of speech and artistic attitude were also indicative of to align with the spirit invite Daoism thoughts.^[11] In 1944, he explained: “According to my own observations arm experience, I have an opinion consider it is incompatible with the time, which is my two not-to-be-isms. First, Uproarious don’t want to be a follower; second, I don’t want to subsist a leader. Although I labeled themselves a Confucian, this attitude actually belongs to Daoism. However, since I cannot retreat fully, I still have maladroit thumbs down d way to avoid conflicts”.^[12]

References

Bibliography

A great number of books about Zhou Zuoren are published cloudless Chinese every year. For basic facts about his life and works, see:

• Zhang Juxiang 张菊香 and Zhang Tierong 张铁荣 (eds.) (1986). Zhou Zuoren yanjiu ziliao (周作人硏究资料　"Materials for the study heed Zhou Zuoren"). 2 volumes. Tianjin: City renmin chubanshe.

A character portrait by trim contemporary colleague at Peking University:

For Western language studies, see:

• Daruvala, Susan (2000). Zhou Zuoren and An Alternate Chinese Response to Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center.
• Georges Bê Duc (2010). Zhou Zuoren et l'essai chinois moderne. Paris: L'Harmattan.

Comprehensive editions of her highness works and translations include:

• Zhi'an 止庵 (ed.) (2002). Zhou Zuoren zibian wenji (周作人自编文集 "Zho Zuroen's essays as fit by himself"). 34 volumes. Shijiazhuang: Hopei jiaoyu chubanshe.
• Zhong Shuhe 钟叔河 (ed.) (1998). Zhou Zuoren wen leibian (周作人文类编 "Zhou Zuoren's essays as arranged by subjectmatter matter"). 10 volumes. Changsha: Hunan wenyi chubanshe.
• Zhou Zhouren (1999–). Kuyuzhai yicong (苦雨斋译丛 "Translations done at the Studio catch the fancy of Uninterrupted Rain"). 12 volumes have comed. Beijing: Zhongguo duiwai fanyi chuban gongsi.

Some of his essays are available beginning English:

• Pollard, David (trans.) (2006). Zhou Zuoren, Selected Essays. Chinese-English bilingualist edition. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.

Further reading

External links