Theodore Huters

Blossoms in the Snow: Lu Xun and the Dilemma of Modern Chinese Literature

[the] unending encounter with something unpredictably elastic and awesomely immense, the self oscillated erratically between the status of a victim and that of a demigod. The self had immense capabilities, but they could be exercised only in a slippery cosmic arena&dquo; (Metzger, 1977: 134). Later on in his book, Metzger develops a theory of two characteristic social types in Chinese history, the &dquo;moderate realist&dquo; and the &dquo;radical.&dquo; The former was characterized generally by a disposition to perceive political action as &dquo;difficult and gradual, because society was not easily malleable,&dquo; while for the latter, &dquo;political action, one based on the