英文摘要 |
The Hong Kong poet Ogai Kamome (Ouwai Ou) published a seemingly nonsensical palm-of-the-hand story in Furen huabao (The women’s pictorial) in 1934. Titled “Yanjiu chujiao de sangeren” (The three who study antennas), it used the science of insect behavior to interpret man-and-woman love in a playful fashion, typical of Neo-Sensationist stories. But the meaning of the mini-story goes beyond pleasantry. Although no names or books are ever mentioned, it implies Lu Xun’s advocacy of Jean-Henri Fabre’s ten volume work Souvenirs ntomologiques: étude sur l’instinct et les moeurs des insects (Memories of insects: study on the instinct and manners of insects; 1879-1907) during the 1920s. Lu Xun, who did not know French, read the Japanese translation, titled Konchūki (Book of insects, 1922-1931), by Osugi Sakae and Shiina Sonoji, two anarchists during the Daishō period. The intriguing questions this paper addresses include: Why were anarchists attracted to Fabre’s work? Did it ever occur to Lu Xun, who used Fabre’s work to comment on the Chinese national character, that science carried special meanings for anarchism? Was Ogai Kamome, intending to ridicule intellectuals like Lu Xun, aware of the complex implications of Fabre’s work, including his famous disputes with Charles Darwin on the theory of evolution? This paper will explore how texts and ideas travel in the Euro-Asian context, and how certain values are lost during the transaction, while others are accrued during the process. |