The Many Voices of the Detached: Revisiting the Disputed Writings of Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren

Abstract

Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren are prominent literary figures in modern China and have greatly influenced culture of East Asia. We revisit a collection of twenty disputed prose pieces that were written in literal Chinese by the brothers and published pseudonymously at the beginning of their writing careers. Using 33 carefully selected function characters and words, we developed a simple logistic regression model that achieved over 93% accuracy on a separate validation set. Our research provides evidence that the brothers shared two pseudonyms, "Du Ying" (独应) and "Du" (独). Lu Xun used these pseudonyms in The Chinese Patriotism (中国人之爱国) and four other essays, and Zhou Zuoren used them in The Ordinary Folks' Responsibility (庸众之责任) and six other works. We demonstrate, for the first time, that the brothers collaborated closely on two works, The Strings of Melancholy (哀弦篇) and On the Difference Between the Russian Revolution and Nihilism (论俄国革命与虚无主义之别). This study sheds light on the early stages of the authors' thinking trajectory.