A Madman's Diary

Between the lines of the history he has revered all his life, page after page of benevolence and virtue, a sleepless man finally makes out the two words that were always underneath: eat people. Once he has seen it he cannot stop. The neighbours' grins, the doctor sent to take his pulse, the elder brother who runs the house all become, he is certain, fellow diners waiting their turn at a feast four thousand years old that has always called itself morality. His terror is not delusion but the only clear sight in the country, and the sharpest cut turns inward, the dawning horror that he too, raised at the same table, may already have tasted what they taste. Lu Xun wrote the first great story in everyday Chinese, and the plain new speech was itself the blow, aimed at the lovely old language that taught a civilisation to devour its own and feel righteous doing it. The diary breaks off on a cry that has never stopped sounding: save the children.