“Farewell to the Shadow” is one of Lu Xun’s most subtle metaphors.
The text begins with a split:
- the “person,”
- and the “shadow.”
The shadow appears when the person is asleep. That is not only physical sleep, but a deeper symbolic state.
A Double Bind
The shadow says it refuses heaven, hell, and even the promised golden future.
Why? Because in light, the shadow exists only as attachment; in darkness, it disappears altogether.
Darkness swallows me; light erases me.
This is a perfect paradox: existential annihilation in darkness, spiritual annihilation in light.
The “No-place” Choice
The shadow chooses “no-place,” refusing both slavery and erasure.
At first this sounds heroic. Then Lu Xun turns it tragic.
There is no third road.
The shadow wanders between dusk and dawn, staging a final ritual before departure, then chooses solitary disappearance.
That is not romantic freedom. It is costly lucidity.
One Person, Not Two
I read both figures as Lu Xun himself:
- the social self that must survive,
- and the inner self that refuses compromise.
To remain in society, the clearest and most rebellious inner part may need to be “killed.”
This is why the piece feels like self-separation rather than interpersonal farewell.
A Harsh Form of Love
The shadow’s final gift is absence.
It leaves so the “person” can keep living in daylight.
That gesture can be read as cruelty, but also as love: I will carry the darkness away and not occupy your heart.
The ending leaves a severe loneliness:
I travel alone, without you, and without any other shadow in the dark.
It is one of the loneliest sentences in Wild Grass.