Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Wild Grass (Yecao)
Lu Xun's 1927 prose-poetry collection
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Wild Grass (Yecao) (Mid) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Non-Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Bi-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Variable |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Partial |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Singular |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Variable |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Reversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Variable |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Variable |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Wild Grass (Yecao)
1924-1926 composition, 1927 publication; mid-1920s political-existential crisis of the May-Fourth generation.
Space
Wild Grass (Yecao)
Beijing literary milieu and Lu Xun's interior dreamscape; published in Yusi journal; later read across Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Chinese-diaspora literary cultures.
Matter
Wild Grass (Yecao)
Dreams, nightmares, the symbolic image (shadow, passer-by, dead fire), the writer's interior — not the external social-pathological matter of the short-story collections.
Observer
Wild Grass (Yecao)
Lu Xun the modernist prose-poet — most experimental, most interior, most influenced by Baudelaire, Turgenev, Sōseki's prose-poem precedents.
Energy
Wild Grass (Yecao)
Nihilistic-and-hopeful coexistence; despair-and-resistance held simultaneously; the affective signature Wang Hui terms 'resisting despair' (反抗绝望).
Information
Wild Grass (Yecao)
Twenty-three short prose-poems; modernist symbolic abstraction; high-density poetic language; book opens with the famous Tici preface.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Wild Grass occupies an unstable place in the Lu Xun reception. Maoist canonisation found the collection harder to assimilate than the short-stories; post-Mao reassessment (Wang Hui, Qian Liqun, Leo Ou-fan Lee) recovered Wild Grass as Lu Xun's deepest philosophical-existential text. The book is now widely treated as a foundational document of Chinese modernism, with continuing influence on Bei Dao and Misty-Poetry-era successors.