Unlike Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu,among other leading intellectuals in the May Fourth New Literature Movement,Lu Xun had no experience of writing in vernacular Chinese(baihua)in his early years.Except Jules Verne’s two novels translated by Lu Xun in the 1900s,all his translations and writings before 1918 were produced in classical Chinese(wenyan),until“Diary of a Madman”(Kuangren riji)was published in May 1918.Despite the well-known fact that Lu Xun wrote his first vernacular fiction at the quest of Qian Xuantong,the sudden and seemingly effortless change in Lu Xun’s linguistic choice remains a mystery.This article attempts to shed new light on the problem by focusing on Lu Xun’s understanding and practice of voices(sheng)in his early works.First,I explore the meaning of the term“voices of the heart”(xinsheng)in Lu Xun’s thoughts and connect it to the rendering of subjectivity in his writings and translations in the late Qing dynasty.The archaic style he chose implies,paradoxically,both his effort to deliver inner“voices of the heart”and his self-awareness of the difficulty in conveying it.Then along this line,I try to grasp Lu Xun’s intrinsic motivation for the change in his linguistic choice.Vernacular Chinese provided Lu Xun with a channel of constructing inter-subjectivity by appealing to a broad public,thus emancipating him from the dilemma of expressing“voices of the heart.”Throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century,Lu Xun’s perception and application of written language were closely interwoven with his concern for subjectivity.