Abstract: The paper posits that Guideways through Mountains and Seas and film slides are two of the starting points to investigate Lu Xun's cognition of and choice between "cultural image" and "political image." Lu Xun had eventually blended both for the purpose of the Enlightenment through Image. Lu Xun's concept of image is two-folded. On the one hand, on the functional level of images, Lu Xun invested the image with the function of enlightenment, through his affirmation of the universality of images, caution against the frivolous consumption of images, and reflection over the enslavement of images. On the other hand, on the level of semiotics, Lu Xun invested the image with independent status of narrative, through his concepts of the three types of image-text relationships. Lu Xun's experience with images set the intellectual tradition for left-wing image, and sheds light for the construction of left-wing imagology. Lu Xun's proposition was based on three rationales, namely, the internal congeniality between the left-wing and images, the Chinese discourse of left-wing experience of image, and the existence of the left-wing experience of image over a century.

Key words: Guideways through Mountains and Seas, film slides, Lu Xun, concept of image, left-wing imagology