Intertextualizing Western Literary Texts in Yu Dafu's Early Short Stories

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Chapter 4 Finding the Right Medium for Emotional Expression: Intertextualizing Western Literary Texts in Yu Dafu’s Early Short Stories

If Su Manshu has been considered as a writer who linked up the “old-style” literature of the Butterfly School with May Fourth literature, then the identity of Yu Dafu as belonging to the latter is without much doubt. Originally named Yu Wen 郁文, he was born into a family of the intelligentsia class in Zhejiang Province. When he was only seventeen years old, he went to Japan to attend a preparatory course for college. Afterwards, he studied political economics at the Imperial University of Tokyo.1 In 1921, together with Guo Moruo and Cheng Fangwu 成仿吾, Yu established the Creation Society in Tokyo, which would eventually become one of the most influential literary societies of modern China.2 In common with many other May Fourth writers, Yu exhibited salient features of Western and Japanese influences in his literary works. However, of all the May Fourth writers, perhaps Yu was influenced by foreign literatures and thoughts in the most heterogeneous and wide-ranging way. In his short stories readers frequently encounter names of foreign writers such as William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Ernest Dowson, William Ernest Henley (1849–1903), Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), George Gissing (1857–1903), and so forth. Whereas he promoted British Romanticism alongside other members of the Creation Society, he almost single-handedly introduced German Romanticism and Japanese shishôtsetsu into China.3

1 For a biography of Yu in English, see Anna Doležalová, Yü Ta-Fu: Specific Traits of His Literary Creation (Bratislava: Publishing House of the Slovak Academy of Sciences; New York: Paragon Book Reprint, 1971). For a Chinese biography of Yu, see Lim Buan Chay 林萬菁, Years before “Sinking”: The Portrait of Yu Dafu in His Autobiographical Sketches (Cong Dafu zizhuan kan Chenlun qian de Yu Dafu 從達夫自傳看《沉淪》前的郁達夫), Occasional Paper Series 53 (Singapore: National University of Singapore, Department of Chinese Studies, 1987). 2 For an introduction to and analysis of the Creation Society and its relationship with the Literary Association, see Hockx, Questions of Style, 68–70. 3 Xu Zidong 許子東, New Perspectives on Yu Dafu (Yu Dafu xinlun 郁達夫新論) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang wenyi chubanshe, 1985), 236.

Yu Dafu and Lyrical Fiction in Modern Chinese Literature

Just like Su Manshu, Yu also intertextualized a wide range of foreign literary texts in his translated creations, i.e., literary texts significantly inspired by foreign texts. Some of these texts formed an integral part of the narrative, creating emotional ambiance and providing a lyrical climax for his short stories, while others possessed a looser connection to the core structure of his stories. In this chapter, I argue that the long-standing tradition in classical Chinese literature of quoting poetic lines or switching to verse form within a work of prose to express powerful emotions underwent a profound change in the early decades of the twentieth century. Instead of quoting from classical poems or writing in verse form to express strong emotions, writers like Yu cited foreign texts to express emotions such as love and sorrow. Quotations of foreign texts can be categorized into three groups in terms of the level of creative transfor- mation: random use of foreign words and phrases, sustained use of foreign lyrical poems, and free translation of foreign literatures to appropriate their emotional ambiance. I have chosen Yu from among May Fourth writers as the subject of this chapter because his literary creations share some significant commonalities with Su Manshu, as well as with the other “old-style” writers discussed in previous chapters. Yu was so well-versed in classical Chinese literature that his works often exhibit a linkage with the past which can also be found in the work of the Butterfly School writers.4 More importantly, like the writers discussed in previous chapters, Yu’s works reveal an obsession with excessive emotional expression.5 Anna Doležalová points out that Yu’s “first prose works are bel- letrized autobiographies. This fact was influenced also by the Chinese traditional literary thinking refusing fiction [sic], and the then widely-spread genre in Japan of watakushi-shôsetsu. However, an essential role was probably played here by the spontaneous yearning of the young literate for self-expression.”6 She observes that Yu did not describe objective reality as such, but through it attempted to portray the individuality of his self-communicating hero.

4 Kirk Denton points out that in Yu’s short story “Sinking,” although the protagonist attempts to live out the view of self offered by the West, he finds himself invariably drawn back to China and “the comfort of a traditional community of like minds in a unified moral cos- mos.” Kirk Denton, “The Distant Shore: Nationalism in Yu Dafu’s ‘Sinking,’ ” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 14 (1992): 117. 5 Guo Moruo and Xu Zhimo were of course also prominent writers with romantic or lyrical inclinations, but they mainly wrote poetry and are therefore not considered in this book. 6 Doležalová, Yü Ta-Fu, 6.