Author: Liu Jun
Yu Dafu is a well-known writer in the history of modern Chinese literature, and his collection of novels published in 1921, "Sinking", is "the first collection of short stories in modern Chinese literature", and the three novels included in this collection, "Sinking", "Moving South", and "The Death of Silver Gray", caused strong social repercussions at the time after they were published. Why? It is precisely because of such explicit bluntness that they feel the difficulty of cheating" - from Guo Moruo's words, it is not difficult to feel the huge impact of Yu Dafu's novel as soon as it came out.
Oda's translation of "The Past- Six Outer Chapters"
Toshio Okazaki's translation of "My Dream, My Youth"
Omada's Biography of Udafu: His Poetry and Love and Japan
It is highly regarded by the Japanese literary community
The impact of Yu Dafu's works soon spread abroad, according to the "Yu Dafu Information" compiled by Ito Toramaru and others, in 1923, the Japanese magazine Yasheng published a review of Yu Dafu, and Masayoshi Yamagami, Haruo Sato and others subsequently talked about Yu Dafu in the article. In 1928, Uddhav's works began to have Japanese translations. According to the research of the Japanese scholar Yoko Okubo, the first translation of "Past" was 1 year after the publication of the original work (February 1927), and "Sinking" was 19 years after the publication of the original work (October 1921). Before 1945, "The Past" was translated 6 times and "Sinking" was translated 1 time; after 1945, "Sinking" was translated twice and "Past" was translated 5 times. In the process of repeatedly publishing collections of modern Chinese literature, the overall number of translations of "Past" is the largest, followed by "Spring Breeze Drunken Night", and the collection of other works is more scattered.
YuDafu studied in Japan and had contacts with Japanese writers such as Hario Sato, so it is only natural that he was valued in the Japanese literary circles. In addition to translating Yu Tatsuo's literary works, such as Oda's translation of "The Past - Six Outer Articles" and Okazaki Toshio's translation of "My Dream, My Youth", japanese research on Yu Dafu also started very early. Li Lijun's research shows that the earliest academic research on Yu Dafu in Japan was taken by Takeuchi Yoshinori in january 1937 in the "Book of Yu Dafu Jueshu" published in the January 22nd issue of the Chinese Literature Monthly, and Takeuchi's Tokyo Imperial University graduation thesis was "Yu Dafu Research". Synchronized with the flourishing of the translation of Yu Dafu's works after World War II, the Japanese Yu Dafu research also had a new breakthrough at this time, and the "Yu Dafu Data" and "Yu Dafu Data Supplement" compiled by Ito Toramaru, Akiji Inaba, Masao Suzuki and others can be called important achievements, and it is the Yu Dafu research of Ito Tiger Maru that pushed the Japanese Yu Dafu research to a new height. He argues that "although Uddhav was influenced by japanese writers such as the late British writers and Sato Haruo, compared with the latter's aesthetic psychology of appreciating decadence behind decadence, the decadence that underpins Uddhav is the traditional aesthetic concept of 'sentimental sadness'." Ito Toramaru saw that under the appearance of Yu Dafu's "external influence" there was still the inherent essence of the "Chinese tradition", which could not but be said to be a theory of Zhiyin. In addition to Ito Toramaru's "Theory of Tradition", Michio Kuwajima's "Theoretical View" and Comparative Perspective, Yoshi Sakai and Kaoru Inoue's "Sexual" Discourse, as well as Oda's "The Biography of Udafu : His Poetry and Love and Japan", Akio Inaba's "Udafu – His Youth and Poetry", Hirai Hiroshi's "Udafu - His Exploration in Literature", Masao Suzuki's "Udafu: Writers of the Tragic Age" and "Udafu sumatra", and Daito Kazushige's "Uddhafu and Taisho Literature " from "self-expression" to "self-realization" ", etc., are representative results of Japanese Yudaf research. Yu Dafu has studied in Japan, and has contacts with the Japanese literary circles, and later the disappearance is also related to the Japanese, which makes the Japanese Yu Dafu research, mainly focusing on "Yu Dafu and Japan", while working to solve the mystery of his disappearance.
Interact with the "Nanyang" literary scene
In another extraterritorial "Nanyang" where Yu Dafu lived, the publication and research of Yu Dafu's works were also quite active, and Singapore, Malaysia and other countries not only published "Yu Dafu's Southern Travels", "Yu Dafu Anti-War Papers", "Yu Dafu Collection", "Yu Dafu Anthology", and also published "Yu Dafu Biography" (Wen Zichuan). Wen Zichuan had contacts with Yu Dafu when he was studying in China, so his biography for Yu Dafu has a unique perspective, not only written in detail and vivid with a sense of substitution, but also quite respectful of Yu Dafu, providing a lot of details of Yu Dafu's "Nanyang" life, and the author also put forward his own unique views on Yu Dafu's final disappearance.
In addition to Wen Zichuan of Malaysia, Singaporean literary historian Fang Xiu, writer Yuan Dian, and writer and scholar Wang Runhua (born in Malaysia) and others have also made their own judgments on Yu Dafu's life experience and literary contributions in "Nanyang" - they invariably take the entanglement of "Nanyang" Yu Dafu and the MCA literary circle and the mystery of his final disappearance as the focus of their respective discourses, reflecting yu Dafu's "literary" traces in "Nanyang". Fang Xiu's affirmation of Yu Dafu focused on his anti-Japanese political theories of the "Nanyang" period, believing that these political theories showed that "Yu's thinking in his later years seemed to have made some leaps and bounds of progress"; Yuan Dian specifically sorted out and analyzed a major controversy between Yu Dafu and the "Nanyang" literary and art circles around his article "Several Problems". Relatively speaking, Wang Runhua's discussion of Yu Dafu's "Nanyang", from "Yu Dafu in Singapore and Malaya" to "The Exile Life of Yu Dafu in Sumatra Seen by Chinese and Japanese People", can almost be regarded as a brief history of Yu Dafu's "Nanyang" life.
It should be noted that in "Nanyang" Uddhav was also written by a new generation of MCA writers such as Huang Kamshu and Lim Khim Kin Khan as objects or characters, and wrote them into their novels (Wong Kam Shu's "The Disappearance of M", "Died in the South") and poetry (Lam Khyung Kin Kin's "May Fourth Poetry Carvings , Uddav Tu") – whereby Uddhav was woven into contemporary MCA literature and "internalized" or melted into part of MCA literature.
Explored by the English-speaking world
Yu Dafu's "literary" traces in the English-speaking world are mainly distributed in some literary anthologies, such as Sinking, which was compiled by Xia Zhiqing into "Short Stories in Twentieth Century China" (Columbia University Press). Compared with the translation of Yu Dafu's works, the English-speaking world seems to be more involved in Yu Dafu's research, and the results are more prominent. Xia Zhiqing's History of the Modern Chinese Novel (Yale University Press) is an earlier research work on Yu Dafu, and on the one hand, the author affirms that Yu Dafu "only dares to use his pen to fully expose his weaknesses, and this kind of writing expands the psychological and moral scope of modern Chinese novels"; on the other hand, he also feels that "his own imagination comes entirely from real life, dominated by his feelings and passions in his own small world", so he has its limitations and is "a spiritual explorer with some pathologies". The Czech scholar Pushk also discussed the creative characteristics of Uddhav in his Lyric Poems and Epics (Indiana University Press), arguing that Uddhav's "most typical feature is undoubtedly his unstable temperament." This temperament makes him run back and forth on the entire scale of feelings, from the lowest and most deplorable feelings to the noblest and noblest feelings such as beautiful feelings, self-sacrifice, etc.", Yudaf is prominent. Their judgment of Uddhav was undoubtedly profound and accurate. When Li Oufan talks about Yu Dafu, he excavates Yu Dafu's "writing and exposing his inner demons to his imaginary readers by writing and exposing his inner demons, and confessions are his cure" from the aspects of "loneliness" and "wandering" life forms and the pursuit of "self-illusions", so "he must be decadent", because only in this way can he realize the "self-illusion". This pushed Uddhav's research to the level of psychoanalysis. On this basis, the history of the University of California, Shi Shumei, sees Yu Dafu as "to expose the true face of traditional morality and aesthetics by practicing decadent aesthetics."
In the English-speaking world, the doctoral dissertation of R.O. Chang of Claremont Graduate University, "An Alienated Genius – Uddhav", which attributes Uddhav to a literary genius, argues that "his novels express an attraction — an attraction that is connected to the most moving emotions in the depths of the human psyche", which is undoubtedly quite high. In contrast, Michael Egan of the University of Hawaii's evaluation of Uddhav is much more concrete, "concrete" refers to his main research on Uddhav's early works, and "real" refers to his belief that the use of color, time, psychological elements, and irony into the work is an important symbol to judge Uddhav's becoming a "modern" writer.
Among European scholars, in addition to Pushk, the Slovak scholar Dolezarova is an important figure in the study of Uddhav in English, and she not only translated Uddhav's short story collection (titled "The Night of Spring Breeze") in Slovak, but also wrote two monographs in English: "The Characteristics of Uddhav's Literary Creation" and "Uddav and the Creation Society". For the characteristics of Uddhav's literary creation, Dolezarova comprehensively and systematically discussed the main characteristics of Uddhav's creation from the aspects of the diversity of "self-expression", the richness of creative methods, and the variability of literary concepts. In contrast, the conclusions drawn by the Dutch scholar Li Deji on the comparative study of Yu Dafu and Sato Hareo are more in-depth. Li Deji believes that in Yu Dafu's novel world, self-blame and frustration coexist, alienation consciousness and sexual distress coexist, absorbing both traditional Chinese literary techniques and mixing Western literary factors, reflecting the chaotic state of the Chinese cultural world at that time.
Yu Dafu's overseas "wen" traces, stopping in Japan, "Southeast Asia", as far as North America, Europe. In general, Uddhav is an object of "concern" in Japan, an object of "curiosity" in "Southeast Asia", and an object of "research" in North America and Europe. Japan saw its own literary influence and historical sins through Yu Dafu, "Nanyang" saw traces of its own literary growth and influence through Yu Dafu, and North America and Europe saw the historical process of "modernization" of Chinese literature through Yu Dafu. The synthesis of all this constitutes a complete "text" trace of Yu Dafu's overseas influence.
(The author is a professor at the School of Literature of Nanjing University, and the picture is provided by Yu Junfeng, the grandson of Yu Dafu)
Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition