| Author: | Yu Dafu |
| Country: | China |
| Language: | Chinese |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Sinking | |
| Published: | October 1921 |
| Oclc: | 729014234 |
Sinking is a novella written by Yu Dafu. The story was completed in Tokyo in 1921 and later published in a collection named Sinking in Shanghai the same year.[1] It is among the first generation of modern Chinese fictions telling psychological stories. The frank expression of sexuality and innovative emphasis on subjectivity of the protagonist is one of the reasons for Sinking's status as romantic, representative of May Fourth literature.[2] [3]
According to Janet Ng, "Sinking" focuses on the sexual anguish of a Chinese student in Japan and his grief over the country's weakness. Due to several overlapping experiences of the author and the protagonist in Japan, it can be reasonably inferred that Yu Dafu's personal experiences provide materials for the autobiographical story.[4]
The protagonist is a melancholic Chinese male student who is in exile in Japan. The hypocrisy and sensitivity in his personality led to his gradual isolation from both the Japanese students and Chinese fellows. Despite his constant longing for interpersonal connection, he decides to live a solitary life in the company of nature to read literature. Chasing a solitary life, he moves to N. City and finds a more remote cottage to settle in.
The protagonist's sexual desire is related to the national shame of Chinese students coming from a backward and weak country. On one hand, he looks forward to taking revenge on the Japanese and holds nostalgia for his homeland. On the other hand, he feels uncomfortable when facing Japanese women, such as the two Japanese students, the hotel owner's daughter, and the Japanese prostitute in the brothel by the sea. His sexual desire and inner conflict between individualism and collectivism lead to his demise. Eventually, driven by sexual impulse and expectation to return to the collective, he visits a brothel and ultimately sinks himself in the sea.
The novella was first published in 1921, when Chinese history was still semi-colonial and semi-feudal.[5] Japan's national modernization formed a contrast with Chinese's national shame of being invaded. At that time, China was a country that had been invaded by foreign powers. In the eyes of the Japanese, the status of the Chinese students were naturally low.[6] During this chaotic period, Chinese intellectuals felt that the Western model of modernization and ethnic unity of Chinese people were in conflict. In other words, the ideas of iconoclasm and nationalism are irreconcilable. On the other hand, the 1920s Chinese literature also received the influence of Western literature's naturalism. The 1920s Chinese literary works were characterized by a similar concurrence between the writer or protagonist's individual struggles, and the nation's dilemma. Chinese intellectuals further transformed the self-revelation function of naturalism into a national awakening one.[7] In the context of this era, the relationship between sexuality and nationalism depicted by Yu Dafu is rather paradoxical. Therefore, throughout the article, the author expects China to become "rich and strong".[6]
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unifying language used to be an important project in order to construct China's nationhood. Right before the publication of "Sinking," due to various Chinese dialects that hindered the communication of Chinese writers with their audience and traditional Chinese that was unable to meet the requirement of modernization, Chinese intellectuals were urged to find a “modern medium of communication” to end this linguistic instability in China.[8] From 1920 onwards, individual creation and expression gradually took interpersonal communication’s place as the concern of language reform. The object of reform also changed into grammar and European sentence structure. However, the purpose of the unification of people remained unchanged. Western literature became a new source of “elements common to human condition” for Chinese intellectuals. Therefore, "Sinking" is considered to carry “a social, historical and cultural intention” of the author.
Citations
Bibliography