Enlightenment·Romance·Decadence

This thesis discusses Yu Dafu’s time consciousness hidden behind the text on the basis of studying and summarizing his works. As one critical extent of modernity, time consciousness permeates Yu Dafu’s writings and thus forms up his special aesthetic value and genre. This reflects the difficulties the intellectuals of the May 4th period met at the construction of subjectivity. In Yu Dafu’s works, time consciousness is reflected in his conflict behind enlightenment, negativity behind romance and anxiety behind decadence.The main conclusions of this thesis are:The core of the subjectivity of modernity is the concerning of individuals, the construction of human free wills. Enlightenment consists of two aspects: the metaphysical, which is the pursuit of rational ideals, and the substantial, which is the satisfaction of human living desires. Except the thirst for modern rationality, Yu Dafu pays much attention to body desires. The irrationality brought up by this body enlightenment collides with the construction of subjectivity, leaving the individuals suffering the divergence of rationality and irrationality.Yu Dafu’s romance is using instantism as a way to free himself from this divergence, using the instant satisfaction of nature, desire and death to resist history made by time, using negative human attitude to reflect the weakness of intellectuals’ ideals. What lies behind all this is his doubt about the individual values in the transition from tradition to modernity.This weak spirit turns sick aesthetically. It is decadence with depression. It is fair to say that this decadence is anxiety under the conflicts of time, modern sickness under the mentality of the weak nations’ s people and individual sensitivity. This sickness reflects individual’s inner contradiction in the pursuit of modernity, which is the modern decadence under time consciousness.