Patriotic Feelings Or Personal Feelings In Yu Dafu And His “Drowned”

Dated back to Yu Dafu's death,people wrote memorials and vindications for him,in which he was and died as a patriot,along with which his works were and are interpreted as patriotic woks.This interpretation greatly influenced our understanding of Yu Dafu and his works,and is still shaping our understanding of them.Yu Dafu's patriotic deeds and expressions late in his life are employed as sources to understand his early works,justified by the interpretative strategy of ‘to know a work,to know his life and world'.The feelings expressed by the protagonist of “Drowned” are not patriotic ones,but humiliated ones,aroused by yet denying his nationality.These feelings are essentially personal,though concerned with the concept of nation.The patriotic explanation deliberately overlooks the protagonist's hatred of Chinese and China,to reduce his hostility to the whole world to his hostility to Japan only,and reduce his feelings of being oppressed to his feelings of being discriminated.His late words,which express his lamentation of his motherland's weakness,is sorted out to express his good wishes for a wealthy and great China.The homeland that he is missing,a Utopian one,used to express his bad situation,is mistaken as the real one.It is the feelings to be cynical and oppressed that “Drowned” expresses.Yu Dafu regards oppressed poets as rebels and thinks himself one of them.That's why Yu Dafu sympathizes with the concept of cynicism in “A Lodging for the Night” readily and expresses it in “Drowned”.The protagonist's oppressed situation is virtual,out of his imagination.Yu Dafu's acceptance of Wilde's philosophy of “life imitates art” is the key to understanding the protagonist's imagined oppression.He thinks of himself as a persecuted poet,like Qu Yuan.The poet's weakness and Yu Dafu's pursuit for sadness make cynicism and oppression not positive rebellion,but weak groans.