Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 ______________________________________________________________________________ Volume 3 Article 85 ______________________________________________________________________________ 2022 The Modern That is Not Western: Mediated Individualism in Khái Hưng’s N ử a Ch ừ ng Xuân and Yu Dafu’s “Sinking ” Camellia (Linh) Pham Dartmouth College Recommended Citation Pham, Camellia (Linh) (2022) “ The Modern That is Not Western: Mediated Individualism in Khái Hưng’s N ử a Ch ừ ng Xuân and Yu Dafu’s “Sinking ” ” The Macksey Journal : Volume 3, Article 85 This article is brought to you for free an open access by the Johns Hopkins University Macksey Journal It has been accepted for inclusion in the Macksey Journal by an authorized editor of the Johns Hopkins University Macksey Journal Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 1 The Modern That is Not Western: Mediated Individualism in Khái Hưng’s Nửa Chừng Xuân and Yu Dafu’s “Sinking” 1 Camellia (Linh) Pham Dartmouth College Abstract Literary modernisms in East and Southeast Asia, though constituted by cultural and linguistic exchanges between various nationalisms and colonialisms, are habitually seen as a unidirectional transfer from Western imperial ideologies West - to - East transference of modernity usually considers literary history as a point where t ranslation emerges as a linear movement between source and target language, and colonial subjects as an unquestioned replica of the Western consciousness However , w hen examining literature subject to competing nationalisms, imperialisms, and colonialisms, specifically in early twentieth - century Vietnam and China, we must consider translation as both a conventional technique and transcultural metaphor of interpellating the foreign “other ” This presentation applies David Der - wei Wang’s metaphorical sense of “carving modernity” and Lydia H Liu’s conceptual framework of “translated modernity” to emphasize a discursive understanding of literary modernity in its constructed nature through “performative/constative narratives ” Modernity transpires by way of “tra nslated performance” until the modes of representations “acquire legitimacy within the host language ” In Yu Dafu’s short story “Chenlun” 沉淪 (Sinking) and Khái Hưng’s novel N ử a Ch ừ ng Xuân (In the Midst of Spring), individualism as an imported ideology is m ade manifest not as a revealing orientation inherent to the literature of modernist writers in colonial Vietnam and semi - colonial China Rather, individualist zeal, evocative of embodied actions and self - and class - consciousness, is continuously performed in the discourse of East Asian modernism as mediated individualism, allowing for comparative analysis of how the “self” contests the conventionally - accepted and binary tropes of modernity –– the “new” being equivalent to the “singular,” the romantic - self, an d the powerful West Keywords : Chinese literature, Vietnamese literature, comparative modernism, modernity, translation studies , T ự L ự c Văn Đoàn, New Culture Movement 1 In this paper, I use the translated English name for Yu Dafu’s “Chenlun” 沉淪 [Sinking] while retaining the original Vietnamese title for Khái Hưng’s Nửa Chừng Xuân [In the Midst of Spring] This deliberate decision stems from the fact that there has not been any officially published English rendition of Nửa Chừng Xuân, whereas “Si nking” has been translated in full into English by Joseph Lau and C T Hsia in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature See Khái Hưng, Nửa Chừng Xuân [In the Midst of Spring] (Sài Gòn: NXB Văn Nghệ, 1934); and Yu Dafu, “Sinking,” i n The Columb ia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature , ed Joseph S M Lau and Howard Goldblatt, trans Joseph S M Lau and C T Hsia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007): 44 - 69 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 2 September 1915 marked the founding of Xin Qing Nian 新靑年 [New Youth], the magazine that would eventually feature two seminal manifestos: “On Literary Revolution” 文學 革命論 by Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879 - 1942) and “Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature” 文學革命論 by Hu Shi 胡適 (1891 - 1962) These manifestos, harbing ers of literary revolution in China, were heralded by Li Zehou 李泽厚 (1930 - 2021) as the double tune of “national salvation and human enlightenment ” 2 The magazine hallmarked an important change as Xin Wenhua Yundong 新文化運動 [ The New Culture Movement] ( the 1 910s - 1920s) inaugurated the formal birth of modern Chinese literature The Movement’s thematic goals of “modernizing people through language, modernizing language through literature, and modernizing literature through Western thought” found camaraderie wit h a peripheral nation of the Sinosphere –– Vietnam –– where literary modernization reached its peak with Tự Lực Văn Đoàn [The Self - Reliant Literary Group; hereafter: TLVĐ] 3 It was not until the beginnings of TLVĐ and the Thơ Mới [New Poetry] Movement that th e process of literary modernization in Vietnam could be compared to that of mainland China, vis - à - vis the magnified and nation - wide scale of professionalism, formalism, and structuralism In this paper, I call into use the understanding of “modern” by David Der - wei Wang and Lydia Liu Regardless of how modernism as an aesthetic movement is quickly deemed futile, vitiated, and bereft of formal coherence, I invoke Der - wei Wang’s metaphorical sense of “carving modernity” and Liu’s conceptual framework of “translated modernity,” not to define what is constituted as “modern” in literature, so much as to emphasize the discursive way we understand literary modernity in its “constructed” and “transc ultural” nature through “performative/constative narratives ” 4 Modernity transpires in Vietnam and China by way of the modernists’ new and revolutionary paths, infiltrating through a conduit of “translated performance” until the modes of representations “ acquire legitimacy within the host language ” 5 Specifically, I apply the theoretical framework of modernity to “Chenlun” 沉淪 [Sinking] by Yu Dafu 郁達夫 (1896 - 1945) and Nửa Chừng Xuân [In the Midst of Spring] by Khái Hưng (1896 - 1947) Born in the same year ag ainst the backdrop of a volatile period of revolutionizing 2 Quoted in Gu Ming Dong, Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature (London; New York: Routledge, 2019), 19 3 It may seem contentious for contemporary scholarship about modern Vietnam to include the country as part of the East Asian cultural sphere , or the Sinosphere, instead of regarding Vietnam in postcolonia l discourse as a Southeast Asian nation By including Vietnam in the realm of Sinitic influence, I highlight the puzzling characteristics of “claiming modernity,” as a result of the understanding that “modernity is an absent figure, an unattainable state ” Since the status of modernities in both countries is rather ambiguous, it would be arbitrary to decisively cut Vietnam off from its thousand - year Sinitic root This classification highlights the comparative analysis between China as the epicenter of the S inosphere and Vietnam as China’s peripheral entity and casts light on the previously ignored similarities between the two modern nations For more discussion on the ambiguities of modernity, see Lingchei Letty Chen, “Reading Between Chinese Modernism and M odernity,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 24 (December 2002): 179 4 Lydia H Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity — China, 1900 - 1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 15; and David Der - wei Wang, “The Literary Mind and the Carving of Modernities,” Der - wei Wang, David “The Literary Mind and the Carving of Modernities ” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 3 , no 2 (2016): 203 DOI:10 1215/23290048 - 3713779 5 Liu, Tr anslingual Practice , 26 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 3 literature, Khái Hưng and Yu Dafu were impassioned firebrands of their generations before they died at around the same age Khái Hưng, Vietnamese - born and French - educated, and Yu Dafu, Chinese - born and Japanese - educated, shared the juxtaposition of backgrounds representative of the transcultural tensions faced by their native countries at that time –– the competing powers of colonial imperialism and cosmopolitan nationalism, and foreign modernization and national backwardness 6 Drawing from the post - structuralist reading by Lydia Liu –– dealing with translation, not in its “ordinary sense of the word,” but considering the so - called “sinification” and “Vietnamization” 7 of concepts –– I claim that individu alism is not something inherent to the writing of TLVĐ and New Culturalists 8 to inculcate interpretive reading; rather, individualist zeal, evocative of embodied actions, is continuously performed in the discourse of East Asian modernism as mediated indiv idualism This treatment of the two texts allows for comparative analysis of how the “self” contests the binary and conventionally accepted tropes of modernity: the “new” is equivalent to the “singular,” the romantic - self, and the powerful West TLVĐ was a left - wing literary association in Tonkin and was arguably the most important intellectual collective during the interwar period (1932 - 1945) The group’s writers had a profound influence on the nascent yet powerful and tempestuous development of modern Vie tnamese society, covering a myriad of fields like literature, journalism, publishing, and art 9 They published extensively in their two journals –– Phong Hoá [Mores] and Ngày Nay [Today] –– which later became the highest - circulating journals in all of Indochi na that advocated for social reform and public proselytization of “gradual decolonization ” 10 Khái Hưng and Nhất Linh (1906 - 1963), TLVĐ’s co - founders and the group’s backbone, were prolific and significant 6 Martina Thucnhi Nguyen, On Our Own Strength: The Self - Reliant Literary Group and Cosmopolitan Nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2021), 6 - 10; and Gu, Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature , 19 7 “Vietnamization” [Việt Nam hoá chiến tranh] is usually used to denote Richard Nixon’s doctrine on withdrawing American troops to end U S involvement in the Vietnam War (1955 - 1975) My understanding of “Vietnamization,” however, deflects from this notion a nd strictly relates to translation studies based on Keith Taylor and Nam Nguyễn’s usage of Vietnamization as transliteration –– to adapt foreign words by way of Vietnamese spelling and pronunciation See Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley: Universi ty of California Press, 1983), 53; and Nam Nguyễn, Phiên Dịch Học Lịch Sử - Văn Hoá: Trường hợp Truyền Kỳ Mạn Lục [Historical and Cultural Translation Studies: The Case of Truyền Kỳ Mạn Lục] (Ho Chi Minh City: Vietnam National University Press, 2002) 8 I used the term “New Culturalist” instead of “May Fourth writers” based on Ziqi Yuan, “‘Isms’ and the Refractions of World Literature in May Fourth China” (Master’s thesis, The Ohio State University, 2005), 7 - 8 Yuan says: “According to the convention in Ch inese studies in the English - speaking sphere, ‘New Culturalist’ usually refers to the intellectuals who were supporters and promoters of the New Culture Movement Usually, native Chinese speakers do not distinguish between ‘the May Fourth Movement’ and ‘th e New Culture Movement ’ For my purposes, the term ‘New Culture Movement’ emphasizes the culture - related content of the historical period, which centers on ideas and practices regarding the construction of a modern national culture and literature (as oppos ed to the traditional, imperial Chinese culture and literature), linguistic reforms, education reforms, and so on ” 9 For discussion of TLVĐ’s literary contributions and their highly - commemorated standing in the process of literary modernization of Vietnam , see Phan Cư Đệ, Tự Lực Văn Đoàn: Con người và văn chương [Tự Lực Văn Đoàn: Writers and Literature] (Hà Nội: NXB Văn học, 1990); and Trần Đình Hượu, “Tự Lực Văn Đoàn nhìn từ góc độ tính liên tục của lịch sử qua bước ngoặt hiện đại hoá trong lịch sử văn họ c phương Đông,” [ Tự Lực Văn Đoàn from the Perspective of Historical Continuity Through the Turning Point of Modernization in the Literary History of the East ] Tạp chí Sông Hương (2021) http://tapchisonghuong com vn/tin - tuc/p0/c7/n30763/Tu - luc - van - doan - nhi n - tu - goc - do - tinh - lien - tuc - cua - lich - su - qua - buoc - ngoat - hien - dai - hoa - trong - lich - su - van - hoc - phuong - Dong html 10 M Nguyen, On Our Own Strength , 12 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 4 writers; entirely Western - educated, they pioneered a number of artistic initiatives and showed a deep commitment to the modern ideals of humanistic progress and individual freedom 11 Across the nation’s border, to the north, TLVĐ was preceded by the New Culture Movement, a group of writers in China during the 1910s and 1920s However, compared to TLVĐ, the New Culture Movement is much more internationally known, acknowledged, and studied The New Culturalists promoted a new Chinese culture grounded on Chinese liberalism and language reform 12 Unlike TLVĐ’s formal self - organized structure, the Movement was constituted of rather diverse literary voices which founded smaller literary units, like Yu Dafu’s Chuangzao She 創造社 [Creation Society], Lu Xun’s Zhongguo Zuoyi Zuojia Lianmeng 中國左翼作家聯盟 [League of Left - Win g Writers] , and Xu Zhimo’s Xinyue She 新月社 [Crescent Moon Society], among others The literary modernizations that emerged in Vietnam and China, two adjacent countries that exerted a pronounced influence on each other throughout over a thousand years of history, featured compelling comparative literary attributes, the study of which has largely been neglected since the French colonization of Vietnam and the crumbling of the Qing dynasty as China’s last imperial rule 13 Both movements feature the fascinating insistence of the “new” to lambast the “old ” The cultural and literary reformations, of which Yu Dafu and Khái Hưng were trailblazing writers, foregrounded the keyword “new” [ mới or 新 ], which emboldened an era of rebels and non - conformity The iconoclasm of the epochal reformations proposed a “new nation” with “new youth,” “new language,” “new literature,” and “new poetry ” The multi - layered and multi - directional discourse of non - conformity applauded Western ideals and scientific methods, and s imultaneously rejected the domineering status of Confucianism in both societies 14 Wenyan 文言 [Classical Chinese] and ch ữ Nôm
Volume Article 85 2022 The Modern That is Not Western: Mediated Individualism in Khái Hưng’s Nửa Chừng Xuân and Yu Dafu’s “Sinking” Camellia (Linh) Pham Dartmouth College Recommended Citation Pham, Camellia (Linh) (2022) “The Modern That is Not Western: Mediated Individualism in Khái Hưng’s Nửa Chừng Xuân and Yu Dafu’s “Sinking.”” The Macksey Journal: Volume 3, Article 85 This article is brought to you for free an open access by the Johns Hopkins University Macksey Journal It has been accepted for inclusion in the Macksey Journal by an authorized editor of the Johns Hopkins University Macksey Journal Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 The Modern That is Not Western: Mediated Individualism in Khái Hưng’s Nửa Chừng Xuân and Yu Dafu’s “Sinking”1 Camellia (Linh) Pham Dartmouth College Abstract Literary modernisms in East and Southeast Asia, though constituted by cultural and linguistic exchanges between various nationalisms and colonialisms, are habitually seen as a unidirectional transfer from Western imperial ideologies West-to-East transference of modernity usually considers literary history as a point where translation emerges as a linear movement between source and target language, and colonial subjects as an unquestioned replica of the Western consciousness However, when examining literature subject to competing nationalisms, imperialisms, and colonialisms, specifically in early twentieth-century Vietnam and China, we must consider translation as both a conventional technique and transcultural metaphor of interpellating the foreign “other.” This presentation applies David Der-wei Wang’s metaphorical sense of “carving modernity” and Lydia H Liu’s conceptual framework of “translated modernity” to emphasize a discursive understanding of literary modernity in its constructed nature through “performative/constative narratives.” Modernity transpires by way of “translated performance” until the modes of representations “acquire legitimacy within the host language.” In Yu Dafu’s short story “Chenlun” 沉淪 (Sinking) and Khái Hưng’s novel Nửa Chừng Xuân (In the Midst of Spring), individualism as an imported ideology is made manifest not as a revealing orientation inherent to the literature of modernist writers in colonial Vietnam and semi-colonial China Rather, individualist zeal, evocative of embodied actions and self- and class-consciousness, is continuously performed in the discourse of East Asian modernism as mediated individualism, allowing for comparative analysis of how the “self” contests the conventionally-accepted and binary tropes of modernity––the “new” being equivalent to the “singular,” the romantic-self, and the powerful West Keywords: Chinese literature, Vietnamese literature, comparative modernism, modernity, translation studies, Tự Lực Văn Đoàn, New Culture Movement In this paper, I use the translated English name for Yu Dafu’s “Chenlun” 沉淪 [Sinking] while retaining the original Vietnamese title for Khái Hưng’s Nửa Chừng Xuân [In the Midst of Spring] This deliberate decision stems from the fact that there has not been any officially published English rendition of Nửa Chừng Xuân, whereas “Sinking” has been translated in full into English by Joseph Lau and C T Hsia in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature See Khái Hưng, Nửa Chừng Xuân [In the Midst of Spring] (Sài Gòn: NXB Văn Nghệ, 1934); and Yu Dafu, “Sinking,” in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, ed Joseph S M Lau and Howard Goldblatt, trans Joseph S M Lau and C T Hsia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007): 44-69 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 September 1915 marked the founding of Xin Qing Nian 新靑年 [New Youth], the magazine that would eventually feature two seminal manifestos: “On Literary Revolution” 文學 革命論 by Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879-1942) and “Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature” 文學革命論 by Hu Shi 胡適 (1891-1962) These manifestos, harbingers of literary revolution in China, were heralded by Li Zehou 李泽厚 (1930-2021) as the double tune of “national salvation and human enlightenment.”2 The magazine hallmarked an important change as Xin Wenhua Yundong 新文化運動 [The New Culture Movement] (the 1910s-1920s) inaugurated the formal birth of modern Chinese literature The Movement’s thematic goals of “modernizing people through language, modernizing language through literature, and modernizing literature through Western thought” found camaraderie with a peripheral nation of the Sinosphere––Vietnam––where literary modernization reached its peak with Tự Lực Văn Đoàn [The Self-Reliant Literary Group; hereafter: TLVĐ].3 It was not until the beginnings of TLVĐ and the Thơ Mới [New Poetry] Movement that the process of literary modernization in Vietnam could be compared to that of mainland China, vis-à-vis the magnified and nation-wide scale of professionalism, formalism, and structuralism In this paper, I call into use the understanding of “modern” by David Der-wei Wang and Lydia Liu Regardless of how modernism as an aesthetic movement is quickly deemed futile, vitiated, and bereft of formal coherence, I invoke Der-wei Wang’s metaphorical sense of “carving modernity” and Liu’s conceptual framework of “translated modernity,” not to define what is constituted as “modern” in literature, so much as to emphasize the discursive way we understand literary modernity in its “constructed” and “transcultural” nature through “performative/constative narratives.”4 Modernity transpires in Vietnam and China by way of the modernists’ new and revolutionary paths, infiltrating through a conduit of “translated performance” until the modes of representations “acquire legitimacy within the host language.”5 Specifically, I apply the theoretical framework of modernity to “Chenlun” 沉淪 [Sinking] by Yu Dafu 郁達夫 (1896-1945) and Nửa Chừng Xuân [In the Midst of Spring] by Khái Hưng (1896-1947) Born in the same year against the backdrop of a volatile period of revolutionizing Quoted in Gu Ming Dong, Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature (London; New York: Routledge, 2019), 19 It may seem contentious for contemporary scholarship about modern Vietnam to include the country as part of the East Asian cultural sphere, or the Sinosphere, instead of regarding Vietnam in postcolonial discourse as a Southeast Asian nation By including Vietnam in the realm of Sinitic influence, I highlight the puzzling characteristics of “claiming modernity,” as a result of the understanding that “modernity is an absent figure, an unattainable state.” Since the status of modernities in both countries is rather ambiguous, it would be arbitrary to decisively cut Vietnam off from its thousand-year Sinitic root This classification highlights the comparative analysis between China as the epicenter of the Sinosphere and Vietnam as China’s peripheral entity and casts light on the previously ignored similarities between the two modern nations For more discussion on the ambiguities of modernity, see Lingchei Letty Chen, “Reading Between Chinese Modernism and Modernity,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 24 (December 2002): 179 Lydia H Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900-1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 15; and David Der-wei Wang, “The Literary Mind and the Carving of Modernities,” Der-wei Wang, David “The Literary Mind and the Carving of Modernities.” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 3, no (2016): 203 DOI:10.1215/23290048-3713779 Liu, Translingual Practice, 26 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 literature, Khái Hưng and Yu Dafu were impassioned firebrands of their generations before they died at around the same age Khái Hưng, Vietnamese-born and French-educated, and Yu Dafu, Chinese-born and Japanese-educated, shared the juxtaposition of backgrounds representative of the transcultural tensions faced by their native countries at that time––the competing powers of colonial imperialism and cosmopolitan nationalism, and foreign modernization and national backwardness.6 Drawing from the post-structuralist reading by Lydia Liu––dealing with translation, not in its “ordinary sense of the word,” but considering the so-called “sinification” and “Vietnamization”7 of concepts––I claim that individualism is not something inherent to the writing of TLVĐ and New Culturalists8 to inculcate interpretive reading; rather, individualist zeal, evocative of embodied actions, is continuously performed in the discourse of East Asian modernism as mediated individualism This treatment of the two texts allows for comparative analysis of how the “self” contests the binary and conventionally accepted tropes of modernity: the “new” is equivalent to the “singular,” the romantic-self, and the powerful West TLVĐ was a left-wing literary association in Tonkin and was arguably the most important intellectual collective during the interwar period (1932-1945) The group’s writers had a profound influence on the nascent yet powerful and tempestuous development of modern Vietnamese society, covering a myriad of fields like literature, journalism, publishing, and art.9 They published extensively in their two journals––Phong Hoá [Mores] and Ngày Nay [Today]–– which later became the highest-circulating journals in all of Indochina that advocated for social reform and public proselytization of “gradual decolonization.”10 Khái Hưng and Nhất Linh (1906-1963), TLVĐ’s co-founders and the group’s backbone, were prolific and significant Martina Thucnhi Nguyen, On Our Own Strength: The Self-Reliant Literary Group and Cosmopolitan Nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2021), 6-10; and Gu, Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature, 19 “Vietnamization” [Việt Nam hoá chiến tranh] is usually used to denote Richard Nixon’s doctrine on withdrawing American troops to end U.S involvement in the Vietnam War (1955-1975) My understanding of “Vietnamization,” however, deflects from this notion and strictly relates to translation studies based on Keith Taylor and Nam Nguyễn’s usage of Vietnamization as transliteration––to adapt foreign words by way of Vietnamese spelling and pronunciation See Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 53; and Nam Nguyễn, Phiên Dịch Học Lịch Sử - Văn Hoá: Trường hợp Truyền Kỳ Mạn Lục [Historical and Cultural Translation Studies: The Case of Truyền Kỳ Mạn Lục] (Ho Chi Minh City: Vietnam National University Press, 2002) I used the term “New Culturalist” instead of “May Fourth writers” based on Ziqi Yuan, “‘Isms’ and the Refractions of World Literature in May Fourth China” (Master’s thesis, The Ohio State University, 2005), 7-8 Yuan says: “According to the convention in Chinese studies in the English-speaking sphere, ‘New Culturalist’ usually refers to the intellectuals who were supporters and promoters of the New Culture Movement Usually, native Chinese speakers not distinguish between ‘the May Fourth Movement’ and ‘the New Culture Movement.’ For my purposes, the term ‘New Culture Movement’ emphasizes the culture-related content of the historical period, which centers on ideas and practices regarding the construction of a modern national culture and literature (as opposed to the traditional, imperial Chinese culture and literature), linguistic reforms, education reforms, and so on.” For discussion of TLVĐ’s literary contributions and their highly-commemorated standing in the process of literary modernization of Vietnam, see Phan Cư Đệ, Tự Lực Văn Đoàn: Con người văn chương [Tự Lực Văn Đoàn: Writers and Literature] (Hà Nội: NXB Văn học, 1990); and Trần Đình Hượu, “Tự Lực Văn Đồn nhìn từ góc độ tính liên tục lịch sử qua bước ngoặt đại hố lịch sử văn học phương Đơng,” [Tự Lực Văn Đoàn from the Perspective of Historical Continuity Through the Turning Point of Modernization in the Literary History of the East] Tạp chí Sơng Hương (2021) http://tapchisonghuong.com.vn/tin-tuc/p0/c7/n30763/Tu-luc-van-doan-nhin-tu-goc- do-tinh-lien-tuc-cua-lich-su-qua-buoc-ngoat-hien-dai-hoa-trong-lich-su-van-hoc-phuong-Dong.html 10 M Nguyen, On Our Own Strength, 12 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 writers; entirely Western-educated, they pioneered a number of artistic initiatives and showed a deep commitment to the modern ideals of humanistic progress and individual freedom.11 Across the nation’s border, to the north, TLVĐ was preceded by the New Culture Movement, a group of writers in China during the 1910s and 1920s However, compared to TLVĐ, the New Culture Movement is much more internationally known, acknowledged, and studied The New Culturalists promoted a new Chinese culture grounded on Chinese liberalism and language reform.12 Unlike TLVĐ’s formal self-organized structure, the Movement was constituted of rather diverse literary voices which founded smaller literary units, like Yu Dafu’s Chuangzao She 創造社 [Creation Society], Lu Xun’s Zhongguo Zuoyi Zuojia Lianmeng 中國左翼作家聯盟 [League of Left-Wing Writers] , and Xu Zhimo’s Xinyue She 新月社 [Crescent Moon Society], among others The literary modernizations that emerged in Vietnam and China, two adjacent countries that exerted a pronounced influence on each other throughout over a thousand years of history, featured compelling comparative literary attributes, the study of which has largely been neglected since the French colonization of Vietnam and the crumbling of the Qing dynasty as China’s last imperial rule.13 Both movements feature the fascinating insistence of the “new” to lambast the “old.” The cultural and literary reformations, of which Yu Dafu and Khái Hưng were trailblazing writers, foregrounded the keyword “new” [mới or 新], which emboldened an era of rebels and non-conformity The iconoclasm of the epochal reformations proposed a “new nation” with “new youth,” “new language,” “new literature,” and “new poetry.” The multi- layered and multi-directional discourse of non-conformity applauded Western ideals and scientific methods, and simultaneously rejected the domineering status of Confucianism in both societies.14 Wenyan 文言 [Classical Chinese] and chữ Nôm 𡨸喃 [Classical Vietnamese] were brought into confrontation with the written Baihua 白話 [Vernacular Chinese] and chữ Quốc Ngữ [modern Vietnamese alphabet, or national script] and colloquial Annamese Likewise, traditional Chinese and Vietnamese-regulated verse clashed against free verse composition, Confucian patriarchal society against democratic individualism, and high-brow literature against 11 For discussion of the prominent status of Khái Hưng and Nhất Linh within TLVĐ, see Lê Thị Đức Hạnh, “Thêm ý kiến đánh giá Tự Lực Văn Đồn” [More Evaluations of Tự Lực Văn Đồn], Tạp chí Văn học, no (1991), 78; and Phạm Thế Ngũ, Việt Nam văn học sử giản ước tân biên [Literary History of Vietnam–A New and Simple Edition], vol III, Quốc Học Tùng Thư, 497 12 Arthur H Hummel, “The New-Culture Movement in China,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 152 (1930), 55 13 For discussion on the interaction between twentieth-century Vietnamese and Chinese modernism in the context of translation, see Nguyễn Thu Hiền, “Dịch thuật văn học Trung Quốc từ kỉ 20 Việt Nam góc nhìn văn học sử” [Translation of Chinese Literature from the Twentieth-Century in Vietnam with a Literary History Approach], Hanoi: Faculty of Philology, Hanoi National University of Education (2020) http://nguvan.hnue.edu.vn/Nghiên-cứu/Văn-học-nước-ngoài/p/dich-thuat-van-hoc-trung-quoc-the-ky-20-o-viet- nam-tu-goc-nhin-van-hoc-su-1323 14 For “new poetry,” specifically in the case of Vietnam, I want to highlight Phong Trào Thơ Mới [New Poetry Movement] (1932-1945), a movement that is contemporary, interlocking, and mutually interdependent with TLVĐ We must recognize how the movement is called “Thơ Mới,” a compound of two vernacular Vietnamese words, instead of its synonymous “Tân Thi,” a Sino-Vietnamese word formation Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 literature for the popular masses.15 TLVĐ and New Culturalists both viewed heightened “self- reliant,” “self-sustaining,” and “self-sufficient” awareness as a continuity of nationalism, or rational patriotism.16 In addition, they single-handedly directed the promotion of modern literature for the working class––the keyword “popular literature” appears within both Vietnam and China’s discourses of modernity.17 And lastly, these groups of writers envisioned their modernization as an act of propagandization––enlisting the general public in the process of reading journals and newspapers.18 In this way, writers participated in the activism of modernization by mobilizing the knowledge of the masses and making the groups’ members not only consumers of literature but also producers in their own right Within the bounds of modernity, the common premise that looms over the characteristically Vietnamese and Chinese developments of poetic and novelistic genres is the individual’s embrace of the modern––the construction of a new subjectivity and the sense of individualism The most widely-accepted understanding of the “new”––the “singular”––can be explained by Chen Jia’ai’s statement on the inaugural issue of the journal Xinchao 新潮 [The Renaissance]: “The [new] is singular for being absolutely unique, whereas the [old] is plural for being open to infinite multiplication.”19 The new self-reflexive and self-articulated perception speaks to China’s modern selfhood, and in turn, it becomes an indication of China’s possession of modernity.20 Likewise, Neil Jamieson also attests to the tensions of modern literature in 15 For detailed manifestos of the two movements, see the translation of TLVĐ’s ten major objectives in Martina Thucnhi Nguyen, “The Self-Reliant Literary Group (Tự Lực Văn Đoàn): Colonial Modernism in Vietnam, 1932-1941,” (PhD diss., Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, 2012), ix The original text was published in Tự Lực Văn Đồn, Phong Hố [Mores], no 87 (1934), For one of a few examples of the New Culture Movement writers’ mission statement, see Hu Shi, “Wenxue gailiang chuyi” 文學改良芻議 [Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature], trans Kirk Denton, in Modern Chinese Literary Thought (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996), 125; Chen Duxiu, “Wenxue geming lun” 文學革命論 [On Literary Revolution], trans by Timothy Wong, In Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996), 141; and Timothy B Weston, “The Formation and Positioning of the New Culture Community 1913- 1917,” Modern China 24, no (1998): 274 16 Hu Shi’s second rule in “Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature” states: “Do not imitate the ancients.” Since “there is no literature to speak after the Six Dynasties,” we should “free ourselves from this kind of slavery and no longer write poems of the ancients and only write our own poems” to cure “our sick nation in such a perilous state.” TLVĐ in their canonized manifesto also pronounces that modern Vietnamese writers should “use one’s own ability to produce literary works of value” to “truly embody Annamese character.” See Hu, “Some Modest Proposals,” 125 17 Chen Duxiu’s third rule in “On Literary Revolution” states: “Down with obscure, abstruse eremitic literature; up with comprehensible, popularized literature!” TLVĐ, on the same note, dedicates two of their ten goals to champion popular literature: “Praise the beauty of our homeland as it reflects the common people, which in turn encourages others to love their country in a populist way” and “Follow populism, produce only works about the common people, and encourage others to love populism.” See D Chen, “On Literary Revolution,” 141 18 Notable initiatives include Chen Duxiu’s Xin Qing Nian 新靑年 [New Youth], The League of Left-Wing Writers’ bibao 壁报 [wall newspaper], and TLVĐ’s Phong Hoá [Mores] and Ngày Nay [Today] For more discussion on literary writings in the newspapers of the New Culturalists, see Charles Laughlin, Chinese Reportage: The Aesthetics of Historical Experience (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002), 87 19 Translated and quoted in Liu, Translingual Practice, 81 20 L Chen, “Reading Between Chinese Modernism and Modernity,” 176 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 Vietnam in a single quandary: the antagonism between the individual and the community.21 The most well-canonized claim about the synthetical setup of modernity and singularity by Hoài Thanh (1909-1982) and Hoài Chân also reveals that “since ancient times, there was no individualism in Vietnamese society,” as if “‘I’ was lost in a strange land” because the unique characteristics of the individual “were submerged in the family and the country, like a drop of water in the sea.”22 It was not until Thơ Mới (1932-1945) and TLVĐ appeared as two constellations in Vietnamese literary history that “I” became validated Vietnamese and Chinese literary modernists, scholars believed, attacked the long-ritualized, rigidly obedient, and unchanged Confucian society that emphasized family- and society-oriented happiness, with the constrictive localization of harmony in the sense of unity The second trope of modernity concerns the idea that the new self is conditional on the romantic one, which further deems individualism to be the stance oppositional to realism, based on the Western models between the two Modern Vietnamese individualism, Ben Tran argues, privileges the authentic self and heartfelt articulations “Chủ nghĩa cá nhân” [Individualism] comes hand-in-hand with the long-established tradition of romantic literature, which becomes an antithesis to socialist realism according to the nation’s adopted Marxist- Leninist apparatus.23 Take 1939 Dưới Mắt Tôi [Beneath My Eyes] by a notable literary critic, Trương Chính (1916-2004), as an example Trương Chính reckons Nửa Chừng Xuân is “a combative challenge” of the “individualistic endeavors” and the “new humanistic values” versus “a traditional system filled with the obsoletes.”24 Similarly, Chinese literary critics have built an edifice of factionalism dividing the realists from the romantics, as expressed in the antagonism between Wenxue Yanjiu Hui 文學研究會 [Literary Research Society] and Chuangzao She 創造 21 Neil L Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam, (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995), 111-13 22 Translated by David Marr, “Concepts of ‘Individual’ and ‘Self’ in Twentieth Century Vietnam,” Modern Asian Studies (Cambridge University Press) 34, no (2000): 787 For the original text in Vietnamese, see Hoài Thanh and Hoài Chân, Thi Nhân Việt Nam [Poets of Vietnam] (Hà Nội: NXB Văn học, 2015), 58-9 23 Scholarships about romanticism, displayed in TLVĐ’s writings, were extremely divergent not only between the interwar period (1932-1945), the First and Second Indochina Wars (1946-1991), and after the Đổi Mới period (1986-present), but also concerning the divide between northern and southern literary criticism During the interwar years, literary critics like Hoài Thanh and Hoài Chân, Vũ Ngọc Phan, and Trương Chính described “romanticism” as depressing, somber, or even antiquated and ordinary TLVĐ’s literature, henceforth, was corrective of these characteristics in popular Vietnamese romance novels like Tố tâm and Giọt lệ thu On the contrary, later Marxist scholars and the Communist party, such as Trương Tửu and Trường Chinh, considered romantic elements in TLVĐ as a pejorative tactic that signifies degeneracy, deterring away from social-realist literature that propelled Communist revolutionaries This strand of thinking, according to Ben Tran, was rooted in the taxonomical binary between romanticism and realism, individualist autonomy and social collective, and Western foreign paradigm and traditional Confucius society For more discussion, see M Nguyen, “The Self-Reliant Literary Group,” xii-xxii; and Ben Tran, “The Politics of Vietnamese Romanticism and Literary History,” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, Ann Arbor: ProQuest LLC, 2008), 19 24 Trương Chính claims: “Nửa Chừng Xuân truyện ghi phấn đấu cá nhân với chế độ Tác giả biện hộ cho giá trị nhân sinh công bố bất hợp thời tập quán luân lý cổ truyền tạo ra.” Trương Chính, “Dưới mắt tơi” [Beneath My Eyes], in Tự Lực Văn Đồn: Trào lưu - Tác giả [Tự Lực Văn Đoàn: Movement and Authors], ed Minh Đức Hà (Hà Nội: NXB Giáo dục, 2007), 313 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 社 [Creation Society].25 Ultimately, scholars consider romantic love as an elusive display of “individual sentimentality and passions” that, in effect, “directly challenges” Confucian ideological structure, representative of medieval Vietnamese and Chinese society Most poignantly, many scholars understand that individualism in China and Vietnam has an explicit connection with the equivalent interplay between modernization and Westernization Japan’s imperial expansion in China and France’s empire-building colonization in Vietnam resulted in the arrival of a Western modernity that was traumatically sudden and inherently foreign It is tremendously striking that Huỳnh Sanh Thông (1926-2008) translated the first policy of TLVĐ’s manifesto as “Modernize completely without hesitation, and modernization means Westernization,” even though the original manifesto published in Phong Hoá number 87 does not mention a definitive goal to Westernize [Tây phương hoá].26 TLVĐ even amplifies the strong sense of nationalism and self-producing literary recognition “Use one’s own ability to produce literary works of value,” the manifesto urges, “[don’t] just translate works from foreign countries simply because they have literary worth.” It explains, “[t]his is to enrich the literary corpus of the nation.”27 Interestingly, the interpretation of modernization as Westernization provokes a similar discussion in China Because the legitimization of the “new” in the New Culture Movement interlocks with the West’s territorial expansion, China has been led to believe that “the violence of imperialism” shaped the purported equation between Chinese modernity and “a complete and total Westernization”–– China had to modernize (read: Westernize) “in order to survive.”28 Considering the dialectic nature of these three tropes of modernity and individualism, I argue that Khái Hưng’s Nửa Chừng Xuân and Yu Dafu’s “Sinking” challenge the normative dyad of singularity and multitude and the dichotomy of Eastern-established society and Western- imported values The three tropes, although they appear arbitrary and unconnected to one another, are in fact woven together in a united, cohesive ideological whole The individualistic wo 我 or “tôi,” I contend, indicates a self-reflexivity that is not intrinsic but rather acquired Firstly, this means that the utterance of “tôi” in Nửa Chừng Xuân and 我 in “Sinking” only becomes meaningful through the mediated, repetitive performativity of language Secondly, via sustained performativity, individualism emerges not merely on the textual level, but also on socio-historical and linguistic levels that are characteristic of and unique to Vietnamese and Chinese modernism Individualism in TLVĐ and New Culturalists’ writings, therefore, is neither 25 Chang Hao described four primary literary tensions in the May Fourth era, including rationalism and romanticism, individualism and collectivism See Kirk Denton, “The Distant Shore: Nationalism in Yu Dafu’s ‘Sinking,’” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 14 (December 1992): 109 DOI:10.2307/495405 26 Huỳnh Sanh Thông, “Main Trends of Vietnamese Literature Between the Two World Wars.” Vietnam Forum 3, no (Winter-Spring 1984), 113-14 27 Tự Lực Văn Đồn “Tơn Tự Lực Văn Đồn” [Principles of Tự Lực Văn Đồn] Phong Hố (March 2, 1934): For further discussion on how the group encouraged writers to find the literary voice of tính cách An Nam [Annamese characters] instead of a total and universal Westernization, see M Nguyen, “The Self-Reliant Literary Group,” ix 28 Liu, Translingual Practice, 81; and Teh-yao Wu, “Chinese Traditional Values and Modernization,” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 4, no (1975): 116 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 something one can possess, nor is it an “equivalent” to an imported Western concept Individualism is significative,29 birthed in the process of “carving” modernities First, if we explain that these two literary modernists indulge in the absolute autonomy of individualism as an antithesis to the collective whole (based on the Western humanist model of the “self”), then how we come to terms with Yu’s patriotic and nationalist overtone in “Sinking”? Or does this dichotomy best represent the promotion of individualism in Khái Hưng’s Nửa Chừng Xuân, where at the end of the story, the heroine Dương Thị Mai fails to defend her love against the traditional, Confucianist bà Án? This dualistic thinking has been reexamined, because the heroine Mai’s “failed attempts” to articulate herself at the beginning of Nửa Chừng Xuân not speak to the “universality of Western individualism,” but instead to “a disjuncture between the modern individualistic “tôi” and the social reality of Vietnam’s colonial world” with social and historical determinants outside the Western European’s imaginations of the Orient.30 TLVĐ’s novels usually lack the hierarchical, neutral first-person “tôi,” characteristic of the group’s nuanced individualism Rather, a system of class-conscious, relationship-based, and societally charged first-person pronouns [đại từ nhân xưng] mediates “tôi” within a larger Vietnamese sociolinguistic configuration, such as cháu, con, em, and mình, among others During the financial negotiation between Mai and the landowner Nguyễn Thiết Thanh, the heroine continuously defines and redefines herself in several first-person terms to avoid Nguyễn Thiết Thanh’s urges that she marry him and become his fourth wife “Thưa ông, nhớ đến thầy tơi mà khóc” [Dear ơng (you), I (tơi) think of my father, and so I (tôi) am crying] is later altered into “Thưa cụ, cụ cho cháu nghĩ lại đã” [Dear cụ (you), cụ should let cháu (me) go home to think about this].31 Mai first establishes herself through a non-kinship pronoun, “tôi,” then changes to the kinship term “cháu,” which means grandchild, niece, or nephew She concurrently addresses Nguyễn Thiết Thanh as “ông,” which means grandfather Through this material, habitual reiteration of many first-person reference forms, Khái Hưng’s character has distanced herself from her addressee Such variety in pronouns does not exist in any European languages; hence, it cannot be simply deemed as an “equivalent” to the Eurocentric paradigm of individualism Mai makes use of the collective social stratum of the Confucian hierarchy to negotiate herself in the modern society of Vietnam.32 In this vein, Yu Dafu also calls into question the observed Western model of the self, which sees “individual consciousness” as the primary and ultimate negation of the Chinese “national collective.”33 The more the anonymous character assumes and recognizes the “self,” the more indignant towards the Japanese he becomes, exemplifying the irrefutably- documentarian and realistic value that Yu’s work has rendered When the character’s Japanese 29 The word “significative” in this sentence refers to the Jacques Derrida concept of “significance.” I borrowed Derrida’s commentary about “deferred” significance, which he argues “slides between signs.” Based on this Derridean concept, I understand individualism in East Asian literature not as an instantaneity––the idea that as soon as we have or wo 我 as signifiers, we instantly achieve “individualism” as a signified Rather, individualism herein “slides between signs” and acquires its meaning presumably through a process of reiteration by which the signifier becomes the signified 30 Trans Tran, “The Politics of Vietnamese Romanticism,” 131 31 Ibid., 155-56 32 Ibid., 15 33 Denton, “The Distant Shore,” 109 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 classmates shun his company, he immediately comforts himself: “They are all Japanese, all my enemies I’ll have my revenge one day I’ll get even with them” [他們都是日本人，他們都是 我的仇敵，我總有一天來復仇，我總要復他們的仇].34 In another instance, he puts down in his diary: “Why did I come to Japan? … China, O my China! Why don’t you grow rich and strong?” [我何苦要到日本來。。。 中國呀中國！你怎麼不富強起來].35 It is striking that the appearance of “I” always happens in concert with his malevolence towards Japanese subjects and his self-imposed exile, seen through the isolated self and the absent motherland To disregard the suicide of the “self” at the end is to accept unquestionably the astonishing complexity and significative ambiguity of Yu’s story, threatening the configuration of a “Chinaman” and “Chineseness” on the one hand, while asserting defiance towards the Western prototype of individualism on the other “Sinking” starts with the appearance of the lonesome “he” [ta/他] and ends with the suicide of the wretched “I” [wo/我] This roundabout cycle in which “he” finally obtains the “I” signifies repetitive compulsions, aggravated by and interpellated through psychological soliloquies and interior monologues that gravitate towards self-annihilation At first, when taking in the beauty of the natural landscape around him, he addresses himself as an ambiguous “you” [ni/你]: “This, then, is your refuge… You might as well spend the rest of your life in this simple countryside, in the bosom of Nature” [這裡就是你的避難所。 。 。你就在 這大自然的懷裡，這純樸的鄉間終老了罷].36 One can readily assume that this “you” is in fact the incognito “I,” because “he” was not incentivized to find a voice for “himself”––consigning his frustration to nature serves as his only escape while studying abroad in the colonizing nation of Japan This also enables what C T Hsia calls an “obsession with China.”37 Through Yu Dafu’s extensive literary name-dropping and poetry recitation, we see the main character gradually embark on the path of self-exploration to ultimately realize his “I.”38 Yu Dafu’s use of interior monologues gives voice to the mechanism of preservation; he decisively philosophizes about the character’s circumstances while relishing his state of remoteness and seclusion In one instance, for example, he finds himself prone to self-pity and solemnly vows, “I mustn’t that sort of thing again” [我以後決不再犯罪了].39 The multiple “I”s scattered throughout the work emphasize the material and habitual course of action that necessitates the final appearance of the “I” in the ending scene The call for a critical reevaluation of the carving of East Asian modernities and its strict accordance with the romantic-self elucidates the second trope Special attention should be paid to the fact that the textual backdrop of “Sinking” happens in Japan, which is also where the story was written.40 The status of Japan to Chinese students serves more than just a symbolic meaning: it represents a “national humiliation” to Chinese pride, traced back to even the First 34 Yu, “Sinking,” 34 35 Ibid., 35 36 Ibid., 32 37 C T Hsia, “Obsession with China: The Moral Burden of Modern Chinese Literature,” in A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967): 536-7 38 Yu, “Sinking,” 33 39 Ibid., 42 40 Feng Lan, “From the De-Based Literati to the Debased Intellectual: A Chinese Hypochondriac in Japan,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 23, no (2011): 106 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 Sino-Japanese War in the late 1800s, when the Qing empire succumbed to Japanese land and naval forces Jaroslav Průšek (1906-1980) characteristically links individualism with cynicism in the context of Chinese literature from the May Fourth Movement of 1919 until the second outbreak of war with Japan (1937-1945) “Subjectivism and individualism,” he asserts, should be “joined with pessimism and a feeling for the tragedy of life, along with an inclination to revolt and even the tendency to self-destruction.”41 This statement accurately maps onto Yu Dafu’s “Sinking,” wherein the no-name protagonist stands in front of a no man’s land and, triggered by his deep well of engulfing emotions and nationalist angst, sinks (drowns) himself to death Subscribing to the notion of individualism with core fixed values––tragedy, pessimism, and self-destruction––Yu Dafu pre-establishes his profound sense of crisis about the nation’s fate through the short story’s self-explanatory title, “Sinking.” Yu’s experiential trip to Japan as an overseas student (1913-1922) also testifies to a kind of “fictional material,” or “fictionality,” that retains its capacity to forestall the story’s notoriety as idealist, apolitical, and futile literature.42 In a monologue after encountering the two cheekily-laughing Japanese girls, the protagonist laments: “Oh, the girl must have known! They must have known that I am a ‘Chinaman’! … Revenge! Revenge! I must seek revenge against their insult” [她們已經知道了，已經知道我是支那人了。。。復仇復仇，我總要復他們的 仇].43 He realizes that his identity, rooted in the societal conception of “Chinaman” and “Chineseness,” is profoundly threatened by the collapse of the cultural whole Praising Yu Dafu’s historically accurate portrayal of the time period, Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892-1978) commends Yu’s short story as “a spring breeze blowing through China’s decaying society awakening at once countless youthful hearts at that time.”44 In another short story called “Xueye” 雪夜 [Snowy Night], Yu himself bluntly links the romantic-self, rendered through his ferocious nationalism, with libidinal acts: “The insults and mistreatment suffered by the people of a weak country are felt most deeply and most unbearably in relations between the sexes, the moment when one is hit by the poison dart of Eros.”45 It is not a stretch to conclude that this postulation about Yu’s works brackets “Snowy Night” with “Sinking.” In “Sinking,” the anonymous protagonist’s romantic-self seeks prostitution and sensual satisfaction, specifically in the context of capitalist fetishism, to invert the inferiority of his nationality as a means to 41 Jaroslav Průšek, “Subjectivism and Individualism in Modern Chinese Literature: Herodotus,” in The Lyrical and the Epic: Studies of Modern Chinese Literature, ed Jaroslav Prüšek and Leo Ou-fan Lee (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980) 42 I used the word “fictional,” instead of “fictive,” based on Catherine Gallagher’s “The Rise of Fictionality,” to emphasize the conditional nature of plausibility and believability as a catalyst of modern novels To Ben Tran, the speculative binary between romanticism and realism is often prompted by the confusion between fictional materiality and verisimilitude, derived from Western-influenced realism See Tran, “The Politics of Vietnamese Romanticism,” 25 43 Yu, “Sinking,” 35 44 Quoted in Denton, “The Distant Shore,” 108 The original text was extracted from Guo Moruo, “Lun Yu Dafu” 論 郁達夫 [On Yu Dafu], in Chuangzao She ziliao 創造社資料 [Materials on the Creation Society] (Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin, 1985): 803-4 45 Quoted in Eva Yin-I Chen, “Shame and Narcissistic Self in Yu Da-fu’s ‘Sinking.’” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 30, no 3-4 (2003): 567 The original text was extracted from Yu Dafu, “Xue ye” 雪夜 [Snowy Night] Vol 2, in Yu Dafu yanjiu ziliao 郁達夫研究資料 [Research Materials on Yu Dafu] (Tianjin: Tianjin Renmin): 58 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 10 defy the domineering manner of Japan’s declaration of war with China.46 Notably, the sexual insecurity that goads him into a brothel is only effectuated after he has sufficiently articulated and materialized the “self” through sustained and unfaltering soliloquies Conclusively, critics have claimed that “Sinking” should be held accountable for “blaming China’s backwardness for [Yu Dafu’s] own personal sexual crisis;” however, tying “the significant presence of the national/public allegory” with the seemingly “private history” does not fully justice to Yu Dafu’s “Sinking.”47 Applying the same critique of “Sinking,” that even the most far-off romanticism should be rooted in realism, we can see that Nửa Chừng Xuân appears to blend both structures When encountering Khái Hưng’s works, scholars in Vietnam tend to neglect the fact that before we had a prodigious Khái Hưng as a literary writer, we already had him as a journalist of Phong Hoá and Ngày Nay magazines Martina Thucnhi Nguyen’s 2021 On Our Own Strength is a notable and urgent call to view journalistic contributions of Khái Hưng, in particular, and TLVĐ, in general, in addendum with their literary texts Khái Hưng’s works thereby cannot be deemed a convenient escapism away from realist writing to idealism, to which Trường Chinh has berated as a “bourgeois romanticism,” conducive to self-indulgence and debauchery.48 In addition to Martina Thucnhi Nguyen’s On Our Own Strength, Phong Hoá thời đại [Mores in the Modern Times], the most recent collaborative work on TLVĐ, has proposed an epistemological way of reimagining Khái Hưng’s Nửa Chừng Xuân as a concept-based fluidity Rather than circumscribing the novel in the conceptually Western dyad of romanticism and realism, Phùng Kiên suggests looking at the novel as a “transshipment point” [điểm trung chuyển] between idealist endeavors and rationalist reality.49 Mai’s pregnancy with Lộc’s child is a romantic symbolism of the quest for individualism and simultaneously a prod to a traditional society that still exists Instead of having his mother bear witness to their marriage, Lộc convinces a woman to stage a matrimonial ceremony Phùng’s postcolonial reading of the lies of Lộc highlights the allegory between the “inequivalency” [không tương thích] of such “linguistic and communicative standards in the transitional times.”50 Again, Phùng’s underscoring of “inequivalency” calls to mind Lydia Liu’s parabolic sense of “translated” modernity––questioning the Westernesque spirits––where the transferring of meanings and concepts between languages stretches beyond the “horizon of an absolutely pure, transparent, and unequivocal translatability.”51 The mixture of romanticism and realism plays an 46 Yu, “Sinking,” 49-55 47 E Chen, “Shame and Narcissistic Self in Yu Da-fu’s ‘Sinking,’” 567 48 Trường Chinh, “Marxism and Vietnamese Culture,” in Selected Writings (Hà Nội: NXB Thế Giới, 1977), 253 49 The original reads: “Câu chuyện Nửa Chừng Xuân đánh dấu điểm trung chuyển lý tưởng lãng mạn thời đại với thực tế sống.” See Phùng Kiên, “Tự Lực Văn Đồn Chuẩn mực thẩm mỹ mới: Tìm kiếm tự chủ văn chương qua hoạt động báo chí” [TLVĐ and the New Aesthetic Standards: In Search for Literary Freedom through Journalistic Activism], in Phong Hoá thời đại: Tự Lực Văn Đồn tình thuộc địa Việt Nam đầu kỷ 20 [Mores in the Modern Times: TLVĐ in the Colonial Condition in Vietnam in the Beginning of Twentieth-Century], ed Dương Ánh Đoàn et al., 167 50 The original reads: “Lời nói dối Lộc với Mai đọc ẩn dụ đầy thú vị khơng tương thích chuẩn giao tiếp ngôn ngữ giai đoạn chuyển đổi.” Ibid., 167 51 Liu, Translingual Practice, 15 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 11 indisputable role within the discourse of the new individualism in Khái Hưng’s works and the often-deemed romantic literature by TLVĐ.52 In the face of the daunting newness, exacerbated by the sudden imposition and importation of a Western modern, the exploration of the liminality between the “traditional” (read as Chinese or Vietnamese) and the “modern” (read as Western) conjured up a narratological struggle for both TLVĐ and the New Culturalists Both cases elucidated the complications of cross-cultural studies discussion: when the term “modernity” is used so readily, it risks becoming uncritical The “new” is the counterpart of the “other,” a self-reflexive mirror feeding the imperialist hunger for exotica, Westernesque in the East Asian eye and Orientalist in the Western eye However, TLVĐ and the New Culturalists’ writings disappoint colonial expectations because their “new” is no longer the exact equivalent of the grand, all- powerful West Lydia Liu’s “Narratives of Modern Selfhood” has problematized Western-language categories like “the self” in the Chinese vernacular language (wo, ziwo, or ziji), the discourse of which has long been classified as a demonstrable “response” to the powerful West.53 In several May Fourth writings, including those by Yu Dafu, modernity often comes across as a self- identity sought by the male protagonist, almost always leading to a serious identity crisis.54 In Chinese, the first-person reference 我 (wo) and the third-person male 他 (ta) are not as clearly distinguished as in European languages because of the lack of subject-verb agreements The transitional effect between the male 他 and 我 is not as defined as the striking gendered difference between the third-person male 他 and the female 她 (also ta) In one specific instance, the male 他 claims that “the innkeeper’s daughter held some attraction for him, for otherwise he could really have committed suicide” [幸而他住的旅館裡，還有一個 主人的女 兒，可以牽引他的心，否則他真只能自殺了].55 His interpellated ego, exemplified through the Chinese language’s differentiation between gendered third-person pronouns, suggests a possibility that he depends on a woman for self-individuation––the Derridean différance between the signifier (both ta) and the signified based on the gender binary evokes the signification that complicates the emergent notion of modern selfhood.56 Because 我 is deemed inconsequential compared to 她, right at the moment when the verbalization of 我 reaches its zenith, the “I” immediately meets its death The nation has killed the “I”: “O China, my China, you are the cause of my death!” [祖國呀祖國！我的死是你害我 的].57 Yu Dafu allows for readerly cognition in a modernist sense that the “I” had to be verbalized, individualism uttered, modernity expressed, until the “I” is not allowed to talk any longer Throughout the course of voicing out those perplexing phantasms, perpetually stuck on 52 Khái Hưng and TLVĐ’s writings often appear to be convenient escapisms from nationalist pragmatism In the eyes of Communist officials like Trường Chinh, TLVĐ’s novels are too “bourgeois” by virtue of its indifference to socialist causes See Trường Chinh, “Marxism and Vietnamese Culture,” Selected Writings, 253 53 Lydia H Liu, “Narratives of Modern Selfhood: First-Person Fiction in May Fourth Literature,” in Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China: Theoretical Interventions and Cultural Critique, ed Liu Kang and Xiaobing Tang (Duke University Press, 1993): 103 54 Ibid., 102 55 Yu, “Sinking,” 57 56 Refer to footnote 29 57 Ibid., 55 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 12 the back of the main character’s throat while trying to banish and repress the painful contents into a “sex drive,” Yu views “Sinking” as an analysis of hypochondria, which Valerie Levan addresses as “an expression of a general modern predicament.”58 In Yu’s 1921 preface to the Sinking collection, he insists that the description of the sick youth’s psychology acts as a kind of anatomy, a jiepou 解剖 [dissection] of hypochondria.59 The clinical task of “dissecting” the sick mind of the nation to restore life to its weakened body is also Lu Xun’s favorite emphasis throughout the course of literary modernization in China.60 Writing creeps into Yu’s life like a self-sanctioned parasite and settles in his soul as a primary means to conceptualize the “I” out of himself This prodigious writer lays the whole nation’s life-battered tragedies onto papers bled with ink, not as those red-tinged marks on the purportedly pristine Treaty of Versailles which presupposed China’s nationwide protests and usurpation, but instead as an “armor” against the guillotine of national ignominy poised over Yu’s neck The modern individualism typified by literary reformation is now drowned in oblivion The suppression of the “I” herein happens textually and paratextually between two different layers: within the short story and outside of it, in the Sinking collection’s preface The collection’s foreword maintains an utterly detached tone, a strategic disguise to hide Yu Dafu’s motivations for writing.61 The estrangement of the self poses a challenge to the claim of equivalency between Chinese modernity and that of the West Through the demise of the main character, Yu alerts readers to a spiritual aspiration towards a modern sense of relative self- awareness Zhou Zuoren 周作人 (1885-1967), in his 1922 critique of the Sinking collection, recognizes Yu’s idealism: “People are not satisfied by reality and are unwilling to escape into emptiness Remaining in this cold reality, they seek far-flung happiness and contentment so out of their reach.”62 Ben Tran, when contextualizing Nửa Chừng Xuân, also attentively takes note of the conflation of Westernization and modernization, which provokes further acknowledgment of individualism manipulated by the wide variety of pronouns for addressers and addressees In the same financial negotiation between Mai and hàn Thanh, not only does Mai switch between a variety of first-person pronouns (as mentioned in previous points on individualism and collectivism), but hàn Thanh also employs an array of personal-referential terms In one moment, hàn Thanh expresses: 58 Valerie Levan, “Forbidden Enlightenment: Self-Articulation and Self-Accusation in the Works of Yu Dafu (1896- 1945)” (PhD Diss., Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010), 92 59 Trans by the author The original text was quoted in Levan, “Forbidden Enlightenment,” 39, which reads: “第一 篇沉沦是描写着一个病的青年的心理，也可以说是青年忧郁病 Hypochondria 的解剖，里边也带叙着现代人 的苦闷。。。第二篇南迁是描写一个无为的理想主义者的没落。。。这两篇是一类的东西，就把他们作连 续的小说看， 也未始不可的。” 60 Liu, Translingual Practice, 50 61 See discussion of this assessment, with quotations and translations, in Levan, Forbidden Enlightenment, 91-3 62 Trans by the author The original was quoted in Zhou, “Chenlun” 沉淪 [Sinking] in Yu Dafu yanjiu ziliao, 3, which reads: “这集内所描写是青年的现代的苦闷 生的意志与现实之冲突是这一切苦闷的基本；人不满足于现 实， 而复不肯遁于空虚，仍就在这坚冷的现实之中，寻求其不可得的快乐与幸福。” Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 13 Vậy đưa nghìn để cơ, để em làm vốn em vờ làm tờ cầm nhà, cầm đất để che mắt thiên hạ, hẹn đến tháng sáu sang năm chuộc… Thế đến tháng sáu sang năm lại giả văn tự cho cơ, cho em… tính có tiện khơng?”63 [So (I) will give cô (you) a thousand right now so that cô—so that em (you) will have some capital, and em will just have to counterfeit a promissory note for the house and land, to trick the rest of the world, to be paid next June And then next June will draft another contract for em, for cô Do cô think this will work?]64 Tran’s recognition of the intricacies and pronoun-specificities in this quote is enlightening The first-person pronoun “em” can refer to “em gái” [younger sister] or “em trai” [younger brother], or more frequently, perform a romantic connotation for the female partner in an intimate relationship In contrast, cô may seem more formal, distanced, and respectful The more hàn Thanh self-corrects from “cô” to “em” to address Mai in a sexual way, the more Mai simultaneously self-posits from the neutral “tôi” to “cháu” to establish the boundary of age, negating hàn Thanh’s established social structure and her own identification specificity If we apply the inflected-language trope of Western modernization and consider the word “tôi” as the Vietnamese equivalent of “I,” then this above dialogue does not signify the intrinsic social difference and personal intentions between Mai and hàn Thanh It is through a series of performative reiteration and redefinition of the first-person pronouns in Vietnamese that both Mai and hàn Thanh attempt to haggle over their inherent differences in social rankings The aforementioned sociolinguistic mobility in addressing and in self-reference is not an overanalysis of Khái Hưng’s literary works, given that Khái Hưng manages to extract the same exploration of characterial denial in fixed identification in another short story called “Lên Sĩ… Xuống Sĩ…” [Move Up Minister… Move Down Minister…].65 Within only a page, the story recounts the final match of cờ tướng [Chinese chess], but within the scope of the village Làng Đông, it is played with human pieces, termed cờ người [chess-human] The game’s two opposing sides are gender-segregated The charming Hai Phùng, a man characteristic of the “rotten scoundrel” of Russian literature, is drawn to an attractive woman playing the sĩ piece Over the course of the match, Hai Phùng exerts a dictatorial agency over the female sĩ piece, which resembles how Khái Hưng consigns an authorial force of individualism to the text at hand The chessboard symbolizes the microcosmic scale of a much larger and more regulated Confucian world, wherein authority figures who adhere to a set of parameters and bylaws dictate the movements of individuals Hai Phùng demands sĩ to move back and forth from her position on the magnified chessboard and even questions her identity.66 This kind of enmity happens in more than one story by Khái Hưng For example, in the interrogation between Mai and the French security guard in Nửa Chừng Xuân, the questioned individual “tôi” is explicitly gendered The act of gendering the single “I” posits a new argument for the discursive transformation of modernism The individual who is brought to confront the collective is essentially female, magnifying the difference between female “I” and male “I.” Turning to a more gendered trope and construction of Khái Hưng’s short story, Tran’s analysis sheds new 63 Khái Hưng, Nửa Chừng Xuân, 73-4 64 Tran, “The Politics of Vietnamese Romanticism,” 156 65 Khái Hưng, “Lên sĩ Xuống sĩ…” [Move Up Minister… Move Down Minister…], Phong Hoá (February 31, 1993): 66 Ibid Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 14 light on prevailing criticisms Neil Jamieson’s assessment, for example, attests to the firmly grounded dichotomy between the individual and the community In doing so, Jamieson failed to critically examine how individualism got “translated” into Vietnamese as a modern discourse Because of the separation of the “I” based on gender, not all “I”s employ the equal agency of striving to voice self-expression and individualism The portrayal of the female “I” and male “I” diverges, with men as the subject and women as the object of interrogation Individualism in East Asia is not an untouched cross-cultural site between the East and the West where we can measure the tropes of modernity through the readily available and homogenizing frameworks and universalizing machines of modernity derived from Western scholarship Lydia Liu and Xiaobing Tang, circa the 1990s, advocated eloquently for the need to problematize Chinese modernism China’s modern literary development enacted a site of pulsing tensions by virtue of China’s quasi-colonial existence after the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing Chinese literature, as Liu suggests, becomes a “translated modernity,” or, as Tang argues, a “subaltern subject” that “is neither the radically different other of the Western subject nor a simple replica of the Western consciousness.”67 Less than twenty years later, Vietnamese scholars also challenged the pristine West-to-East transference of modernity Both Ben Tran and Martina Thucnhi Nguyen explored the possibilities, as well as limitations, of “Westernization” and foreign Enlightenment ideals Vietnam’s modern literary development, they contend, happened in a society that was constantly grappling with colonial modernity dominated by Euro-American mores Such reexamination of the seemingly popular and sterile tropes––singularity, romanticism, and Westernness––memorializes a larger picture of the studies of modernism, embedded with its ever-changing structure of sociolinguistic and geopolitical histories unique to the cultures In the era of (post-) postmodernism, literary modernism seems to paradoxically stay in the antiquated past Comparative literary investigations between TLVĐ and the New Culturalists point to a continuation of transnational thought about modernism in East Asia and under-researched, yet vibrant literary cultures like that of Vietnam If the new is not necessarily an equivalent to either singularity and modernization is not simply viewed as Westernization, East Asian modernities appear unpolished, problematized, and contested More focus on modernity in Vietnam and China, not as a universal concept or hypothetical equivalence of the West, will further the studies of modernism with the consideration of oftentimes unstable bonds between languages, scriptures, cultures, and histories 67 Liu, Translingual Practice, xix; and Tang Xiaobing, Tang Xiaobing, Chinese Modern: The Heroic and the Quotidian (Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2000), 53 Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 15 Bibliography Chen, Duxiu “Wenxue geming lun” 文學革命論 [On Literary 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