Learning Mandarin - Short Story by 郁达夫 (Yu Dafu) - 春风沉醉的晚上 (Spring Night) -

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Short Story by 郁达夫 (Yu Dafu) - 春风沉醉的晚上 (Spring Night)
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gato -

Breaking out from an earlier thread:
http://www. /showthread.php?t=18542

Some of us are reading and will be discussing 春风沉醉的晚上 (Spring Night).
http://www.oklink.net/99/1222/yudafu/003.htm

You can read an article about the author here:
http://www.cctv.com/lm/176/71/88858.html
Yu Dafu

As I mentioned in the earlier thread, the style and the psychological details are a bit
reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald and other writers of the early 20th century. One can guess from
Yu's use of English phrases in places, that he probably was very much influenced by English
language literature of that era, though his writing is also very Chinese. The grammar and
vocabulary, particularly, are not completely vernacular Chinese (白话). One might say that it
has 10-20% classical Chinese elements. Some of Lu Xun's stories are similar in this respect.



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muyongshi -

Very interesting story indeed! I like his writing style. I still need to go through it a second
time, but I found his style of writing very colorful and perfectly descriptive and to me influence
from other languages was not obvious. I'll be looking into some more of his works...










文言訓開班 -

gato, thanks for starting the new thread!

I'm just checking in. I'm three paragraphs into the first chapter. I'm hope my slow reading speed
is not too annoying for the other readers here This Chinese is challenging to me, but should be
manageable.

I like the voice the writer's using so far. The language is indeed descriptive and colorful. Some
of the words trip me up, though. Out of curiosity, he had to 拖几本破书 in the first
paragraph--are 破书 books he'd already read?

同志们加油!










gato -



Quote:

Out of curiosity, he had to 拖几本破书 in the first paragraph--are 破书 books he'd already
read?

破书 literally means "dilapidated books," but I think here he's using it self-deprecatingly or
self-pityingly to refer to his few possessions. I'm glad you guys are enjoying it so far. I was
very impressed by the story myself.

Muyongshi, I see a European/American influence because of psychological details. I believe that
Chinese authors of earlier generations tend to be less focused on psychology. Many fiction writers
in the 1912-1949 period studied abroad and often were fluent in several foreign languages (e.g.
Japanese, English, French, German). Lu Xun was at least fluent in Japanese and I bet borrowed many
Japanese writing techniques into his writing. We have remember that vernacular Chinese writing
(白话) was still a brand new animal at this time. Everybody was experimenting and naturally
borrowing from foreign vernacular literature that they knew. Classical Chinese writing typically
is very pithy and informs by allusions. They are like those paintings that create images with
absence of brush strokes rather than the presence. You can't just directly translate from
classical Chinese to vernacular Chinese.










muyongshi -



Quote:

破书 literally means "dilapidated books," but I think here he's using it self-deprecatingly or
self-pityingly to refer to his few possessions.

I agree with you because within the first few paragraphs he goes to great lengths to describe his
books as pretty much being his only possession. I also think that it refers to the fact that books
are his "life" so to say. He doesn't really have any other possessions but he can't part with his
books.










roddy -

Is there a schedule for reading this over a certain period of time or are we just doing it all at
once?










muyongshi -

I read it in about 20-25 minutes the first time and am going to do a second time and re-lookup
some of the language and that will probably take me about and hour so....










roddy -

I thought it might be an idea to break it into chunks - has four parts anyway - and do them one by
one for the sake of people who will be doing significant amounts of dictionary look up. Not sure
if that's worth doing or not.










文言訓開班 -

I'm a little pressed for time as of right now. Would we be willing to put off finishing this story
until maybe Tuesday?










muyongshi -

Does it matter when who finishes what? We can just talk about it as people feel like talking about
it....it's not like a book club, just like any other thread, anybody can jump in anytime right?












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