THE MODERN THAT IS NOT WESTERN: MEDIATED INDIVIDUALISM IN KHÁI HƯNG’S NỬA CHỪNG XUÂN AND YU DAFU’S “SINKING” - Full 10 điểm

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