Though a third-person

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Though a third-person

narrative, "Sinking" is unabash¬edly autobiographical. The familial and educational back¬grounds birkenstock shoes of author and hero are almost identical, and the story is told in an intimate fashion. In that sense, the whole body of Yil Ta-fu's fiction, with the few exceptions in the proletarian mode, constitute a Rousseauist confession. In one of his essays YU birkenstock Sandals Ta-fu declares that all literature is auto¬biographical. but characteristically he fails to emphasize the kinds of subtle transformation to which a great writer in¬variably subjects his personal experience. His own practice testifies to the predominance of a literal imagination fasci¬nated by the narrow world of his private sensations and feelings.The subjective hero is not without social significance, however: he is the impotent patriot, the harassed family man, the artist alienated from society. At times he is even the proud genius conscious of his superiority and scornful of the world's inattention. In "Ts'ai Shih Chi" (1922), a story about the distinguished Ch'ing poet Huang Chung-ts,Yu Ta-fu gives a magnificent if idealized self-portrait. Ar¬rogant, lonely, and extremely sensitive, the poet pits him¬self against the famed scholar and philosopher Tai Tung- yuan (one of Hu Shih's great heroes) and regards him as merely a member of the official establishment and therefore a pseudo-Confucianist. The poet himself patterns his life after Li Po. the genius of poetic spontaneity. In the story. Huang Chung-ts£ sulks and falls ill, recalls the past love of his early youth and weeps at the tomb of Li Po. laments his fate, and above all composes verse. By inserting a good many of the poems in the biographical contexts of their composition. YU Ta-fu restores to the emaciated poet all his feverish intensity.YU Ta-fu's autobiographical hero has also been generally regarded as a decadent character. Yet this decadence is only superficial, far from incompatible with a scrupulous moral sensibility. In "One Intoxicating Spring Evening" (1913), (he first-person hero is a struggling author down on his for¬tunes. Evicted from a cheap hotel, he moves to a flat in a slum district in Shanghai; in the same flat lives a girl who works in a cigarette factory. She suspects the writer to be a thief, since he never goes out to work in the daytime but takes frequent strolls at night. The girl, however, is sym¬pathetic and friendly, and once invites him over to share some food with her. One day the writer receives a five-dollar pay check; he goes out to take a bath and buy some clothing, and to repay the girl's kindness buys some fruit and dessert. That night at ten o'clock the two enjoy a snack together. In her candor, the girl asks him not to smoke so much and not to associate with thieves. Deeply touched by her solici¬tude, the writer restrains his impulse to embrace her and bids her good night with a promise of reform. Mainly of humanitarian interest in its depiction of two people in the clutches of poverty, the story also asserts the paralysis of lust in the face of innocence. Similarly, in "Late-blooming Cassia" (195s), the first-person hero restrains his concupis¬cence toward a lovely young widow because her purity and animal grace have inspired him with a brotherly love. In both stories one notices a kindness and ultimate decency on the part of the autobiographical hero, staying well within the bounds of Confucian propriety.The most adult manifestation of this postdecadent decency is found in the story "The Past" (197). The first-person hero once lived in the same residential terrace in Shanghai with four not very respectable sisters. The eldest was a banker's concubine, and the other three were also financially dependent on him. The hero was madly in love with the second sister, from whom he suffered many masochistic humiliations. When she finally got married to another man, he took Lao San. the third sister, on a trip to Soochow, where they spent a night together in a hotel. Because he was still thinking of the second sister, they did not consum¬mate their passion that night, even though he knew Lao San was deeply in love with him. The story opens three years later with the hero recuperating from a pulmonary disease at Macao. One rainy day birkenstock outlet he accidentally runs into Lao San, now a widow and much sadder and thinner after a marriage without love. They renew their friendship and see each other daily. The hero is now consumed with the passion to possess her; one evening he stages a dinner for her at a good res¬taurant and later half drags and half persuades her to spend the night with him in a hotel:The night thickened and the wind was whistling out side. The 50-watt light bulb, whidi had turned much brighter after midnight, illumined the unusual loneli¬ness in my heart. The room was also getting colder. Still with her clothes on, she was lying in bed, wrapped in a blanket and facing the wall.