Burning Confession -- Yu Dafu's Genuine Confession: Yu Dafu's Genuine Confession

Author: Yu Dafu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features: Yu Dafu's famous short story collection The Drowning, once popular for exposing the anxieties of youth and depicting the conflict between the spirit and the flesh. The suffering young man in the text is a reflection of the author himself—Yu Dafu. According to Yu Dafu's Spring Melancholy Like Water—Autobiography IV and Autobiographical Poems, when he was thirteen and still studying at Fuyang Higher Primary School, his sexual awareness began to stir. He had a (first love) with a neighboring "young woman from the Zhao family," experiencing a "spring melancholy like water." This faint, watery spring melancholy disturbed his innocent heart for two years. Later, when the Zhao family girl got engaged, he deeply regretted having lost his chance. Around the same time, he also had similar relationships with two other girls, Qian'er and others.