Yu Dafu -- Students Reading Classics

Author: Yu Dafu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-01-01
Features: Uncle Yu Dafu, along with Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, and Mao Dun, was one of the founders of the New Literature Movement. In the 1930s, while in Shanghai, Yu Dafu once told the American writer Agnes Smedley, "I am not a fighter, but only a writer," and he also said, "Those who can say 'Dishonoring one's integrity is worse than starving to death' and actually live by this principle are the true literary scholars." Uncle Yu Dafu, along with Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, and Mao Dun, was one of the founders of the May Fourth New Literature Movement. In the 1930s, while in Shanghai, Yu Dafu once told the American writer Agnes Smedley, "I am not a fighter, but only a writer," and he also said, "Those who can say 'Dishonoring one's integrity is worse than starving to death' and actually live by this principle are the true literary scholars." However, since the liberation of the country, he published only a thin collection of works in 1952. On literary lecture platforms, if his name was mentioned, he was often dismissed as a "decadent" writer with a mere passing mention, and his books were rarely found in libraries. As a result, until the early 1980s, most middle-aged and young people under the age of 45 had little knowledge of who Yu Dafu was.