Duàn Hóng Líng Yàn Jì 斷鴻零雁記
Record of the Lone Wild Goose Parted from Its Flock by 蘇曼殊 (撰)
About the work
Duàn Hóng Líng Yàn Jì 斷鴻零雁記 (Record of the Lone Wild Goose Parted from Its Flock) is an autobiographical novel in 27 chapters by Sū Mànshū 蘇曼殊 (1884–1918), first serialized in the journal Tài Píng Yáng Bào 太平洋報 in 1912. It is the most celebrated of Sū’s five short novels and is written in a lyrical, semi-classical wényán prose style unusual for the period. The narrator — a Buddhist monk named Sānláng 三郎, clearly an alter ego of the author — recounts his childhood origins (a Japanese mother, a Chinese father), his monastic life, his journey between Japan and China, and his anguished romantic attachment to a young woman named Xuě Méi 雪梅, whom he cannot marry because of his monastic vows. The title evokes images of a wild goose separated from its flock — a classical Chinese metaphor for loneliness, wandering, and impossible longing.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
The source file contains no preface or postface. The novel begins directly with Chapter One, in which the narrator stands on the roof of an ancient monastery by the sea, having just received the full monastic precepts, and meditates on his orphaned condition and the half-heard voice of a mother he has never seen. The narrative proceeds in a first-person confessional mode throughout.
Abstract
Sū Mànshū 蘇曼殊 (CBDB id 76416; b. 1884, d. 1918) was a poet, novelist, translator, and Buddhist monk of mixed Sino-Japanese parentage, born in Yokohama to a Chinese father (Sū Jiélíng 蘇傑靈) and a Japanese mother or aunt. He was one of the most singular literary figures of the late Qīng and early Republican period — a practicing monk who frequented brothels, a revolutionary associate of Sūn Yātīng 孫逸仙 (Sun Yat-sen), and a poet celebrated for his delicate classical verse lamenting romantic and existential suffering.
Duàn Hóng Líng Yàn Jì was serialized in Tài Píng Yáng Bào 太平洋報 beginning in April 1912. It is autobiographical in substance: the novel’s monk-narrator, his Japanese roots, his illegitimate status, his attempts to find his mother, and his doomed love for Xuě Méi all closely parallel documented episodes in Sū Mànshū’s own life. The novel is notable for its lyrical, allusive prose — mixing classical idiom with vernacular emotional directness — and for its meditation on the conflict between Buddhist renunciation and romantic longing (qíngyuàn 情緣). The title phrase, evoking a lone goose separated from its migrating flock (duàn hóng líng yàn 斷鴻零雁), encapsulates both the biographical situation of the Sino-Japanese half-orphan and the metaphysical condition of the monk who cannot love.
The novel belongs to a cluster of autobiographical Mandarin Duck and Butterfly (yuānyāng húdié 鴛鴦蝴蝶) inflected narratives, though Sū’s work is considerably more literarily ambitious than most of the genre. Wilkinson notes Wu Woyao (see KR4k0107) as a key figure of the same era; Sū represents a contrasting, more inward aesthetic within late-Qīng fiction.
Translations and research
Liu, James J. Y. 1979. “Su Manshu.” In The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. William H. Nienhauser Jr. Indiana University Press. (Biographical and literary survey.)
Lau, Joseph S. M. 1990. “Su Man-shu.” In Nienhauser 1986. (Critical entry.)
Hanan, Patrick. 2004. Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Columbia University Press. (Contextual discussion.)
Lin, Julia C. 1981. Modern Chinese Poetry: An Introduction. University of Washington Press. (Discussion of Sū’s poetry alongside his prose fiction.)
Other points of interest
Sū Mànshū wrote four other short novels: Tiāntā Chóuhén 天涯愁恨, Luòyīng Fēimèng Jì 落英飛夢記, Juē Hóng Líng Yàn Jì 絕鴻零雁記, and Fēiliú Mèngduàn Jì 非流夢斷記. His translation of Byron’s poetry into Chinese (Wénxué Yányì period) and his translation of Les Misérables fragments are also historically significant. He died in Shanghai in 1918, reportedly from the effects of overindulgence.