No Fio Inconstante dos Dias: memórias de uma vida flutuante

by Shěn Fù, Eugénia de Vasconcellos (Tradução), Manuel S. Fonseca (Tradução)

No Fio Inconstante dos Dias, de Shen Fu, é um clássico chinês de uma beleza devastadora. É, por isso, um clássico universal, que pela primeira vez se publica em Portugal.
Livro único de Shen Fu, relata-nos, antes de mais, uma história de amor, o amor do autor por Yun, a sua mulher: um amor correspondido, tão correspondido que os espíritos de Shen Fu e Yun se fundem também na paixão por tudo o que é imaginação e beleza. Essa história de amor cruza-se com histórias de amor filial, com histórias de amor à natureza, com os nunca escondidos desejos amorosos de Shen Fu e de Yun fora do casamento ou trazidos em consentimento para dentro deste.
Esta é uma história de amor, mas é também uma história de sofrimento; é uma história de virtudes, mas também de vícios, de generosidade e de ganância. Longe de nos dar uma visão bucólica ou lírica da sociedade chinesa, No Fio Inconstante dos Dias: Memórias de Uma Vida Flutuante mostra a vida como ela acontece, com uma aceitação do que de bom ou mau essa sociedade oferece, longe da revolta ou cisão constitutivas do olhar ocidental.
Uma comovente pérola que nos chega do século xix.

Genres: China, Nonfiction, Classics, History, Chinese Literature, Memoir, Biography

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1877

About the author

Shěn Fù (simplified Chinese: 沈复; traditional Chinese: 沈復; 1763–1825?), courtesy name Sanbai (三白), was a Chinese writer of the Qing Dynasty, best known for the novel Six Records of a Floating Life.

Reviews

[Petra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This was a lovely treat. I feel like I've gotten to know Shen Fu as a friend. He was kind, gentle, artistic, observant and loving to his wife. He was happy and content in Life, even while poor & close to destitute. At heart, his life was full of friends and cheer. It was a full life.
Shen Fu is a wonderfully intimate and personal writer. I felt like I was with him in his journey. His wife, Yun, was interesting and complex. The two loved each other throughout their time together, which doesn't mean that life was monogamous.
This book is divided into four chapters.
The first is about Shen Fu & Yun's happy marriage, their trips, their homes, their conversations. They share everything, they laugh, they enjoy. I enjoyed the fact that they often played drinking games, a very modern feeling game. It shows that humans haven't changed all that much. Each generation has its drinking game. :D
In the chapter on Leisure, Shen Fu relates all of his hobbies. The man is artistic in so many ways, as is Yun. Together they decorate their homes while using very little money (a thing they are often without). Their gardens are serene and lovely to the eye. The descriptions of bonsais is wonderful.
But pain is also in Shen Fu's life and the chapter on Sorrow is heartbreaking at times.
The final chapter on Shen Fu's many travels through and about China for work and leisure are wonderfully described. The mountains of China must be numerous and high. And lovely. The pavilions, pagodas, temples, monasteries and forests, rivers and ponds described are brought to life with his words.
Shen Fu was a natural writer and observer of life. He felt and saw and lived. This tiny book encompasses all that. He becomes a person and a friend.

[Fátima Linhares · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tal como o título diz, este livro são memórias de uma vida flutuante. Para mim, o termo mais adequado seria errante. Shen Fu consegue, numa altura em que os casamentos eram arranjados, casar por amor com Yun, uma jovem que, contra os padrões da época, era culta e sábia. Têm dois filhos e vão vivendo uma vida errática e sem poiso certo, muito devido à condição de funcionário público do autor e à saúde frágil da sua mulher. No meio disto conseguem apreciar a beleza do que os rodeia, a presença dos amigos, o vinho e a companhia um do outro.

Sente-se que houve muito amor entre o casal, mas o relato da vida deles torna-se um pouco aborrecido e até confuso. Não sei se por ser um relato já antigo, do século XIX, se por ser uma cultura totalmente diferente, não gostei tanto como esperava.

Este livro não é, para mim, um grande êxito mundial como a cinta que envolve o livro diz. Ou então, é só um êxito mesmo na China que é quase como se fosse mundial já que eles são muitos.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very enjoyable, a wonderful social commentary of 18th/19th century China. It has some fantastic stories and insights into Chinese life.
Two things stopped this being 5 stars, the first is that despite the title, there are only 4 records, the remaining 2 did not survive, although someone did try to forge the remaining 2 early in the 20th century, and the second thing was the way the "notes" system works. Each of the 4 surviving records have a number of specific Chinese idioms or expressions, these are explained at the back of the book in the notes section. Now bearing in mind each of the 4 records has between 30 and 100 notes, it can get a right pain, flipping backwards and forwards. If only they had put the explanations in brackets at the right place in the book it would've made it so much more enjoyable.

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was written in the late 1700s and early 1800s by a Chinese man who drifted between various clerical and artistic jobs.

Only four of the original six chapters exist, and it makes a very different style of storytelling: each chapter is thematic, and chronological within, but the book overall is not chronological, so some episodes are described in different chapters, in different ways (layers of floating records). It works very well, though the various notes, maps and appendices in this edition are very helpful too.

The four chapters concern his courtship and marriage; their hobbies and pastimes (mainly horticultural); the problems that beset them (ill health, un(der)employment, financial woes), and the author's travels. The last one is particularly good if you're familiar with Suzhou/Shanghai area, but perhaps less engaging if you're not.

It gives a fascinating insight into real lives of the period, because it is an authentic voice of that time. Very different from reading a modern historical novel, however well researched. Shen Fu isn't entirely likeable (though you have to admire his honesty), but his wife is delightful: bright, cheeky, slightly rebellious yet happy to help him find a concubine.

I read it in a day and whilst I wasn't rushing (it's pretty short), there is a beauty to it that really justifies a more leisurely approach.

After this, read The Red Thread by Nicholas Jose, in which a contemporary art dealer tracks down the missing chapters and notices echoes between the book and his life. See https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in the mood for something old that casually went against the grain of centuries of Euro propaganda by simply existing, and low and behold, this work rose to the top. I hadn't started it expecting an affirmation of a Tumblr post gushing about China's 3000 years of queer history, but it did that and more, giving a wonderful view into a life with things akin to 'Boston Marriages' alongside such a loving relationship between wife and husband that it reaffirms the fact that the solution to misogyny takes more than simple fucking. Alas, Shen Fu's influence, much like his last two records, have been for the most part lost, and the Chinese work of 1809 with its hints of polyamory amidst a dignified treating with educated work and pleasure lost out to the invention of white heterosexuality in the mid 19th century. The introduction to this may have essentially blamed Shen Fu for the death of his wife, but considering the Orientalims drowning the add ons in general, from scoffing at old measurements (as if miles and feet and ounces make any standardized sense whatsoever) to assuming only "Western" audiences will bother to pick up this text, such a critique is easily glossed over.

I'll admit that I was less than thrilled with the last touring of the country section with its countless references, but it was interesting to compare Shen Fu's portrayal of sing-song girls to my memories of The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai, written as Fu's are in a period long before Shanghai rose to prominence. Leading up to this truncatedly final part is a story that is admittedly, even in these times where the word is both sensationalized and undervalued for the sake of inspiration porn, tragic. Chen Yun and Shen Fu built the sort of harmonious marriage "Western" historians tell you can't exist today because not enough time=progress has passed, and what does fate give them in return? Expulsions over trivial misunderstandings, impoverished existences, miserable deaths, and final disappearances in the annals of history that can only be mummed at with plagiarisms. If immortality doesn't await these two souls in some sort of afterlife, at least a form of posthumous continuity may be won by this text being engaged with by those fed up with modern propaganda and eager for a glimpse of a world, candidly expressed and unintentionally subversive, with bisexual presumptions and kindness to sex workers. Commentary on the manipulation of flora and even some fauna, as well as a sightseeing tour where both wine and educated references were plentiful, made for a less intriguing reading, but at base level it was informative and at its highest level it was inspiring. 3000 years and counting is nothing to sneeze at, and while Neo-Europe dominates the globe today, one can't help but wonder, while reading something like this, what the future will bring.

This may very well be my least read work of 2017, but one never knows with these things. Nevertheless, it would be a good note to end on: a glimpse of a scene more than 200 years ago which contains things which are supposedly new but very much not (challenges to gender/sexual norms aside, according to one of the end notes, the Han Shan/Han Mountain poems of the 6th-9th century are the much overlooked origin of the US 'beat' generation of the 1950's), and very old things whose continued survival in the face of years of destruction is nothing short of miraculous. It was a nice break from reality, but breaks from reality only put food on the table if one is very, very lucky or very, very wealthy. Some of us may come to the point of Shen Fu's selling of clothes and dying an unknown death, and the panopticon of the Internet may not be enough to reveal the true face of history should those in power keep throwing money at those who are paid to obscure it. In any case, I hope to come across a more respectful edition than this one, as the tone of the pre and post commentary most assuredly compromised the translated contents in some manner beyond my linguistic grasp. The author is dead, as theorists declare, and the test is what we make of it.

[Grace Tjan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have you ever...

been married off to your first cousin at seventeen?

been thrown out of the house for "mishandling arrangements to obtain a concubine" for your father-in-law?

been obsessed with the idea of finding a concubine for your husband?

tried to purchase an underage singsong girl to be a concubine to both yourself and your husband?

wasted to death because you failed to arrange for a live-in threesome relationship with your husband and his concubine?


If you answer “yes” to any of these questions then you might have been a protagonist in this book, one of imperial China's most romantic love story, an 18th century memoir written by Shen Fu about his wife, Yun. The circumstances might seem odd to us, but it’s not difficult to understand why generations of Chinese, repressed by thousands of years of paternalistic culture, consider it to be romantic. Shen, an itinerant scholar who was chronically unemployed for much of his working life, wrote about his conjugal life with an intimate candor that was rare for his times. No, he didn’t write about that kinky threesome with the underage concubine --- it was a scheme that never came through, though I wonder whether Yun really wanted it, since we only see her through her husband’s perspective. Instead, there are scenes of him and Yun whiling away a moonlit night by drinking wine and reciting Tang poetry. Chrysanthemums bloomed around their modest, economy-sized cottage, and the ever resourceful Yun, an orphan who raised herself and her brother by taking in needlework, contrived to make movable screens out of live flowers. Shen himself is an aesthete who could devote pages on the correct way to display flowers (“When putting chrysanthemums in a vase one should select an odd number of flowers…”) and burning incense (“Buddha’s Hands should not be smelled by someone who is drunk, or they will spoil”). These scenes are among the most charming of this occasionally disjointed, rambling memoir, though I also find it rather disturbing that Shen managed to devote so much more pages to these pursuits than to their young children (who, due to their parents’ poverty and outcast status, had to be taken away to be raised by others). Shen and Yun’s lives are tragic, and their idea of marital happiness is at odds with our modern notions, yet ultimately it is their upbringing that is the strangest thing of all. The Chinese were determined that government officials should be scholars first and bureaucrats second. One of the largest empires in the history of the world was administered by a small group of men, who had not the slightest training in administration, and who knew more about the poetry of a thousand years before than they did about tax law. Imagine the government being ran by a bunch of English majors! This idea seems to me both daft and endearing at the same time --- and the real tragedy of Shen’s life (and others like him, and ultimately imperial China itself) is that at the end this is simply just not enough.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, actually it's only four records (unless one counts a forgery). Shen Fu was completely unremarkable in public -- enough so that no one knows how he died -- but his memoir, unusually candid and personal for Chinese literature, reverals him as a creature of intense feeling. He is admired for the loving portrait of his wife that this book includes, but he was also a man capable of devoting more pages to the handling of flowers than to his two children. Still, this is perhaps the most immediate of Chinese books, and Shen Fu makes clear that his life as an intinerant and sometimes poverty-stricken secretary to other Qing dynasty officials was, if not rich, at least varied. It is in the unobtrusive details that Shen Fu's world becomes most vivid, as when his adored wife seems to take a concubine, when she annoys her in-laws by referring to them in the less-than-preferred way in a letter intended for him, when the author speaks of Chinese nobles so poor they sell their underwear. It's an impressionistic, haphazard portrait, sometimes intense, sometimes unfocussed, but at its best, it makes that vanished come alive like nothing else.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 3 out of 5]

How do you rate a 200-year-old memoir from a different culture? The best I can do is to go on my level of enjoyment. But this is certainly a valuable book for anyone interested in late 18th/early 19th century China.

Born in 1763, Shen Fu was essentially a failed member of the literati—he did not succeed at civil service exams and ultimately gave up his studies in his teens, opting instead to follow his father into a career as a personal secretary for government officials. This meant his work was precarious, as said officials paid out of their own pocket, and he found himself consistently short of money and depending on more successful family and friends. He married an interesting woman, who in his recollections comes across as more intelligent than he was and also more sensitive, unhappy with the role she was forced into and without the outlets (most notably travel and sightseeing) that her husband found. Of the “six records,” only four are known to exist, covering overlapping periods of the author’s life but each with a different focus: marriage, leisure, hardships, and travel.

I read the Sanders translation (2011), which is perhaps not the prettiest language but which certainly excels in the supplementary material: it includes maps, a family tree, a chronology of events, and extensive footnotes explaining every cultural and literary reference in the text. Some of this is perhaps overkill, but the publisher certainly put work into it.

Some of the most interesting episodes, to me:

- The author’s wife, Yun, was bummed about not being able to attend a festival because she was a woman. The author helped her disguise herself as a man and passed her off as his cousin. The disguise fell apart when they encountered other women (relegated to a secluded spot) and she casually touched one on the shoulder, which was incredibly offensive until she revealed herself.

- When the couple are in their early 30s, Yun attempts to buy the author a 15-year-old concubine. He seems less interested than she is—despite an earlier episode in another town where he spends a lot of time on the “pleasure boats” with “singing girls,” and at one point has to smuggle two of them out of the city via the sewers because they weren’t allowed within city walls—but then Yun is really invested, openly telling her husband that she wants to be with this girl in some unspecified way herself. His family is pissed when they find out because Yun has become sworn sisters with a prostitute (the other sworn sister of hers who appears in the text is a prosperous wife, with whose family the couple eventually go to stay, though Yun later says they aren’t that close).

- When they go to stay with Yun’s well-off friends, the couple for some reason need to leave behind their children. So they hastily betroth their 14-year-old daughter to a cousin they have mixed feelings about, while setting up their 12-year-old son in job training with another relative. They assure the daughter they’ll be back in 2-3 years (!) and make her restrain her distraught brother on their departure, while also hiding the truth from him. This whole episode seems to be treated very matter-of-factly, though it can be hard to tell in translation.

- The author’s father apparently has the right to have his adult sons executed for unfilial behavior, which he reminds the author of before kicking him out of the house over stuff like being angry that Yun referred to him disrespectfully (“your old man”) in a private letter to her husband. Somehow no blame attaches to the father for this whole situation, which began with his getting Yun to procure him a concubine behind his wife’s back.

- The author and his friends love to go visit monasteries as a “retreat” to “the simple life” etc. etc., and come across exactly as insufferable as modern urbanites about it. At one point a monk asks one of his friends for local political news and the friend insults the monk and storms out of the monastery in disgust—the author and the rest of the friends apparently agreeing that it was inappropriate of the monk to bring up such vulgar matters when they are there to relax. Meanwhile they spend a lot of time playing drinking games with monks (and also without them, they drink a lot).

- The whole “singing girls” episode is also fun only from the perspective of the vacationing men. The girls reveal to the author that they were sold into prostitution, hate it, and are often treated poorly by the johns. His favorite seems to be hoping he will buy her from the madam, which he does not (for lack of money? Unclear).

Unfortunately the whole book is not quite so interesting. Here were my least favorite parts:

- Shen Fu’s opinions on bonsai pruning, flower arranging, household DIY, and garden layouts (basically all of Record Two)

- Shen Fu’s opinions on the merits of the literary classics (mostly relayed through stilted dialogue with his wife in Record One)

- Lengthy descriptions of the natural beauty of various tourist sites, plus lists of sites Shen Fu wants you to know were definitely not worth the trouble (Record Four—though happily I did also find some interest in his travel stories)

That said, in the end I’m glad I pushed through the parts that interested me less to finish the book; it’s not long and as a cultural artifact it is fascinating. Worth checking out if you are interested.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book for several reasons. It is a rare and frank account of a failed literati during the Qing Dynasty; Shen Fu writes in an astonishingly intimate and emotional manner for his time and his upbringing giving the reader a glimpse into a world long gone. Despite the fact that Shen Fu believes he is a poor writer, his writing is lyrical, stark and incredibly romantic. Shen Fu, for all of his faults (and there are many), preserved for the ages the romance between himself and his wife Yun who really is the star of this story of this story. I had to wonder while reading, how the story would be different if it was written from her point of view, she was such a complex woman, far more so than the flighty Shen Fu.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shen Fu's Six records of a Floating Life is too short! Granted two chapters have gone missing since it was written in 1806 I wish there was more. I loved it so much. Well all except the bit about flower arranging and landscaping though I could understand why it was in there. It was a very touching autobiography of the life of a man livining in late 18th Century China who was usually broke but sometimes worked for the government, sometimes as an art dealer, but mostly just sat drinking with his wife and his friends discussing the finer things in life.

I loved reading about his drinking escapades, he did seem to be a bit of a drunk. Frequently talking about pawning items to buy wine. How being able to buy wine for entertaining your friends was the only reason you needed money. I liked the comment his wife made one time when he returned and she said, "are you very drunk again?"

She was by far the best part of the book. I do believe the woman had a little bit of a bisexual side. To start with there was the reference to her two best friends who used to sleep over and kick her husband out of her bed. Then she got in trouble with her husbands family for being a sworn sister of a sing-song girl. She was trying to get the girl to be a concubine for her husband but admitted she was really doing it because she was in love with the girl herself. The girl ended up being married to someone who had a great deal of money and his wife died of a broken heart. She also wrote poetry and loved old books. Fu talked about how she would collect old books and take them apart and have them rebound and how she did the same for calligraphy. Oh what a lovely hobby! (Particularly as the books were old in the late 18th century in China).
And then there was the time Fu convinced her to dress up like a man so she could sneak into the temple for the festival. She had to practice walking as a man, and managed to pull it off until she went over to chat to a group of women and accidentally touched one and got in trouble till she revealed her true identity. Fu wished she'd been born a man so they could go traveling together, but alas she never lived that long. They decided that in their next life she would get to be born the man and he the woman. It was all terribly romantic and tragic.

Fu also wrote lovely descriptions of his visits around China. My favourite was when he went to Canton and visited the brothels there. He complained that none of the women understood him and they all looked strange. Eventually he found a boat that catered to Northern tastes and upon finding a woman he liked his first thought was, "oh I wish my wife were here". He stayed with the prostitute for 4 months, he was very proud how little it cost him, and how well he treated her. But at the end he left he said the madam was too pushy, but I think the real reason was he just didn't have the money to pay for her. (He was perpetually broke). It was quite touching how he described the hard lives of the boat women. However this didn't stop him from abandoning his favourite, or doing anything to help her once he found out she had attempted suicide several times since he left.

It was a lovely book. Romantic, decadent and holding a true appreciation for nature and beauty...and wine.

[Jakub Horbów · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nieśpieszna lektura, która mimo różnic kulturowych i ponad 200 lat od jej napisania jest inspiracją dla doceniania rzeczy małych, przyjaźni, natury, małżeństwa i podróży. Ta autobiografia(?) wbrew swojej starości ma mnóstwo wspólnego z dzisiejszymi książkami o stracie najbliższych i przemijaniu zwykłego życia zarówno w swoim charakterze, jak i formie - jej jedynym minusem jest brak ostatnich dwóch rozdziałów, które mogłyby dopełnić tą lekturę w zamierzony przez autora sposób. Bardzo przyjemne czytelnicze zaskoczenie w dodatku pięknie wydane i opatrzone ważną dla lektury przedmową przez tłumaczkę.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

So etwas wie das chinesische Kopfkissenbuch aus der Zeit des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts, das einen Blick in eine fremde, in der Zeit eingefrorene Gesellschaft bietet, wenngleich der letzte Teil - Reisen - eher langatmig daherkommt. Exzellent kommentiert und erläutert. Leider war meine Ausgabe in mikroskopisch kleiner Schrift.

[Cubex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books of all time, and I find it tragic that only four out of six chapters have come down to us. I would give a lot to have those two lost chapters. Lin Yutang's translation is loving and deeply poetic, as it was one of his favorite books too (I discovered it while reading his book of philosophical essays The Importance of Living). The honesty with which this memoir is told gave me such a clear and intimate view into the past, and the central love story pulled me in so thoroughly that I found myself really feeling the loss of a person who's been dead for two hundred years. It also conveys an aesthetic and philosophy of living that could guide any artist or appreciator of art in any place or time. The appearance and positive treatment of bisexuality and polyamory is a very pleasant surprise in such an old book, and reminds us that most of lived history has played out in living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms, not in palaces, castles, and battlefields. This book can be read as a message from the past about the intense beauty to be found in joy and sorrow, flowers and furniture, food and old friends.

[Andrew]

When I read Chaucer for the first time, I thought "how contemporary this all is!" And when I read Shen Fu, I came to realize that he was a sort of Jack Kerouac of late 18th Century China. He:

--Has a badass wife who recites poetry
--Tries to pick up young women
--Spends a lot of time traveling around with his bros looking for Enlightenment and getting hammered

For those of you who are often confounded by the icy rigidity of so much classical Chinese prose, don't worry. Shen Fu is actually a pretty great storyteller, and aside from the specific references, this could be a modern novel.

[Maia · Rating 5 out of 5]

a book you should read before you die, absolutely unique, both as an autobiography from this period and from this culture. As most say, the stand-out chapter is the one on his marriage, but the ones on travels and aesthetics are great too. As i remember, the best one is first and the worst one is second and makes you want to give up, but it's the only stinker, so keep on! Plus, it's short. Read this.

[Phuongvu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phù sinh lục ký là một tác phẩm kinh điển của Trung Quốc thuộc thể loại tản văn. Đọc quyển này như đọc thơ. Tuyệt đối nên đọc Phù sinh lục ký lúc thư thả. Đặc biệt là gần cây cối hoa lá, tâm tình yên lặng và đọc vào lúc sáng sớm tinh mơ khi vừa thức dậy. Pha một ấm trà Ô Long sữa mà uống thì không còn gì tuyệt bằng.

[Bạch Thố · Rating 4 out of 5]

(1 sao điểm cộng cho bản dịch xuất sắc)
Quyển này phần đa mình đều thích, thậm chí có những đoạn nghĩ chấm 10 sao cũng không đủ là những đoạn thuật lại chuyện tình Bạch-Vân, tả phong cảnh, tả đời sống thôn quê, dạy cách "dưỡng sinh". Văn phong thanh thoát lại gặp được dịch giả tài hoa.
Đổi lại, có những đoạn thấy khó ưa vô cùng. Biết rằng đem tiêu chuẩn hiện đại mà cân đo chuyện người thì thật là dạ tiểu nhân so lòng quân tử. Nhưng thực thì đoạn Tam Bạch bốn tháng qua lại với nàng kỹ nữ, không thể khỏi nghĩ mà thương cho Vân vốn ốm yếu lại phải lúc gia đình khánh kiệt khó khăn. Bạch về sau nhìn lại thì tuyệt chẳng ân hận nghĩ ngợi, lại cho chỗ hơn trăm lạng bạc hầu cho cái thú kia là giá hời chẳng đáng là bao!
Nhưng còn lại thì quả hiếm có tình nào được như tình Bạch với Vân, chuyện kia âu cũng là cái vết chàm be bé.
Thêm nữa là ông tác giả hay lan man, những lúc thích thì cũng rất thích, nhưng những đoạn mô tả kiến trúc, tục lệ khi xưa, vốn đã xa lạ với mình, lại còn chi tiết quá mức, ngao ngán mà đọc cho qua.

[to.ostatnia.ksiazka · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐

[carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

whimsical, silly, often hilarious. read like an authentically ancient chinese slice of life novel. i was surprised by how familiar and tender the world was, despite being set during the qing dynasty. many imaginative, singular moments in here that i will pocket forever

[Sofia C Sousa]

“No Fio Inconstante dos Dias”, de Shen Fu, é um clássico da literatura chinesa que se desenrola durante a dinastia Qing.

Composto por quatro relatos do autor sobre a sua vida quotidiana em torno de um núcleo comum - o amor do autor pela sua mulher, amor esse que transcende o tempo e o espaço - é nítida a escrita franca de Shen Fu. Ele não se coíbe de mostrar as suas fraquezas, as dificuldades com que se depara no confronto entre o seu eu e as suas circunstâncias.

Apesar da escrita poética e filosófica e de toda a ambiência quase mística de uma China que já não existe, considero que o lento ritmo narrativo, a par da idealização de alguns conceitos, acabaram por se tornar elementos maçadores para mim.

Este poderá ser o livro ideal para quem gosta de ler memórias autobiográficas e de um registo narrativo mais filosófico, situado na dinastia Qing (1644 - 1911/12).

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Westerner’s impression of 19th century China - if that Westerner has one - may well be summed up by the cover illustration of this book. It is a world as remote as that of medieval chivalry, distant from us in both time and space; a world of elaborate customs and ritual, both beautiful and impenetrable.

But Shen Fu speaks to us, in this translation, with a surprising immediacy. He does things that we might well have done - quarrels with his parents, falls in love, gets drunk, goes travelling. In short, he is a flesh-and-blood person who reveals some of the most intimate details of his life - a life that was lived a world away from our own, but is nevertheless recognisable.

Probably what makes Shen Fu most sympathetic to a modern reader is his touching account of his relationship with his wife, Yun - a partnership of mutual love and respect that shatters the stereotype of miserable arranged marriages. It is a relationship that survives his dalliance with a courtesan on a trip to Canton - whom he chooses because she resembles Yun - and much more seriously, a falling-out with Shen Fu’s father, which in a society steeped in Confucian values was a grave affair.

Yet however much we may warm to Shen Fu, we are regularly reminded that he lived his life according to very different rules. Towards the end of the first ‘record’, which concerns Shen Fu’s marriage, he describes Yun’s efforts to find him a concubine. One does not have to read very carefully between the lines to realise that Yun wants the concubine as much for herself as her husband; a fact Shen Fu realises too and seems to accept without objection. The decision of the woman in question to marry another man barely affects Shen Fu, but cuts Yun deep: she never fully recovers from what she sees as a heartless betrayal.

The amount of free time that Shen Fu and his wife appear to have also seems alien to the modern reader - and they are skilled at enjoying it. There are detailed descriptions of how to create miniature landscapes with plants and stones, and their idea of a good time is to get slowly drunk and make up poetry with their friends.

This is the fascination of the book for me: it casts a sort of spell that makes the strange seem familiar and the distant past seem like living memory - I suppose it is the closest I will ever get to being able to time-travel to 19th century China.

[Keenan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In terms of pure romance, this is a 5 star genuinely warming love story, a story made ever more pure by the heartache and misfortune (though this doesn't preclude some naughty fun in Canton later in the book) that befalls the author in the book's later pages. Subject matter beyond the matters of romance can be skimmed over unless you care for the intricacies of various parks and mountains in Zhejiang and Jiangsu and how nice it was to "chill with the boyz" in these scenic places. Make sure to read the version with lots of footnotes that explain the idioms and euphemisms.

[Nico Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely little book, that basically posits whilst the world, it's structures, fluctuate around us, our individual thoughts about our small lives remain peculiar, particular and personal and therefore, perversely, in odd ways universal.

[Joseph Tang · Rating 5 out of 5]

若得一知己于闺中如此，此生当无憾。奈何沈生未有所成，遗病闺中而负此佳人。初以芸觅憨为真情，无奈复本浮而戏妓，留憨只为挽君。

[Alexandros Potapidis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an autobiography of a civil servant at the end of the 18th, beginning of 19th century China. Shen Fu divides his memoir into six chapters, but only four reach us today. There were subsequent attempts to fabricate the remaining two chapters but these failed because either the chronology or the style did not fit author's predicaments. There is nothing significant in Shen Fu's life, position, or achievements in life that can constitute the Six Records of a Floating Life an essential work of literature.

The book is a blatant description of Shen Fu's memories in his life with his wife Yün, his travels in eastern part of China, a short mention to what today we would call hobbies, and the various clashes he had with his extended family and friends that were usually the result of financial difficulties. His position as a lower ranking civil servant in the local government is not elaborated but it is obvious that he has taken various positions in several provincial and administrative regions in eastern China. Shen Fu is somehow cryptic about the conditions under which he leaves his posts but in most cases he does it under his own volition. Even the language and the descriptive qualities of the book can't be described as timeless. His prose is bureaucratic despite the several passages where he mentions his love of poetry while quoting some lines of his or famous poets' work. Even when we glimpse into the values and principles that guide his life the reader is not convinced that he leads an overtly virtuous life. In other words Shen Fu is neither a role model nor a talented celebrity.

If Shen Fu is an unremarkable character, where lies the significance of the book? The short answer is in the details. Most work of literature or poetry of that period conveys a narrative of the lives and work of distinguished individuals, either royals, high ranking officials, artists, poets, warriors, or military commanders. What is absent from written records is the everyday life of the vast majority of the Chinese population, whether it is their rituals, traditions, leisure, or vocation. The largest social strata does not appear to be interesting enough to be a theme of extensive discussions. Shen Fu offers to bridge this gap with his detailed account of his life, along with that of his friends and family. He discusses various every day practices, such as the food people were eating, the techniques of growing flowers or building houses, the games they were playing, and social conventions.

It is challenging to understand if these practices and traditions were a topographic feature of Chinese society as a whole or prevalent practices of the entire era. For example, drinking wine on a daily basis for entertainment is understandable. But prioritising the purchase and consumption of wine to entertain guests, while under financial duress and pawning their most valuable belongings, seems to be a counterintuitive practice. Another practice that goes against the Christian morality of the 18th century is the prevalent adoption of concubines, especially under aged ones. Despite it being an expensive venture, since the family would have to be wealthy enough to afford to pay daily servises, it tells us something about the polygamous nature of the Chinese society. Shen Fu had a concubine for a temporary time whom Yün chose and seem to have had herself feelings about her. Educated concubines were the most sought after live-in prostitutes and their services were charged on a higher rate.

Chinese society is segregated in many respects and the bureaucratic mechanisms of local governments have created and feed an army of civil servants whose admission to their ranks are conditional to passing extremely difficult exams. This continues to the current day Chinese civil service admission practices. What is interesting about the topics of these exams at the time of Shen Fu is the fact that they are entirely focused on poetic skills and ability to create life lessons in the form of short passages, the shengyu.

[Kaushik Dowarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A vivid account of a modest life in late-eighteenth century China. It leaves your mind adrift in the bygone chinese atmosphere to empathise with the narrator in his emotions of joy, misery, bias, jealousy, immortality, wonder, excitement, melodrama, and basically any emotions we feel as humans. Not to discount, his zeal to travel and experience newness. It leaves me wonder how, no matter how much politics change, civilisations change, technologies advance, common man’s emotions are ever the same. There’s no superiority and inferiority when it comes to those very feelings, no matter how much we advance in technology or claim to be “civilised” or “modern”. They were all modern and they felt the same.

[Emily Zhou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone who knows me knows how much I hate reading romances. But, maybe I just want to believe in love again (jk I'm being so dramatic). There's something so familiar in this story about this random commoner marrying his best friend and their friendship like marriage without the traditional patriarchy typically found in ancient China. I loved their interactions, the little acts of consideration they showed each other. I also loved how he just dropped off the face of earth after she died, so real.

There's nothing complex or beautiful about this prose, but is that really necessary in writing?

[Elo · Rating 4 out of 5]

ma première fois à lire de la littérature chinoise, et ce sont six récits (bon, en fait 4... les 2 derniers ayant été perdus) de souvenirs allègres, exquis, amers aussi, de l'auteur. celui-ci n'est pas vraiment artiste, un peu poète, mais surtout il est fin observateur et aime les choses de la vie (son épouse, les randonnées). c'est vraiment une invitation à ralentir, observer la nature, profiter des moments ensembles, trouver la beauté même dans les épreuves. c'était sincère et beau. dommage que cela se finisse de manière aussi abrupte.

[cellus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comme un paysage de printemps. Léger et soyeux, belle surprise.

[Jue JJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

小红楼。小时候读那篇余忆童稚时的课文觉得非常有趣，长大了读全文却是浮生若梦，为欢几何。沈复给人感觉很谦和很善良，也有文人的清高吧，芸娘跟他既有享福也有受苦。