Dream of the Red Chamber
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Dream of the Red Chamber (Traditional Chinese: 紅樓夢; Simplified Chinese: 红楼梦; pinyin: hóng lóu mèng), also known as A Dream of Red Mansions, The Story of the Stone, or Chronicles of the Stone (Traditional Chinese: 石頭記; Simplified Chinese: 石头记; pinyin: shí tóu jì) is one of the masterpieces of Chinese fiction. It was composed sometime in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty, and its authorship is attributed to Cao Xueqin (Cao Zhan).
The novel is usually grouped with three other pre-modern Chinese works of fiction, collectively known as the Four Great Classical Novels. Of these, Dream of the Red Chamber is often taken to be the zenith of classical Chinese fiction.
There are two craters on asteroid 433 Eros named after the novel's fictional characters, Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu.
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[edit] Synopsis
The novel is conjectured to be semi-autobiographical, mirroring the fortunes of Cao Xueqin's own family. It was also intended to be a memorial to the women Cao knew in his youth: friends, relatives and servants, as the author detailed himself in the first chapter.
The novel is a detailed, episodic record of the lives of the extended Jia family, made up of two clans (the Ning-guo and Rong-guo houses), which occupies two large family compounds in the capital, Beijing. Originally extremely wealthy, with a female member who was made an Imperial Concubine, the family eventually fell into disfavour with the Emperor, and had their mansions raided and confiscated.
The story is prefaced with supernatural Taoist and Buddhist overtones. A sentient Stone, abandoned by the Goddess Nüwa when she mends the heavens, enters the mortal realm after begging a Taoist priest and Buddhist monk to bring it to see the world.
The main character, Jia Baoyu, is the adolescent heir of the family, apparently the reincarnation of the Stone (some versions however have the Stone and Jia Baoyu as two separate, though related, entities). In that previous life he had a relationship with a flower, who is incarnated now as Baoyu's sickly cousin, the emotional Lin Daiyu. However, he is predestined in this life, despite his love for Daiyu, to marry another cousin, Xue Baochai. The novel follows this love triangle against the backdrop of the family's declining fortunes.
The novel is remarkable not only in its huge cast of characters — over 400 in all, most of whom are female — and its psychological scope, but also in its precise and detailed observations of the life and social structures of 18th-century China.
[edit] Fiction / Reality
The name of the main family, "賈" looks similar to the author's surname 曹 and has the same pronunciation in Mandarin as another Chinese character "假", which means fake or sham. Thus Cao Xueqin (曹雪芹) suggests that the novel's family is both a reflection of his own family, and simultaneously fictional - or a "dream"-version of his family. (Confusingly, Baoyu occasionally dreams of another Baoyu, whose surname is "Zhen", which puns on "real".)
The novel is normally called Hong Lou Meng (紅樓夢) - literally "Red Mansion Dream". "Red Mansion" was an idiom for the chamber where the daughters of rich men live; thus the title can be understood as a "dream of rich young women". It can also be understood as referring to a dream that Baoyu has - in a "Red Mansion" - at the beginning of the novel, where the deaths of many of the female characters are foreshadowed. "Red" also suggests the Buddhist idea that the whole world is "red dust" (紅塵) - merely illusory and to be shunned. Thus the novel fits in perfectly with Buddhist (佛) and Taoist (道) beliefs that to find enlightenment, one must realize that the world is but a dream from which we must awake.
[edit] Textual Problems
The textual problem of the novel is extremely complex and has been the subject of much critical scrutiny and conjecture in modern times.
[edit] Early manuscript versions
All versions of the novel up till the twentieth century were anonymous. Since the twentieth century, after Hu Shi's analyses, it is generally agreed that the first 80 chapters of the novel is written by the same person, and that person is believed to be Cao Xueqin.
Early hand-copied versions — many of which are 80 chapters and all incomplete — have comments written on them in red ink, which give some clues as to how the novel was originally going to end. These commentators clearly knew the author in person, and some are believed to be members of Cao Xueqin's own family. The most prominent of which is Red Inkstone (脂砚斋), who gave much insight into the novel and the novelist's working life. These are the textually most reliable versions, known amongst scholars as "Rouge versions" (脂本). Even amongst the some 12 independent surviving manuscripts, small differences in wording, rearrangements and possible rewritings made each of them vary a little from another.
According to novel's first chapter, Cao Xueqin revised his novel five times, and died before he had finished the fifth version. To compound this problem, parts of the latter chapters of the book were lost, so we only have 80 chapters that are definitively written by the author.
The early 80 chapters brim with prophecies and dramatic foreshadowings which also give hints as to how the book would continue. For example, it is obvious that Lin Daiyu will eventually die; that Baoyu will become a monk; various characters will suffer in the snow; and that the whole estate will finally be consumed by flames.
As the Rouge editions are believed to be authentic and closest to the author's intents, most modern editions have the first 80 chapters based on them.
[edit] Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E's 120-chapter version
In 1791, Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E brought together the novel's first movable type edition, a "complete" 120-chapter version of Dream. In 1792, they published a second edition correcting many typographical and editorial errors of the 1791 version. In the preface, the two editors claimed to have put together an ending based on the author's manuscripts. Most modern scholars believe that this later 40 chapters to be a later addition, perhaps by Gao E. According to Hu Shi, who first put forth the theory that the last 40 chapters were a forgery by Gao E, the ending of the novel does not coincide with the various foreshadowings of the chief characters' fates in the prophetic poetic lines.
Scholars since then have debated the authenticity of the last 40 chapters. Many think that the editors lied in their preface and simply authored the ending. Others suggest Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan may be duped into taking someone else's forgery as an original work. A few scholars however believe that the last 40 chapters do contain Cao's own work, although the extent cannot be ascertained. Most modern scholars, however, agree that though the plotting and prose of the last 40 chapters is inferior to the earlier 80 chapters, the Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E version is still the finest of the many existing "completed" versions of the novel.
The book, is, thus, normally published and read in Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E's 120-chapter completed version.
[edit] Family trees of the main characters
[edit] The Jia clan
(You-shi)────┐
X ├─ Rong
┌─ Zhen ────────┘ X
┌─ Yan ──────── Dai-hua ──────────── Jing ───────┤ (Qin-shi)
│ Duke of └─ (Xi-chun)
│ Ning-guo
│ (Wang Xi-feng)─┐
common ─┤ (Lady Xing) X ├── (Qiao-jie)
ancestor │ X ┌─ Lian* ─────────┘ 'Baby'
│ ┌─ She ────────┤
│ │ └─ Ying-chun*
│ │
│ │ (Li Wan) ─────┐
│ │ X ├── Lan
│ │ ┌─ Zhu ──────────┘
│ │ │
└─ Yuan ─────── Dai-shan ────────┐├─ Zheng ──────┐├─ (Yuan-chun)
Duke of X ├┤ X ├┤
Rong-guo (Grandmother Jia)┘│ (Lady Wang)─┘├─ Bao-yu
(née Shi) │ │
│ ├─ (Tan-chun*)
│ │
│ └─ Huan*
└─ (Min) ──────┐
X ├── (Lin Dai-yu)
Lin Ru-hai ─┘
- denotes a child by a concubine.
() denotes female character.
[edit] The Wang family
┌── Wang Xi-feng's ┌─ Ren
│ father ──┤
│ └─ Xi-feng
│ X
├── Zi-teng Jia Lian
common ──┤
ancestor │ ┌─ Zhu
├── (Lady Wang) ────┐│
│ X ├┼─ (Yuan-chun)
│ Jia Zheng ──────┘│
│ └─ Jia Bao-yu ─┐
│ │
│ X
└── (Aunt Xue) ─────┐┌─ Pan │
X ├┤ │
Uncle Xue ──────┘└─ (Bao-chai) ─┘
() denotes female character.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, ISBN 0-393-30780-8
- Cao, Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: a Chinese Novel: Vol 1, The Golden Days, trans. David Hawkes. ISBN 0-14-044293-6.
- Cao, Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: a Chinese Novel: Vol 2, The Crab-flower Club, trans. David Hawkes. ISBN 0-14-044326-6.
- Cao, Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: a Chinese Novel: Vol 3, The Warning Voice, trans. David Hawkes. ISBN 0-14-044370-3.
- Cao, Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: a Chinese Novel: Vol 4, The Debt of Tears, trans. John Minford. ISBN 0-14-044371-1.
- Cao, Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: a Chinese Novel: Vol 5, The Dreamer Wakes, trans. John Minford. ISBN 0-14-044372-X.
[edit] External links
- http://www.china-on-site.com/pages/comic/comiccatalog4.php Dreams of Red Chamber English translation with manhua
- An Introduction to Editions of the Red Chamber, David L. Steelman, The Scholar, 1981
- Red on Gold: Teaching Honglou meng in California
- Article on China Central Television Program about Red Chamber - China Daily. Raymond Zhou. November 12, 2005.
- H. Bencraft Joly's English translation from Project Gutenberg--Vol. 1, Vol. 2
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