Dream of the Red Chamber
Dream of the Red Chamber or The Story of the Stone is an 18th-century Chinese novel authored by Cao Xueqin, considered to be one of the Four Great Classic Novels of Chinese literature. It is known for its psychological scope and its observation of the worldview, aesthetics, lifestyles, and social relations of High Qing China.
The intricate strands of its plot depict the rise and decline of a family much like Cao's own and, by extension, of the dynasty itself. Cao depicts the power of the father over the family, but the novel is intended to be a memorial to the women he knew in his youth: friends, relatives and servants. At a more profound level, the author explores religious and philosophical questions, and the writing style includes echoes of the plays and novels of the late Ming, as well as poetry from earlier periods.
Cao apparently began composing it in the 1740s and worked on it until his death in 1763 or 1764. Copies of his uncompleted manuscript circulated in Cao's social circle, under the title Story of a Stone, in slightly varying versions of eighty chapters. It was not published until nearly three decades after Cao's death, when Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan edited the first and second printed editions under the title Dream of the Red Chamber from 1791 to 1792, adding 40 chapters. It is still debated whether Gao and Cheng composed these chapters themselves and the extent to which they did or did not represent Cao's intentions. Their 120-chapter edition became the most widely circulated version. The title has also been translated as Red Chamber Dream and A Dream of Red Mansions. Redology is the field of study devoted to the novel.
Language
The novel is composed in written vernacular rather than Classical Chinese. Cao Xueqin was highly proficient in both Chinese poetry and Classical Chinese, having composed essays in a semi-wenyan style. The novel's dialogue, however, is rendered in the Beijing Mandarin dialect, which later became the foundation of modern spoken Chinese. In the early 20th century, lexicographers used the text to establish the vocabulary of the new standardised language and reformers used the novel to promote the written vernacular.History
Textual history
Dream of the Red Chamber has a complicated textual history that scholars have long debated. It is known with certainty that Cao Xueqin began writing the novel in the 1740s. Cao was a member of a prominent Chinese family that had served the Manchu emperors of the Qing dynasty but whose fortunes had begun to decline. By the time of Cao's death in 1763 or 1764, hand-copied manuscripts of the novel's first 80 chapters had begun circulating, and he may have written drafts of the remaining chapters.These hand-copied manuscripts circulated first among his personal friends and a growing circle of aficionados, then eventually on the open market where they sold for large sums of money.
The first printed version of Dream of the Red Chamber, published by Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E in 1791, contains edits and revisions that Cao never authorized. It is possible that Cao destroyed the last chapters or that at least parts of Cao's original ending were incorporated into the 120 chapter Cheng-Gao versions, with Gao E's "careful emendations" of Cao's draft.
"Rouge" versions
Up until 1791, the novel circulated in hand-copied manuscripts. Even amongst some 12 independent surviving manuscripts, small differences in some characters, rearrangements and possible rewritings cause the texts to vary a little. The earliest manuscripts end abruptly at the latest at the 80th chapter. The earlier versions contain comments and annotations in red or black ink from unknown commentators. These commentators' remarks reveal much about the author as a person, and it is now believed that some of them may even be members of Cao Xueqin's own family. The most prominent commentator is Zhiyanzhai, who revealed much of the interior structuring of the work and the original manuscript ending, now lost. These manuscripts, the most textually reliable versions, are known as "rouge versions".The early 80 chapters brim with prophecies and dramatic foreshadowings that give hints as to how the book would continue. For example, it is obvious that Lin Daiyu will eventually die in the course of the novel; that Baoyu and Baochai will marry; that Baoyu will become a monk. A branch of Redology, known as tànyì xué, is focused on recovering the lost manuscript ending, based on the commentators' annotations in the Rouge versions, as well as the internal foreshadowings in the earlier 80 chapters.
Several early manuscripts are still extant. At the present, the "Jiaxu manuscript" is held in the Shanghai Museum, the "Jimao manuscript" is held in the National Library of China, and the "Gengchen manuscript" is held in the library of Peking University. Beijing Normal University and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences both also held manuscripts of the novel that predate the first printed edition of 1791.
Cheng–Gao versions
In 1791, Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan brought out the novel's first printed edition. This was also the first "complete" edition of The Story of the Stone, which they printed as the Illustrated Dream of the Red Chamber. While the original Rouge manuscripts have eighty chapters, the 1791 edition completed the novel in 120 chapters. The first 80 chapters were edited from the Rouge versions, but the last 40 were newly published.In 1792, Cheng and Gao published a second edition correcting editorial errors of the 1791 version. In the 1791 prefaces, Cheng claimed to have put together an ending based on the author's working manuscripts.
The debate over the last 40 chapters and the 1791–92 prefaces continues to this day. Many modern scholars believe these chapters were a later addition. Hu Shih, in his Studies on A Dream of the Red Chamber argued that these chapters were written by Gao E, citing the foreshadowing of the main characters' fates in Chapter 5, which differs from the ending of the 1791 Cheng-Gao version. However, during the mid-20th century, the discovery of a 120 chapter manuscript that dates well before 1791 further complicated the questions regarding Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan's involvement—whether they simply edited Cao Xueqin's work or actually wrote the continuation of the novel. Though it is unclear if the last 40 chapters of the discovered manuscript contained the original works of Cao, Irene Eber found the discovery "seems to confirm Cheng and Gao's claim that they merely edited a complete manuscript, consisting of 120 chapters, rather than actually writing a portion of the novel".
The book is usually published and read in Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E's 120 chapter version. Some modern editions, such as Zhou Ruchang's, do not include the last 40 chapters.
In 2014, three researchers using data analysis of writing styles announced that "Applying our method to the Cheng–Gao version of Dream of the Red Chamber has led to convincing if not irrefutable evidence that the first 80 chapters and the last 40 chapters of the book were written by two different authors."
In 2020, Zhang Qingshan, the president of the academic organization Society of the Dream of the Red Chamber, stated that although the authorship of the novel's last 40 chapters remains uncertain, it is unlikely Gao E was the one who wrote them.
Plot summary
In the novel's frame story, a sentient Stone, left over when the goddess Nüwa mended the heaven aeons ago, wants to enjoy the pleasures of the "red dust". The Stone begs a Taoist priest and a Buddhist monk to take it with them to see the world. The Stone, along with a companion, is then given a chance to learn from human existence, and enters the mortal realm. In the Cheng-Gao versions, he is reborn as Jia Baoyu – thus "The Story of the Stone".The novel provides a detailed, episodic record of life in the two branches of the wealthy, aristocratic Jia clan—the Rongguo House and the Ningguo House —who reside in large, adjacent family compounds in the capital. The capital, however, is not named, and the first chapter insists that the dynasty is indeterminate. The ancestors of the two families were made Chinese nobility and given imperial titles, and as the novel begins the houses are two of the most illustrious families in the city. One of the Jia daughters is made a Royal Consort, and to suitably receive her, the family constructs the Daguanyuan, a lush landscaped garden, the setting for much of subsequent action. The novel describes the Jias' wealth and influence in great naturalistic detail, and charts the Jias' fall from the height of their prestige, following some thirty main characters and over four hundred minor ones.
As the carefree adolescent male heir of the family, Baoyu in this life has a special bond with his sickly and melancholic cousin Lin Daiyu, who shares his love of music and poetry. Baoyu, however, is predestined to marry another cousin, Xue Baochai, whose grace and intelligence exemplify an ideal woman, but with whom he lacks an emotional connection. The romantic rivalry and friendship among the three characters against the backdrop of the family's declining fortunes form the central story.
Characters
Dream of the Red Chamber contains an extraordinarily large number of characters: nearly 40 major characters, and over 400 additional ones. The novel is known for complex portraits of its female characters. According to Lu Xun in the appendix to A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, Dream of the Red Chamber broke every conceivable thought and technique in traditional Chinese fiction; its realistic characterization presents thoroughly human characters who are neither "wholly good nor wholly bad", but who seem to inhabit part of the real world.The names of the characters in particular present a challenge to translators, since many of them convey meaning. David Hawkes left the names of the masters, mistresses, and their family members in pinyin, translated the meanings of the servants' names,, put the names of the Daoists and Buddhists into Latin, and those of actors and actresses into French.