Dream of the Red Chamber , also called The Story of the Stone , composed by Cao Xueqin, is one of the Four Great Classical Chinese novels. It was written sometime in the mid-18th century during the Qing Dynasty. Long regarded as a work of Chinese literature, the novels are generally recognized as the peak of Chinese fiction. "Redology" is a field of study devoted to this work.
The title has also been translated as Red Chamber Dream and A Dream of Red Mansions . The novel circulated in a copy of the manuscript with various titles to its print publication, in 1791. Gao E, who prepared the first and second print editions with his colleague Cheng Weiyuan in 1791-2, added 40 additional chapters to complete the novel.
The Red Chamber is believed to be semi-autobiographical, reflecting the rise and fall of the family of writer Cao Xueqin and, by extension, from the Qing Dynasty. As the author's details in the first chapter, it is intended to be a warning to the damsels he knew in his youth: friends, relatives and helpers. This novel is remarkable not only for the great figures and the psychological sphere, but also for precise and detailed observations of the life and social structure typical of the 18th century Chinese society.
Video Dream of the Red Chamber
Languages ​​
The novel is compiled in written language (baihua ) rather than Chinese Classics ( wenyan ). Cao Xueqin is very proficient in Chinese poetry and in Classical Chinese, has a written treatise in semi-wenyan style, while the dialogue of this novel is written in Mandarin Mandarin dialect, which became the basis of modern. speaking Chinese. At the beginning of the 20th century, lexicographers used texts to define new standard language vocabularies and reformers using novels to promote written spoken language.
Maps Dream of the Red Chamber
History
Textual history
The complex textual history of Dream of the Red Chamber continues to be the subject for critical examination, debate, and conjecture. Cao Xueqin, a prominent member of the family who had served the emperors of the Qing dynasty but whose fate began to decline, began to compose the Red House Dream during the 1740s. At the time of his death in 1763 or 1764, Cao had completed the first 80 chapters of the novel and may have composed the remaining chapters. The first 80 chapters were circulated during Cao's lifetime in hand-copied manuscripts. The first printed version, published by Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E in 1791, contains unauthorized edits and revisions by the author. It is possible that Cao destroyed the final chapters or at least the original parts of Cao were incorporated into Cheng Cheng's 120 chapters, with Gao E's "careful emendations" of Cao's draft.
Rouge version
Until the year 1791, this novel circulated in manuscript copied hand. Even among some 12 independent surviving scripts, minor differences in some characters, rearrangements and possible rewrites cause the text to differ slightly. The earliest manuscripts ended suddenly at the latest in the 80th chapter. Previous versions contained comments and annotations of red or black ink from unknown commentators. The statements of these commentators reveal much about the author as someone, 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 reveals much of the interior arrangement of the work and the end of the original manuscript, is now gone. These manuscripts, the most reliable version of textual, are known as the "Rouge Version" ( zh? B? N ?? ).
The early 80 chapters are full of dramatic prophecies and shadows that give clues as to how the book will continue. For example, it is clear that Lin Daiyu will eventually die in the course of the novel; that Baoyu and Baochai will marry; that Baoyu will become a monk. The Branch of Redology, known as tÃÆ' nyÃÆ'¬ xuÃÆ' Â © (???), focuses on the final restoration of missing manuscripts, based on commentary annotations in the Rouge version, as well as internal forecasting in the previous 80 chapters.
Currently, some novel manuscripts can still be found in locations in China and Europe. The "Jiaxu manuscript" (dated 1754) is currently located in the Shanghai Museum, the "Jimao manuscript" (1759) is located in the National Library of China, and the "Gengchen script" (1760) is located in the library of Peking University. The Beijing Normal University and the Institute of Oriental Studies at St. Both Petersburg also hold novel manuscripts dated before the first print edition of 1791.
Cheng-Gao Version
In 1791, Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan compiled the first print edition of the novel. This is also the first "complete" edition of The Story of the Stone, which they print as Dream Illustrated of Red Chamber (?????). While the original Rouge manuscripts have eight chapters, the 1791 edition completes the novel in 120 chapters. The first 80 chapters were edited from the Rouge version, but the last 40 were published.
In 1792, Cheng and Gao published the second edition correcting editorial errors of 1791 versions. In 1791 prefaces, Cheng claimed to have compiled the final based on the author's manuscript.
The debate over the last 40 chapters and 1791-2 disclosures continues to this day. Many modern scholars believe these chapters are additional later. Hu Shih, in his essay of 1921 Evidence on the Red Room Dream , contends that the final was actually written by Gao E, citing the shadow of the fate of the main character 'in Chapter 5, which differs from the end of 1791 Cheng-Gao. However, during the mid-20th century, the discovery of the 120 chapters that date before 1791 further complicates the question of the involvement of Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan - whether they merely edit or actually write a continuation of the novel. Although it is unclear whether the last 40 chapters of the manuscript found containing Cao's original work, Irene Eber finds the discovery "seems to confirm Cheng and Gao's claim that they are only editing a complete manuscript, consisting of 120 chapters, rather than actually writing part of the novel. "
This book is usually published and read in chapter 120 versions of Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E. Some modern editions, such as Zhou Ruchang, exclude the last 40 chapters.
In 2014, three researchers used a data analysis style of writing to announce that "Applying our method to the Cheng-Gao version of the Red Room's Dream has led to convincing evidence if it is incontestable that the first 80 chapters and the last 40 chapters of the book it's written by two different authors. "
Plot summary
The novel provides a detailed and episodic record of life in the two branches of the Jia (?) Rich and aristocratic clan - Rongguo House (???) and Ningguo House (???) - who live in two large, family compounds adjacent to the capital. Their ancestors were made Dukes and were given the title of the empire, and when the novel began, the two houses were the most famous family in the city. One of the clan's descendants was made the Empress Royal, and the lush garden was built to receive his visit. This novel describes the richness and influence of Jias in great naturalistic detail, and maps the fall of Jias from the top of their prestige, following about thirty main characters and over four hundred minor characters. Eventually the Jia clan fell into displeasure with the Emperor, and their homes were raided and confiscated.
In the story of a novel frame, the living Stone, abandoned by the NÃÆ'¼wa goddess as he repaired the sky a few years ago, begged a Taoist monk and a monk to take him with them to see the world. The Stone, along with a companion (in Cheng-Gao's version they are merged into the same character), then given the opportunity to learn from human existence, and enter the mortal world.
The main character of this novel is the happy juvenile juvenile heir, Jia Baoyu. He was born with a magical piece of "jade" in his mouth. In this life he has a special bond with his cousin, Lin Daiyu, who shares his passion for music and poetry. Baoyu, however, is destined to marry another cousin, Xue Baochai, whose mercy and intelligence exemplify the ideal woman, but with whom she has no emotional connection. The romantic rivalry and friendship between the three characters with the background of the family fortune decreased forming the main story in the novel.
Character
The Dream of the Red Chamber contains a tremendous amount of characters: nearly forty are considered the main characters, and there are more than four hundred additional characters. This novel is also known for its complex portrait of many female characters. According to Lu Xun in the appendix for China's Short Fiction History, Red House Dreams solves all possible thinking and techniques in traditional Chinese fiction; its realistic characterization brings out a whole human character that is not "wholly good or all bad," but who seems to inhabit a part of the real world.
In the novel opening chapter, a couplet was introduced:
As critics point out, the verse signifies "not a hard and fast division between truth and falsehood, reality and illusion, but the impossibility of making such a difference in any world, fictive or" actual. "" The main surname, Jia (?, Pronounced ji?), Is a homophone with ji characters? ?, meaning false or fictive; this is reflected by another family who has the surname Zhen (?, pronounced zh? n), a homophone for the word "real" (?). It is suggested that the novel family is a realistic reflection and a fictitious version or "dream" of the Cao family itself.
This novel is most often titled HÃÆ'³ng lÃÆ'³u MÃÆ'¨ng (???), literally "Red Chamber Dream". "Red Space" is an idiom with several definitions; one specifically refers to the sheltered rooms where the daughters of prominent families live. It also refers to a dream in chapter five that Baoyu possesses, arranged in a "red space", where the fate of many characters is overshadowed. "Chamber" is sometimes translated as "home" because of the Chinese word scale "?". But the word "house" is considered to be a misconception of the hÃÆ'³nglÃÆ'³u phrase, which should be more accurately translated as "space", according to scholar Zhou Ruchang.
This novel provided tremendous insight into Chinese cultural depictions at the time, including a description of the "behavior, expectations, and consequences" of the era. Many aspects of Chinese culture, such as medicine, cuisine, tea culture, celebrations, proverbs, mythology, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, devoted piety, opera, music, architecture, funerals, paintings, classical literature, and Books. described. Among these, the novel is especially notable for its great use of poetry.
Early Chinese critics identified two main themes as romantic love, and about the transitoryity of worldly material values, set forth in Buddhist and Taoist philosophy. Since the rediscovery of Cao Xueqin as a novelist, his autobiographical aspect has surfaced, in particular the Cao Xueqin clan which is equally invaded in real life, and placed under the supervision of criticism of the 20th and 21st centuries. During the Mao Zedong era, the Marxist interpretation of the novel is the focus of some Chinese critics, who lament the corruption of the feudal society and emphasize clashes between classes. Since the 1980s, critics have begun to embrace the richness and aesthetics of this novel in a more multicultural context.
Reception and influence in the modern era
At the end of the 19th century, Hong Lou Meng's influence was so pervasive that reformist Liang Qichao attacked him along with other classic Water Margin novels as "incitement to robbery and lust" and to grasp the introduction of a Western-style novel, which he considers to be more socially responsible. However, renowned scholar Wang Guowei, achieved a new method of literary interpretation in an innovative and obsessed essay in 1904 that elicited the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Wang called the novel "tragedy tragedy," in contrast to the prosperous end in the earliest drama and fiction.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, although the New Culture Movement took a critical view of Confucian classics, scholar Hu Shih used textual criticism tools to put the novel in an entirely different light, the foundation for national culture. Hu and his disciples, Gu Jiegang and Yu Pingbo, first determined that Cao Xueqin was the author of his work. Considering the issue of authors seriously reflects a new respect for fiction, because the lower literary form is not traditionally thought to have come from a particular individual. The next Hu was built on Cai Yuanpei's investigation of the history of early edition printing to prepare a reliable reading text. The final task, and in some ways the most important, is to learn the vocabulary and use of the Beijing Cao dialect as the basis for Modern Mandarin.
In the 1920s, scholars and loyal readers developed Hongxue , or Redology into a popular field of scholarship and passion. Among the diligent readers was the young Mao Zedong, who later claimed to have read the novel five times and praised him as one of China's greatest literary works. The influence of this novel theme and style is evident in many modern Chinese prose works. The early 1950s was a rich period for Redology with major research publications by Yu Pingbo. Zhou Ruchang, who as a young scholar had been the concern of Hu Shih in the late 1940s, published his first research in 1953, which became the best seller. But in 1954 Mao personally criticized Yu Pingbo for his "bourgeois idealism" for failing to emphasize that the novel exposes the declaration of "feudal" society and the theme of class struggle. In the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Yu gets heavily criticized but his attacks are so vast and full of quotes from his work that they spread Yu's ideas to many people who will not know where they are.
During the Cultural Revolution, the novel was initially attacked, though it quickly regained its prestige in the years that followed. Zhou Ruchang continued his lifelong work, eventually publishing more than sixty biographical and critical studies. In 2006 Zhou, who had long distrusted Gao E's edition, and novelist Liu Xinwu, author of the popular novel study, joined forces to produce a new 80-chapter version that Zhou had edited to eliminate Cheng-Gao's changes. Liu completed the end that should have been more in line with Cao's original intent.
Translation and acceptance in the West
This is a major challenge for translating Cao's prose, which utilizes many levels of everyday language and literature and incorporates the classic form of poetry that is an integral part of the novel. A recent study concludes that the work is "a challenge even for the most intelligent translators, and the process of translating it into other languages ​​will certainly involve more translation, engineering, and principles than any other literary process."
The first recorded effort in translating the novel into English was done by famous Protestant missionary and sinologist Robert Morrison (1782-1834) in 1812 when he translated part of chapter four novel for the purpose of publishing it in the second volume of his book in 1812 Horae Sinicae (this book is never published). In 1816, Morrison published a conversation translation of chapter 31 in his Mandarin textbook Dialogue and Separate Sentences in Mandarin . In 1819, a brief excerpt from chapter 3 was translated by the famous British diplomat and sinologist John Francis Davis (1795-1890) and published in the London Journal Quarterly Review . Davis also published a poem from chapter 3 of the novel in 1830 in the Transitional of the Royal Asiatic Society.
The next translation into English is a literal translation of selected sections prepared for foreigners studying Chinese language published by Presbyterian Mission Press of Ningbo in 1846. Edward Charles Bowra of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs published a translation of the first eight chapters on in 1868 and H. Bencraft Joly of the first fifty-six chapters in 1892.
A short translation by Wang Chi-Chen that emphasized the central love story was published in 1929, with an introduction by Arthur Waley. Waley says that in the passages that tell the dream "we feel clearly the symbolic or universal value" of the characters. "Pao Yu", Waley continued, the abbreviation of "imagination and poetry" and his father to "all the abusive powers and restrictions that hinder the artist..." In a review of Wang's version of the 1930 version of Harry Clemons of The Virginia Quarterly Review write "This is a great novel," and along with Romance of the Three Kingdoms , it is "among the classics of classical Chinese literature." Although Clemons felt "fragmented expressions" only in prose translated in English and that "many incidents" and "many poems" were omitted, he kept thinking "at every level of effort to read The Dream of Red Chamber really worth making. "In 1958, Wang published an extension of his previous summary, though it was still cut in 60 chapters.
The flow of translations and literary studies in the West grew steadily, based on Chinese language proficiency. The German translation of 1932 by Franz Kuhn is the basis of the summary version, The Dream of the Red Room , by Florence and Isabel McHugh published in 1958, and the later French version. Bramwell Seaton Bonsall, completed translation in the 1950s, Red Chamber Dream , a script available on the web. Critic Anthony West wrote in The New Yorker in 1958 that his novel is for the Chinese people "very much what
The first complete English translation published by David Hawkes about half a century after the first English translation. Hawkes was recognized as a redolog and had previously translated Chu Ci when the Penguin Classics approached it in 1970 to create a translation that would appeal to English readers. After resigning from his professorship, Hawkes published the first eighty chapters in three volumes (1973, 1977, 1980). The Story of the Stone (1973-1980), the first eighty chapters translated by Hawkes and the last 40 years by John Minford consist of five volumes and 2,339 pages of actual text (excluding Prefaces, Introductions, and Appendices). ). The number of English Classical Penguin translations is estimated at 845,000 words. In a 1980 review of the translation of Hawkes and Minford in The New York Review of Books, Frederic Wakeman, Jr. describes the novel as a "work" and the work of a "literary genius." Cynthia L. Chennault of the University of Florida stated that "The Dream is recognized as one of the world's most psychologically sharp literary novels." Michael Orthofer from the online literature website Overview declares it as one of the few works that can be considered for the title "Book of the Millennium," and a rare literature "in which a person can lose himself completely."
Extracts from the Hawkes translation are published as The Dream of the Red Chamber (New York: Penguin, Penguin 1960s Classics Series, 1996. ISBNÃ, 0-14-600176-1.)
A respected and productive team, Gladys Yang and Yang Hsien-yi also translated the full version, A Dream of Red Mansions (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, three volumes, 1978-1980).
In 2014, a short translation of Dream writer by writer Lin Yutang reappeared in the Japanese library. Lin's translation, about half of the original, is reportedly not literal.
Sequel and advanced
Due to its enormous popularity, many of the sequels and sequels of this novel have been published, even during the Qing era. There are currently more than thirty sequels or advanced recordings for novels, including the modern ones. The modern continuation (post-1949) tends to follow after the eighty chapter, and includes those by Zhang Zhi, Zhou Yuqing, Hu Nan and Liu Xinwu.
Adaptations
At least fourteen cinematic adaptations of the Dream of the Red Chamber have been created, including the 1944 film directed by Bu Wancang, the Hong Kong Shaw Brothers adaptation starring Sylvia Chang and Brigitte Lin, and the 1988 film directed by Xie Tieli (???) and Zhao Yuan (??). This last film took two years to prepare and three years for filming, and still, in 735 minutes, the longest Chinese film ever made.
At least ten television adaptations have been produced (excluding many Chinese operatic adaptations), and they include the famous 1987 television series, considered by many in China as an almost definitive novel adaptation. It was initially somewhat controversial because some Redologists believe TV adaptation can do full novel justice. Producer and director Wang Fulin's decision to hire non-professional young actors is justified as the TV series gained immense popularity in China. The series' success owes much to composer Wang Liping (???). He set many classic verses of the novel for music, took four years to negotiate and complete his composition. Other television versions include the 1996 Taiwan series and the 2010 version directed by Fifth Generation director Li Shaohong.
Unlike other great Chinese novels, especially the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dream of the Red Chamber, has received little attention. in the gaming world, with only two Chinese visual novels released in 2017. Hong Lou Meng and Hong Lou Meng: Lin Daiyu yu Bei Jingwang (Chinese: span lang = "zh"> ???: ??????? ) both released by Beijing Entertainment All Technology (Chinese: ????? ). The latter was released on January 8, 2010, and this is an extended version of the first game, with the main heroes of the fully voiced game and additional CG suffixes.
An English-language opera based on a novel in two rounds made by Chinese American composer, Bright Sheng, with libretto by Sheng and David Henry Hwang. The three-hour opera premiered in the world on September 10, 2016, by Opera San Francisco.
References
The work cited
External links
- Bryan Van Norden, A Guide to Reading The Stone Story/Dream of the Red Chamber .
- Zhang Xiugui, CliffsNotes. Summary and notes.
- Richard Smith (Rice University) The Dream of the Red Space Outline of Vol I from Story of the Stone , with comments.
- An article on China's Central Television Program on Red Space - China Daily . Raymond Zhou. November 12, 2005.
- Dream of the Red Chamber public domain audiobook on LibriVox
- Dream of the Red Chamber Afterlives, University of Minnesota
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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