Tales Across The Sea

4 Responses to “Tackling Two English versions of Dream of the Red Chamber”

1. xgz Posted: Jan 16th, 2008 at 9:54 pm

   1 I recently read on a Chinese website that someone had proposed that the last 40 chapters were not simply “lost.” Instead, Tsao intentionally chopped them off (possibly to avoid censorship) and then embedded the story in the last 40 chapters along with the ending into the first 80 chapters. This is what the author/commentator meant by “caoshe huixian, fumai qiangli” (grass snake grey line, hide clues a thousand miles) in the comments on the margins of the original manuscript. It probably is impossible to translate both the story on the surface, the one that is being told, and the story hidden behind. The hidden story is embedded in people’s names, in shadow events (similar things happening twice), in poems written by the characters themselves, and also through apparent inconsistencies in the story details. Some of the characters’ ages don’t make sense or don’t change consistently with the number of years passed. In the past scholars simply attributed these inconsistencies to the author’s carelessness (hard to believe because the author spent 10 years doing nothing but working on this book). But now viewing them with the view of two stories intertwined together, it actually makes sense. This prompted me to go back and read the novel one more time. It seems the folded storyline idea is quite plausible. I don’t know how can anyone get these details into English with any degree of fidelity.

2. Lara Posted: Feb 7th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

   2 Author Comment Hm. It seems strange that an author would interweave his real last forty chapters through the first eighty, without a consistent series of clues! Has anyone tried sketching out the inconsistent story details into one separate volumn? I’d be interested to see what they came up with. This sounds implausible, like the accusation Christian fundamentalists used to make that if you played recordings of popular rock ‘n ‘roll songs backwards you could hear the lyrics of hymns to Satan. You’d have to have some idea of what hymns of Satan would be like to find them in the first place, of course. As a medievalist, I’d say that many inconsistencies probably crept in through mistakes in the copying and printing processes. Or maybe if you spend ten years working on the same project you forget that what’s in your mind may not match what’s on the page?

3. xgz Posted: Feb 7th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

   3 It was the time when one could get his head chopped off for writing “清风不识字,” (“clear wind doesn’t know a word,” the word “clear” clashes with the name of the dynasty “qing”). The last 1/3 of the book could have contained something that could cause trouble for the author and his family. I am not talking about minor/incidental inconsistencies. In chapter 13, the funeral of Qin Keqing, one of the main characters that died very early on, is a major inconsistency. Qin Keqing was the wife of Jia Rong, a nephew of Baoyu. Jia Rong should be very low in the hierarchy of the family because he was a great grandson and did not have an official position. Yet his wife’s funeral was way out of proportion. It was the biggest funeral in the whole book, and was definitely not appropriate for a young wife of a rankless child of a feudal family. The coffin used the wood that an old King saved for himself. This was not just an inconsistency, it was unthinkable in a feudal society. As if the author was afraid that we still didn’t get the point, the funeral precession was attended by the Northern King! The only explanation is that this was describing someone else’s funeral. That would be one big clue the author gave us. A more clear indication of the folded storyline, is the death of Qingwen, one of Baoyu’s handmaiden. Qingwen looked strikingly like Daiyu. Qingwen was the only handmaiden who didn’t have sex with Baoyu. Qingwen’s death was sudden, very soon after she was expelled by Lady Wang. After her death, Baoyu wrote “芙蓉女儿诔” in her memory (chapter 78). There were two clues that Qingwen’s death was actually Daiyu’s death. First, before Baoyu wrote “芙蓉女儿诔” he had to write a poem for his father to memorialize a fictional heroine named Lin. Daiyu’s last name is also Lin. Second, 芙蓉 (lotus flower) symbolized Daiyu earlier in the book. So Baoyu was really mourning the death of Daiyu in this chapter. In other words, here Qingwen stood for Daiyu of a few years later. Qingwen’s death was Daiyu’s death folded back in time. There are other clues too. Several characters look alike, and there were many shadow events that were clearly meant to happen elsewhere or another time.

4. Bode Posted: Mar 9th, 2009 at 4:25 pm

   4 Wow, didn’t expect that Baoyu was having all the handmaidens too. I’ve only been able to guess at the lewdness coming through from the David Hawkes version (and the 1987 TV version). My Mandarin is nowhere up to reading it as anything other than an translation. The folded storyline elements did come through in the Hawkes version, but as I was watching the TV series last night another aspect of Qingwen’s persecution by Lady Wang came about. Wikipedia (of all places) indicates that Miaoyu appreciates Baoyu for following his heart in loving Daiyu openly. To me this seems more an example of Bayou’s carelessness with words and actions rather than simply love conquering all. Regardless, his affair with Daiyu is obvious to someone living in isolation in the garden so it would not have escaped the bitchy maid of Lady Wang who starts stirring resentment against Qingwen. Lady Wang may be getting the wrong end of the insinuation about whom Baoyu is openly loving and Qingwen gets taken down as a scapegoat as she looks similar to Daiyu. The maid, and the mistress either fear naming Daiyu and punish Qingwen because she is a handmaiden and a much easier target, or genuinely conclude that it is Qingwen who is seducing Baoyu. I’d be very interested in how salacious the original is. Hawkes, being English, has the doubt of being slightly prudish, and TV is generally censored about such things anyway.