Chapter 58 Preface to "Nightmare in the Red Chamber"

This was eight or nine years ago.I sent some textual research outlines to Song Qi, and some of the contents looked very strange.Song Qi jokingly called it Nightmare in the Red Chamber (Red Chamber Nightmare), and sometimes asked in letters, "How is your Nightmare in the Red Chamber?" . In those few years, I happened to have the opportunity to borrow books from the Harvard-Yenching Library and the Greater Library of Bai Guanglai, and saw the fat book.The textual research of recent people is to stand and watch - too late to sit down.As for doing it myself, my only qualification is that I have read it well. I don’t need to pay attention to the different books, and the words that are slightly unfamiliar will pop up automatically.

But I haven't written a theoretical text, of course it's a joke.I may have been poisoned by ancient prose. Bacon’s prose is the most memorable sentence: "Shortness is the soul of eloquence."Because I was afraid of nagging, the reasoning was not clear enough, so I referred to the entire manuscript—the so-called "Draft of a Dream of Red Mansions"—abbreviated as manuscript.In fact, these books are all copies.It's no wonder that after the publication of "A Dream of Red Mansions", a friend told me that I couldn't understand it—of course he put it mildly.

Thinking about it together, it seems that some book reviewers don't understand the topic of "Zhang Kan", so I will take the opportunity to explain it at this time. "Zhang Kan" is just applying the common "I Kan CC", filling in the subject matter or the name of the person. "Zhang Kan" is Zhang's opinion or peeping - looking inside - the most shallow pun.In the past, "Rumors" quoted an English sentence—a poem? Written on water (words written on water) means that it will not last long, but I hope it will spread as fast as rumors.I myself often doubt whether people understand or not, and I have never asked people.

One of the characteristics of the book is the long time of rewriting - more than "adding and deleting five times" in ten years?Until his death, it probably accounted for the entirety of the author's adult life.Cao Xueqin's genius was not like the goddess Athena, who jumped out from between the eyebrows of her father, the god of heaven, Hughes, and was fully armed in one fell swoop.From the process of rewriting, we can see his growth, sometimes I think it is a cross-section of genius. It has been rewritten for more than 20 years. In order to save copying labor, it is not necessary to copy a copy from scratch every time there are a few major changes.Of course, try to make the best use of the existing manuscripts at hand.However, the manuscripts of different periods have been circulated, and the book owners have followed up with revisions, and it is not necessary to copy a copy from scratch every time.Therefore, the content of each book is different, and the date of each book cannot be judged based on the date of a certain chapter or place.This is nothing more than common sense, but I think it is a point of my book.In addition, there are some places that seem absurd and unbelievable. For example, rewriting often occurs at the beginning or at the end, because it is more convenient to change pages from beginning to end in a thread-bound book.Such a rash attitude towards writing?But the stitching of the manuscript should have been the work under the name of Musk Moon—there was a real person who attacked Musk Moon, and later there was only Musk Moon left by the author—it also shows that he is considerate of others.

In the current era of mass communication, it is difficult to imagine the closed society of the past. In the twenty-third chapter, there are four instant poems by Baoyu, "At that time, there was a class of snobs who saw the writing of the twelve or thirteen-year-old son of Rongfu, and recorded it and praised it everywhere."After reading it, people can't help but think that the author of the book lives in poverty in the western suburbs. The Manchus clearly said that the author produced it, "It's a pity that his book has not been passed on, and few people in the world know about it." It can be seen that the copying is only limited to the circle of relatives.Moreover, in the past, novels had no status in literature and art, but were just for fun, unlike the modern Soviet Russians who copied underground novels and poems, and the authors could get spiritual comfort.In this depressing environment, Cao Xueqin relied on the second and third confidants in his family to cheer him up. He seemed to be a warm and emotional person. "People", it is understandable to rely on Zhiyan and Wuhu psychologically.Some people in recent times think that this book was created collectively.Collective creation can only write the script of the CCP.

He is completely isolated.Even if there were contacts overseas at that time, there were no books for reference.Novels in Old Russia have yet to be written.Chinese novels like this "woke up early and caught up with the evening episode" happened to be blocked when they were frustrated when they were developing to the top.Trends tend to be like this.The scolding novels in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China still inherited the previous ones.It doesn't matter if it's not finished, it's bad enough to be a gangrene-please forgive my mixed metaphor. It has been vulgarized, and it is as popular as the Bible in the West, so it has affected the mainstream of the novel and the reading interest.A hundred years later, there is a three-point similarity, but it was abandoned by readers twice, including the Yadong edition in the 1930s.On the one hand, readers are already changing, but they are all affected by external influences, and they have already formed prejudices against old novels, and most of the old novels are like this.

In foreign countries, it is really hard to say to people, "Chinese classical novels and Chinese paintings—should be poetry and paintings, but too few people can understand Chinese poetry—as good as porcelain."If you know that you are also a writer of novels, you may even be suspected of "Pharaoh selling melons, selling melons and boasting".When I stayed in a university town in the Midwest of the United States, I knew quite a few students, and they all thought that it was similar to Ba Jin's, and it was a tragedy of love between cousins ​​in an old family.Boys only care about Baoyu being so feminine, whether she is gay or not.Although they vary in degree, they are not without discernment.A girl who is well-grown, not tall, with tall dark brown hair, looks like a rich peasant or a businessman with heavy make-up, told me that she saw it, praised it a few times as usual, and then hesitated.A little confused says:

"Why are these people the same as us?" I was taken aback.The characters in it are really not that different from Americans or anyone else except Wang Lung Alan Laundry Boss or Philosopher.I feel that she has explained the crux of my writing in English, and I feel very confidant. As soon as Cheng Ben came out, many people said it was a clumsy continuation, but it was only in this century that Hu Shi and others began to look for evidence and wash out the true colors.Fifty or sixty years ago, a magazine recently introduced a "Research Collection of A Dream of Red Mansions":

"This book is a masterpiece written by a group of young people, contrary to the research method of the predecessors who focused on textual research,..." My book "Dream of Red Mansions is Unfinished" is impressively included, and I feel ashamed after reading it.It can also be seen that people generally hate hearing about textual research.Most of the articles in it still regard Cheng Ben as the original work. I also saw this kind of papers in newspaper supplements, which may be the course volumes of college students or graduate students in the Chinese department. ——That also reflects the attitude of the professor. ——Maybe also because of the difficulty in teaching when studying an unfinished work. ——There is an article scolding Xiren to lure Baoyu, obviously I read the sixth chapter tampered with by Cheng Ben. Also changed "and" to "forced pull", and added two sentences such as "tweaked for a long time".If we are like this, we can’t blame others—Hawkes’ English translation of the full text for the first time is still the Cheng version.But only the first volume, twenty-six chapters, and the fox tail of the last forty chapters have not yet been revealed.The broken-arm Venus unearthed on Miro Island is equipped with prosthetic limbs. Does it still have a place in the international art circle?

I would have been thinking, at least complete.It was also eight or nine years ago that I heard Patrick Hanan, a Sinologist who specializes in Chinese novels It is said that the fifty-third to fifty-seventh chapters were written by two unrelated people.I was very shaken. Looking back, I immediately remembered that when I was reading a book, there was a piece of gray, which was boring and not very clear-in fact, it was the place where the donkey's head was not aligned with the horse's mouth, which confuses people.Traveling around Tokyo, seeing the singing girl off, sending off the fifteen-year-old singing girl Chu Yun, but in the end there was no show, leaving no impression, thinking to myself, "What's going on? What's wrong with this book?"

Just wondering, another round started, and suddenly his eyes lit up, as if he had drilled out of a tunnel. I saw me sitting in that familiar room holding a large volume of small print lithographs. "Hey, it's fake." I reached out to touch the teenager's shoulder. These two books are the source of everything for me, especially."Five or six drafts" of the posthumous manuscripts were lost by the borrowers. I have been wishing to take a time machine and fly to the family's house to find them and snatch them back.Now my heart is calmer, because part of my curiosity has been satisfied to some extent. In this collection, apart from rewriting the entire chapter of "Three Details", I wrote it all the way down, and did not correct the previous text where some things are right and wrong, because it is regarded as a long-distance adventure, and readers can start from the beginning if they are interested. walk around.I'm just using the most basic logic, but layer by layer, sometimes it confuses people. I am dizzy myself, and I can put it aside for a year or two.Like a maze, like a jigsaw puzzle, and like a detective story.Hayamoto's different endings have the taste of "Rashomon".When you encounter Funi by chance, it doesn't matter how big or small it is, as long as you "detail" the Dream of the Red Chamber for a while, it will be fine. I am a lackluster person, focusing on the word "poor", but as long as I really like something, I really don't care about it-fortunately, my range of interests is not wide.It has been a feat to spend ten years in this way at a time when "the past has suffered a lot".exactly: Textual research on sleep deprivation in ten years Earned the title of Nightmare in the Red Chamber. (1976)