Chapter 27 Baoyu drinking soup

The basis of sorting out ancient books should be collation.If the collation work is not done well, other work is like building a house on the sand, which cannot be solid.Such as punctuation and annotations must be attached to this article. If the article is wrong first, where can I go to install the punctuation annotations?This is the most obvious truth.Here is one of the clearest examples in this book to illustrate. In the fifty-eighth chapter, there is such a passage in the general notebook, hereby quotes the text of the Jiachen edition: While looking at the box, there was a bowl of fresh ham and bamboo shoot soup, and he hurriedly brought it in front of Baoyu. Baoyu took a sip on the table and said it was a good soup. You have to get up like this, while speaking, hold it up, and blow it gently with your mouth. Seeing Fang Guan by his side, he handed it to Fang Guan and said, "You should also learn to serve, don't just sleep in a daze, and speak softly." , Don't blow on the saliva stars. (Cheng Jia's version, Daoguang Wang's version, Guangxu's "Jin Yu Yuan" version, and Yadong Pai version are roughly the same.)

Because of poor punctuation, the sentence was simply broken.There is obviously an error in this passage, but this is not the case when looking at the Zhigeng version. The Yinzhigeng version has been slightly corrected as follows: (above omitted) Baoyu took a sip on the table and said, "It's so hot."Xiren said with a smile: "The Bodhisattva can not see meat for a few days, so he will get up like this." As he said, he quickly picked it up and blew gently with his mouth; "You also learn to wait around, don't just sleep in a daze, speak softly, and don't blow spittle stars."

There are two main differences between the versions of these two systems: (1) the difference between Baoyu's "good soup" and "good hot"; (2) the difference between "Xi Ren Xiao Dao" and "everyone laughs."Let me talk about (1) point first: if it is a "good soup", the culture and science are solid; but it is just a bowl of ham and bamboo shoot soup, so why should Baoyu say good soup.From the following, the detailed description of Chuina soup shows that this bowl of soup is very hot.If the soup is not hot, why bother to brag about it.Make "hot" self-optimization.The reason why it is wrong is that the two characters have close sounds, so it is easy to make mistakes.According to the ancient meaning, soup is boiled water, which was originally very hot, and hot can be regarded as the vulgar form of soup; but it is inconvenient to apply to modern vernacular novels.In addition to the phonetic error and form error, I have another argument, which is to change it indiscriminately, which may be a misunderstanding from the gluttonous characters below.To describe gluttony, you must say "good soup"; does anyone think so?As everyone knows, saying "good soup" can certainly describe gluttony, but saying "so hot" can also describe gluttony, and it is even more visual.Zhi Geng's review of "Painting the Patient" was good.He couldn't wait to drink the soup, so he burned his mouth, no wonder people laughed at him for being greedy.

As far as point (2) is concerned, it involves a wider context.On the surface, it is also very inappropriate to say "everyone laughs".Baoyu just took a sip of the soup, and the girls laughed together, "You are so greedy." This scene is already very strange.Looking at it further, since the above is "everyone laughs", the following "one side said" is a continuation of the above, of course it still refers to everyone, then "one side speaks, one side carries the soup" (soup), who will carry it? ? "One side speaks, the other side lifts up", the words of connection cannot be cut off in the middle.Take it up and blow it gently with your mouth; who blows it?Seeing Fang Guan by his side, he handed it to Fang Guan; who will pass it?Teach Fangguan a lesson, who will teach him a lesson?If it is all about a certain person, there is no clear text in the book, and the text continues without interruption.We have to define the only grammatical subject as "many people". The subject of "everyone" governs a series of actions: as if laughing at Baoyu with one voice, they brought up the soup together, blew with their mouths together, handed the bowl to Fang Guan together, and taught her with one voice.Is there such a thing in the world?If not, what should it be? "Golden Jade Fate" This Taiping leisure person's clip review saw this a little bit, and commented under "Blowing gently with the mouth" and said, "Who is blowing it?" The tone is exactly that of Qingwen." He said it, assuming it was Qingwen.The book didn't say, where did he know.At last he saw this, and it can be said that he "studied well".

If it is changed from Zhiben, the writing will be smooth and the situation will be just right.With Xiren's usual status, she might as well laugh at Baoyu a little bit, one thing; she naturally picks up the soup and blows it, two things; she passes the soup to Fang Guan, teaches her how to blow it, and reprimands her with some greetings The meaning of "is exactly in line with Xiren's identity, behavior and character, three things."Qingwen was bitter, she said these words, they were not very appropriate, it can be seen that the idle people in Taiping guessed wrong.It was originally a matter of attacking one person, and there was no problem with a series of words.

The reason for this error is that I first mistook "Xiren" for "Everyone"; since "Everyone" was called "Everyone", the word "all" was added to make it what it is today.But there is no version for "everyone laughs". Wrong words will inevitably lead to contradictions, and if you use the old-style sentence reading or not at all, you can get over it sloppily; if you add new-style punctuation, the contradictions will immediately become prominent and sharp, and you will not be able to solve it.According to the text of this book, it cannot be cut off.When it is cut off, there is no subject, and the question of "who did it" immediately arises.It can't be continuous, there is only one subject, and the problem of "doing together" occurs again.No matter what, everyone come together.To give an example, let's look at the Yadong edition (the recent writer's press edition is roughly the same):

Baoyu took a sip from the table and said, "Good soup!" Everyone laughed and said, "How many days can the Bodhisattva not see meat? Just like this!" As he said, he picked it up and gently used his mouth Blowing; seeing Fangguan by his side, he handed it to Fangguan and said, "You also learn to serve as servants, don't just sleep stupidly. Keep your mouth light and don't blow on saliva stars." (fifty-eighth) back to page 15) It is clear that everyone is bragging together, may I ask if he still wants to drink this bowl of Tang Baoyu. This is not to blame for the bad punctuation in this book, because according to the text, no one can punctuate it very well.Basically, it is not a question of good or bad punctuation, but a question of whether it should be punctuated or not, that is, a question of collation, as mentioned at the beginning of this article.

As far as punctuation is concerned, I also have two digressions.Since the emergence of new punctuation, there have been many achievements in cultural undertakings, and there have been many crimes and jokes.With punctuation, it is easier for you to understand when you read the article, but sometimes it makes you more confused, which corresponds to the saying "I still understand if you don't talk about it, but the more you talk about it, the more confused I become".We can't give up eating because of choking, but we must be very careful when we punctuate, and readers must also be vigilant at all times, seek the meaning of the text, and don't just rely on this crutch.There are fundamental difficulties in using new-style punctuation in some ancient books, so I can't say more here.