The New Lifetime Reading Plan

family fallen on hard times. His grandfather Ts'ao Yin was a hereditary bondservant of the Ch^ng imperial family (by no means a lowly status), and had served as an imperial commis- sioner in Nanjing. But when Hsьeh-cfrin was in his early thir- ties, imperial favor was withdrawn, and the family moved to Beijing to live in slowly deepening poverty; deprived of his expected career in service to the imperial family, he devoted his life to writing his great novel. (Some of the stigma that had earlier attached to writing fiction had worn off by the eigh- teenth century; see Wu Cfreng-en, [36]. Perhaps, too, faced with the collapse of his hopes, Ts'ao Hsьeh-cfrin simply didn't care very much whether his work was respectable or not.) The first eighty chapters circulated in manuscript form during his lifetime, but a complete edition of the book was not published until 1791-92; the last forty chapters seem to have been very heavily edited by the publisher, in part to omit any hint of dan- gerous criticism of the imperial family. The book's transcen- dent qualities immediately won it an admiring readership, and it has been treasured by readers ever since.

The Dream of the Red Chamber (also known by an alterna- tive title, The Story of the Stone) describes the slow decline in wealth and power of a great family, the Chia [Jia] clan. The action takes place mainly in their elegant mansion and, espe- cially, in its large, beautiful garden. The principal character is a young man, Chia Pao-yь [Jia Baoyu], who is assumed to be, in part, Ts'ao Hsьeh-cfrin himself. Raised by his strictly orthodox Confucian father for a life of public service, Pao-yь is happier and more at ease in the women's quarters of the mansion, where he finds romance and delicacy of feeling rather than his fathers stern rectitude. He falls in love with his doomed, melancholy cousin, Lin Tai-yь [Lin Daiyu], but eventually marries a rival, Pao-ch'ai [Baochai]. Tai-yь dies of despair; Pao-yь loses his mind, eventually recovers, prepares himself for an official career but ultimately leaves the world behind to become a monk, assuring the collapse of the family fortunes. The plot of the novel is intricate, convoluted, and not always

even consistent; in outline it might sound like soap opera. What saves it is its literary grace; the authors remarkable abil- ity to observe and describe the intricate details of upper-class life in traditional China; and above ali the psychological depth of the book's characters. Pao-yь and his cousins are not stock figures of melodrama, but rather fully realized human beings with whom the reader readily identifies, even across great gaps of time and culture.

The book's title deserves a moment's attention. The transla­tion "Dream of the Red Chamber" became current in the 1920S, and is now so widely known as to have become stan­dard; and it would be futile to try to change it. But it is worth knowing that lou doesn't really mean "chamber"; a lou is a mul- tistoried building or tower, the sort of high pavilion (red-lac- quered pillars, fancy roof bracketing) that would grace the gar- den of a wealthy traditional Chinese household. So Hung lou meng means something more like "Red Pavilion Dream," or better, "A Dream in a Red Pavilion." The title alerts us to the role the garden and its buildings will play in the story, and to the possibility that the whole story—life itself—might be (in Buddhist fashion) merely a dream.

It was probably to avoid using the misleading title "Dream of the Red Chamber" that David Hawkes used the alternate title The Story of the Stone for his complete translation of the novel. It is by far the best English version and should be used in preference to ali others.

J.S.M.

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JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

1712-1778 Confessions

Of ali the great writers we have met, including Wordsworth [64] and Milton [45], Rousseau is the most irritating. His