A Dream of Red Mansions is the best novel among China's classical novels, an outstanding representative of China's long and splendid culture, a treasure in the treasure house of world literature and the pride of our great Chinese nation.
The time when the story of A Dream of Red Mansions was hidden by the author Cao Xueqin was actually the time when his grandparents, parents and himself lived, that is, the three dynasties of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty. This was the heyday of China's last feudal dynasty, the Qing Empire. However, behind the appearance of "peace and prosperity" with strong national strength and rich material resources, class struggles and political struggles have intensified, and various hidden social contradictions and profound crises have gradually emerged. The economic foundation of feudal society is decaying day by day, feudal ethics is hypocritical and corrupt, and political turmoil changes. The rapid transfer of honor and disgrace among political groups, families and their members within the ruling class, as well as people's deep doubts and disappointment about the existing order, all indicate that the superstructure of feudal society is also shaking and gradually tends to collapse. These are typical signs of the times. Cao Xueqin is great as a writer. He left us an extremely vivid and true historical picture with unparalleled vivid pen.
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There are too many things written in A Dream of Red Mansions, including architecture, gardens, costumes, utensils, diet, medicine, etiquette system, seven-year-old customs, philosophy and religion, music art and opera entertainment. What extensive knowledge and profound accomplishment the author needs! In this respect, Cao Xueqin's versatility is unparalleled, and only a great genius like him can write an encyclopedia covering a wide range of fields.
July 2000, No.84, Gengen South Street, Donghuangcheng, Beijing.
2. On the Poetry in A Dream of Red Mansions and Qufu.
Real "literary preparation"
Cao Xueqin, a great writer who is proud of our people, has been handed down from generation to generation except a novel Dream of Red Mansions, which unfortunately became an incomplete manuscript and was supplemented by later generations. However, no one will doubt his versatility. Novelists need all kinds of knowledge and literacy to successfully describe complex life phenomena and form a broad picture of the times. At this point, Cao Xueqin's talent is extraordinary. He can write poetry, be good at painting, be knowledgeable, learn miscellaneous things and know everything.
Since the legend of the Tang Dynasty, "one stroke with many bodies" has become a major feature of China's novel genre. However, in most cases, where the story needs to be exaggerated or lamented, a few poems or a paragraph of praise and prose are added to increase the effect. The so-called "many styles" is really limited. A Dream of Red Mansions is different. In addition to the novel itself, it also combines the advantages of "multi-body", such as poems, words, songs, ci fu, ballads, proverbs, praises, poems, couplets, books, riddles, alcoholic drinks, parallel prose and quasi-ancient prose. As far as poetry is concerned, there are five quatrains, seven quatrains, five-metrical poems, seven-metrical poems, arrangement rhythm, verse and Sao style; There are homesick poems, event poems, scenic poems, riddles, doggerel poems, limited poems, rhymes, poems with the same topic, poems with different topics and poems chanting; And there is a style that poetry should be tailored. It is varied and colorful. This is a real "literary preparation", which has never been seen in other novels.
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In a word, from the novel's point of view, the artistic achievement of the poems and songs in A Dream of Red Mansions is very high, which is a very special phenomenon in China's classical novels. We should know its artistic features, understand it and appreciate it, so as to live up to the painstaking efforts of Cao Xueqin, a great writer.
1979 May in Beijing Vine Garden
13, eating too much (first time)
Without the talent to mend the sky, it is a waste of time to enter the world of mortals.
Who will remember to give this department a wonderful biography?
explain
The author fictionalizes that there is a stubborn stone under Geng Qingfeng, and tells the story of its experience after being brought into the world of mortals. There is also a poem behind it, which is a seven-character quatrain. Gigi, the lyrics in Buddhist scriptures, also refers to Buddhist poetry. This is the abbreviation of the transliteration of Buddhist Sanskrit "Songtuo", which means "ode".
To annotate ...
1. Filled with the sky-from ancient myths. Legend has it that the sky collapsed in ancient times, and Nu Wa's five-color stone was refined to repair it. Lack of talent is to use fairy tales to say that they are unable to save the collapse of the social system. "Huainanzi Lan Mingxun": "In the past, the four poles (four pillars supporting the sky) were abolished, Kyushu was divided, the sky was not covered (the land could not be covered due to collapse), and the land was underdeveloped (the land could not carry everything due to collapse). The fire is burning (like practicing inkstone, it burns violently), but it doesn't go out, and the water is boundless. Beasts eat people (sound awareness, kindness), while raptors (raptors) catch (sound awareness, capture) the old and weak. So Nu Wa refined five-color stones to fill the sky, broke the aojiang (sound ao, big turtle) and set up four poles, killed the black dragon to help Jizhou (Central Plains), and accumulated reed ash to stop the flood. Tian Bu, four poles are positive, lewd water is exhausted, Jizhou is flat, sly insects die, and people's livelihood is destroyed. "
2. The sentence of "going away in vain"-coming to this world for so many years in vain. The author lamented the wasted years. The world of mortals, Ban Gu's Ode to the Westward Journey: "The world of mortals is four in one, and the sea of clouds is connected." This book is about the prosperity of Chang 'an, which was later used to say that the world is bustling. There is a plot in the novel that the stone was "brought into the world of mortals by scholars and mysterious real people".
3. "This trip"-this is the story of the stone before and after. The novel said that Jia Baoyu was a stone in front of him, but after some experience in the world, he was "led to the other side" and still turned into a stone, so he said so.
4. The sentence of "money (green) people"-please copy it down and tell me anecdotes. Please call me money. Strange stories from a strange studio, that is, legends, are reversed to rhyme, which means that strange stories from a strange studio can be passed down from generation to generation. The earliest is a short story in classical Chinese in Tang Dynasty. Here we only take the meaning of hearsay in the novel.
Distinguish and appreciate
This is a preface to the author's explanation of the reasons for the creation of The Story of the Stone according to myths. In the wedge of the novel, he invented a story that the book was copied from a stone. Its original author turned it into a psychic Baoyu, and the waiter Shen Ying (Jia Baoyu's predecessor) "brought it to the world" and experienced a dream, while Cao Xueqin himself was just a "scholar". However, this point has been exposed by Zhi Yanzhai. He commented on the book and plagiarized it, saying that "the author's pen is very cunning", and the author is actually Cao Xueqin himself.
In the poem, the stubborn stone said that he could not help the world, was abandoned by the world, and lived in poverty for half his life. I had to turn to a book and write my own observations and feelings about reality into a novel A Dream of Red Mansions. The so-called "no talent", seemingly ashamed, is actually conceited, which is the author's angry words and a feeling of "treating a strange man as a poet"; Take a hard stone as a metaphor to show unfashionable pride.
The Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, which appeared in the novel, was the turning point of the last dynasty in China's history from prosperity to decline. With the trend of the times, some old-fashioned economic bases have absorbed the ideas of other countries and become a new production relationship. The author sees that the social system will change after the emergence of "peaceful and prosperous times". He is dissatisfied with the reality, but he wants to "mend the sky" and save the decline. But he also saw that the "sky" of the society at that time was so broken that it could not be repaired at all, so he lamented that he had wasted his life. This is also the nihility and pessimism often revealed in A Dream of Red Mansions.
However, in A Dream of Red Mansions, Cao Xueqin insisted on the realistic creation principle of "following the track, not daring to make any loopholes and distorting for the people". In this way, it is bound to be as Engels said: "I have to go against my class sympathy and political prejudice." He saw the inevitability of the demise of his beloved nobles and described them as people who did not deserve a better fate. " (To Ma Harkness) This makes us see the irreversible historical fate that the whole feudal class is bound to "fail" from Cao Xueqin's Before and After, that is, the decline and fall of a typical feudal family depicted in the novel.