Review: Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin (Penguin Classic edition, translation by David Hawkes and John Minford)

 

I did it: I started in September, and I have now read the entirety of Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone, all five volumes as published in the Penguin Classic edition (translation of vol 1-3 by David Hawkes and vol 4-5 by John Minford), each volume ~400-500 pages and in tiny font, single-spaced.

 

It feels like waking from a dream.

 

And what a dream! This strange, mesmerizing, shape-shifter of novel. It starts out like a xianxia c-drama! (why did no one tell me that?) A sentient stone spirit (made and then abandoned by the goddess Nu-wa) falls for a Crimson Pearl Flower and waters her with sweet dew until she becomes a fairy girl. She pledges to someday repay him with her tears. The flower and stone are then both reborn in the human world to meet one another and live out their fates. And here the story shifts, for long periods of time, to something like a 19^th century English novel of manners. The stone is reincarnated as boy named Bao-yu and the flower as his cousin, a girl named Dai-yu. Both belong to the fabulously wealthy and aristocratic Jia family, and the novel provides lavish details of the minutiae of this family’s doings. There are rounds of social visiting, tea, dinner parties, and plays. Extended descriptions of fashion and furnishings. Dissection of etiquette and possible violations of etiquette. More tea. Poetry contests and drinking games.

 

But lurking on the edges is the reminder of Bao-yu’s mystical origin, and the greater reminder of the material world’s transience: that fortune and life itself are but passing things, subject to arbitrary change. That our material world is, indeed, nothing but illusion.

 

Violence erupts at the edges of this narrative, occasionally swinging briefly into the forefront. A string of maids commit suicide by various means. Wives and concubines plot murder. Tragic love stories play out among maids and minor characters. A reckless cousin of the family involves himself in both abduction and murder, and nearly all the menfolk involve themselves in dubious shenanigans. Bao-yu himself is nearly beaten to death at one point. And then the violent/tragic episode subsides, sinking beneath the ongoing narrative with what seems scarcely a lasting ripple. The story moves on, and it’s on to the next party, the next garden gathering, the next recited poem.

 

There’s a feeling of capaciousness in this book, of the wildness and randomness of life, that I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else. All kinds of strange, seemingly random things happen, and are absorbed by the narrative. The characters are some of the most multi-faceted, fascinating, complex characters I’ve ever met. And it’s the female characters, primarily, who shine (not a surprise, as the author Cao Xueqin wrote that a primary motive of this book was to memorialize the talented young women he’d known in his youth). The reincarnated flower, Dai-yu, is prickly, sensitive, quick to take offense, but also quick-witted and gifted. Bao-chai is Dai-yu’s rival, a sensible and gracious young woman who becomes a stabilizing influence on the sensitive and mercurial Bao-yu. Grandmother Jia is the fun-loving family matriarch. There’s also Bao-yu’s sharp-tongued maid with the tragic fate, Skybright. His other maid and unofficial concubine, Aroma, who is intelligent, loyal, and supremely capable. And of course there’s Xifeng, the young wife and manager who practically runs all the household affairs herself. Xifeng, who is conscientious, loyal, capable, intelligent, and witty. Xifeng, who is also duplicitous, scheming, vengeful and venomous. Xifeng who plots the downfall of others and is partly responsible for the downfall of the Jia family, and who has also devoted her life to the Jia household and has the hardest work ethic of anyone in the book. Xifeng who has a hidden mean streak a mile wide and who is also kind to others (her kindness to a poor relation is what saves her own daughter in the end). Xifeng is certainly one of the most complex, memorable characters in all of literature, and the narrative presents her as a whole person, without judgement.

 

Xifeng’s usurious money-lending schemes eventually contribute to the Jia family’s ruin, along with the misdeeds and feckless actions of the senior menfolk. For Dream of the Red Chamber is not only a story of love and fate and mysticism; it’s also the sprawling saga of a family’s downfall, and a wider “society novel” of corruption and hypocrisy throughout the upper strata of the Qing Dynasty. As the narrative proceeds it also darkens, and many of the seemingly consequence-free episodes of violence and misconduct that appeared earlier turn out to have consequences after all. As loss and tragedy compound, the earlier scenes of luxurious pleasure—all the garden parties and banter and seemingly innocent trivialities—appear ever more poignant. Karma slowly works itself out for this family, in ways both good and bad.

 

I feel that I could say so much more about this wonder of a novel. I feel its rhythms and emotions still in me, like a lingering dream. A beautiful dream of silk finery and furs, of flowers and moonlight and exquisite aesthetics. A dream of passion and love and tragedy. It’s a great society novel, a love story, a sprawling family saga, and a mystical meditation on illusion and lasting truth. It’s a deep immersion into a vanished world, into the upper class society of Qing Dynasty China. It occasionally drags in its detailed minutiae, and then turns captivating again, a page-turner. The overall effect is mesmerizing. It’s like nothing I’ve ever read before.

Some quotes:

Vol 1:

“The first girl was of medium height and slightly plumpish, with cheeks as white and firm as a fresh lychee and a nose as white and shy as soap made from the whitest goose-fat. She had a gentle, sweet, reserved manner. To look at her was to love her.”

“Bao-yu had from early youth grown up among girls. . .As a result of this upbringing, he had come to the conclusion that the pure essence of humanity was all concentrated in the female of the species and that males were its mere dregs and off-scourings. To him, therefore, all members of his own sex without distinction were brutes who might just as well have not existed.”

  

Vol 3:

"“If only I could die this minute and my heart burst out of my body so that you could see how true it is! After that I shouldn’t care if all of me—flesh, blood, and bones—was blown by the winds into every corner of the earth!”"

 --said by Bao-yu to Dai-yu’s maid, Nightingale, in an attempt to convince the maid of his love

 for her mistress