Volume 27, Number 10 · June 12, 1980
The Genius of the Red Chamber
By Frederic Wakeman
The Story of the Stone Volume 1: The Golden Days Volume 2: The Crab-Flower Club
by Cao Xueqin, translated by David Hawkes
Indiana University Press, 540 and 601 pp., $25.00 each
Of all the classic Chinese novels, The Story of the Stone (Shitou ji) is indisputably the greatest masterpiece. It is also—unlike The Water Margin or The Journey to the West, which crystallized popular tales and folklore—an individualistic work of fiction, clearly expressing the artistic vision of a single literary genius[1] Better known as The Dream of the Red Chamber (Hong lou meng), which is the title used in the earlier English translations, this eighteenth-century work actually has appeared under both titles in Chinese.[2] Each carries a particular emphasis of its own, and perhaps the reason The Dream of the Red Chamber has become the prevalent one in China is that the phrase hong lou (red mansions) evokes both 'a dream of delicately nurtured young ladies living in luxurious apartments' and a 'dream of vanished splendor.'[3]
Review, 4304 words
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