The Dream of the Red Chamber
It has been
a while since my last book review. My excuse is that this, the next book on the
List, was a big and difficult one to get through.
“The Dream
of the Red Chamber” by Cao Xueqin is a massive work. When I first started googling
it, I kept getting hits on an entire bookcase of volumes. The one I settled
for, a single tome of 966 pages, turned out to be a translation of just the
first 56 chapters of a total of 120 chapters. Translated by H. Bencaft Joly in
the nineteenth century in a very literal style. I know that, reading this, I
have by no means read the entire story, but I think I got a pretty good idea what
this is.
Essentially
“The Dream of the Red Chamber” is a slice of life in the mansion of a high-level
noble clan, the Jia, in China in the eighteenth century. In the gardens,
pavilions and apartments on the compound the men are mostly absent, and the
women are largely running the affairs on their own. The only exception is Baoyu,
an adolescent male and grandson of the current head mistress of the clan, the Dowager
Lady Jia. Most of the other characters we follow are the women, sisters,
cousins, aunts and maids. There is known to be upwards of 400 named characters
in this epic novel and we are introduced to a lot of them in this first part.
The scenes
are pictures of daily life in the mansion. Celebrations of new year, visits to
the temple, guests arriving from far away, the poetry club, sickness, feasting,
domestic chores, small disasters and other events as they would happen in such
mansion. It all carries the impression of being scenes from real life, not a
glamoured up drama, but life as it happens for this sort of people. A window
into a world totally alien to a westerner like me, and yet so familiar in its
domestic universalities.
Technically
the story moves around between the characters, following first one, then
another and a third with a handover where they meet, so it is an unbroken
stream passing through many characters. Sometimes one of the cousins, or aunts
or maids, only the lowest ranking in the hierarchy are treated as general
background. The insights into the going on’s is impressive. Each of the named
characters are fleshed out, whether it is Daiyu, Baochai, Xiren, Li Wan, Lady
Feng or any of the others, which is quite incredible. I got the nagging feeling
that the author actually knew these people.
Nothing
much happens in terms of a plot. Or rather, the plot is the daily life in the
mansion. While interesting enough on its own, it does make for slow reading,
when nothing of consequence is happening. Domestic drama is only… so
interesting. When reading up on the full story I can see that there is some
actual drama in store further down the line. The decline that is only hinted at
towards the end of the part I read will apparently escalate, so if at some
point I decide to continue I will get that.
Another element
that makes this a difficult read is the cultural differences together with the
very literal translation. I have lived in China for half a year back in 2008
and I regularly visit China, at least before COVID and it has always struck me
how translations invariably look like bad Google translations. I think there
are some fundamental differences in language concepts that just makes it very
difficult to translate the meaning and intention of a text and the result is often
misleading or confusing. Add to that a cultural baggage that we do not share
and things like humor or poetry becomes obscure and indecipherable. I found myself
reading entire sections where I had no clue what was going on, or thinking I just
read a bad insult, which turn out to be a compliment or the other way around.
As a westerner I probably lost 40-60% of the meaning and details and while this
was frustrating, eventually I got to learn to live with it.
“The Dream
of the Red Chamber” provides a fascinating window into the old Chinese nobility
and for that alone it is worth a read. It is a very slow one though and I suppose
this is not for everyone. I am curious about the sequel, I just do not know if
I have the patience for it.
