《红楼梦》——繁华与幻灭
English
Dream of the Red Chamber is the novel that readers of Chinese literature tend to save for last — not because it is the most difficult, but because it asks the most of the person reading it. It is a book about beauty and its disappearance, about the fullness of a world and the completeness of its eventual loss.
中文
《红楼梦》是中国文学的读者往往留到最后才读的小说——不是因为它最难，而是因为它对阅读它的人要求最多。这是一本关于美丽与美丽的消逝、关于一个世界的丰盛与它最终彻底失落的书。
The World of the Novel
小说的世界
English
The novel is set within the Grand View Garden, a lavish estate built for the visit of a royal concubine, and inhabited by the daughters and young women of the Jia family — one of four great aristocratic families in the capital. At the center is Jia Baoyu, a young man of unusual sensitivity who was born with a piece of jade in his mouth, and who moves through this world of women and poetry and refined feeling with an awareness that everything around him is exquisite and impermanent.
His great love is Lin Daiyu, his cousin — a poet of extraordinary talent and fragility, who came to live in the household after her mother’s death. The other significant figure is Xue Baochai, also a cousin, accomplished, composed, and everything that conventional society would approve of. The tension between these three — between romantic feeling and social expectation, between the life that is wanted and the life that is arranged — runs through the entire novel.
Around them, the Jia family slowly loses its wealth, its influence, and its members. The garden becomes the setting for the most delicate and transient of human experiences: young women composing poetry, forming a poetry club, celebrating festivals, falling ill, growing older. By the end, the garden is emptied. The family is diminished. Baoyu becomes a monk. Daiyu is dead.
中文
小说的背景是大观园——一座为贵妃省亲而建的奢华园林，贾家的女儿们与年轻女性们居住于此。贾家是京城四大家族之一。处于中心的是贾宝玉，一个敏感过人的年轻人，出生时口含一块玉石，以一种对周遭一切之精美与无常都保持清醒意识的姿态，穿行于这个由女性、诗歌与精致情感构成的世界。
他深爱的人是林黛玉，他的表妹——一位才华与脆弱并存的诗人，在母亲去世后来到贾府居住。另一位重要人物是薛宝钗，同样是表妹，端庄，沉稳，是传统社会所有期许的化身。这三人之间的张力——浪漫的情感与社会期许之间，想要的生活与被安排的生活之间——贯穿了整部小说。
围绕着他们，贾家缓慢地失去了财富、影响力，以及家族的成员。那座园林成了人类最精微、最短暂的经验的舞台：年轻女性们吟诗作赋，结成诗社，庆祝节日，生病，老去。小说结尾，园林空了，家族凋零了，宝玉出家为僧，黛玉已死。
Why This Novel Endures
为何历久弥新
English
Cao Xueqin wrote Dream of the Red Chamber from memory and loss — he was himself the descendant of a once-great family that had fallen into poverty and obscurity. The novel contains eighty completed chapters; the final forty, attributed to Gao E, are generally considered a completion rather than an original continuation. Cao Xueqin died before finishing it.
The novel endures because it refuses consolation. It does not suggest that the beauty it describes was illusory, or that loss is somehow for the best. It insists that what was beautiful was genuinely beautiful, that what was lost was genuinely worth having, and that the passing of such things is genuinely to be mourned. This combination — full presence combined with full awareness of impermanence — is rare in any literary tradition.
It also endures because of its extraordinary precision. Cao Xueqin renders the texture of daily life within the garden — the meals, the games, the conversations, the poetry contests, the rivalries and affections among the women — with a specificity that makes the reader feel they have lived there. The loss, when it comes, is felt as personal.
中文
曹雪芹以记忆与失落写成《红楼梦》——他本人正是一个曾经显赫、后来没落的家族的后裔。小说共有八十回完稿；后四十回一般认为是高鹗的续写，而非曹雪芹的原作。曹雪芹在完成之前便去世了。
这部小说之所以历久弥新，在于它拒绝给予安慰。它不暗示它所描绘的美丽是虚幻的，也不暗示失去终究是好事。它坚持：曾经美丽的，确实美丽；曾经拥有的，确实值得拥有；此类事物的消逝，确实值得哀悼。这种结合——对当下的充分在场，与对无常的充分意识并存——在任何文学传统中都属罕见。
它历久弥新，也因为它非凡的精确。曹雪芹以令人叹止的细腻呈现了园林日常生活的质地——餐食、游戏、对话、诗会、女性们之间的竞争与情谊——那种具体性让读者感觉自己曾经住在那里。当失落到来，它以私人的方式被感受到。
A Note for Western Readers
西方读者的注脚
English
Western readers sometimes compare Dream of the Red Chamber to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time — both are long novels of memory and time, both render the texture of a vanishing world with extraordinary precision, both are obsessed with the question of what remains when beauty passes. The comparison is imperfect, as all such comparisons are. But it opens a door. If you have read Proust and want to understand what Chinese classical literature is capable of at its highest reach, Dream of the Red Chamber is a place to begin.
中文
西方读者有时将《红楼梦》与普鲁斯特的《追忆似水年华》相比较——两者都是关于记忆与时间的长篇小说，都以非凡的精准呈现了一个正在消逝的世界的质地，都痴迷于一个问题：当美丽消逝，什么留了下来。这个比较是不完整的，所有这类比较都是如此。但它打开了一扇门。如果你读过普鲁斯特，想理解中国古典文学在最高处能够达到什么——《红楼梦》是一个开始的地方。
※ 英译本以大卫·霍克斯（David Hawkes）的译本《石头记》（The Story of the Stone）最受推崇，共五卷。