Two treasure jades and "the real thing wants to be revealed, and the false thing will be exhausted"

Some people say that the so-called "hidden true things" in "Dream of the Red Chamber" is actually a typical creation method of literature. Is that right?

I think half of them are right.

For example, the image of Jia Baoyu, Li Yanzhai and so on sometimes regard him as an author, sometimes see themselves from it, and sometimes do not admit that there is a real person, he said: "Baoyu's person is a person I have seen in books in my generation and know that there is this person, but I have never seen it in person." (Gengchen Ben's nineteenth review) These are very natural from the perspective of typical creation of human images.

However, there are also many phenomena in the writing of "Dream of the Red Chamber" that cannot be explained by typical theory. For example, in addition to shaping the image of Jia Baoyu, Cao Xueqin also wrote a Zhen Baoyu with the same name, the same appearance, the same temperament, and even the situation is very similar. If we follow the general typical creative law, they should be synthesized into one person, because the typical should be the so-called "this one". But "Dream of the Red Chamber" is written as "these two", why is this? What is the need to write in this way?

In the eighty times, although Zhen Baoyu mentioned it through the mouth of the woman who came to Beijing from Jia Yucun and the Zhen family, Jia Baoyu also dreamed of a character with the same name as himself (the second and fifty-sixth times) because he heard what the Zhen family said, but the real person did not appear. Then, in Cao Xueqin's eighty-fold draft, did this Zhen Baoyu not appear?

The sequel reads: Bao Yong, a servant of the Zhen family, came to Jia Mansion and said that since Zhen Baoyu had dreamed of going to a temple with a torii arch during a serious illness, he saw that there were books in the cupboard, and saw countless women turned into ghosts and skeletons (this was from the fifth return), and after recovering from the illness, he changed from evil and became a gentleman and a sage. If anyone came to seduce him, he was completely unmoved", and "was able to help the old man with some housework" (the ninety-third time). Later, it was also written that he became a relative and was in the middle of the lift.

It seems that the difference between Zhen Baoyu and Jia Baoyu is that one has "changed his temper" and one has not changed.

The continuing author probably wants to say that what can be corrected is the true treasure jade. In fact, in our opinion, Jia Baoyu in the sequel has also changed his temper almost: didn't he also start to study hard, ready to "win the first place" and "not waste the heavens and en Zude"? (18th)

The first to criticize the continuation of the book for not being in line with Zhen Baoyu's original intention was Yu Rui. He said in "The Idle Pen of the Jujube Window":

In the first fifty-six times, it is written that the Zhen family came to Beijing to see Jia Mu, saying that Zhen Baoyu's affection and his family affairs are vaguely similar and similar, one is two, it is difficult to distinguish between true and false, and Si is a wonderful text. Hou Baoyu dreamed of the mirror and made it clear that the true zhen was false, as if he were a shadow in the mirror. Forty years after returning home, he did not understand his purpose, and stupidly created Zhen and Jia Liangyu, who looked the same and had different temperaments, and married Li Qi, then became a second family with Jia Fu, chewing wax tastelessly, and poisoning the wonderful meaning of the snow parsley with subtle puns.

sigh! Is the intention of the snow parsley only fifty-six times and start? In the second time Jia Yu Village and Leng Zi Xingyan, when he was in the Jinling Zhen family, he saw Zhen Baoyu being reprimanded to call on his sisters to stop the pain, and only pity for his daughter's love, etc., which had already been portrayed for Jia Baoyu. Hypocrites, how can they dream!

Yu Rui criticized the continuing author for not understanding Cao Xueqin's intentions, writing Zhen Baoyu's pen and ink to kill the scenery, which is very artistic appreciation and eyesight. But he himself only saw half of Cao Xueqin's intention to write Zhen Baoyu, that is, "true Zhen and false Jia, as if appearing in the mirror.".

But why did the author write this? Is it just because of the artistic effect of "implicit pun" or "first portray Jia Baoyu"?

I think not, when Leng Zixing gave a speech at rongguofu, he had already introduced Jia Baoyu's "love for his daughter's love and other words" to Jia Yucun first, is this not "first portraying Jia Baoyu"? Why wait for Yucun to say Zhen Baoyu to be a portrayal?

As for the "implicit pun" of "true zhen and false Jia", what is the intention of it, it is precisely what needs to be revealed.

For example, the last forty continuations of the book take those who can change evil and convert to the true (Zhen) treasure, and those who have problems and do not change are false (Jia) treasures, which is also a kind of intention. Cao Xueqin's intention should not be so!

In "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Zhen Jia" harmonizes "true and false", which is a special artistic technique adopted by the author in the overall conception to solve the contradiction of "tracking down" the real thing by "tracking the traces" and having to "hide the real thing" because of some avoidance.

The real thing, of course, mainly refers to the fact that the Cao family "clutched sorrow and joy, and rose and fell". To a large extent, "concealment" is a means of last resort, and actual recording is the end.

To this end, the author has to use various methods to deform the original appearance of life (not only the deformation required for ordinary literary and artistic works to refine the materials of life and make them typical), so that the reader can see it at a glance confusing, true and false, and cannot recognize its original appearance.

However, the author does not want people to finally "not recognize", so he has to leave some gaps that can be glimpsed from it, so that people have clues to find, which is like the author obeying the orders of the elders' relatives and friends, concealing the plot of "Qin Keqing's obscene funeral of Tianxiang Lou" in the first draft and rewriting Qin Shi as a disease and death, but deliberately leaving a picture of her hanging herself and a sentence in the book of Bo Mingsi (this is not an oversight in Cao Xueqin's rewriting).

Cao Xueqin wrote the true affairs of her Own Cao family in two places: Jinling ZhenFu and Duzhongjia Mansion.

Before the Cao family was destroyed, its status was Xuan He, and the real thing was mostly known to the same people. Therefore, in the first eighty times, the method of deformation is used to capitalize the matter of Jia Fu and show people with the so-called illusion.

Of course, there is truth in falsehood. Zhen Fu, which is occasionally mentioned through character dialogue, as if it is the shadow of Jia Fu, has the function of revealing this kind of true information at the big joint.

But there are also falses in the true. If the first review is as revealed in article 5 of jia shu ben's "Ordinary Cases" (that is, the first paragraph of his book), the author intends to conceal the "real thing" in this book with "false language village dialect", then the second time both Write Leng Zixing says Jia Fu and Jia Yucun says Zhen Fu, and the author's intention is to let the reader understand from the vague similarities and differences between the two houses that Zhen and Jia are not the two families.

For this reason, the author wrote that "this Zhen Mansion and Jia Fu are old relatives, and they are related to each other, and the two families are extremely affectionate", not only does the Zhen family also have an identical treasure jade, but also "he Lingzun has also been flogged several times, and he has no choice but to change"; there is also a grandmother who is "doting on unknowns", and she often "blames her son for insulting her teacher" and so on.

Of course, this can be said to be a portrayal of Jia Fu with Zhen Fu, but it is not impossible to say the other way around, writing Jia Fu is to write Zhen Fu.

If you understand it from the perspective of "fake Jia Zhen Zhen". When Li Yanzhai and others criticized the "Zhen family", they said: "Another real home, holding and the fake family is far away, so writing false is knowing the truth." ”

In short, it is implied that Zhen and Jia are writing about the same object- the Cao family.

Therefore, on the "talisman" of the "Great Clan Eunuch Family" in Jinling, with the Jia family, the Zhen family is not listed, and Zhen has been included in the "Jia is not false (not false is true)".

Jia Fu is in the capital, and Zhen Fu is in Jinling. The Cao family in his prime said that the capital is false and "deformed"; Jinling is true, only dark spots. Calling Jia Fu Mendi "after the Second Duke of Ning and Rong", both "deformed", may be said to be false, but not very eye-catching, but it is true.

Leng Zixing wrote that "the emperor because of his sympathy for his ancestors... When the political father was given an additional title of principal", the fat comment pointed out: "The real thing is not a vain thing." We know that after Cao Yin's death, Kangxi took pity on the Cao family, and in addition to inheriting his father's position in charge of Jiangning Weaving, Cao also "gave him the title of chief of the ministry of honor" ("Jiangning Weaving Cao Shu Xie inherited his father's position"). Later, Cao also took on this position. These were written on Jia Zheng.

However, such as Cao Yin's appointment as a general envoy, who also inspected the imperial history of the two Huai salts, and supervised Jiang Ning weaving prominently, it could not be explicitly stated in the writing of Jia Fu. Therefore, he borrowed the Zhen family to reveal its truth, saying that the Zhen family was the "president of the Qincha Jinling Provincial TirenYuan", and that the regent envoys, the inspectors of the imperial history and the palm weaving of Guanfang were all "Qin cha"; "Ti ren", that is, the so-called "Yang Ti Huang Ren", was a word of gratitude and praise commonly used by the emperor; the three generations and four grandchildren of the Cao family, Meng Kangxi Te Garn, ren Jiangning weaving for more than half a century, so this title was fictionalized.

Li commented: "This title is not examined, and it is also set up because of allegory, leaving it alone." "Obviously knowingly and refusing to break it." It can be seen that when telling the truth, it is also necessary to use some falsehood.

Kangxi toured the south, with the Jiangning Weaving Bureau as the palace, and Cao Yin took over the car four times. Among them, during a southern tour in the 44th year of the Kangxi Dynasty, cao Yin, in addition to picking up the driver in Nanjing, rushed to Yangzhou as a patrol salt imperial historian to pick up the driver, and also received gifts such as the imperial handbook couplet in Suzhou. Kangxi was given the title of Tongzheng envoy because of Cao Yin's diligence and sincerity in preparing the palace.

All these are the grand events that are greatly glorious in the Cao family's door, although the younger generations of the later generations have not been born twenty or thirty years earlier, as Sister Feng said, they have not seen the world in person, and they have heard the elders say it many times.

Therefore, in the novel, if you do not write about the prosperity and grandeur of the past, you must write about the southern tour. But such a grand event can not be written explicitly, otherwise "Dream of the Red Chamber" will be copied, and people outside the author's circle will know that the novel is about Cao Yin's family.

Therefore, the characters, places, events, and plots of the Yuan Princess Provincial Relatives and the construction of the Grand View Garden were conceived to reflect them in a tortuous manner. This is the author's intention revealed to us by the lipogram:

Borrowing provincial relatives to write about the southern tour, out of the heart of how much to remember the past and the present! (The Sixteenth General Batch of the Kojibun)

Kangxi's southern tour, luxurious and extravagant, feasting and acting in the Jiangning Weaving Office as a palace, giving poems to the monarchs, distributing gifts, etc., are well documented in historical records (see Zhou Ruchang's "Dream of the Red Chamber New Evidence, Historical Chronicles").

In the novel, it is nothing more than a family banquet act in Jia Province, and a gift of poetry between the sisters of Yuan Chun. Therefore, the poems that divide the Great View Garden, although they are out of the boudoir, are all poems that should be produced. And the number of honors and inferiorities between kings and subjects, the strict hierarchy, is also vividly expressed by depicting the upside-down and ridiculous relationship between Jia Zheng's father and daughter.

However, Cao Xueqin was also afraid that such a deformed writing method of concealing the real thing might eventually lead to the annihilation of the real thing, so she specially led the woman's family to talk about the world from the matter of the provincial relatives, and leaked a little chance from it. In this way, there is a passage from Aunt Zhao saying "the story of Emperor Taizu imitating Shun's patrol in those years".

She said: "Jia Fu is supervising the construction of sea boats in the Area of Gusu and Yangzhou, repairing the Sea Pond, only preparing to take over the car once, and spending all the silver on the water." ”

As mentioned above, during the southern tour of the spring and summer of the 44th year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Cao Yin did go to Su and Yang to pick up the car, and just three months ago, he said in a recital: "The minister and Li Xu have built river boats and inland river boats, and are ready to complete them within this year." It can be seen that the clouds of "supervising the construction of the sea ship" are not without a foundation.

But these details of that year, outsiders may not all remember and want to get, so it may be better to say that it is Jia Fu. Only the most famous in Jiangning received the driving incident four times, and the author did not dare to directly connect with the Jia Fu mainly described in the novel, so he attributed it to the "shadow" of the Jia Fu, the Zhen Fu, saying:

And now the Zhen family in Jiangnan, hi yo yo, good power faction! He took the ride four times, and if we hadn't seen it with our own eyes, no one would have believed it. Don't say that silver has become mud, by virtue of all the world, there is nothing that is not piled up in the mountains and the sea, and the four words of "sin and pity" cannot be taken care of. ...... It was just taking the silver of the emperor's family and making it to the emperor. Whoever has the money to buy this hilarity goes! (The sixteenth time of Gengchen Ben)

This is the real thing that Cao Xueqin wants to get rid of by borrowing the provincial pro-plot.

Therefore, the fat review reminds the reader: "The Zhen family is the big key, the big festival, do not make a general spoken word!" ”

And approved the "four times to pick up the driver" said: "Point the main text of the topic." ”

Meaning, this is the author's original intention to write a provincial story.

Exploring the advantages and disadvantages of the rule of the family can remind people of the reform measures of the rulers on certain economic issues. I wonder if this is also the deformed way of writing the real affairs of the Cao family.

For example, the management of the Grand View Garden implemented the responsibility system of contracting cadres, and the crowd reflected: "I don't have to move the money and grain in the officials, I can also pay the money and grain." Bao Chao said: "But these things, they are all wrapped up, do not need the accounting office to receive money, just calculate, how much will be saved?" "Wait, very similar to Cao Yin and others to undertake the imperial court to save copper and silver expenses;

Words such as the following abound in Cao Yin and the relevant compromises:

Thanks to the master Hong'en, the fourteen levels of copper such as Hushu were divided into three parts, and since the slaves and others were entrusted, I and others will save silver every year and hand over the inner library. ...... Now, if you pay the copper price silver of Hushu and other fourteen passes to me, and the foot fee is five points of silver, stop receiving it from the Guan Supervision, and pay it by the nearby Jiangsu Clan Treasury instead, then... Boatmen's employment prices and miscellaneous uses in various places can save 10,000 taels of silver. Therefore, if you save 140,000 taels more than I did before, you can save an additional 10,000 taels of silver. ...... If it can be carried out, then I will be spared the suffering of the great rivers and boats, and it will also benefit the money and food... (Kangxi 44 December 28)

The novel is based on false photography, with small yu big, afraid that the reader will forget the relationship between the fake Jia Zhenzhen in the xingsheng and the elimination of the disadvantages, especially in the guanyuan people to the master Xie En, said "we are no longer going to be physical, the heavens and the earth will not tolerate", immediately inserted the family over-report "Jiangnan Zhen Mansion family members arrived in Beijing yesterday, today into the palace to celebrate, at this moment sent people to send gifts to please an" and other words, interrupting this matter, the traces of hints are very obvious.

The true story of the Cao family's punishment by the imperial court, like the southern tour of driving, can neither be written nor truthfully written in the novel.

The fat commentary mentioned that after eighty times, jia fu 's "confiscation", if it is all written in a positive way, I am afraid it will be difficult to conceal the real thing and achieve the purpose of recording.

I think that the author may use some side-pen secret writing methods to make up for this matter, and some of the scenes and details in it are likely to have been transformed into the deformed "confusing and slanderous copying and inspecting the Grand View Garden" in advance.

Of course, the inspection of the Grand View Garden is only a "suicide and self-destruction" within a family, but Yongzheng seized the concubine, the party was the same, and the princes and ministers of the clan were killed, so why not be the same room?

The author seemed to be busy sneaking around, and deliberately let Tanchun shed tears and said that the Zhen family "really copied today", and then let You Shi add in the next time: "Yesterday I heard your grandfather say, read the di newspaper, the Zhen family has committed a crime, and now it has no family affairs, and it is transferred to Beijing to deal with the crime." "Wait, is this accidental? This is similar to how similar it is to the author writing about Yuan Chun Province and specifically letting Grandma Zhao mention the southern tour and the Zhen family's driving affair!

Cao Xueqin does not simply use the plot of the novel to write political history, nor will she use a novel character to stupidly allude to a real person, otherwise, the character image he creates will not have real artistic vitality. He only discovered many similarities inherent in the large family of feudal patriarchy and the feudal patriarchal dynasty, so with his special sensitivity, out of special needs, he consciously used unusual typical methods to synthesize and communicate some of the characteristics of the two, although on the surface he only wrote about the internal affairs of a family, which either took small and large, or played on the topic, or referred to the east and the west, and the character images and events had their own independent existence value and authenticity, and the cognitive significance was not limited to itself.

With this method, Cao Xueqin wrote a very profound novel of "complaining about the times and cursing the world" in the form of "children's pen and ink".

The couplet on the Stone Arch of the Too Illusory Realm says: "When it is false, it is true and false, and there is nowhere to do anything." (The couplet appears twice in the first and fifth times, which is the author's deliberate emphasis.) ）

I thought that this was the author drawing the reader's attention to the way the novel is written: the characters and stories are true and false, the false is true, and Zhen and Jia fu are designed to show this relationship. With fake perfunctory, with real points, they complement each other. Don't take the fake as real, the real as fake.