The reason why the original manuscript of "Dream of the Red Chamber" was scattered after eighty times

Cao Xueqin was both lucky and unlucky. The decline of the family road and the hardships of life are his luck, precisely because he is "depressed in his intentions, and he cannot pass through his way, so he recounts the past and sees the comers" that he has stimulated his creative enthusiasm, otherwise, there would not be a "Dream of the Red Chamber" in the world.

His greatest misfortune was that the "Great Book of More Than a Hundred Returns" that he had spent ten years of hard work and painstakingly written was actually scattered in the second half, and only eighty times became a fragment.

If it was a year of absence, it would be enough for him to write this masterpiece, but this is not the case.

As early as the nineteenth year of Qianlong Jia Shu (1754), when Xueqin was only thirty years old, this manuscript had been "read (actually written, because it pretended that the novel was written in stone, so it was called) for ten years, added and deleted five times, compiled into a catalog, and divided into chapters and returns", in addition to the lack of poems in some places to be supplemented, and some chapters need to be considered for separation and addition of references, the whole book, including the last "List of Police Illusions", has been written, and its relatives and friends have been approved and transcribed, and Li Yanzhai has also "re-evaluated" it.

What makes this great work a fragment is the most prosaic accidental reason, and therefore the real misfortune.

We know from the fat batch that on the seventh day of the first month of May in the twenty-first year of Qianlong (1756, that is, the second year after Jia Shu), the manuscript of "Dream of the Red Chamber" after reappraisal has been proofread and transcribed by Xueqin's relatives and friends at least seventy-five times. All those who are suitable for two times, broken or missing poems are batched out one by one.

However, this transcription is probably not complete. This can be seen eleven years later (32 ding hai of Qianlong, 1767), when the author had died, and his relatives and friends, Wat Shu, added several comments when they re-read the manuscript of the book, one of which said:

Xi Xue to the "Prison Temple" is presented with the main text. The main body of the attack is called "Flower Attack On People Have a Beginning and An End", and Yu only saw that once when he was transcribed, he was lost by the borrowers of the fifth and sixth drafts such as "Prison Temple Consolation Baoyu". Sigh! Ding Haixia, Deformity.

Another one says:

"Prison Temple" has a large text of Xi Xue and Hong Yu, but it is lost without a manuscript. Sigh! Ding Haixia, Deformity.

Another one says:

Writing Ni Er, Zi Ying, Xiang Lian, and Yu Han Xia Wen, each of them has to fax the pen of the portrayal. Unfortunately, the text of "Wei Ruolan Shooting Garden" is lost and there is no manuscript, sigh! Ding Haixia, Deformity. Another one says:

Sigh can not see Baoyu's "Cliff Hands" text as hate. Ding Haixia, Deformity.

The commentary says, "Once at the time of the transcription ... The borrower is lost", the time should be earlier, and the "lost" should be the author's original manuscript. If in the next few years, the manuscript has been copied a lot, even if this manuscript is lost, the manuscript is still there, and it will not become an irreparable regret.

From the above quotation, we can also deduce the following facts:

First, after the author has basically finalized the draft of "adding or deleting five times", in the process of adding approval and successively trancribing, there are some relatives and friends rushing to borrow it, taking a sneak peek, perhaps there is more than one borrower, and there are also the second half of the original manuscript that has not yet been transcribed, which has been passed around, and the possibility of loss is very large.

Judging from the plot content of the five or six drafts of the "lost" mentioned, these five and six drafts are not connected, and some should be relatively early, such as "Wei Ruolan Shooting Garden", which is probably written with the line led by Jin Qilin, so that Xiang Yun can marry Wei Ruolan; there are already words "quoted" in the first eighty times of learning to shoot, which can be written immediately after eighty times.

Some are later, such as "Prison Temple"; the latest, such as "Cliff Drop", can only be in the last few times, but not the last, the last time is "Police Fantasy List", there is no criticism that it is lost.

The earliest contact with the original manuscript is Li Yanzhai, who should have read the whole manuscript; it seems that he has also read most of the original manuscript, so he still remembers the review and general content of the "lost" manuscript, so there are "each has to fax the pen of the portrayal" and a certain time is a certain "main text" and other words, only "Cliff Throw" back, playing the tone of criticism, it seems that it is not enough to read before "lost".

Second, these "lost" manuscripts are all after the eighty times, and there is one less draft here, and one less draft there, and the missing ones may also have the plot immediately following the eighty times, so that after the eighty times, the original manuscript is too missing, and it is intermittent, and it can no longer be transcribed.

This is the reason why the manuscripts of "Dream of the Red Chamber" that have been copied from generation to generation have stopped at eighty times.

At that time, all the relatives and friends related to the manuscript had "gone one after another, and in this Ding Haixia, only one decaying thing (deformed self-proclaimed) remained", which shows that the original manuscript or transcription of the Dream of the Red Chamber, as well as the remaining remnants of the eighty times except for the "lost" five or six drafts, should still be preserved in the hands of the deformed Wat.

If there are still thirty times after the original manuscript has been eighty times, the residual manuscript should still exist twenty-four or five times. However, some researchers believe that the so-called "last thirty times" of the fat batch should not be divided by eighty times, but should be divided by the defeat of Jia Fu, assuming that the failure is written about ninety times, then add "last thirty times", the whole book should also have one hundred and twenty times, and the number of residual manuscript returns is also more.

The remnants are preserved in the anomalous wat, and are naturally and reasonably concluded according to the logic of their criticism. If this were not the case, the deformity would not have only sighed five or six times "lost", or simply hated not being able to see the text of "CliffHanger".

Fourth, a few years ago, I said that "Dream of the Red Chamber" had been completed before Jia Shu (1754), and "adding and deleting five times" was also before Jia Shu; after Jia Shu, Cao Xueqin never revised the draft of "Dream of the Red Chamber" that he had already written.

Therefore, the books copied out after the Jia Shu, such as the Heji Ben, the Gengchen Ben, and so on, are different from the Jia Shu Ben (except in the case of errors and omissions in the Jia Shu Ben itself and his good omissions), especially those words that have obviously been changed, whether it is a review or the main text, and regardless of their merits or demerits, are not from Cao Xueqin's own hands.

Initially, this was only a conclusion drawn from a comparative study of the differences between the texts. At that time, it was always a little difficult to understand, why cao Xueqin threw her basically completed manuscripts in the last ten years to relatives and friends such as Li Yan and Wat to review and approve, but she did not start to do the final repair work? It only took him ten years to create this novel, so is it still afraid that he will not be able to complete the whole book after another ten years of work? Why let the book that has been painstakingly "wept" become a scrap?

Now I understand that the main reason is that "the fifth and sixth drafts are lost by the borrowers.". If these five or six drafts were thrown into water or burned in fire, and there was no possibility of recovery, Cao Xueqin might have died of heart, but would force herself to rewrite it again, although rewriting it was a very frustrating thing, but time was enough.

Now it is not, it is "lost", it is the result of the borrower's momentary confusion and forgetfulness, and he cannot remember where to put the manuscript or in the hands of whom. This is a common occurrence. Anyone would think: it is always somewhere, no one will deliberately hide these fragments of text, maybe one day suddenly found again. So there was some waiting, And Cao Xueqin waited for the manuscripts handed over to Li Yan and other relatives and friends to be approved, transcribed, and collected, so that they could be reviewed again, including the supplementary work of those missing poems or a few points that needed to be adjusted and re-drafted.

However, the complete transcript was never returned, because the manuscript was incomplete. In this regard, Cao Xueqin may have been unhappy: how could the manuscript not be found? But the result is probably that in addition to the luck, there can only be no choice, and it is impossible to order the relatives and friends who work with him to retrieve the lost manuscript within a time limit, perhaps the careless borrower is still the elder who the author cannot afford to offend.

Needless to say, cao Xueqin himself and even Li Yanzhai and others did not fully realize the seriousness of this matter at that time, and always thought that it would be difficult for the japanese to come to Japan for a long time, and the big book "Dream of the Red Chamber" would eventually dedicate itself to the world with a full bi. Therefore, before the author's death, there was not a single word of mention of the loss of the fifth or sixth drafts.

Who expected that time was uncertain, the only beloved son of Xueqin, who lived in the western mountains, unfortunately died, Xueqin "became ill due to sentimentality", "a disease without treatment", lasted for "several months", only "forty years", and even died in Jia Shenchun (after February 2, 1764), and half a year later, Li Yanzhai also died one after another. "The dream of the white snow song is long", "Dream of the Red Chamber" has become a fragment of the manuscript has been irreparable.

After three years, the deviant Wat sighed at the crippling of the Strange Book. However, he himself also made a great mistake, because he cherished the manuscript after eighty times, afraid of "getting lost" again, he hid it himself and did not easily show it to others. What a misstep! The manuscripts in my personal collection can survive the relentless elimination of the long river of history, and it is simply more difficult than winning the jackpot with lottery tickets.

Cao Xueqin's handwriting, in addition to the forged fakes, whether it is words or paintings, has not long been gone? For posterity, even who the deformity was, when and where he died, is difficult to examine, and where to find his manuscripts?

Thirty years after Cao Xueqin's death, Cheng Weiyuan and Gao Hu compiled and engraved one hundred and twenty copies of "Dream of the Red Chamber" that were renewed by unknown people for the next forty times.

Although some of the plots of the sequel seem to be basically consistent with the author's original conception at first glance, such as the death of Dai Yu (called "the leading edge of the evidence" in the original manuscript), Jin Yu cheng married (in the original manuscript, Baoyu was sober, and there was still "talking about old feelings" when "becoming a couple"), and Bao Yu was a monk (called "cliffhanger" in the original draft), etc., but those are the things that have been repeatedly prompted in the first eighty texts, and do not need to be supplemented according to what author's manuscripts, retained recollections, or what outline text, as some researchers speculate.

If you carefully compare the plot after reading the full manuscript of Xueqin and mentioning the plot after eighty times from time to time, the criticism of Li Yanzhai and other people in the text, there is no place in the sequel that can completely match, and it can be seen that when the sequel starts writing, in addition to basing on the eighty texts that have been widely circulated in the world, the later fragments that have been preserved by the deformity are all "lost". The successors have definitely not seen a word in the last dozens of original manuscripts written by Cao Xueqin.