As a remnant of the Red Mansion, when the eighty episodes came to an abrupt end, there was still a period of time before Daiyu's death, how Daiyu died, and there were many speculations and interpretations by later generations of obsessed red scholars such as book sequelators and interpreters, such as:
Daiyu burned the manuscript to break the infatuation, died in tears, died of oil and lamp blight, and died of suicide due to the marriage of Bao Dai's love......
There are various assumptions, no matter what Cao Gong's real thoughts are, what the first draft he completed, in short, Daiyu will die in the end, this is indisputable, the one who fights is the way to die.
No matter how she dies, it is always closely related to Baoyu, always related to her and Baoyu I's confidante falling into vain, and always related to her depressed living environment of "three hundred and sixty days a year, wind and frost and swords are strictly pressing". Daiyu's death is a complete tragedy, and the tragedy of the Red Chamber is very colorful, that is, Daiyu's fate and Daiyu's death can be compared with the complete destruction of Jiafu's house.
As the first heroine of "A Dream of Red Mansions", Lin Daiyu entrusts the author's most important feelings and value orientation, as the first woman in the Red Mansion, why can't she be allowed to live? Baochai, Xiangyun, and Xing Xiuyan have all lived to the end of their lives, why is Cao Xueqin so cruel to Lin Daiyu that she has to let her die in the best youth?
Lin Daiyu's beautiful life, does she have to die?
Yes, one of the great things about "Dream of Red Mansions" is that it faces the bleakness and desolation, leaving no room for it, reading the whole book, closing the eyes and thinking, leaving only the residual hatred, which has lasted for more than 260 years, and will continue to be the residual hatred. Shocked generations of readers, and stunned generations of readers.
This is an objective fact, but it is not Cao Gong's intention, Cao Gong does not want to torture readers, what he wants to express is to tell readers that such a decaying, long overdue death, and a society that cannot tolerate a little bit of beauty, has no pure land at all, his favorite heroine, he can't bear her to live in such a dirty world, he asked her to return to Taixu, to be her pearl fairy, and never to come to the world again.
He treats the women he loves the most, all of them are handled in this way, whoever he loves the most, let her get out of the world as soon as possible, not only limited to Lin Daiyu, but also Qingwen, Yuanchun, Yingchun, Jin Yu, and Sister Feng.
In fact, Cao Gong may also want to explain to the reader why he did this, so he shows several performance art in the novel, all of which are directed to death.
1. Daiyu's two funeral flowers
Daiyu's funeral of flowers is probably the most fascinating performance art of "Dream of Red Mansions", Daiyu has a total of two acts of burying flowers, one is the 23rd time when she and Baoyu read the West Chamber, "falling into the red array" and "entering the soil into the mud", and the second time is the 27th time Daiyu carried the flower hoe to "collect the beautiful bones, so as not to fall into the dirty ditch".
These flowers, refers to the young girl, the first time refers to the group of flowers, the second burial of flowers is a metaphor for the death of Daiyu, with the bag of these petals blown off by the wind into the bag, buried in the ground, turned into soil, such a destination at least kept clean, kept the spirit, adhered to the discipline, than into the mud ditch into the dirt ten thousand times stronger. This is Daiyu's values and Cao Xueqin's values.
Second, Baoyu's flower ash smoke
In the nineteenth episode, Baoyu gave a speech of self-talk:
"When one day I turn into ashes—the ashes are not good, the ashes still have shapes, and there are knowledge—when I turn into a puff of smoke, and the wind blows, and it will disperse......"
In Chinese tradition, when a person dies, he is buried in the ground, and gradually becomes one with the soil. Baoyu obviously didn't want to do this after he died, he didn't want to let himself stay in this world, so he wanted to turn into ashes, and ash also had traces, and he didn't want to, so he wanted to turn into smoke, so that when the wind blew, the smoke disappeared completely, and he had nothing to do with this world at all, this is the destination of his hope, which shows how disappointed he is in this world and how disgusted he is.
Of course, we can criticize Cao Xueqin's misanthropy as a kind of hateful behavior that is powerless to change himself and unable to support his family, and we can also criticize him for being just a negative person who can only criticize but can't give a strategy, because he is a literati who does not understand the chronic disease of the country's economic base and production relations, and cannot use a philosophical perspective to look down on the cycle of social rise and fall. But we need to understand him from a literary point of view, not from God's point of view.
In the end, death may be a better outcome than living in a filthy earthly world, and dying cleanly is the best outcome. Cao Xueqin is indeed expressing such a view.
3. The Grand View Garden is artificially chiseled
On the surface, the Grand View Garden is a provincial villa built to welcome the provincial concubine, and from another perspective, it is also a pure land created by Cao Xueqin for the daughters of the Red Mansion. This is isolated from the society, it seems to be the peach blossom source of the Wei and Jin dynasties, here, there is no social customary tilting, and even the class separation is blurred, in the Grand View Garden, all the girls can realize their ideals:
Like Daiyu, her positivity, upright, void, and high-spirited good qualities and spirit. The thousands of green bamboos planted in the Xiaoxiang Pavilion are symbols.
Like Tanchun, her spaciousness, her courage and courage to open and close, and her determination to kill, reflected in the furnishings in her room, which resemble an official's study.
Xue Baochai, Li Kun, Miaoyu, etc. are the same. The Red Mansion Zhufang opened the Begonia Poetry Society in the Grand View Garden, and later Lin Daiyu reopened the Peach Blossom Society, they expressed their thoughts and ideas through their own cultural salons, although they were different, they could contend with a hundred schools.
However, the reader knows that later there were filthy things embroidered spring sacs in the Grand View Garden, so the artificially chiseled Grand View Garden could not be independent of the world, just like the anthill had begun to attack the embankment, and they could sooner or later capture all the places and completely destroy the seemingly joyful prosperity. Copying and inspecting the Grand View Garden, driving away the girls, the delicate flowers were destroyed one by one, and the Grand View Garden is not a place of fragrant hills. Not only these youthful lives, but even this garden will be destroyed sooner or later. Death is its only destination.
Dying in the best time of youth is the best ending for Cao Xueqin, and he uses this way to indict the dark and filthy world. Lin Daiyu, as the woman he cherishes the most, how can she survive?
The author of this article: Pingshan Magenta Mansion
Reference to the original work: "Jiazhu Ben Fat Yan Zhai Re-evaluation of the Stone Record" "Gengchen Ben Fat Yan Zhai Re-evaluation of the Stone Record"
Image source: Stills from the 87 CCTV version of the TV series "Dream of Red Mansions".