Q: What is the core theme of Dream of Red Mansions? If it is "the main purpose of love", why did the author write that You Sanjie said that "I was mistakenly confused by love in my previous life, and now I am ashamed of my feelings", so is the theme of "Dream of Red Mansions" "color emptiness"? I feel that the author is somewhat contradictory.
This is actually one of the most complex issues in the whole "Dream of Red Mansions", or the most difficult topic to explain, because there may be no way to explain what "Dream of Red Mansions" is written in the first place.
In terms of reading experience, "Dream of Red Mansions" is indeed mainly about love. Although when the author said that he was "talking about the general purpose", he actually wanted to say that he did not interfere with the times and wanted to avoid trouble, which is a strategic statement; I have repeatedly emphasized that the real core of the work is not love, but the socially and family-oriented issues that the author has carefully covered up, but we still have to admit that the most significant artistic aspect of "Dream of Red Mansions" is indeed constructed by love.
Of course, the situation here can be understood on two levels. What we ordinary people see is shallow, that is, the love between Bao Dai, which we will discuss in detail when we analyze the image of Bao Dai later; In fact, the "main purpose of love" in "Dream of Red Mansions" should not be confined to love, it is more of a deep expression of the philosophical issues of life and human society, so the novel at the beginning said that after the monk copied it, "because of emptiness to see color, from lust to love", and then it was called "Love Monk Record", which is the reason, because it wants to understand these truths through love.
It is precisely because of these two levels of love that there will be some seemingly contradictory places in the expression of "Dream of Red Mansions". As mentioned in this question, the work originally took love as the core, but I always wanted to transcend it, and I always felt that it was a shameful thing to have feelings. Therefore, Third Sister You said, "I was mistakenly confused by love in my previous life, but now I am ashamed of it", she was infatuated with Liu Xianglian, but she said that she was "mistakenly confused by love", indicating that this is wrong. The author's judgment to Qin Keqing said that "love the heavens and the sea illustrate the love body, and when the love meets, it must be the main adultery", love was originally what he wanted to flaunt, but the sentence "love both meets" leads it to a negative judgment. We see that there seems to be a similar contradiction between the inspiration of the police illusion fairy Gu to Jia Baoyu and the trust of Ning and Rong. That's where it all comes from. In fact, this is also a problem that the author cannot solve, knowing that life is in the world, and the most important thing is love, but people are often unable to detach themselves because of love, which can also be regarded as the core of "Dream of Red Mansions" to some extent.
The most profound thing about "Dream of Red Mansions" is that it raises the question that each of us cannot but face when living in this world, that is, as a person, how to get along with society under the premise of maintaining ourselves, and how to recognize the value of our personal life. These are all love-related topics, but how does it answer? In the end, Jia Baoyu gave up the cliff, that is, he became a monk, which is naturally an escape from the problem, but from the perspective of love, it is also a renunciation of love. Baoyu often said that he wanted to become a monk, and even Daiyu and others laughed at him, asking him how many times he wanted to be a monk and remember this number. In fact, he said that he wanted to be a monk and that there was a problem in itself. In the early days, Jia Baoyu was actually quite vague about his emotional sustenance, and he also thought that his emotional sustenance would be fixed in the form of marriage, or he would not swear to be a monk.
His so-called being a monk means not marrying a wife, and we in Chinese Han Buddhism cannot marry a wife. So he swore to Lin Daiyu: What do you want, I will become a monk. The subtext is: If I don't become a monk, I'll marry you; If I fail you, I will be punished for not having a wife for the rest of my life. At this time, he placed his feelings on his family, and his feelings were only on the family.
But gradually, he stopped swearing. The reason is not only that others ridicule him, but also that he slowly became enlightened and found that his emotional sustenance does not have to be confined to the form of marriage. When his vision has been broadened, he will say, "I beg you to look at me and watch over me, until one day I will turn into ashes—the ashes are not good, the ashes will still have shapes, and there will be knowledge—and when I will turn into a puff of smoke, and the wind will blow away, you will not be able to control me, and I will not care about you." Then I went with me, and I went with your love. "These statements are all poetic, but what is the core? He felt that the beauty of his emotional sustenance had been lost, and there was no point in living in this world, and he wanted to erase all traces of him. We are used to thinking that it is a very stupid statement, but in fact, it is worth thinking about when we really interpret "Dream of Red Mansions" from a philosophical point of view.
We Chinese pay the most attention to immortality, and we value immortality more than Westerners. In the Confucian classics, it is emphasized that there must be three immortals: Taishang Lide, followed by meritorious service, and then by speech. What is the purpose? I just don't want to leave, I want to create an established reality of being present. Not to mention ancient times, we are the same now, almost everything that people want to do is related to this in the final analysis, such as we want to eat, why do we eat? To keep myself alive, that is, I want to be there, I can't leave this place, I want to see this world. In ancient China, longevity was called the art of longevity. Why is it called long-sighted? Because the purpose of immortality is to see the world, and the presence of people is called long-sightedness. That's why we're sustaining ourselves now. People have to have children next, why? In order to continue their own lives, because people cannot live forever, let the children continue to see the world instead of themselves, and let the children's children continue to watch, and use this way to see for a long time. This is one aspect. On the other hand, there is a person who pursues, in the words of Confucianism, that is, a person who pursues the Tao, what does he do? He was going to leave a book. Including the fact that novelists now want to write novels, film artists want to leave a film that will be passed on to future generations, and scholars want to keep an academic work that can be picked up and re-read by future scholars, in fact, it is also a kind of "presence". In other words, although I am gone, my academic thoughts are still there. So all our efforts are towards immortality. However, what Jia Baoyu pursues is not "immortal", but "immortality", which is "immortal". Have we ever thought about it from this perspective? He hoped that he would eventually turn into dust, and later said that there were still traces of dust, and he didn't want to leave them at all, and there would be no traces when he turned into light smoke. Why? This is really worth thinking about, because the first meaning of life is to continue, but he doesn't want it, so his final ending is to give up on the cliff, there is really no trace, leaving a white land is really clean. This question is related to the topic we just talked about, and it has actually been writing that the most critical thing in life is love. But in the face of various emotional problems, it is impossible to solve them. Because emotions and society are entangled, if you are not a social person, in fact, you have no emotions in a sense. Emotions are a product of socialization, both of whom you like and what type of person you like.
If you want to live in the Tang Dynasty, you will be fat as beautiful; Now everyone is trying to lose weight, and they can't wait to have an A4 waist, why? In fact, is thinness really beauty? It is our current society that stipulates your identity, and you will feel thin and beautiful. Many of us think that aesthetics are our own, but in fact, we are wrong, aesthetics is the setting given by society. For many hot topics on the Internet now, many of us are indignant and think that we are angry with them, but in fact we may be angry by some rumors, and then we are complacent about our anger, thinking that we will be angry and independent people. Emotions are socialized, and "Dream of Red Mansions" wants to express this, but he can't eliminate the contradictions contained in it, so the author empties and imagines it.