■ Peng Chiquan played the hair crown worn by Jia Baoyu, collected by the Cantonese Opera Art Museum, modern. Photographed in YueBo
■ 87 edition of the TV series "Dream of the Red Chamber" villain book, Beijing Cao Xueqin Society collection, contemporary, a set of thirteen volumes, China Radio and Television Publishing House. Photographed in YueBo
■ Qing Dynasty costumes at the exhibition site. Photo courtesy of Yue Bo
Sun Weike, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Dream of the Red Chamber, wrote an article to interpret the aesthetic structure of "Dream of the Red Chamber":
On December 20, 2019, after the launch of the National Museum of China, with the support of the Dream of the Red Chamber Society and the Beijing Cao Xueqin Society, and in parallel with the exhibition, ten lectures on "Dream of the Red Chamber" and "Chinese Culture" were held, and the speakers included Wang Meng, a famous writer and honorary president of the Beijing Cao Xueqin Society, Hu Deping, advisor of the China Dream Society and founding president of the Beijing Cao Xueqin Society, deputy director of the Dream of the Red Chamber Research Institute of the China Academy of Arts, and "Dream of the Red Chamber Journal" Editor-in-chief Sun Weike and ten other experts. At the end of 2020, these ten lectures were compiled by the organizers and published by the Beijing Times Chinese Literature Bureau as a book called "Ten Talks on Culture". Today, with the permission of the editors of the book, I would like to present here some passages from Mr. Sun Weike's article "Family Tragedy: The Rise and Fall of Jia Fu" to explore the "structure of tragedy" aesthetically.
■ Collection Weekly reporter Pan Weiqian text/picture
1
Before Wang Guowei, there was no such word as tragedy in ancient Chinese literature... Only in the Qing Dynasty did Cao Xueqin really write a tragic story in the novel
Wang Guowei said, "The writer of the art is not of the nature of the individual, but of the nature of the whole of mankind." But the quality of art, the concrete and not the abstract, is taken up as the nature of the whole of human beings and placed under the name of the individual. The "fine arts" here refers to "art" in a broad sense, and he advocates that art shapes the image of art according to typical laws. Artistic objects are concrete and individual, but their meaning has the character of "all human beings". Cai Jiawan, a commentator of the Qing Dynasty, also said, "The Family of Ran Xueqin can include a hundred thousand families", "Dream of the Red Chamber" writes about a family affair and a family affair, but summarizes a hundred family affairs and writes about the Affairs of the Cao Family in Jiangnan, but it is typical, and the author reveals the common reasons for the decline of many aristocratic families through the Cao Family. We have comprehensively analyzed the reasons for the decline of Jia Fu from moral, economic, political, judicial and other angles, but if we return to the text of "Dream of the Red Chamber", how should we view the decline and fall of Jia Fu? This is inseparable from our understanding of the concept of tragedy on an aesthetic level.
Cao Xueqin's creative starting point is to write "Dream of the Red Chamber" as a tragedy. Writing a story of Daizhu Immortal Grass still in tears and dying in tears, is this not a love tragedy? He wrote "Qunfang Pulp (Broken)" and "Qianhong Yi Cave (Crying), Wan Yan Tong Cup (Sorrow)" in a homophonic way, writing about the tragedy of destruction of a group of young men and women who have no way to go, and the aesthetic structure of "Dream of the Red Chamber" was originally a tragic structure.
When the author writes tragedy, he must have the emotional experience of sadness, compassion, grief, and grief, and with these emotional experiences, "the succession of death" is the inevitable result, Lin Daiyu is dead, Qingwen is dead, Jia Mu is dead, Wang Xifeng is dead, and Baoyu is out of the house. Death is a tragedy, and all the characters in the book are even more tragic. Xue Baochao was pregnant with a child, but her husband in high school did not know the end. For a woman to run away without a message, this is a real tragedy; even the attackers who can talk about peace everywhere end up being "sad and alone"... I have analyzed a lot of real reasons earlier, including the judicial incidents in Jia Fu in law, the economic stretching in Jia Fu, and the various wind and moon things that Jia Fu and other people do in moral corruption, but these are more important than the writers who want to conceive "Dream of the Red Chamber" as a tragic story at the beginning. Chinese there is no concept of tragedy. Before Wang Guowei, there was no tragedy in ancient Chinese literature, there was "sadness" but no "tragedy", only in the Qing Dynasty, Cao Xueqin really wrote a tragic story in the novel. As Wang Guowei said: "Dream of the Red Chamber" is a tragedy within tragedy, a tragedy through the end, and a third kind of tragedy.
2
Baoyu believes that he lives in this world, and the only person who can keep him concerned is the "sentient" person
The root cause of the Jia Fu family's despair is that "Baoyu xiha heaven and earth, there is a lot of madness, so he went out from then on." Baoyu's breakthrough and unknown end made the Second Duke of Ning Rong no longer harbor illusions about the only family heir and his parents who could pin their hopes on the family. This is the true tragedy of this family. So why did Jia Baoyu bid farewell and leave this family? Baoyu wants love without love in Jia Fu, and wants freedom without freedom, which is contrary to his personal beliefs. Baoyu is not like Lin Daiyu, Lin Daiyu is that if she can't realize her belief, then she would rather die than keep this belief, Lin Daiyu's death is actually a kind of martyrdom of her own, which should be indisputable.
It's just that Baoyu still has the idea of compromise, so he didn't simply martyr himself, but wanted to delay to see if he could find the hope of realizing this belief. He wanted to look for hope from Baochao, and found that Xue Baochao often taught him to focus on old ladies, old masters, wives and families, and advised him to seek fame and take the road of career. Bao Yu said two times before breaking out of the door about the heart of the naked child, he said that the heart of the naked child is "ignorant, ignorant, greedy and unscrupulous", and the "heart of the naked child" that Bao Chao understands is your loyalty and filial piety to the family, if these are not done mercilessly, what else is the heart of the naked child? It can be seen that the differences between the two of them have become irreconcilable.
Bao Yu believes that he lives in this world, the only thing that can keep him concerned is the "sentient" person, initially he lived for Lin Daiyu, because he had feelings for Lin Daiyu, lin Daiyu also responded to his feelings all the time, so he could not bid farewell to this world. Later, the people around him were "heartless people." Xue Baochao did not intercede with him, people are "cold lovers"; there is also a person who is weak and widowed, that is, attacking people, she said, "Have you become a robber, and I will not follow you?" "In the end, the rest of Baoyu's people are you doing your duty, I do my duty, we don't have to talk." But for Baoyu, if there is no love, then there is no reason for him to continue to exist in this world. Don't you want him to make a name? Then it is time for him to leave after the meritorious examination. He is the "love obsession species", he is "the illusion of the experience", and the extinction of love is disillusionment.
3
Cao Xueqin agrees with This love of Baoyu and believes that secular people should also agree with this kind of love, so he wants to solidify this momentary beautiful love into a literary work to resist the world's understanding of the nothingness of life
Cao Xueqin said that "the lack of a corner of heaven" is the lack of a sentient stone, that is, there is everything in life, but there is a lack of affection. If there is no emotion, Cao Xueqin believes that the only real content of life does not exist. This is the opposite of how we feel in real life, we often feel that people's feelings are always erratic, unpredictable, and always changing with things, so we all don't cherish love. What we value is merit and gain, including our own promotion. Cao Xueqin, on the other hand, said that fame and fortune are not important, what matters is whether we have emotional comfort and whether we have an emotional home. A home with emotions is your home, and if there is no emotion, then this home is only on the other side. Therefore, Baoyu bid farewell to the earthly world, bid farewell to the gentle and rich village, the rich and prosperous land, and returned to the great wilderness, and returned to the ruthless realm. Cao Xueqin agrees with This love of Baoyu and believes that secular people should also agree with this kind of love, so he wants to solidify this momentary beautiful love into a literary work to resist the world's understanding of the nothingness of life. Everyone often says that "life turns into emptiness", all things are over-the-top clouds, but Cao Xueqin has to write down the most cherished love in the world, write down the most affectionate sex, turn it into words, and use it to overcome nothingness. Cao Xueqin also knows that his painstaking efforts are not understood by all people who read the works, so he sighed that "all the clouds are stupid, who understands the taste."
The family has not given young people the right to choose freely, and the choice of young people's life path has no autonomy, which is a fundamental reason for the demise of the family, and everyone should pay attention to this reason. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", the poetry club and banquet can show the beauty of youth, precisely because it has great creativity. Distinct personality and creativity are the root of Cao Xueqin's belief that life holds hope and remains prosperous.
"Dream of the Red Chamber" uses false photographs and false facts to convey The Gods, writing a more generalized tragedy to achieve a higher reality. In a nutshell, true art is a "true lie."
(The main text is excerpted from Sun Weike's "Family Tragedy: The Change of the Rise and Fall of Jia Fu", from "Ten Talks on Culture", Beijing Times Chinese Literature Bureau, January 2021, 1st edition)