Not everyone is infected by the charm of this novel. I remember that at the beginning of 1949, Zhao Shuli said at an open-air meeting in the Democratic Square of the old Peking University, "We are no longer interested in the funny performance of a dude like Jia Baoyu and the love life of Tang and his little wife." (When I said this, I didn't expect that A Dream of Red Mansions showed "the seeds of capitalism", and the great redologist Yu Pingbo was persecuted because he didn't see it. However, people who fall for the charm of A Dream of Red Mansions can be found not only in China, but also all over the world. Paolo Demiaver, a great sinologist and Swiss-born Frenchman, once told me that he remembered reading A Dream of Red Mansions in bed when he was studying in Hanoi and was attracted by the novel. He didn't even feel his little monkey urinating on the top of the mosquito net and sprinkling it on him. Demi Ivell taught herself Russian so that she could read the original version of War and Peace. However, he thinks the novel A Dream of Red Mansions is even greater than Proust's epic description of "the world of decadent snobs in Paris".
I have translated A Dream of Red Mansions for many years, so I'm afraid I can't give any useful comments on my experience in translating this book-I can only say that the time when I translated A Dream of Red Mansions in my memory was a very pleasant time in my life. My work progress is slow, but I'm glad to be able to work quietly. Some people may think that the freedom I enjoy in the process of translation is irresponsible, but I am deeply encouraged. There are inevitable mistakes in my translation, some of which are serious. It is likely that this translation will be replaced or even forgotten. I am sure that the possible advantages of the translation will be partly attributed to the spirit given to it when writing, which I can neither analyze nor explain.
My favorite English translation-The Legend of the Giant by rabelais translated by Sir Thomas urquhart in the17th century-I'm sure it was translated with the same pleasure and freedom. I don't expect to keep up with the achievements of my predecessors-and after all, I don't stick to the original text like urquhart. Think about two great translators: one is Sir Thomas Mallory, the translator of The Death of King Arthur, and the other is our contemporary Mr. Yang.
I'm afraid this letter is a bit confusing.
September 2002 17
Written in Oxford
Letter from Mr. Min Tude, Translator
Dear Liu Jiaoshou:
I am deeply grateful for your timely notification on the eve of the seminar on the translation of the excellent novel A Dream of Red Mansions held by Nankai University.
I remember Nankai clearly. 1980 to 1982 During my stay in Tianjin, I went to Nankai Campus several times. As for A Dream of Red Mansions, it is one of the masterpieces that can change readers' lives. I have never regretted reading this novel. It is a great blessing for me to be David Hawkes's apprentice and help him finish this translation. If there is any small achievement in the translation of the last forty, it depends entirely on the brilliant example set by Hawkes during my apprenticeship.
When I think of the seminar you are going to hold, there is not a translator who is not worried! Any translation is bound to have mistakes and shortcomings. Students, scholars and critics are of course obliged to point them out. But I can be sure of one thing: neither Hawkes nor I started this work as an academic activity, but out of my love for the original work itself. This is the motivation of our work. As for mistranslation, an Italian translator who translated another famous work (Defoe's Robinson Crusoe) made a preview. Please allow me to quote him: "Please be kind to my mistakes and live happily!"
I hope you can get fun and happiness from reading the original text and translation of this novel! I hope you can get "harmless fun" from reading, and also play a warning role for those who still need to be alert.
Please accept my best wishes!
John minford
200214 October, 65438
Invited report
The External World and Internal World of Feng Qiyong's A Dream of Red Mansions —— A Report on the National Symposium on Translation of A Dream of Red Mansions.
About the author: The problem of A Dream of Red Mansions is really complicated. I think it will be more difficult to talk about Feng Qiyong and translate it. I don't know how to translate it, but it is not easy for us to understand the original text of A Dream of Red Mansions, even for a famous red scientist. So it is even more difficult for China to translate it into a foreign language. Now I only know that the Honor Society can report to you some ideas and long-term understanding of my long-term study of A Dream of Red Mansions to see if it is useful. There may be some inaccuracies in the editor-in-chief of this magazine. Please give us your advice.
Before I came to talk about a dream of red mansions, my two books were published at the same time. One is A Dream of Red Mansions, published by Heilongjiang Education Press, and the other is An Introduction to A Dream of Red Mansions, published by Beijing Library Press. This is a cooperation between Comrade Li and me, and the introduction was started by Comrade Li and revised by me. The rest, about Cao Xueqin's ancestral home and family background. There are two articles about a dream of red mansions written by me. I happen to have them all the time. These two books are just sample books. When they are finished, I will send them to the CD as a token of my gratitude. Why are we talking about this issue? Because there are many quotations behind what I said, all of which are in this book. I can only tell you a general and specific information book, and all of them indicate the source. The source of each quotation is explained, so you can check the original again.
The study of A Dream of Red Mansions is really difficult. This kind of difficulty has been different since I first started learning. I knew there were difficulties at first, but I didn't expect how big the difficulties were. It took me a few years to realize that the difficulty is really too great. Why are there such difficulties? Because Cao Xueqin didn't dare to speak out in the society and times at that time. In a roundabout way, the superficial meaning of these words is just the opposite of the actual meaning. Although some meanings are not the opposite, you should guide yourself to think about this problem. At that time, he had to do this, because the literary inquisition was too serious. He experienced it many times personally, and some of it was because he wrote books, so he had to avoid it. Well, this makes it difficult for us to understand today. If we can't find this door, we'll never get in. So in China's study of A Dream of Red Mansions, there are many speculations, and there are many speculations now. I still think that is right, but it is not like that at all. For example, Yong Zhengdi was murdered by Cao Xueqin and his mistress, which is sheer nonsense. So I think it is really necessary to do an academic, textual research and research work on A Dream of Red Mansions to ensure that every word of it is well documented. Evidence is the most important thing in learning. You can create without evidence, such as writing a novel, and you don't need to produce evidence. But if you write a research article, it will be difficult without evidence.
Today, I mainly talk about how to enter a dream of red mansions and what problems we should know. I want to briefly talk about the era of a dream of red mansions. What is the external world of this era and the internal world of this era?
Since 1950s, there has been a great debate in China about the nature of the democratic thought reflected in A Dream of Red Mansions. Some friends think it is a feudal democratic thought, which does not violate everything in feudalism, and is an idea allowed by feudal society. Another view is that this is not a feudal democratic thought, but a democratic thought that reflects the economic phenomenon in the bud of capitalism, a new democratic thought, and a democratic thought belonging to the bourgeoisie in capitalist society. This problem has not been solved accurately. At that time, Comrade He Qifang advocated that the first viewpoint was feudal democratic thought. He Qifang is our predecessor and has a good friendship with me. I can't immediately see whether his views are accurate, but I feel that I don't quite agree with his ideas. In the 1970s, I wrote two articles, clearly pointing out that A Dream of Red Mansions is not a feudal democratic thought, but the external world and internal world of A Dream of Red Mansions are capitalist democratic thoughts. These are two articles written after 1975. By the time 1983, I had written "Endless Articles". At that time, I felt that my understanding was relatively certain. The article is also relatively long, with more than 30 thousand words and more arguments. After that, the academic school in the Red Chamber was more in favor of my idea. In this book, I added a lot of materials to prove that the thought of A Dream of Red Mansions is not only a new democratic thought, but also closely related to the ideological struggle and philosophical struggle in the academic circles at that time, which is consistent with a series of anti-unification thoughts, speeches and thoughts of many people in the philosophical circles at that time. This is my new job in recent years. Why do I say that? There are several reasons for my argument:
First of all, let's take a look at what kind of world the outside world of A Dream of Red Mansions is. The era of A Dream of Red Mansions is that of Cao Xueqin. The year of Cao Xueqin's birth and death has always been controversial. When he was born and when he died, there is no unified statement. But the approximate time can be determined. According to my personal opinion, it should be born in the 54th year of Kangxi, that is, 17 15, at the beginning of the 18th century. There is no evidence for Kangxi's judgment in fifty-four years. Any conclusion must have evidence to make people believe. There is no evidence for this, so I want to make it clear. But how did you get it without proof? It has been pushed up since Cao Xueqin died. This is also a kind of evidence and a method, but it is still a layer short of direct evidence. Cao Xueqin's death year is also divided. One opinion is that he died on the eve of the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong, and the other is that he died on the eve of the twenty-eighth year of Qianlong. There is evidence for this statement. Qianlong was 27 years old, because there was a comment in his Red inkstone, "On New Year's Eve, Qin died in tears before the book was finished." That is to say, on New Year's Eve in Renwu, Cao Xueqin cried her tears dry and died. The other manuscript is also in the same batch, both of which are manuscripts from the Qianlong period. These two sentences are exactly the same, so there is no mistake in copying them. 1992 A stone with "Cao Cemetery" on it was found in Zhangjiawan, Tongxian County, and the burial place was called Cao Family Tomb. So it seems that the Cao Jiazu grave that everyone has been looking for for a long time may be in this place, because this place of Cao Jiafen has been called by this name for a long time. The Cao family has an ancestral business in Zhangjiawan, Tongxian County, and the evidence is conclusive. Cao Pin wrote a letter to Kangxi, which was clearly written. After Cao Yin's death, Cao Frequency succeeded to the throne. Kangxi was very concerned about them, so he said, How many industries do you still have (because after Cao Yin's death, his family business gradually declined)? Tell me about you and let me know about a cheese? Go down. Cao Pin was still very young (not a child, of course, at least he was eighteen or nineteen years old), so he wrote a report, which said that Zhangjiawan had 600 acres of land and a pawnshop.
He has 600 acres of land in Zhangjiawan, and it is estimated that the ancestral grave is nearby. Therefore, from this perspective, "Qin died in tears before the book was finished on New Year's Eve" is more credible. That's because Cao Xueqin's friend wrote a few poems before the year of Imperial concubine Tomb-Sweeping Day, and invited Cao Xueqin and Tomb-Sweeping Day to his house for a drink. It was the spring of Guiwei, so Guiwei invited him to drink in the year, so Ren didn't die for five years. But this problem is analyzed. Why? At that time, Cao Xueqin lived in a remote mountain village in the western suburbs. He died on New Year's Eve. In March of the following year, his friend wrote to invite him to drink. It is entirely possible that the news of his death has not reached the city. This possibility exists. Besides, since the poem that told him to drink in Guiwei, no one has ever written a poem for Cao Xueqin, which is also well-founded. No one contacted him again, maybe he later learned that he was gone. As for the second poem sent by my second friend to Cao Xueqin, I couldn't find it last year. On the other hand, it also proves that Renwu has two records of New Year's Eve. There is also a tombstone with Cao Xueqin's name, and next to Cao Luo, there are the words Renwu. Then there are three pieces of evidence, which I think are more credible. So how can we push it up from the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong? It happened that Cao Xueqin had a friend named Zhang Yiquan, who wrote a poem mourning his death, including: He died before the age of 50. There is a sentence at the bottom of that poem, which is called "Die before the age of 50". However, another friend also wrote a mourning poem. The sentence of the poem is "Forty years have passed". According to this sentence, some people say that he only lived for forty years. Forty to fifty, there is a big gap in ten years. But the result of everyone's analysis is that Zhang Yiquan's "Not yet 50 years old" is not a poem, but a vernacular, so it is close to 50 years old even if it is not 50 years old. Everyone thinks that the phrase "40 years old is a poem, and it needs to be rounded, so if you are less than 50 years old, you are 40 years old. Recently, a friend had a new idea. He said that Yongzheng was thirteen years old and Qianlong was twenty-seven years old, which was exactly forty years. But in any case, I think the argument of midnight New Year's Eve is more substantive. Last year, he was less than fifty years old. Even if he was forty-eight, it would have been the fifty-fourth year of Kangxi, or it might have been the fifty-fifth year of Kangxi. This is just a general idea. In any case, the approximate time from the fifty-fourth year of Kangxi to the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong is no problem.
The era of A Dream of Red Mansions should be that of Cao Xueqin, that is,1early 8th century. In the west, Britain's industrial revolution flourished. 1760 is the year when Watt invented the steam engine. Britain adopted the steam engine invented by Watt and entered the era of large-scale industrial production. 1760 is the twenty-five years of China Qianlong, when Cao Xueqin was 46 years old. The manuscript of Geng, which we all attach importance to now, is a book of twenty-five years of Qianlong, and the earliest book is a book of nineteen years of Qianlong, called Jiaxu. That is to say, when Cao Xueqin finished writing A Dream of Red Mansions, it was the flourishing age of British industrial revolution, the Renaissance in 14 and 15 centuries and a series of ideological and cultural revolutions in the west. As a result, the West entered the industrial age, while China was still in the feudal dynasty. What does Cao Xueqin have to do with the isolation between the two? I think it should be noted that since the late Ming Dynasty, many missionaries came to China. Although China was a feudal society and a feudal autocratic dark kingdom at that time, it still had exchanges with the West, among which missionaries were the most. One of the most famous missionaries was Matteo Ricci, who came to China in the early years of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty and arrived in Beijing in the 30th year of Wanli. It is worth mentioning that he compiled a map of the world in Beijing, which was then called "The National Map of Kun Wan Yu". The map of the world is printed in Beijing, and China is certainly included in this world. It is inconceivable to print a map of the world without China in Beijing. This proves that China has been included in the scope of the world, western missionaries have been coming to China, and western knowledge of science, technology, medicine, physiology, etc. has been continuously spread to China. People in China, for example, used to think that thinking was the heart, so they often said that they should follow their conscience. In fact, the heart doesn't care about thoughts. So when did you know that the mind is in charge of thinking instead of thinking? It was brought by missionaries during the reign of Kangxi. This point is clearly recorded in the works of Chinese scholars in the Qing Dynasty. This shows that although one is already a capitalist society and the other is a dark feudal kingdom, there are still exchanges between the West and China. Missionaries are the main disseminators, and their scientific knowledge has played a considerable role in China. Missionaries did not stop coming to China in the Ming Dynasty, but kept coming from Kangxi to Qianlong. For example, during the Kangxi period, China's national strength was still very strong. Once the Pope ordered a missionary who came to China to go back. Emperor Kangxi warmly retained him and wrote a letter to the Pope, saying that your so-and-so had a good time with us, and we got along well, hoping that he would not go back and stay in China. The Pope disagreed and wrote that he had to go back. Kangxi immediately replied to him, saying, "OK, you must send him back, and I will send his head back to you right away. The pope was too scared to speak again and didn't want him to go back. On the one hand, this incident shows that Kangxi is really capable. He is the same as the Russians in fighting. His main idea is that for the sake of frontier issues, the army must fight first and they must be beaten. There is no way out, and then we will negotiate. In this way, we won a great victory and then sat down to talk. Therefore, the national strength was still very strong during the Kangxi period. At that time, there were many missionaries around Kangxi, who kept passing on western culture and scientific knowledge. Therefore, don't regard the society in the early Qing dynasty as a dark and completely closed country, which has no connection with foreign countries, but actually has more connections. In this way, we can understand why China has many ideas that modern people find incomprehensible.
Back to the internal world of China, that is, the internal world of China in Cao Xueqin's era.
By the time Cao Xueqin arrived, the Qing soldiers had been in the customs for more than one hundred years. After a long period of political adjustment, it has recovered from the chaos in the late Ming Dynasty, and the adjusted "Yang 30th" and "Jiading Three Slaughters" massacre policy. By the end of Kangxi, the national strength was already quite strong, and it was in the early and middle period of Qianlong. A major proof of this is the doubling of the population. In the fiftieth year of Kangxi, an order was issued: take the population of Kangxi in the fifty years as the standard, and the population increased in the future will never be added. This policy actually encourages everyone to have more children, so the population has soared. During the Qianlong period, the population increased to more than 200 million. The other is the increase of cultivated land. By the end of Kangxi, in the middle of Qianlong, the area of cultivated land had doubled, which proved the increase of tax revenue and the enrichment of the national treasury at that time. Why did Kangxi come to Qianlong, and he had so much power to constantly patrol the south and fight so many wars? At that time, the country had no power and could not have such a move. Therefore, during the Qianlong period, the national economy and finance flourished, the population flourished, the business flourished, and the number of big cities increased. At that time, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin, Wuhan, Guangzhou and many other cities were famous commercial cities in China. And since the end of the Ming Dynasty, there have been foreign ports. In the early years of Qing Dynasty, the customs was closed for a period of time, and the customs ban was opened only after Taiwan Province Province was recovered. Cao Xueqin's great-uncle Xu Li was the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, in charge of customs. A dream of red mansions involves western countries, which is one reason. So for this reason, by the Qing Dynasty and the reign of Emperor Kangxi, the economy had recovered. Therefore, since the end of the Ming Dynasty, the budding economic form of capitalism has been developing continuously. By the Kangxi period, that is, the era of Cao Xueqin's grandfather Cao Yin, the textile industry in Nanjing had developed rapidly. There was a document that asked Cao Yin to apply to the imperial court to open the restrictions on the textile industry, that is, not to limit the number of looms. Cao Yin agreed, showed his attitude to the court, and then let go of the restrictions. After the textile industry was opened in Nanjing, the number of looms doubled, which was recorded in history and I also quoted it in my book. This further proves the rapid development of industry and commerce. At that time, some poor farmers sold their labor, and there were several designated labor markets in Nanjing. Workers go there every morning to wait, and whoever wants labor will go there to hire employees. They have some short-term jobs, some long-term jobs and records. This also shows that although China is much later than the west, by this time, a new economic factor in our society has been developing vigorously. Capitalism has developed from its infancy, which is the trend of the times that must be paid attention to.
However, the whole society is still under feudal rule, especially under ideological rule. Shunzhi, Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong all advocated Neo-Confucianism. The rule of Cheng Zhu's Neo-Confucianism is very strict. For example, in the seventh year of Yongzheng, a minister named Xie Jishi wrote two books, one was University Notes and the other was The Doctrine of the Mean. At that time, Kangxi had a saying that nothing he said could be changed in the five hundred years since Zhu. That's the imperial edict of Kangxi. Therefore, anyone who reads the Four Books and Five Classics must take Zhu's comments as the standard. Whether Xie Jishi knew what Kangxi said, or for what reason, he insisted on commenting on the doctrine of the mean in the university, and made it clear that my annotation didn't need Zhu's set at all. I have my own opinion. This violated the imperial edict, that is, he committed a heinous crime and Xie Jishi was beheaded. Since the reign of Emperor Kangxi in the second year of Zhuang Dynasty, literary inquisitions have emerged one after another. The above example is the seventh year of Yongzheng, when the Cao family was already after the property was seized (the property was seized in the sixth year of Yongzheng). At that time, Cao Xueqin was about fifteen or sixteen years old. Of course, he remembered this (he had not written A Dream of Red Mansions at that time, but A Dream of Red Mansions was written in the 19th year of Qianlong, and "ten years of hard work is unusual", so it was probably ten years of Qianlong, or nine years of Qianlong began to write books, and there was still some time before Yongzheng). This is a lesson from the past. Twenty years after Qianlong, there was another literary inquisition. A man named Hu Zhongzao wrote a poem: "A heart is turbid and water is clear", which was denounced. Isn't adding "turbid" before the word "clear" saying that the Qing Dynasty was dirty? At that time, for ethnic minorities, Han people often said that they were dirty and unclean. That's how they scolded ethnic minorities at that time. Of course, this is not in line with our policy today. We are all brothers, the same. However, at that time, there was a great ethnic gap, so when someone reported that adding the word "turbidity" before the word "Qing" was obviously a slander to Manchu, it was condemned. At that time, the literary inquisition was not as simple as punishing us now, but the whole family copied it. In this case, one is the strict rule of Zhu Cheng Neo-Confucianism, and the other is the constant occurrence of literary inquisition. Cao Xueqin wanted to write A Dream of Red Mansions at this time. These are his obstacles, and he must think about these problems.