The Story of the Stone (Dream of Red Chamber) readalong #storyofstonealong discussion
Book I (Chapter 1-26)
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Week 1 Chapter 1-7
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Meonicorn (The Bookish Land)
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Aug 16, 2018 11:48AM
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Just finished chapter one. I found it easier to read than expected and, specially at the beginning, quite funny. I'm interested to know where the story will go.
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But I don't know why The Penguine Edition (don't know about other translated editions) seems deleted a paragraph at the very beginning. (maybe the translator explained in the introduction? but I didn't read the introduction...) The deleted paragraph doesn't make anything difference, so I don't think it matters a lot, but I think I will translate it tonight when I have more time, just to help you know more about the context.
Also, I found it's very interesting that the translator tried very hard to help the readers to understand the context. For example he used brackets sometimes to explain the context, which made it easier for readers to read since the original text was so complicated haha.
Something other things I think will help you understand more about the book:
The first character in the book, Zhen Shiyin's last name: ZHEN (we have our last name first in Chinese), has the same pronunciation as "truth" or "real".
His friend Jia Yucun's last name JIA has the same pronunciation as "fake" or "fiction".
The poem in the book (page 55 in Penguin edition) that set the tone of the book played with the pronunciation of ZHEN and JIA:
Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;
Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real.
Also, the first page of the book mentioned a goddess called Nü-wa who repairs the sky, it's actually a great Chinese myths, anyone want to hear more about it? (also Nü-wa is also the goddess who created people!)
That deleted paragraph does seem to be in my copy of the Yang-translation. It starts rather clunky though: "This is the opening chapter of the novel. In writing this story of the Stone the author wanted to record certain of his past dreams and illusions [...]"
It's only after a paragraph that the author (as opposed to the translator? or is this the narrator instead of the author? I'm very confused) gets to speak: "In this busy, dusty world, having accomplished nothing, I suddenly recalled all the girls I had known [...]"
That sounds a lot better as an opening!
Comparing it to the amazon preview of the penguin edition, it looks like there's an entire page of text that hasn't been translated in the penguin edition. Interesting!
I haven't gotten very far yet (another book is monopolizing my attention at the moment, woops!), but I'm interested to see how these translation choices will affect our understanding of the book!
Very interesting about the names, I think that something as obvious to native reader should be a translator's note. I love mythology and I think any information about it is interesting. I'm very curious about the missing paragraph, maybe it was explained in the introduction but I don't think is common to remove parts of books in translations.
I read it as an ebook and there is no mention, which translation is used, but it contains the paragraph. But the book lacks any comment or footnotes, which I guess is included in the penguin edition?I just read the first chapter and on the one hand, I’m confused by all the myths and goddesses, but the main plot was surprisingly easy to follow.
Thanks for the info on the names! Does Feng Su also have a hidden meaning?
Now into Chapter 5, but I think I might go back and make myself a family / character tree! 😂 EDIT - 2 minutes later and Ali discovers there is one in the back of the book (Penguin Classics version) - doh! Well, at least I found it now and not in couple of days after wearing down my ruler and black pen! 😅😂
I’m a little behind as I spent too much time with the darn introduction, which I dnf’d. I’m comfused so I hope now that the genesis of the stone with the petal etc.. has been laid out, it will get better.
Mod
About the missing paragraph: it's told from the author, Cao Xueqin's perspective, ruffly translated to:
(Note: my translation is VERY BAD (to a point that I don't think it's English?!), so it's just for the purpose of the context, and free feel to ask any questions about my lame translation, or share some proper translation! )
This is the first chapter of the book.
The author of this book said: because once I had experienced some dreamily illusion, I hide the truth from the story, and wrote THE STORY OF THE STONE and pretend it is a fictional story, so it is called ZHEN SHIYIN.
But who are the people in this book? The author explained again: today my life is not successful. I often recall how the girls in my life all have greater knowledge and manners than me. So why am I, a man, is worse than those girls? Feeling guilty about this issue is useless, feeling regret is not helpful. I want to tell my story to people all around the world, to tell how I violated the education my father and brothers gave me and embarrassed the manners and ethics that my teachers and friends taught me when I was born blessed and lived wealthy. My behavior led to the lose of my life, so that I am poor in the second half of my life. I want to wrote my stories to warn other people.
But although I am as guilty as I am, I couldn't let all the wonderful girls in my life get blamed because of me, and I couldn't let them disappear in the history. Today I'm living in a poor grass house, using tiles as stove and ropes as bed, and don't have enough time to enjoy things like the morning dews, trees and flowers, I still want to write my story. Although I didn't learn much and my writings are bad, I can still make up some fictional stories to pass on the stories of the girls in my life. Maybe other people can enjoy these stories and get entertained, so why not write them? So it is called JIA YUCUN.
A ruffly translation of my ruffly translation:
The author was born in a wealthy family, but he didn't learn well from his teachers, friends, father and brothers, so he didn't do well in life, so he's very poor now. But because he was once wealthy, there're many wonderful girls in his life, and he often think about them, he though the girls are better than him, a man. He wanted to write his story to help other people to not follow his path, but in the main time, he doesnn't want any of the girls who appeared in his story to be blamed because they are wonderful. So he decided to hide his story in a fictionalized version. ( hence he wanted to ZHEN SHI YIN in JIA YUCUN, please find below for further explanation of these two names).
Further explanations of the names (I forgot to explain the whole name of the two characters, so sorry!):
ZHEN SHIYIN, we discussed ZHEN means the truth yesterday, SHIYIN has the same pronunciation as "hidden the things". SHI's pronunciation means things, YIN means hidden. So together the name means: to hide the truth.
JIA YUCUN, YU has the same pronunciation as "to speak", CUN is the same word as village. So "to speak village" indicate the gossips that was talking around villages, something unreal. Together, JIA YUCUN stands for the untrue gossips passed by towns people.
So the two names together, means the author wants to hide some true things in towns people's gossips. Remember the poem from Chapter 1?
Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;
Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real.
About the plot and myth: I'd suggest that don't bother with the myth, because it's only here at the beginning of the book (to explain that there's a magical jade that was born with Baoyu (the main character), in order to experience the life of humans, and after the jade experienced all that, it carved its experiences on itself, hence this book). And the whole story will be about the family of Jia, so I'm glad Kat found its easy to follow. XD
so with the aforementioned "missing phragraph", the whole jade things was the author trying to build a "the story was not true" kind of feel, to hide the fact that these stories may be true.
Also, the second chapter also has something missing in the begining! It's not a whole page tho, just a sentence, ruffly translated to:
There's a poem saying: the result was not settle after just one game, one still hesitate after the incense and tea has been emptied. If one wants to know the omen of rise and fall, one should ask the people who observes on the side.
Here "the people who observes on the side" in Chinese is "Cold eyed people". Where "COLD" has the same pronunciation as LENG. So get it? It's the surname of LENG ZIXING, who appeared in the second chapter. So basically this poem means, LENG ZIXING is going to talk about the rise and fall of JIA family and give some omens.
Somethings other things I noticed that may help you with the book
FENG SU, his name means serious, but it's not metaphor as long as I know, just a name with meanings, kind of like Lily means the flower.
LUCKY, the maid, I don't know why her name translated as lucky while everybody else's name was translated by Pinyin (the official romanization system for Chinese), and her name was translated randomly (not even by meaning). Her name is JIAO XING in Pinyin, means charming apricot.
YUAN CHUN, who was mentioned in the second chapter, her name means the first day of spring (which was explained in the book), because YUAN means the first. So We call January 1st YUAN DAN, where DAN means days. So YUAN DAN means the first day (of the year). (well it's not related to the book, just random something on my mind lol).
PS:
Will make videos about Chinese myth mentioned in the book XD But probably next month.
Thank you for all the info! That helps.And I finished the third chapter an finally the story is what I expected it to be - a description of court life.
I’m really looking forward to hear all about the life of Daiyu in her new home.
And to get to meet Baoyu (he’s very strange in this chapter).
I love, that there is a lot of female point of view in this book! I’m not used to that in a lot of older books.
The names in my translation seem to be a bit different than in the penguin edition, which is a bit annoying when trying to research it...
Thanks again for all the information, it really helps a lot.I have just finished chapter three and I have enjoyed it a lot. I really like palace life descriptions and the last lines of the chapter made me think that we may get a little bit more politics too and I think that can be very interesting.
Thanks so much for the extra information. I had to read the first two chapters twice because I was completely confused. It really helps just to understand that there are hidden or double or symbolic meanings to names and situations. Chapter 3 was much easier for me to grasp, though I still have to keep referring to the family charts in the back of the book.
For those reading Penguin edition, I highly recommend liberal use of the referenced appendix when you read Ch5. It really adds a lot of depth and enjoyment to the text. I copied it (along with character list and trees) in order to avoid flipping back and forth in the book - but I expect you guys aren’t as lazy as me! 😄If anyone out there is reading a translation that doesn’t have any supplementary / explanatory matter, I’m happy to try to set up a sharing folder and upload the copies there. I think it should be okay as it’s for ‘educational’ purposes and only about 10ish pages in all.
Anyway, let me know if you’re interested.
Linda wrote: "Thanks so much for the extra information. I had to read the first two chapters twice because I was completely confused. It really helps just to understand that there are hidden or double or symboli..."I too had a hard time with those chapters and I kept having to reread paragraphs and sentences over and over and they just went over my head, sometime aloud I found chapter 3 and 4 better. Thank goodness for the family tree in the back. I finally made allot copy so not to keep having to flip aground so much!
Not looking forward to chapter 5.
Mod
How's your reading going?
Meonicorn (The Bookish Land) wrote: "Today is a big day!!! I haven't read Chapter 5 but this is the chapter where everybody's fate has been told to the readers!! I will get back to you guys after I read it.How's your reading going?"
Settling in... just one chapter behind. I’m also doing Victober so my reading time is being pulled in many directions!
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I completely understand, my Victober reading has not started yet because of this readalong and other things in life XD But I'm gld you are settling in! Feel free to ask any questions you have any time :D
Mod
And I finished the third chapter an finally the story is what I expected it to be - a description of court life.
I’m really looking forward to hear all abo..."
if you are unsure about any names, feel free to ask me! Also, do you have the family tree in your edition?
Mod
but with the 12 songs correspond with the 12 girls in the family, we should get a brief idea about what will happen to the girls. I would like to invite all of you to find the answers to the hint in future reads. A lot of things will unfold.
And at the end of the chapter, before "If you have not yet fathomed the answer to her...", there is a short paragraooh with a poem that didn't get translated, so here comes Meonicorn's ruffly translation:
It is said: Who can (I) tell about one faint dream, I'm the only Infatuate one among all lovers throughout thousands of years.
Some other information:
JinLing: another name of Nanking.
Xi Shi: it is said she's one of the four most beautiful girl in the ancient Chinese history, but she had poor health, so she always covered her chest with her arms when walking, and she always frown her brow because of pain. And the way she frown her brow made her look even more beautiful. So in ancient China if you say a person is as beautiful as Xi Shi, she probably the most beautiful girl you've ever seen (in modern China people don't say this). Xi Shi has appeared twice so far, In Chapter 5 Qin Shi has a quilted coverlet that had been laundered by Xi Shi. But back in Chapter 3, it said Dai-yu is more beautiful than Xi Shi, so she must be very pretty.
Hong-Niang: another historical figure like Xi Shi, but she's probably a fictional character first appeared in a story written in Tang Dynasty (Year 618 - Year 907). She's a matchmaker.
Red Inkstone (in appendix) is a friend of Cao Xueqin. In many version's of drafts of The Story of The Stone, she'll write her comment along side of the story. for example if there's happy sence in the story, she'll write something like "I remembered the day who and who wearing red". So it is a common believe that Red Inkstone was one of the girls in the big house, who's still with Cao Xueqin until the day he wrote his books. There're five hypothesis of who Red Inkstone was: 1) Cao Xueqin himself; 2) Shi Xiangyun 3) Cao's uncle 4)Cao's cuisine 5) a fake people that modern generation made up. I believe that Red Inkstone ( and it's so weird to translate her name by meaning, we usually called her Zhi Yanzhai in Pinyin) existed.
Mod
About female point of views
Kat was right, this book has a lot of point of view from females. It is worth notice that different female has different level (position?) in this family, and their position depends on their husband. For example if you are the wife of the eldest son in the generation, your level is higher than other wives. so the fates of all females in the book were results of patriarchy. But some people call it a feminism novel (and I agree) because it wrote about the unfairness women suffers in the society, and also every women has her unique characters and it's not common in classic novels like this. (think about the classics we read in Victober by male authors XD)
About age
so currently Bao-yu and Dai-yu both live with Grandmother Jia, and in Chapter 5 they Bao-yu wanted to sleep in Qin Shi's bedroom, and the maids all disagree because Baoyu is Qin Shi's uncle, but Qin Shi said it's okay. Because at the beginning of the novel, Bao-yu and Dai-yu both are little. and it's believed that Bao-yu was about 12 in chapter 5, but there're also other people saying that he must be 15 based on the following event in chapter 6. But in some later chapters, the age thing was messed up because there're no final version of The Story of The Stone, the author was continuing editing it and didn't have a finish copy. (or the finished copy lost in history).
About Qin Shi
"Shi" was a word gave to a woman after she got married. She doesn't need to change her first name like in the west, she will be called "Her-Last-Name Shi". So for Qin Shi, her real name was Qin Ke-qing, and after she got married, she's called Qin Shi.
Yamen
A word appeared many times in and before Chapter 4. It's “the office or residence of a public official in the Chinese Empire", it's like court where you can sue people.
Just finished the sixth chapter, and I really enjoyed this book so far.Although it's only six chapters in, we can already tell the personality for some characters.
Also, I'm very impressed by the level of details author put on for each key character, for example, the appearance, living environment and relationship with each family members.
Looking forward to see what will happen next.
Thanks for the explanations Meonicorn, they're very helpful. When people mention the capital, do they mean Beijing? Or was it still a different city at the time the book takes place?I'm halfway through chapter 5 at the moment and enjoying it a lot, although it's taken me a bit to get used to the style and figure out what's going on. The book also feels quite modern to me, not sure whether that's the translation, or the narration style.
The opening of the book reminded me a bit of the start of Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (the one who wrote Robinson Crusoe). Defoe also starts with a 'justification' why he's writing a novel, rather than say a biography of a famous person.
Finally caught up, after the end of the week was a bit busier than anticipated. Still very much enjoying this book. I particularly like the chapters about the high class women daily life.
I’m getting behind sadly. I’m finding this read a bit of struggle to follow everyone and I think culturally I’m missing some the referencess, being a westerner. They may not be important to the story, but I’m one of those readers that has to understand the geography, history, etc of the period I’m reading about. I can’t just ignore stuff I don’t understand, It’s over my head, which is fine, and the reason why I wanted to read this was to learn more about Chinese culture and literature.I’ll keep plugging away, but I won’t be following the timeline, just the discussions.
Mod
I'm halfway t..."
I'm glad you are enjoying the book John, and thanks for sharing the information about Moll Flanders, I feel book with a justification is very interesting.
Also, the capital in the book is a fictionalized place, it called Chang'An in the book. Chang'An is an ancient name for a city called Xi'An. Xi'An has been the capital of China in different Dynasties for serval times. But because the story happened in a fictional world, and the author did live in Beijing, so people believe he was talking about Beijing when he said "capital" in the book.
Mod
It's totally fine to read on your own pace, just remember to check the discussions to see if there're informations to help you XD
And based on the messages I got, you can try to "just go" the details (for example who's who, especially at the beginning of the book) and read the plot as a whole, the book will be easier to read.
Don't be hard on yourself, remember this is a book which there're A LOT OF scholars are still studying today and they even don't fully understand it :P
Meonicorn (The Bookish Land) wrote: "Hi all! I finished Chapter 5 just now, and oh what a Chapter!! So this chapter, basically Baoyu had a dream and went to THE LAND OF ILLUSION, read the texts and heard the songs about the girls in h..."Thank you for all the extra descriptions and insight. It really helps. So I’m in chapter 5 and want to confirm the appendix explanations are related to the songs AND the pictures he saw in the Main Register. Correct? I want to confirm I’m on then right track.
Thanks.
Meonicorn (The Bookish Land) wrote: "Jill wrote: "I’m getting behind sadly. I’m finding this read a bit of struggle to follow everyone and I think culturally I’m missing some the referencess, being a westerner. They may not be importa..."You have helped me more than you know! Then point that scholars still don’t understand the text! That is the wake up call I needed! I’m just going to read the darn book!
I am a bit behind too. Just finished chapter 7 and I completely understand Jill's issue. It is quite hard to grasp all in one time, even more so because my edition does not have any family tree, so it's like reading the Silmarillion in some parts xDHowever, the method suggested by Meonicorn is quite useful in this case. I already noticed that some characters only appear for a second and are never mentioned later, so it's better to focus on the big picture and just do our best with the details.
I have a question:
How the name system works/worked exactly? Sometimes they referred to an adult vs a child name. Was there a change in the name that occurred at a certain age?
Thank you so much for the additional info, it’s really interesting. I’m reading a little behind so that I can add in, and refer to, the notes from here as I go. Great idea as a read along.
Kristina wrote: "I am a bit behind too. Just finished chapter 7 and I completely understand Jill's issue. It is quite hard to grasp all in one time, even more so because my edition does not have any family tree, so..."It took me three hours to read chapter 5! No joke. Now I’m just letting it go. I’m still a little lost, but now it’s just not getting to me as much.
I only bought the book a few days ago so I'm already really behind, I think I might read it slower than the readathon pace but still look on the group to see everyone's thoughts about it :) I'm just reading it at such a slow pace that I don't think I'll be able to catch up!
I'm finally further along and I'm loving the story now that I'm more aware of what is going on. Thank you Meonicorn for all the pointers above, they definitely helped me to understand the story more! I'm now on Chapter 9, so will re-visit that group when I'm up to chapter 14.
