A note about the anonymous writer of Dream of the Red Chamber
According to the first printed version published in 1791, the
editor said the author was unknown. The book had been popular for twenty years
or so before the printed version in 1791. It was first circulated in hand-written
copies in temple fairs. People were willing to buy the scripts at very high
price. It could be dozens of taels in silver. Why could the book be sold in such
a high price? It must be that the book was so attractive and it was all about
the very rich noble people’s life and was unknown to the public. And more importantly,
people can copy it and sell it again in the same or even higher price. A
million words were not easy to copy, however, even several chapters could sell
a good price. There was no complete version of the book by then, but loose
chapters. For the first twenty years or so, the book was popular among readers
in the old Capital of China. People knew there were 120 chapters in the book
from the index on the first chapter, but for a long time, there were only loose
chapters for the first 80 chapters. The loose hand-copied chapters were sold in
temple fairs, or even vendors on the street. It must be a lucrative business by
then. However, someone determined to collect the complete chapters and print
them. The last 40 chapters were finally found and pieced together. Then we have
the 1791 version, then a better one in 1792 by the same first printers. From
the beginning till the first printed version, no one knew who was the author of
the book.
As a lucrative business, the hand-written circulation was continued
until the second world war. It was sold as antiques for collectors. People not
only copied the chapters, they rewrote it, adding more vivid sexual description
and putting on personal remarks. It was more welcome by the market then. One
copier wrote in his remarks that Cao xue-qin was his nephew and he could “order”
the author to alter certain places in the book. People believed him.
Scholars of the last century seemed not to think the author was
anonymous. They would rather believe Cao Xue-qin who had been mentioned in the
book as an editor, was the writer. But there was no prove of it. And the
scholars were not in the position of a reader of the book, but analyzers of it.
They could not feel the inner force from the story. They did not share the same
feeling with the writer. They were busy at picking up external data from the
huge volumes. That must be a hard work for them. Anyone who could feel the same
with the writer, would believe, by the time of a highly authoritarian pressure
in Ching dynasty, it was completely impossible to publish a book with such
advanced thoughts at the time. Anyone would choose to omit his name to avoid
being persecuted.
The scholars in China seldom doubted about the copiers. They
believed them.
The most important scholar who had insisted the writer was Cao
Xue-qin, was Hu Shi.
Hu Shi maintained that there were two writers. He had said the
last 40 chapters were the work of the first printers, though it had no proof.
Hu could not feel the inner spirit of the work nor he could see into the highly
complicated structure of the work with some literature awareness. He was a
politician more than a literature scholar. Yet his opinion was accepted until
now.
He was deeply immersed in American thoughts and was honored by
numerous American Universities. At least 35 Western universities offered honorary
degrees to him. Most of them were awarded in the United States during the
Second Sino-Japanese War period. It was strange, why the American people were so
mush fond of him. Sometimes, Hu Shi would collect two honorary degrees at the
same day. Yet seldom of the people in China doubt about the political intention
in the move. The Chinese people still put the name Cao Xue-qin in the book as
its author, both in Mainland China and Taiwan until today.
Chinese version 中文版
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