Cao Xueqin: The Story Of The Stone

[Ben Jackson]

I heard this book has influenced countless people, from Mao Zedong to Eileen Chang, to European classics like Buddenbrooks. Reason why I haven't read this novel is because of its length. But maybe in the next few years, I will give it a try.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

I heard this book has influenced countless people, from Mao Zedong to Eileen Chang, to European classics like Buddenbrooks. Reason why I haven't read this novel is because of its length. But maybe in the next few years, I will give it a try.

I don’t think it is necessary to read the five volumes at “one go”. One volume per year would probably work for most people with decent memories. And indeed, I would recommend that kind of spacing out.

 

[kpjayan]

^^ Or One per month, as I did. The name list and the family tree at the end was a huge help, whenever one gets confused with the names..

 

[redhead]

How did you find the translation of the Penguin editions? I read the translation by Gladys Yang and Yang Xianyi a few years ago and while I enjoyed it, the language seemed rather plain--I've seen commentators go on about the poetic language and I found little of it there--and the lack of explanatory notes left me confused at times (I was lost with the whole frame story with the stone).

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Commenting on the quality of translations is perilous when you don’t know the original language (and even when you do). So I’ll just say that the Penguin translation by David Hawkes and John Minford is very readable and that the supporting materials are all helpful. Those are mainly kept apart from the main text (introduction, appendices, character list, family trees). There are few or no footnotes in the body.

 

[redhead]

Commenting on the quality of translations is perilous when you don’t know the original language (and even when you do).

Eh, I think it depends. If you're talking about pure accuracy, then yeah I'd of course agree, but when it comes to quality (especially if you're reading something as a layperson and not a scholar), I think you can make some general comments about the prose of translated works.

Thanks though for the overview!

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Eh, I think it depends. If you're talking about pure accuracy, then yeah I'd of course agree, but when it comes to quality (especially if you're reading something as a layperson and not a scholar), I think you can make some general comments about the prose of translated works.

Thanks though for the overview!

Well, yes, but I have seen vicious arguments about translations both here and elsewhere. Trying to stay calm these days. ?

 

[kpjayan]

Commenting on the quality of translations is perilous when you don’t know the original language (and even when you do). So I’ll just say that the Penguin translation by David Hawkes and John Minford is very readable and that the supporting materials are all helpful. Those are mainly kept apart from the main text (introduction, appendices, character list, family trees). There are few or no footnotes in the body.

Agree with this. The translation is fairly smooth and even, including the translation of the poetry was fabulous. While he seems to have used the prosody and metering slightly different from the original chinese, to suit the English tradition ( remember reading it somewhere in the intro , I could be mistaken here) and were really impressive.

 

[Cleanthess]

The Story of the Stone is a wonderful book, even if, like an iceberg, we only see the fraction above the surface, in translation without scholarly apparatus.

There are literary and cultural references continuously dropped left and right throughout the novel. My eyes were opened when I read the few chapters excerpted in Norton's Anthology of World Literature, which included notes. Wow, a text almost as literarily allusive as Nabokov's (but not as Joyce's, that is more Pu Song Ling's turf).

A Dream of Red Mansions shares with Coetzee's Jesus novels the same departure point. There are two realities, and beings that were glorious in one of those, when they come to the reality of the novels, might not fare as well. So, the heavenly stone and flower, so perfect in that domain, when they incarnate in our world, go through a lot.

In Coetzee's trilogy, beings like Jesus, who in our world achieved messiahhood, once reincarnated in the alternate world that contains Novilla and Estrella, lead what amounts to a frustrated existence.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Something that is striking me in Volume IV, but that I recall from the earlier volumes too, is that everyone is sick ALL THE TIME; there is more herbal medicine in this book than you could shake a stick at. Now, I don’t know whether this was just typical of the Chinese upper class of that era (in which case I pity the lower classes), or whether this debility is meant as a foreshadowing of the eventual fate of the families. But they are all so DELICATE!