Dream of the Red Chamber

I was hesitant to start reading this, because I was afraid it would be difficult to read as a non-chinese reader, and because I was afraid it would be long. Well, yes, it is long, but surprisingly enough it didn't feel like it was very long - the story drew me in and kept me reading, and though there are some aspects of Chinese culture that take some getting used to, it wasn't very difficult to read either.
Xueqin tells the story of a very wealthy Chinese family; he focuses mainly on the women of the house and one of the sons, Paoyu. Paoyu grows up in a protected environment, the favourite of his grandmother, pampered by numerous servants, spending his time gallivanting with his nieces in the beautiful gardens adjacent to the house. show more However, even rich households can get into trouble, and even Paoyu can't always get what he wants...
I very much enjoyed the story. I found the beginning (the first volume) a bit long winding, as it is mainly an introduction to the characters and the household, but from the second volume the story really takes off. We get to know the different members of the families and their likes and dislikes, and share in the worries of the family. Each character has his/her own story and though some of the female characters are slightly hysterical, you do get drawn into their stories and feel for the characters.
Aside from that, the novel gives a great historical view of Chinese society and tradition. I really didn't know much about Chinese culture before I started reading, and I very much enjoyed getting to know the ways of an ancient, wealthy family - the rules of conduct, the social connections, the household and the servants are all described and give a vivid idea of what life was like.
Though the writing style is somewhat different from the style in Western novels, I didn't find it difficult or daunting. Xueqin's descriptions are beautiful, and I enjoyed the way in which the story alternately slows down and speeds up, which works very well for a very long work like this. show less

This enormous novel occupies the same central place in the literary culture of the Chinese as the works of Shakespeare do in English, as Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin does in Russian, and as Dante’s Divine Comedy does in Italian literature. Like them, it creates a whole world that is at once very specific to a time and place (China in the middle of the 18th century) and yet also universal. Like them it embodies the paradox of great art, best expressed by Matisse: All art bears the imprint of its historical epoch. Great art is that in which this imprint is most deeply marked.

And yet in the West the novel is hardly known at all. Reasons for this no doubt include unfamiliarity with the world the novel describes and creates, the show more vast number of characters (with names which are more than usually difficult for Western readers to remember) and its sheer length. It’s even difficult to arrive at a fixed title for the work, compounded by the fact that in Chinese it has many names, all of them given in the text itself. These titles include: The Story of the Stone, The Precious Mirror of Love, The Twelve Beauties of Jingling, and Dream of Red Mansions. The Penguin translation by David Hawkes uses the first of these titles. A Dream of Red Mansions is the closest translation (by Yang Hsien Yi and Gladys Yang) of the most common Chinese title, but other translations of this title might also include A Dream of the Red Chamber, or Dreams in a Red Chamber. This plethora of titles and translations of titles neatly reflects the great difficulties of translating a work from a language in which ambiguity is prized and preserved, into language where it is not.

Given these difficulties for a Western reader, perhaps the best way to approach this work is to look closely at the three characters which make up the most common title in Chinese. In so doing, we shall see that each one loosely defines a category that might help us to orient ourselves in the multifarious world of the Hong Lou Meng….

Read the full review on The Lectern show less

As to the series, please see my review in "the Three Kingdoms" volume.

This volume in particular was a fun recap of a book i had already read. That said, in being simplified for an immature reader, it was helpful in pointing out things that i had missed as culturally immature/ignorant reader. I kinda wish I had read this before reading the actual novel.

(2024 Review #6)

A truly outstanding novel with richness of thought and design at every scale. The juxtaposition of mundane power/money grabbing and supernatural is unbelievably original, amazingly well executed and deeply moving.

Also known as Hong Lou Meng, this is arguably China's greatest literary masterpiece. A chronicle of a noble family in the eighteenth century; but the splendor of enchanting gardens, pleasure pavilions, and daily life of the most sophisticated refinements hides the realities of decay and self-destruction.

It is a classic and understandably so, but in my opinion it is quite a strenuous and tedious task to read it in its entirety. I just can't over so many pages follow the story and its multiple and diverse characters. This may be a fault on my part, but I'd rather spend the time with something a bit easier to get into. Perhaps, just an annotated edition would have made the deal and helped me to get into this influential work.

Le premesse dicevano che sarebbe stato il piu' grande romanzo della letteratura cinese (o almeno uno dei migliori). Ma la trama non era poi cosi' coinvolgente, sinceramente ci si aspettava molto di piu'.