The main protagonist

Qíng and the striving for narcissistic fulfilment

In the last chapter, we saw how Ji�� B��oyù and Wáng X��fèng constitute two more or less symmetrical pillars around which the narrative of The Red Chamber Dream revolves and evolves. We also saw, however, how the symmetry between the two is constantly tilted in B��oyù’s direction. There is no doubt, therefore, that B��oyù is the main protagonist of the novel.

In the novel’s opening chapter, the Taoist K��ngk��ng �տյ��� concludes upon reading the novel that “its main theme is love” ��ּՄ��. In Milan Kundera’s terms, love — or rather qíng ��, which is not quite the same — is one of the “great themes of existence” that this novel thoroughly explores. Being the prime representative of this theme, B��oyù, along with other characters in the Róngguó and Níngguó mansions, is an “experimental self” by means of which this theme is explored. [1]

B��oyù clearly belongs to the group of characters for which the reader feels sympathy, even admiration. In the previous chapter, however, we saw how he is constantly linked to much less sympathetic characters. In this chapter, we shall see how the theme of love is linked to self-centredness in a way that at times breaks down the sympathy and admiration the reader tends to feel towards B��oyù.

Conflicting impulses

Before the influx of Western thought, the novel as a literary genre was never allowed a secure place in the Chinese literary canon. This peripheral position, however, gave it a freedom to explore themes that more orthodox modes of writing seldom touched upon. One of these themes was love.

In its treatment of love and emotions, The Red Chamber Dream continues a discourse on themes that had long been addressed in Chinese drama and fiction. It makes numerous references to China’s most famous love dramas, The Story of the Western Wing ����ӛ and The Peony Pavilion ĵ��ͤ, and scholars and critics have long pointed out its debt to the erotic novel The Plum in the Golden Vase ��ƿ÷.[2] One might read The Red Chamber Dream as just another literary expression of the “cult of qíng” originating in the late Ming.

The way in which The Red Chamber Dream approaches its theme, however, is original. It is concerned with love and emotions as a complex psychological theme, not just a subject of entertainment or a focus of moral concern. As we shall see, although the novel has often been hailed as a defense of qíng, its treatment of the sphere of love and emotions is in fact highly ambivalent. On one reading, it is a psychological novel built around a core of conflicting inner impulses. This chapter attempts to provide a preliminary and partial exploration of this psychological core. B��oyù’s personality is one important element in the complex psychological web that underlies the novel.

From expression to exploration

Simply speaking, one might view a novel as having one or more of the following four functions:

          1. Entertainment

          2. Education

          3. Emotional expression

          4. Existential exploration

Among these four e’s, The Red Chamber Dream, in various self-referential passages in chapter 1, explicitly relates to the first three:

          1.  The novel has been written, we are told, in order to entertain, to “please the reader and divert him from his cares” (����֮Ŀ�����˳, my translation).

          2.  The novel is morally educating, we are told (albeit with a tint of irony), because it consistently “commends great achievements and praises moral power” (�Q��ힵ�, my translation).

          3.  The novel also claims to be emotionally expressive, to have been penned “with hot and bitter tears” (һ������I).

But what about the fourth e? Does the novel ever claim to explore the great themes of existence? Hardly. If The Red Chamber Dream is exploratory in Kundera’s sense, this is in spite of the fact that no such claim has been made by its author, nor, for that matter, by traditional critics.

The closest the novel gets to asserting that it is exploratory in this sense is in writing that the Taoist K��ngk��ng upon copying the text of the novel finally “awoke to the Void” (���), suggesting that the novel contains clues to an insight into the deepest existential truths, as exposed by Buddhism. In this context, however, awaking to the Void seems to imply a realisation of given religious tenets rather than an exploration of new aspects of the human existence.

I will suggest that the key to the exploratory nature of The Red Chamber Dream does not primarily lie in its ideas of “awaking to the Void”, but in its intense emotional expressiveness. In The Red Chamber Dream, therefore, the last two e’s merge into one.

Many cultural factors provide the basis for the emotional expressiveness of this novel. First, it is written in the semi-autobiographical mode typical of its time.[3] Second, the novel had become a mode of communication and a channel for the feelings of frustration of unsuccessful (“displaced”) literati.[4] Third, the “cult of qíng”, of which it may be seen as an example, idealises authenticity and individual expression.[5] Fourth, the focus on qíng implies a focus on emotions and sensibility in general and love and longing in particular. Fifth, the increasing realism and quotidian focus of fiction gives more room for psychological description. Sixth, the higher acceptance of fictionality in a novel also allows for more thorough psychological description, since it is no longer necessary to confine oneself to external description in order to appear “historical”.[6] Seventh, the novelistic tradition has by now come to value subtlety in the description of characters over black-and-white distinctions between “good” and “bad” characters, allowing for ambivalence and ambiguity.[7]

In one sense, therefore, The Red Chamber Dream merely brings further ideals that were already part of the culture in which it emerged. In comparison to most earlier novels, it has more autobiographical elements, a more consistent focus on qíng, more psychological description, more subtlety in the description of characters, and it is more consciously fictional. The result, however, is a psychological complexity beyond anything seen in earlier fiction and drama.

The Red Chamber Dream is not the first piece of fiction or drama to problematise the sentimental self-indulgence of its main protagonist. Within drama, T��ng Xi��nz��’s The Story of Hánd��n ����ӛ and The Story of Nánk�� �Ͽ�ӛ, as well as K��ng Shàngrèn’s The Peach Blossom Fan �һ���, all use Buddhist, Daoist and to some extent even Confucian thought to put in question the value of qíng. The same can be said of many novels.[8] It is primarily the psychological subtlety of The Red Chamber Dream that brings its descriptions of both qíng and the forces in opposition to qíng so clearly beyond the works preceding it.

Meanings of qíng

Already in classical times, the term qíng was highly ambiguous, and this is no less true by the time of The Red Chamber Dream, after two thousand years of historical development.[9] Though this is not the place to provide a full analysis of its multitude of meanings and submeanings, a general outline is necessary to identify what kind of qíng we are discussing. In the The Red Chamber Dream, the term qíng is used in at least three completely different meanings (1-3):

          1. Real event (as in shìqíng ����)

          2. Personality, character (as in xìngqíng ����)

          3. Positive emotion towards others (as in ��nqíng ����)

The qíng that acts as a main theme in The Red Chamber Dream is of the third meaning, denoting positive emotions between human beings. This kind of qíng may be subdivided into three usages (a-c) with closely related meanings:

       a.  Normal (and morally acceptable) feelings towards others (as in z�� mèi zh�� qíng ���֮�� ‘the feelings [or love] between sisters’)

       b.  Interpersonal relations used to achieve a certain goal (as in qíngmiàn ����)

       c.  Spontaneous, free-flowing and often incontrollable feelings towards and desire for others (as in qíngyù ����)

The qíng that constitutes a main theme in The Red Chamber Dream belongs to the third usage. This kind of qíng lies at the heart of a dilemma between the genuine and the proper. Being genuine, qíng is sometimes strongly idealised, especially among liberal intellectuals from the late Ming onwards. However, since its incontrollable nature often brings it at odds with moral order (l�� ��) or ritual propriety (l�� �Y), its idealisation is never unambiguous. Unlike the first and second usage, the mere existence of qíng in this third usage often implies a contrast to and a conflict with l�� �� or l�� �Y.

This third usage of qíng may be further subdivided into two variants (i-ii):

       i.   A strongly eroticised qíng, like the qíng Ji�� Ruì nourishes for Wáng X��fèng in chapter 12, often translatable as ‘desire’.

       ii.  A less strongly eroticised qíng, like the qíng Ji�� B��oyù nourishes for the young girls of the family, explained by the Red Inkstone commentary as t��ti�� �w�N ‘sensitivity, empathy, caring’.

Both variants are aspects of the main theme of The Red Chamber Dream, though they dominate different parts of the novel. Basically, the first variant of qíng dominates the parts of the novel considered by the Chinese scholar Yú Píngbó ��ƽ�� to reflect the original manuscript of Precious Mirror for the Romantic���L�Œ��b��, an early and now lost piece of fiction by Cáo Xu��qín mentioned in the Red Inkstone commentary. These parts roughly comprise chapters 9-16 and a section beginning in the second half of chapter 63 and running to the end of chapter 69.[10] The second variant of qíng dominates in the chapters describing details of everyday life in the Prospect Garden ���^�@. While the description of the first variant of qíng is common in traditional Chinese novels, the second variant seems to be Cáo Xu��qín’s original creation.

Though the first variant of qíng is most strongly eroticised, there is also an erotic element in the second variant. In chapter 5, the fairy J��nghuàn �������� emphasises that “love, meeting with its like, breeds lust” �����������. There is, according to her, no such thing as “love untainted by lust” ������� (translations modified by me). Although Ji�� B��oyù seldom acts out his own sexual desire, his sensitivity and empathy towards the girls (and a handful of boys) still has an erotic undertone, to be further discussed below.

To sum up, when the Taoist K��ngk��ng discovers that the main theme of The Red Chamber Dream is qíng, he is referring to the word in meaning 3, usage c, variants i and ii. In this sense, qíng is conceived to be at odds with both l�� �� ’cosmic and moral order’ and l�� �Y ’ritual propriety’ and lies at the heart of psychological conflicts running through the entire novel. Together the two variants of qíng constitute one of the “great themes of existence” explored by this novel.

Qíng and narcissism

B��oyù is the most important of the “experimental selves” employed by the novel to explore the great existential theme of qíng. The Red Inkstone commentary says: “B��oyù favours qíng over l��” �������鲻�ضY.[11] In the following, we shall look into some of the psychological traits underlying this attitude.

Consider first B��oyù’s idea in chapter 36 of what would constitute a glorious death:

Now if I were fortunate, I would die now, while you [the girls] are all around me; then your tears could combine to make a great river that my corpse could float away on, far, far away to some remote place that no bird has ever flown to, and gently decompose there with the wind, after that never, never to be reborn again as a human being—that would be a really good death. (translation modified)

�����Ҵ˕r�������컯��ԓ��춴˕r�������ゃ�����Ҿ����������܉��ゃ���ҵ��ۜI���ɴ�������ҵČ���Ư�������͵����fȸ��������Ƨ֮̎���S�L�������Դ��ٲ�Ҫ�������������������ĵÕr�ˡ�

In this passage, B��oyù has positive fantasies about a state in which his person seems to dissolve into nothing, leaving no trace of individuality. The source of this idealised state, however, lies in the girls, and especially in their tears for him. What seems to be a state of egolessness, therefore, turns out to be a state where B��oyù’s ego is the object of  considerable aggrandisement, and where the girls and their sorrow for him is his primary source of pleasure. It is a narcissistic frame of mind.

The egolessness of B��oyù’s fantasy is psychologically reminiscent of what Sigmund Freud once called an “oceanic feeling” of “something unlimited, unbounded”.[12] According to Freud, “[a]n infant at the breast does not as yet distinguish his ego from the external world as the source of the sensations flowing in upon him”. In another context, he uses the term “primary narcissism” to designate this first state of life, prior to the formation of the ego, epitomised by life in the womb, an objectless, undifferentiated state, with no split between the subject and the external world.[13] Although the existence of such a completely undifferentiated state has been called into question by later psychoanalysts,[14] the important point in our context is the relative lack of differentiation associated with B��oyù’s idealised state.

The aggrandisement of B��oyù’s ego through the girls and their tears for him, as well as the pleasure he derives therefrom, does involve a relation, and hence a distinction, between B��oyù’s ego and the “objects” around him, especially the girls. In Freudian terms, it is an expression of secondary narcissism. At the same time, B��oyù and the girls – or rather his body and their tears – almost merge into one, and it is literally their tears that bring him to the ultimate destination of his journey, the place (and the state) where his individuality dissolves. In B��oyù’s fantasy, the girls and their tears exist in order to instil B��oyù with a sense of well-being, and to bring him to his goal of egolessness.

B��oyù’s fantasy, therefore, brings together the egolessness of primary narcissism and the ego-aggrandisement of secondary narcissism, the latter somehow leading to the former. Since the ultimate goal seems to be a non-differentiated state, I shall refer to this and similar fantasies as expressing a longing for a state of primary narcissism. This, however, is a simplification, since in B��oyù’s case egolessness and ego-aggrandisement always seem to go hand in hand.

As we shall see, B��oyù’s fantasy is archetypical of much that happens in the novel, and the relation between B��oyù and the girls lies at the heart of the novel’s treatment of qíng. B��oyù’s qíng for the girls repeatedly involves his tears for them or their tears for him or both, and these tears are consistently a source of pleasure to B��oyù, since they create a special bond between him and them. Just as in his fantasy their tears bring his body to a “remote place that no bird has ever flown to”, beyond the realm of human beings, so he and the girls are close to creating a cocoon-like existence in the Prospect Garden, based on their mutual bond of tears. In his fantasy, the world outside the cocoon is blissfully absent, while in the garden, the external world is often perceived as a threat and looked upon with fear and contempt. B��oyù’s fantasy, therefore, is not just an isolated case, but represents a psychological structure that underlies much of the narrative.

Both in the fantasy and in the garden, B��oyù is the unchallenged centre towards whom everybody’s attention is directed. As a boy in a world of girls, he is unique. Compared to the boys and men outside the garden, most of whom are either coarse or pedantic, he is particularly refined. His consideration for and understanding of the girls sets him apart from everybody else. Moreover, since he is doted on by the head of the family, Grandmother Ji��, and since he is the future inheritor of the family fortune, his centrality extends far beyond the garden world. In the design of the novel, the girls are basically satellites circling around B��oyù, and their relative centrality in the novel varies with their emotional intimacy and locational proximity to him. The girls seldom bring the narrative forward of their own accord.

For B��oyù, qíng is primarily an inner state of unity and pleasure. In the cases where the unity is shattered, as when the girls turn away from B��oyù, or when external influences threaten to disrupt their cocoon-like existence, B��oyù becomes extremely distressed. Thus, while it is true that B��oyù’s qíng implies positive feelings for the girls, and even a sensitivity to their needs, it is also true that the girls are often reduced to an ancillary existence as providers of narcissistic fulfilment for B��oyù. His self-centredness is far less crude than that of the novel’s many lechers, but even for him, the girls are surprisingly often primarily important as a source of personal well-being.

Qíng and the aversion against boundaries

B��oyù’s favouring of qíng over l�� implies a strong dislike for any sort of boundaries. As soon as there are boundaries, there will be restrictions, and l�� ‘ritual propriety’ is the most direct expression of such boundaries and restrictions. B��oyù’s dislike of boundaries is closely related to his longing for the undifferentiated state of primary narcissism.

In the Prospect Garden, and even before the garden was built, B��oyù is most of the time allowed to do whatever he pleases. His grandmother dotes on him, and hence the other people of the family do not dare to restrict or restrain him. The only threat to his free and unrestrained life is his father Ji�� Zhèng �Z��, who tries to force him to study and who once swears that he will beat his son to death and actually tries to do so. Ji�� Zhèng favours l�� over qíng and represents the boundaries and restrictions that B��oyù detests.

B��oyù’s dislike of boundaries is expressed in quite a few peculiar ways. His lack of regard for the boundary between animate and inanimate beings is a recurring theme in the novel. According to the Red Inkstone commentary, the “Roster of Love” ��� in the unfinished part of the novel contains the following description of B��oyù:

B��oyù qíng bù qíng

�����鲻�顣[15]

On its most plausible interpretation, the first qíng is a transitive verb meaning ‘to treat with qíng’, with the phrase bù qíng as its object. In other words, B��oyù treats with qíng even objects without qíng. In Buddhist terminology, the distinction between that which has qíng and that which lacks it corresponds to the distinction between sentient and non-sentient beings.[16] As early as in chapter 1, in his former existence as the Divine Luminescent Stone-in-Waiting in the Court of Sunset Glow ��覌m��������, he treats with qíng the Crimson Pearl Flower �{���, thus enabling her (it?) to “shed her vegetable shape and assume the form of a girl” ���Ó�s��̥ľ�|���ÓQ�������H�޳ɂ�Ů�w, who is ultimately reborn on earth as B��oyù’s female cousin and main object of affection Lín Dàiyù ������. Later, B��oyù treats with qíng peach blossoms falling down in the wind (chapter 23) and a fan that one of his maidservants inadvertently treads on (chapter 31). The Red Inkstone commentary concludes:

He cares about and is full of infatuation for all witless objects of this world.

�����g֮�o֪�o�R���˾���һ�V��ȥ�w�N��[17]

On one occasion, B��oyù denies that plants and trees are devoid of qíng:

Not only plants and trees, but all things have feelings and reason. And like people, they are most responsive to those who most appreciate them.

������ľ��������֮��������������������Ҳ����һ��������֪������O���`�ġ�

(chapter 77, translation modified)

B��oyù does not fully make the usual distinctions between sentient and non-sentient, between people and objects. This may be seen as an expression of extreme sensitivity, but it may also be seen as narcissistic self-indulgence, as a projection of his own state of mind to his surroundings.

B��oyù is also sometimes unclear about the boundaries between different groups or kinds of people. First of all, “brothers and sisters [including cousins] were all one to him, and he made no distinction between close and distant relationships” ҕ��õ��ֽԳ�һ�����K�o�H���h��֮�e (chapter 5, my translation). Even though his first object of affection is Lín Dàiyù, this does not prevent him from feeling both affection and desire towards his other sisters (including female cousins) and maidservants. Second, as hinted by the same quotation, he sometimes seems to ignore the boundary between male and female, and his affection for some boys (like Qín Zh��ng ��� and Ji��ng Yùhàn ����) is very close to his affection for the girls. Third, he sometimes overlooks the distinction between master and servant, as when he waits on his maidservant Xírén �u�� in chapter 31. Fourth, he does not always distinguish real and imaginary persons and treats imaginary persons as if they were real, as when he wants to go and comfort a beautiful woman in a painting, lest she feels lonely (chapter 19); or when he believes in Grannie Liú’s story about a girl stealing wood and wants to go and look for her (chapter 39); or when he believes in and even makes a poem in honour of the Hibiscus goddess ܽ��֮�� invented by one of the maidservants (chapter 78). Fifth, he sometimes does not even distinguish clearly between himself and others, so that he worries about Línggu��n �g�� getting wet while he himself is in fact also standing in the rain (chapter 30); he worries that Yùchuàn ���A might have been burnt when it is in fact he himself who has (chapter 35); and he also takes it for granted that when he feels affection for Línggu��n, she will nourish the same feelings for him (chapter 36). This last case most clearly thematises B��oyù’s self-indulgent traits, since Línggu��n does not in fact nourish romantic feelings for B��oyù.

Some of these traits are not unique to B��oyù, but are based on cultural clichés. For instance, the phrase “(even) plants and trees have feelings” ��ľ(��)���� is a standard way of emotionalising nature, such as in the Song poet Lù Yóu’s ��� (1125-1210) couplet “if they had feelings, plants and trees would shed tears; and though they have no heart, iron and stone will be heartbroken” ��ľ�������I���Fʯ�o��Ҳ���c.[18] The image of someone relating to a portrait as if the person in the portrait were a living being is another such cliché. To treat cultural clichés as psychological symptoms is not unproblematic, but in the case of B��oyù, these features are clearly expressions of his eccentric character (�����Ƨ, translated by Hawkes as “his character [was] strange and incomprehensible”, chapter 3).

In a few cases, B��oyù’s eccentric traits develop into mental illness, as when he suffers “a delirium caused by a phlegmatic occlusion of the cardiac orifices” ��ʹ���� in chapter 57 and enters “a state of mental collapse” ����֮�� in chapter 70. In most of the first 80 chapters of the novel, however, B��oyù is not mentally ill, though his sense of self and of boundaries is not fully developed, and his longing for the unity of primary narcissism is a dominant feature. As we shall see, even his much-lauded empathy with the girls is founded on self-love, on the pursuit of narcissistic fulfilment.

Qíng and the lack of responsibility

A narcissistic frame of mind is basically a self-centred attitude, a kind of self-love. Superficially, B��oyù does not immediately strike one as a self-centred person. On the contrary, nobody seems to be more concerned with and understanding towards the girls (and a few boys) than he. He is “humble and accomodating in spite of his social position, always willing to defer to others in the interest of harmony [and he has an] affectionate disposition and familiar manner of speech” ����С�������r���š��������w�N��Ԓ�Z�d�p (chapter 9). I have already mentioned the way he cares about Línggu��n even when he himself is in fact getting wet in the rain, and the way he cares about Yùchuàn even when he himself is burnt by hot water. A similar example occurs in chapter 34, after B��oyù has been beaten by his father, and Xírén starts putting the blame on B��oyù’s cousin Xu�� Pán Ѧ�, whereupon B��oyù fears that Xu�� Pán’s sister B��och��i ���O, who is present, will feel embarrassed. Noticing his concern, B��och��i thinks by herself:

What a delicacy of feeling! ...—after so terrible a beating and in spite of all the pain, to be still able to worry about the possibility of someone else’s being offended!

����@����������߀��^����߀���@�Ӽ������µ�����������Ҋ���҂�����Ҳ���������ˡ�

Many examples could be cited of descriptions of B��oyù’s caring and understanding for the girls. It seems slightly paradoxical to call such a person self-centred.

B��oyù’s attitude towards the girls, however, is highly complex and does indeed contain an element of self-centredness. Basically, he is concerned with the tragic lives of the girls because their tragedy reflects his own tragedy and the shattering of the ideals of primary narcissism. That is exactly why their tears create such a strong bond between them. In a sense, the girls may be seen as objects of B��oyù’s projected self-love. Everything that hurts the girls indirectly also hurts B��oyù, and his caring for and protection of the girls are in fact ways of caring for and protecting himself. Most notably, his caring attitude is very limited, being almost exclusively reserved for young and (with few exceptions) unmarried girls, whose apparent innocence make them more suitable objects of projection.

B��oyù’s immaturity is reflected in his attitude towards responsibility. Although he is the person who will, in the future, inherit the responsibility for the fortunes of the whole family, he does nothing to prepare for this. On the contrary, he is “exceptionally wild and naughty, … hate[s] study and like[s] to spend all his time in the women’s apartments with the girls” �B�Ӯ������O���x������ϲ�ڃȎ��P�� (chapter 3). As long as he is a child, such behaviour may still be seen as natural. But when he gradually grows into biological maturity, this looks more and more like plain irresponsibility.

One might argue that this aspect of B��oyù’s personality is a charming trait that shows him as a much more genuine person than the inauthentic ”career worms” that he so thoroughly loathes. One might even insist that B��oyù is revolting against Confucian ideals and a (in modern terms) “feudal” system that are contrary to human nature. If so, his seeming irresponsibility is in fact a higher kind of responsibility. This line of reasoning, however, is less easy to accept when he behaves irresponsibly in ways that directly hurt the girls and boys he loves. The novel describes at least two clear cases of such behaviour.

The first case occurs in chapter 30, when B��oyù’s mother Lady Wáng ������ strikes her maidservant J��nchuàn ���A in her face and calls her a “shameless little harlot” ����С潋D for having uttered a few arguably flirtatious remarks to B��oyù — on his instigation. Instead of trying to protect her, B��oyù immediately slips away ��һ�ȥ��, and feeling upset, he rushes into the Prospect Garden �Լ��]Ȥ��æ�M���^�@��, where he seems to forget about J��nchuàn immediately. Lady Wáng dismisses J��nchuàn from her service, and J��nchuàn ends up committing suicide.

The second case occurs in chapter 33, when the Prince of Zh��ngshùn’s chamberlain arrives to enquire about the young actor Ji��ng Yùhàn �Y����, who has gone missing from the palace. B��oyù initially claims to know nothing about the actor, but when the chamberlain provides evidence for a close relation between the two, B��oyù immediately reveals Ji��ng Yùhàn’s hiding place:

From what I’ve heard, he recently acquired a little villa and an acre or so of land at Fort Redwood, seven miles east of the walls. I suppose he could be there.

 ���f��������ږ|���x�Ƕ�ʮ���Ђ�ʲ�N��̴�����������e���ˎ׮���������g���ᡣ���������eҲδ��֪��

With B��oyù’s help, the Prince of Zh��ngshùn gets his favorite actor back.

B��oyù betrays the people he loves, in order to avoid trouble for himself. Maybe his way of behaviour is understandable if one considers the kind of pressure he was under. However, even in his own dreams, B��oyù does not feel guilt for the fact that his behaviour made J��nchuàn commit suicide and resulted in Ji��ng Yùhàn being caught:

He had dozed off. The shadowy form of Ji��ng Yùhàn had come in to tell him of his capture by the Prince of Zh��ngshùn’s men, followed, shortly after, by J��nchuàn, who gave him a tearful account of how she had drowned herself. B��oyù was half dreaming, half awake and paid no attention.

�@�e������ĬĬ��ֻҊ�Y���ա������١������M�����V�f��호�����֮������Ҋ���A���M�������f����Ͷ��֮�顣���������ѣ��������⡣

(chapter 34, translation modified)

There is no doubt that J��nchuàn’s suicide leaves B��oyù “in a state of shock” ����������ȴ݂� (chapter 33), and “grief for J��nchuàn so occupied his mind that he would have preferred to immediately sacrifice his own life and follow her in death” һ�Ŀ�����A���Ђ����޲��ô˕rҲ�������������˽��A��ȥ (chapter 33, my translation). At no point, however, does he seem to be concerned with his own responsibility for her death. Although J��nchuàn’s suicide was primarily prompted by Lady Wáng’s reaction, it would never have happened if B��oyù had not started to flirt with her, and might perhaps have been avoided if he had supported her instead of running away. The fact that B��oyù in his dream “paid no attention” �������� contrasts sharply with the strong self-reproach of Lady Wáng:

… in a moment of anger I struck her a couple of times and sent her back to her mother’s. I had only been meaning to leave her there a day or two to punish her. After that I would have had her back again. I never dreamed that she would be so angry with me as to drown herself. Now that she has, I feel that it is all my fault.

��һ�r�������������������f������ȥ����ֻ�f�������죬߀�����ρ����l֪���@�N���Դ󣬾�Ͷ�����ˡ��M�����ҵ����^��

(chapter 32)

Although Lady Wáng has already “given [J��nchuàn’s] mother fifty taels” �p��������ʮ���y�� and is comforted by B��och��i, she still “feel[s] very uneasy in [her] mind” �IJ���. B��oyù never says anything like this.

Throughout the whole novel, B��oyù hardly ever expresses a sense of guilt or self-reproach. On a few occasions, he does express feelings of inferiority, especially in comparison to girls and effeminate boys (see below), but these feelings are not motivated by guilt, but rather by admiration for the other and shame at his own decrepit state. He also sometimes “regrets having spoken too roughly” �Ի����Zðײ (chapter 5, my translation), but this feeling is motivated by a wish to avoid other people’s anger rather than by his own sense of remorse. The only instance in which he seems to blame himself for the unfortunate turn of events is in his brief self-reproach after the maidservant Number Four �ă� is dismissed from the family (see chapter 3). Most of the time, B��oyù simply seems to “feel superior to ordinary people” �Ԟ���^���� (chapter 16, my translation), as his friend Qín Zh��ng says on his deathbed.

Ji�� B��oyù’s qíng does involve empathy for the girls (and a few boys) and sorrow for their sad fate. It hardly contains, however, any sort of long-term responsibility or commitment. Ji�� B��oyù’s main concern is with his own feeling of well-being and aesthetic pleasure. His empathy is restricted to the people and the situations that provide him with this sense of well-being and pleasure. Rather than reflecting selfless care it is, in a sense, instrumental in his own attempts to achieve a state of primary narcissism.

Beautiful girls and handsome boys (especially those who are also intelligent and sensitive) are mostly capable of providing him with the sense of well-being he seeks. When these girls and boys are ill or depressed, he has ample opportunity to express his empathy, and this somehow intensifies his feeling of well-being, even as he suffers with them.

As we have seen a number of times, one of the things that disturb his sense of well-being most strongly is other people’s anger. As soon as somebody turns angry, B��oyù starts “feeling distressed” �Լ��]Ȥ and runs away. This is especially true when the girls, especially Lín Dàiyù, are angry with him, shattering the sense of mutual sympathy that is a precondition for qíng.

Chapter 21 is especially telling in this respect. Here the girls with whom B��oyù usually empathises are angry with him. At first, B��oyù “feels gloomy” �Û]�dȤ (my translation). Later, he finds a method of regaining his sense of well-being. He pretends for the moment that they are all dead �ஔ��������, and he finds comfort in the thought: “He was able to stop worrying. He even began to feel quite cheerful” ���o������������Ȼ�Ԑ�. In this case, it is the death of the girls rather than the girls themselves that is instrumental in bringing about B��oyù’s sense of well-being, his state of primary narcissism. The quest for this feeling lies at the heart of B��oyù’s — and the novel’s — idealisation of qíng.

Equally telling is his opposite reaction when the rejection comes from his father Ji�� Zhèng. Though B��oyù does what he can to avoid such rejections, the actual psychological effect on him is moderate. Ji�� Zhèng is neither an object nor a source of qíng. Even when his father has virtually beaten him to death, B��oyù does not, as soon as he regains consciousness, seem to be psychologically distressed. On the contrary, his maltreatment at the hands of his father intensifies the sympathy between him and the girls, intensifies his qíng, and thereby indirectly increases his sense of psychological well-being instead of reducing it.

Qíng and the sense of guilt

B��oyù’s lack of guilt contrasts sharply with the theme of guilt as it occurs elsewhere in the novel. In crucial parts of the novel, the sense of guilt and remorse is highly thematised.

Most notably, in the preface-like introduction to the novel’s chapter 1, the author describes himself as having reached “the unbearable day of unbridled embarrassment and useless remorse” �����t���N���֟o��֮��o�����֮�� (my translation), his remorse being at least partly due to “the sin of having defied the attempts by my elders to give me a proper upbringing, and of having turned my back on warnings and advice from my teachers and friends, so that today I have acquired no skill by which to make a living, and have idled away half my lifetime” �����ֽ���֮����ؓ����ҎՄ֮������������һ���o���������ʵ�֮��. This lead Yú Píngbó ��ƽ�� to conclude that the novel is “borne out of repentance for a life of qíng”.[19]

Admittedly, the autobiographical passage at the beginning of chapter 1 leaves us with quite a few unresolved questions. Although the passage in which it occurs claims to quote the author (“the author says himself” ��������), this seems to imply that it is not written by the author. In one of the earliest manuscripts we have, it is not a part of the novel at all, but is included as a preface or a pre-chapter commentary. Some scholars believe it to be the preface to Cáo Xu��qín’s early work Precious Mirror for the Romantic mentioned in the Red Inkstone commentary, written by the author’s younger brother (or cousin ��) Tángc��n �Ĵ�. Tángc��n is sometimes identified with K��ng Méix�� from Eastern L�� �|����÷Ϫ, who, according to chapter 1, added the title Precious Mirror for the Romantic to the whole novel. By giving him the same family name (K��ng) and homeland (Eastern L��) as Confucius, the author might be teasing him for Confucian pedantery. May it be that the remorse expressed is a feeling Tángc��n thought the author ought to have felt rather than one he actually felt?

Even if this passage does represent the author’s own words, however, does it also represent his heartfelt feelings? Or is it just a conventional expression of polite modesty? Or perhaps just playful words that were never intended to be taken seriously? An indication of the playfulness of the passage lies in the collocation of Confucian vocabulary (even a sentence modelled on a famous sentence pattern from the Analects: “Is it not indeed suitable!” �����˺�) and wildly unconventional (and un-Confucian) values, such as the worship of young girls, the contempt for men, and the idea of writing a book to preserve the glorious memory of young girls ʹ�|�w�т�.

Since we are less concerned with the actual author than with the author as embodied in the text, it does not really matter whether the real-life Cáo Xu��qín actually felt guilt or not. What matters is the way the theme of guilt is represented in the novel itself. Whether or not this passage was written by Cáo Xu��qín, it was included in the novel during his lifetime. And even if it is playful and humorous, it still brings guilt to the forefront as a central theme in the novel.

Furthermore, expressions of self-reproach and remorse with an often slightly Confucian tinge are not restricted to this opening passage. They occur in other passages as well. For instance, a little further into chapter 1, the uncarved stone �Bʯ that is left unused when N��w�� Ů�z repairs the sky also expresses dissatisfaction with itself:

Observing that the other blocks had been used for celestial repairs and that it was the only one to have been rejected as unworthy, it became filled with shame and resentment and passed its days in sorrow and embarrassment.

��Ҋ��ʯ����a�������Լ��o�IJ������x������Թ�ԇ@����ҹ��̖�M����

(translation modified)

The expression “repair the sky” �a�� is often used to express the idea of recovering one’s fortunes.[20] The useless stone lies at the foot of Q��ngg��ngf��ng �๡��, which is near-homophonous with qíngg��n ��� ‘the root of qíng’, and the Red Inkstone commentary indicates that this is the reason for the stone’s uselessness:

It says it has fallen to the roots of qíng, and hence is of no use in repairing the sky.

���^�䉙������ʟo�a��֮�á�[21]

Since B��oyù may be seen as the stone’s incarnation in the world of mortal beings, this seems to indicate that he, too, is useless due to his favouring of qíng over l��. Although B��oyù does not reach this conclusion himself in the course of the novel’s first 80 chapters, the “sorrow and embarrassment” felt by the stone is a clear parallel to the author’s “unbridled embarrassment and useless remorse”.

Note again, however, that even this passage may be more playful than serious. Beside the passage about the melting of stone to repair the sky ��ʯ�a��, the Red Inkstone commentary adds:

“Repairing the sky to benefit the world” is a common expression used in a playful way.

�a����������J���ó��ԡ�[22]

The way the Red Inkstone commentary sees it, the self-reproach of the stone also has its humorous aspect, just like the passage at the beginning of the chapter.

The commentators often emphasise what they conceive as feelings of embarrassment and remorse lying behind the novel. In chapter 12, in which Ji�� Ruì eventually dies from his infatuation with Wáng X��fèng, the 1760 edition ������ has the following two comments:

Na��ve parents and disobedient offspring are pointed out everywhere—this book has grown out of [the author’s] embarrassment with himself.

̎̎�c��ĸ�V�����ӌO��Ф——�˕��S�������ɡ�[23]

“The sea of bitterness is endless, turn back and you will find the shore.” But who is able to turn back? Alas! Alas!

�ຣ�o߅�����^�ǰ������ܻ��^Ҳ���@�@��[24]

As we have seen, the story of Ji�� Ruì is only one of numerous stories of people dying because of blind infatuation, of qíng, and one reading of the novel is as a warning against the excesses of romance, as indicated in the Reader’s Guide ���� of the 1754 edition ���籾.

Such warnings are given to Ji�� B��oyù in the mythical dream of chapter 5. The fairy J��nghuàn has been asked by the dead souls of the Duke of Níngguó and the Duke of Róngguó ���s���� to make Ji�� B��oyù “devote himself single-mindedly to the serious things of life” �����·, by “initiat[ing] him in the pleasures of the flesh and all that sort of thing in such a way as to shock the silliness out of him” ������•ɫ���¾���V�B. When, towards the end of the chapter, Ji�� B��oyù is about to fall into the Ford of Error �Խ�, the fairy J��nghuàn shouts to him:

Stop! Stop! … Turn back at once! Turn back!

����ǰ�M�����ٻ��^Ҫ�o��

According to the Red Inkstone commentary, this passage is meant to awaken ordinary people �c������.[25] The fairy J��nghuàn warns:

If you had gone on walking just now and had fallen in, all the good advice I was at such pains to give you would have been wasted.

�O�牙���������t��ؓ�ҏ�ǰՁՁ����֮�Z�ӡ�

The Red Inkstone commentary adds: “When you see how [the author] turns the pen and writes these words, you know that from here it is all about repentance” �������D�P�����Z���t֪��������Ի�.[26] Another commentary in the same chapter says: “Scolding B��oyù, he is actually expressing his own repentance” �R���������s���Ի�.

Again, however, passages like the ones cited from chapter 5 also have humorous elements, and some of them may be read as charicatures of Confucian moralism. When teaching B��oyù the mysteries of sexuality, the fairy J��nghuàn admonishes him saying: “It is my earnest hope that … you will henceforth be able to shake yourself free of [love’s] entanglements and change your previous way of thinking, devoting your mind seriously to the teachings of Confucius and Mencius and your person wholeheartedly to the betterment of society” �������f�f���������ǰ��������춿���֮�g��ί��춽���֮��. Even the Red Inkstone commentary, which generally tends much more strongly towards moralism than the novel itself, is ambivalent to this overly explicit Confucian statement: “Saying this, J��nghuàn also becomes pedantic, but she has no other way” �f���˶����������ฯ����Ȼ�಻�ò�Ȼ��.[27]

Two characters who, while alive, represent the glorification of qíng tend towards a more conventional and moralistic view towards the end of their lives: Qín K��q��ng and her brother Qín Zh��ng.

In chapter 13, Qín K��q��ng, while dying, appears in a dream to Wáng X��fèng and tells her to purchase property that, once the family’s fortunes decline, may act as “a place where the young people can go to farm and study, as well as a means of maintaining the ancestral sacrifices in unbroken succession” �ӌO�ؼ��x�����r��Ҳ�Ђ��˲��������ֿ����^. She adds:

… if you fail to take precautions in good time, you will live to regret it bitterly when it is already too late.

�˕r���������]���R��ֻ����ڟo���ˡ�

This must have been written at “the unbearable day of unbridled embarrassment and useless remorse” ���t���N���֟o��֮��o�����֮�� (see above).

In chapter 16, when already half-dead, Qín Zh��ng exhorts his closest friend B��oyù saying:

You and I used to think we were above ordinary people, but today I know I was wrong. In the future you should set your ambition on your career seeking honour and illustrious achievements.

��ǰ����Ҋ�R�Ԟ���^�������ҽ��ղ�֪���`�ˡ�����߀ԓ��־�������Ԙsҫ�@�_���ǡ�

Wai-yee Li argues that this passage is purely humorous, since the immediately preceding passage on the ghosts fetching Qín Zh��ng is indeed jocular.[28] All the Red Inkstone commentaries, however, take Qín Zh��ng’s words seriously. The 1760 edition ������ contains both an interlinear commentary and a marginal commentary:

If at this moment he hadn’t made these two statements, he wouldn’t have been B��oyù’s understanding friend.

�˿̟o�˶��Z��������֪֮����

Reading this we realise that all is about belated regret.

�x�˄t֪ȫ�ǻ��t֮�ޡ�

Many editions add the following comment after Qín Zh��ng’s first sentence:

Who doesn’t regret it’s too late!

�l�����t��

The word regret is a translation of the same Chinese word, hu�� ��, as the one translated as “repent(ance)” and “(feeling) remorse” in other quotations.

To sum up, The Red Chamber Dream again and again emphasises that a life devoted to qíng is likely to bring about regret, remorse, and repentance. The novel usually does so in a humorous way full of irony, but this does not seem to indicate a lack of serious concern with the problem. Although the main protagonist Ji�� B��oyù appears during the first 80 chapters as an unrepentant representative of the glorification of qíng, he also receives early warnings, and the novel itself is indeed much more complex. In Kundera’s terms, B��oyù as a fictional character is an experimental self used to explore an attitude to life that has qíng as its core value. On many points B��oyù resembles the author as represented in the first paragraph of chapter 1, but he differs in virtually never repenting, never reproaching himself for his own actions, never feeling remorse.

It would be overly simplistic, however, to see The Red Chamber Dream simply as a book of repentance. The basic attitude underlying this novel is one of ambivalence and irony rather than unequivocal truth. The Red Chamber Dream does not promote any specific argument either in favour of qíng or against it. It contains, in the words of Kundera, “not a single absolute truth but a welter of contradictory truths”. It plunges into the great existential theme of qíng with an exploratory attitude based on the “wisdom of uncertainty”.[29]

The Red Chamber Dream vacillates between a strong idealisation of qíng on the one hand and feelings of regret and remorse on the other, never coming fully to terms with either. This conflict not only represents a contradiction between two ways of thinking, as Kundera indicates, it also reflects a complex psychological struggle between inner forces that are basically emotional and instinctual rather than purely intellectual.

Since qíng represents spontaneous impulses, while hu�� �� ‘regret, remorse, repentance’ is often associated with moralism, this conflict is easily associated with Freud’s opposition between the id and the super-ego, the id including all spontaneous impulses, instincts, and inner drives, and the super-ego including the moral forces that want to control, suppress or eliminate all these impulses, instincts and drives. Qíng, however, by no means represents just any impulse belonging to the id. On the contrary, the excessive sexual promiscuity displayed by many of the male (and a few of the female) characters in the novel is clearly conceived of as being vulgar and in strong opposition to the sublime sensibilities of qíng.

In chapter 5, the fairy J��nghuàn distinguishes between “a shallow, promiscuous kind of lust” Ƥ�w���E and a “lust of the mind” ����. Though both of them are “lustful” ��, the former is of the flesh (literally, of the skin) and the latter of the mind. This dichotomy is a new and highly original version of the traditional distinction between (the morally and aesthetically more acceptable) qíng ‘love, emotions’ and (the morally and aesthetically less acceptable) yù �� (or �j) ‘desire, lust’.[30] From a psychoanalytic point of view, it is a more advanced version, since it acknowledges sexual desire or “lustfulness” as an integral part of both, there being no such thing as “love untainted by lust” �������. Using psychoanalytic terms, qíng is a highly sublimated, emotionalised form of desire, one that is more acceptable to a strict super-ego than ordinary carnal lust.[31] Even so, however, the conflict between an impulsive id and a repressive super-ego still persists, and this conflict lies at the heart of The Red Chamber Dream.

This conflict, however, is not an explicit part of B��oyù’s character, which represents the cultivation of a purified qíng. B��oyù has, as we have seen, almost no real sense of guilt. According to Freud, the development of a sense of guilt represents a partial farewell to the self-centredness of the narcissism of the younger child. B��oyù seems hardly even to have started to bid farewell to this part of himself.

Qíng and the sense of fear

In addition to the sense of guilt, The Red Chamber Dream also describes other psychological forces that threaten the sense of well-being and aesthetic pleasure associated with qíng. One of them is the sense of deadly fear of the dangers invoked by the strong link between qíng and sexual desire. And just as B��oyù was immune to the sense of guilt, he also seems to be immune to this danger, though it may not seem so at the beginning of the novel.

When B��oyù has just entered the Land of Illusion ̫̓�þ� in his dream in chapter 5, he catches sight of an inscription that makes him ponder:

I wonder what the meaning of “passion that outlasts all time” can be. And what are “love’s debts”? From now on I must make an effort to understand these things.

����֪�Ξ顺�Ž�֮�须���Ξ顺�L��֮�������Ľ�Ҫ�I���I�ԡ�

After he has decided to make an effort to understand passion and love, he immediately runs into problems:

… merely by thinking this he had invited poisonous demons into the innermost recesses of his heart.

����ֻ����һ�룬�������Щаħ��������ˡ�

(translation modified)

For the moment, he seems to escape danger, only to reencounter it towards the end of the chapter, when he and K��q��ng, after having made love, walk playfully together holding hands:

Their walk seemed to take them quite suddenly to a place where only thorn-trees grew and wolves and tigers prowled around in pairs. Ahead of them the road ended at the edge of a dark ravine. No bridge connected it with the other side.

����һ����������Ҋ�G黱�����ǻ�ͬȺ��ӭ��һ����Ϫ��·���K�o������ͨ��

The fairy J��nghuàn explains to B��oyù that this is the Ford of Error �Խ�. Fortunately, at the very moment when “a multitude of demons and water monsters reached up and clutched at B��oyù to drag him down into its depths” �S��ҹ�溣�팢�����ό���ȥ, he wakes up to discover it was all a dream.

But if B��oyù is saved from calamity, the deadly dangers of love have more grave consequences for a number of other characters in the novel. As we have seen in previous chapters, Ji�� Ruì, Qín K��q��ng, Qín Zh��ng, J��nchuàn, B��o Èr’s wife, Yóu s��nji��, Yóu èrji��, and Qíngwén all die because of the fatal combination of genuine, but illicit love and uncontrollable lust. The same may be true of Lín Dàiyù in the original design of the novel.[32]

A Red Inkstone commentary found at the end of chapter 35 in the Royal Household edition ������ and the Y��uzhèng edition ������ concludes:

The depths of the river of love are bottomless, how can you keep afloat? Once you start sinking, only death can stop you.

�ۺ�֮��o�����οɷ��E��һ��������������ֹ��

This and other comments see the novel as being forged on a mould of warnings against karmic retribution for sexual sins known from a variety of pieces of traditional Chinese fiction, most notably The Plum in the Golden Vase. As we have seen, however, the stories in The Red Chamber Dream differ from the standard stories of karmic retribution in not seeing the danger in question as primarily arising from sexual excesses, but rather from desire generated by genuine feelings of love. In this novel, real love is more dangerous than loveless sex. The novel’s numerous lechers do not seem to have a problem, only the ones who fall helplessly in love are in danger. This indicates that the main point of these stories does not lie in the by Cáo Xu��qín’s time already well-worn idea of karmic retribution, but rather in a psychological fear of the vulnerability accompanying genuine feelings of love.

The vulnerability of love is made all the more frightening by the presence, in the novel, of the punitive and merciless forces represented by harbingers of Confucian values like B��oyù’s father Ji�� Zhèng and Ji�� Ruì’s grandfather Ji�� Dàirú �Z����. Ji�� Zhèng tries, albeit unsuccessfully, to beat his son to death, while Ji�� Dàirú’s fierce punishment of his grandson contributes to the latter’s illness and subsequent death. Psychologically, the state of primary narcissism associated with qíng is under constant threat from cruel forces aimed at destroying it. In this perspective, the resistance against giving up primary narcissism becomes understandable, since the alternative is associated with callous and emotionally destructive forces.

The power of qíng, according to the idealised view that originated in late Ming literary and aesthetic discourse, lies in its ability to transcend l�� �� (or, in The Red Chamber Dream, l�� �Y), and this is exactly the reason why qíng can also be so dangerous. It is impossible to control and easily leads to transgression. As we have seen, love that is not in conflict with l�� �� or l�� �Y carries no danger, as in the love relation between B��oyù and his maidservant Xírén, which is consummated in chapter 6 (see ??). All the love relations that end in death somehow violate a taboo. Even the feelings between Ji�� B��oyù and Lín Dàiyù, which might have been perfectly acceptable, since they are maternal and not paternal cousins, the sheer fact that their relation is built on love and not on family consent makes it at least semi-illicit.[33]

As mentioned, Ji�� B��oyù differs from all of the characters in the standard stories of karmic retribution by seeming to be constitutionally immune to its dangers. In chapter 5, the fairy J��nghuàn says about the Ford of Error:

No boat can ever cross it; only a raft manned by a lay-brother called Numb and an acolyte called Dumb. Numb holds the steering-paddle and Dumb wields the pole. They won’t ferry anyone across for money, but only take those who are fated to cross over.

�Пo��鮿�ͨ��ֻ��һ��ľ������ľ��ʿ�ƶ��������ߓθ������ܽ��y֮�x�������о��߶�֮��

B��oyù’s desire brings him to the verge of catastrophe, but because he belongs to “those who are fated” �о���, he does not in the end fall into the Ford of Error. In other words, he avoids, for the moment at least, the forces of karmic retribution. He is uniquely protected, as behoves a literary representative of a narcissistic frame of mind.

That B��oyù belongs to “those who are fated” can be seen from the jade he carried in his mouth when he was born. The reverse side of the jade is inscribed with three lines describing its powers, the second of which is to “cure lovesickness” ��ԩ�� (chapter 8, my translation).[34] The contrast to Ji�� Ruì is instructive. The Taoist who gives Ji�� Ruì the Precious Mirror for the Romantic “claims to specialise in curing lovesickness” �ڷQ����ԩ�I֢֮ (chapter 12, my translation) and tells him only to look into the reverse side of the mirror. Ji�� Ruì is clearly not fated to avoid disaster and insists on looking into the front side of the mirror as well, leading to his death in a pool of semen. The numerous people who die from love in The Red Chamber Dream do not belong to “those who are fated” either, and are therefore unable to cross the Ford of Error successfully. They are not, in the end, cured of their lovesickness.

Qíng and the sense of shame

There is, however, one threat to the harmony of primary narcissism to which Ji�� B��oyù is not immune: his sense of shame at being male, at being what the novel repeatedly calls “a bearded filthy creature” �Pü���� (my translation). A narcissistic mind often hovers between admiration and idealisation (of self and others) on the one hand and a painful sense of shame and worthlessness on the other. In this case, B��oyù is no exception.

As mentioned above, The Red Chamber Dream is famous for its highly unconventional idealisation of femininity and contempt for masculinity. It is not the only Qing dynasty novel emphasising women’s reactions,[35] and it may be seen as reflecting the traditional Taoist preference for yin over yang, but The Red Chamber Dream is unique in linking this way of thinking to a deep-seated psychological sense of shame.

In the novel, the contempt for masculinity and the idealisation of femininity are primarily associated with Ji�� B��oyù, as in the following quotation from chapter 2:

Girls are made of water and boys are made of mud. When I am with girls I feel fresh and clean, but when I am with boys I feel filthy and stinking.

Ů����ˮ���Ĺ����������������Ĺ��⡣��Ҋ��Ů�����ұ���ˬ��Ҋ�����ӣ����X������ˡ�

(translation modified)

In the novel, masculinity is repeatedly associated with impurity. It contaminates the “fresh and clean” realm of femininity and thereby threatens the well-being associated with qíng, the state of primary narcissism, the primary source of which is, as we have seen, the presence of the girls.

A similar attitude is found in Ji�� Boayu’s mirror reflection Zh��n B��oyù �猚��, also in chapter 2:

The word ‘girl’ is very precious and very pure. It is much more rare and precious than all the rarest beasts and birds and plants in the world. So it is most extremely important that you should never, never violate it with your coarse mouths and stinking breath. Whenever you need to say it, you should first rinse your mouths out with clean water and scented tea. And if ever I catch you slipping up, I shall have holes drilled through your teeth and lace them up together.

�@Ů���ɂ������O���F���O��Q�������ǰ����ӷ�Ԫʼ������@�ɂ���̖߀����s�o���������ゃ�@��ڳ������f������ͻ���@�ɂ�����Ҫ�o������Ҫ�f�r�����������ˮ������˿ڲſɣ��O��ʧ�e����Ҫ����������¡�

According to the explicitly autobiographical passage at the beginning of the novel, the idealisation of femininity and the contempt for masculinity is not restricted to fictional characters, but also reflects the attitude of the author:

Now living in misery without a single achievement, I suddenly came to think of all the girls from bygone days. Weighing them carefully one by one, I found all of them superior to myself both morally and intellectually. Though a bearded man of no mean aspiration, I really cannot compare with those slips of girls!

���L�mµµ��һ�Ÿo���������������֮Ů����һһ�����^ȥ���X����ֹҊ�R���Գ����֮�ϡ����������Pü���\������ȹ�O����

(my translation)

As opposed to the statements of Ji�� B��oyù and Zh��n B��oyù above, the author’s words clearly express a self-deprecatory sense of shame, not just a general contempt for the male gender. In the cases of Ji�� B��oyù and Zh��n B��oyù, it is not always clear that their contempt for masculinity leads to a sense of shame on their own behalf. On the contrary, it sometimes imbues them with a sense of superiority, since it seems to show that they have a much better understanding of the qualities of the female gender than other men have. Sometimes, however, Ji�� B��oyù does use the terms “filthy creature” ���� and “bearded filthy creature” �Pü���� to include himself:

I only said she is a nice girl, suited to live in a big and wealthy household, instead of filthy creatures like us who actually live here.

�Ҳ��^��ٝ���������������@���ô�Ժ�e���]���҂��@�N���ﵹ�����@�e��

(chapter 19, my translation)

When nature has produced a great person like her, what’s the use of bearded filthy creatures like me coming here to contaminate the world.

������@�������ֺ������@�ü�����������硣

(chapter 58, my translation)

In these two cases, B��oyù looks down upon himself after having met with beautiful and admirable girls. In chapter 5, when some fairies in the Land of Illusion complain that the fairy J��nghuàn has “brought this disgusting creature to pollute our pure, maidenly precincts”, B��oyù seems to agree entirely:

At these words B��oyù was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the uncleanness and impurity of his own body and sought in vain for somewhere to escape to …

���� ����f���㇘�����˲����������X�����۷x������

Clearly, Ji�� B��oyù, like the author, does feel shame at his own filthiness, not only that of other males.

However, B��oyù does not idealise all female beings, nor does he feel contempt for all males. First of all, his idealisation of the female gender is basically restricted to girls that have not yet been tainted by male sexuality and, by association, male repressive conventionality. Most married women fall outside:

Strange, the way they get like this when they marry! It must be something in the male that infects them. If anything they end up even worse than the men!

�������������N�@Щ��ֻһ���˝h����Ⱦ�����˵Ě�ζ�����@�ӻ��~�����������˸��ɚ�����

(chapter 77)

B��oyù does have a close and affectionate relation to several married women, including Qín K��q��ng and Wáng X��fèng, but except for Ji�� Li��n’s concubine Píng’ér ƽ�� and Xu�� Pán’s concubine Xi��nglíng ����, who even moves into the garden, they do not belong to the highly idealised world of unmarried girls. Sometimes even unmarried girls have problems. When Xu�� B��och��i or other girls try to admonish B��oyù, he complains:

Why should a pure, sweet girl like you want to go imitating that ghastly crew of thievish, place-hunting career worms, … bothering her head about “fame” and “reputation” and all that sort of rubbish? All these notions you are parroting were dreamed up by meddlesome old men in days gone by for the express purpose of leading astray the whiskered idiots [bearded filthy creatures] who come after them. I really think it’s too bad that I should have to live in an age when the minds of nice, sensible girls are contaminated by such idiocies. It’s a rank abuse of the intellectual gifts that you were born with!

�úõ�һ����Q����Ů����Ҳ�W��������u�����ˇ��\����֮�����@����ǰ�˟o�����£������Q�o��ԭ�錧�������Pü��������������ң����ҭ��|�C�w����Ⱦ���L��������ؓ�����`ع��֮�£�

(chapter 36)

Second, objects of idealisation also include some males. B��oyù’s reaction on his first meeting with Qín Zh��ng in chapter 7 is similar to his reaction towards girls—he idealises the other while feeling contempt for himself:

How perfect he is! Who would have believed there could be such perfection? Now that I have seen him I know that I am just a pig wallowing in the mud, a mangy dog! … Though I am so much richer and more nobly born than he, what use are my fine clothes but to cover up the dead and rotten wood beneath? What use the luxuries I eat and drink but to fill the cesspit and swell the stinking sewer of my inside?

���¾����@����������񿴁����Ҿ��������i�]���ˡ�??���m��˱������F����֪�\�C���_��Ҳ���^�������@����ľ�^��������ᣬҲ���^�������@�S�����ϡ�

Qín Zh��ng is a highly effeminate boy, probably with a bisexual tendency. Hints of similar feelings are found in B��oyù’s relation to Ji��ng Yùhàn, the Prince of B��ijìng ���o��, and Li�� Xi��nglián. B��oyù’s strong feelings towards the masculine gender are consistently aroused by unconventional boys or men of outstanding beauty, and usually with highly effeminate traits. His admiration for them is an extension of his admiration for the girls.

In fact, B��oyù himself fits quite neatly with the description of boys or men he would usually admire. He is highly unconventional and extremely beautiful, he clearly has effeminate traits and probably a bisexual tendency. But while on some occasions he certainly leans towards self-admiration, on other occasions, as we have seen, he feels shame at his own maleness, which he sees as filthy and highly unaesthetic. In his own case, he seems to be aware of the lurking presence of some shameful element within himself that is at odds with his idealised picture of unmarried girls and admirable boys. But what is this element? What is this most fearsome threat to Ji�� B��oyù’s state of well-being and aesthetic pleasure?

Qíng and male desire

One possible answer lies in Wáng Guówéi’s analysis of the term yù �� ‘jade’.[36] According to him, the term stands for the homophonous term written with the character �� (or �j) and referring to ‘desire’ or ‘carnal lust’. B��oyù was born carrying a jade in his mouth, a fact for which he is not always happy. When meeting Lín Dàiyù for the first time in chapter 3, upon hearing that she does not have a jade like his, he throws his own jade to the ground, calling it a “beastly thing” ��ʲ�� which “can’t even tell which people are better than others” �B��֮�ߵͲ���:

None of the girls has got one. … Only I have got one. It always upsets me. And now this new cousin comes here who is as beautiful as an angel and she hasn’t got one either, so I know it can’t be any good.

���e�����ö��]���������������f�]Ȥ���������@��һ�������Ƶ�����Ҳ�]������֪�@���ǂ��Ö|����

B��oyù obviously feels that he is inferior to the girls, and that things that he has and the girls do not are somehow inherently bad. B��oyù’s aversion towards his jade (yù ��), then, may reflect an aversion towards male desire (yù �� or �j). David Hawkes comments on the passage above saying that “Xueqin’s eighteenth century insights can be quite startling”, and adds that “I do not think the fact that he is actually referring to his jade talisman makes this passage psychologically any the less interesting”,[37] clearly suggesting that B��oyù’s behaviour is a kind of Freudian self-castration. If B��oyù were able to get rid of the lust and desires that are associated with maleness, he might become immune to his sense of shame and other threats to his state of well-being and aesthetic pleasure, his primary narcissism.

While the notion of qíng appears very frequently in The Red Chamber Dream and is explicitly said to be one of the novel’s main themes, the notion of yù ‘desire, carnal lust’ only occurs a few times (except as a modal verb ‘to be about to; to want to’) and is never highlighted. In Wáng Guówéi’s analysis, however, yù ‘desire, carnal lust’ is still one of the novel’s main themes, though it does not appear directly, but is instead hidden behind the homophonous word meaning ‘jade’, which is indeed a frequently recurring motif in the novel. Wáng Guówéi’s analysis may seem speculative and is not based on much concrete evidence, apart from the general fact that many words and names in the novel clearly have a double meaning based on homophony. Even if we do not accept his suggestion that yù ’jade’ is a representation of yù ’desire’, however, there is plenty of evidence that a fear of male desire underlies much of the novel.

I mentioned above that the fairy J��nghuàn’s distinction between “a shallow, promiscuous kind of lust” Ƥ�w���E and a “lust of the mind” ���� more or less corresponds to the traditional distinction between qíng ‘love, emotions’ and yù ‘desire, carnal lust’. J��nghuàn’s version acknowledges “lustfulness” �� as an integral part of both, and this actually makes the delineation between the two much more tricky. The problem is not so much to distinguish B��oyù’s qíng from the yù of the novel’s numerous lechers, since they tend to be selfishly concerned with fulfilment of sexual desire without much consideration for the girls or women (or, in some cases, boys) involved, in stark contrast to B��oyù. The tricky problem is the distinction between the more or less purified qíng that B��oyù represents and the qíng with a strong admixture of yù represented by, for instance, his good friend Qín Zh��ng. Qín Zh��ng starts out as a paragon of qíng, but ends his life because of his lustful association with the young nun Zhìnéng.[38]

B��oyù’s “lust of the mind” clearly includes an erotic component. Whether the object of his love is Lín Dàiyù, Xu�� B��och��i, J��nchuàn, Píng’ér, or Qíngwén on the female side, or Qín Zh��ng or Ji��ng Yùhàn on the male side, his feelings for them are partly erotic.[39] For instance, in chapter 28 when B��oyù sees B��och��i’s arm...

…a feeling rather warmer than admiration was kindled inside him. ‘If that arm were growing on Cousin Lín’s body,’ he speculated, ‘I might hope one day to touch it. What a pity it’s hers! Now I shall never have that good fortune.’ Suddenly he thought of the curious coincidence of the gold and jade talismans … He looked again at B��och��i -

that face like the full moon’s argent bowl;

those eyes like sloes;

those lips whose carmine hue no Art contrived;

and brows by none but Nature’s pencil lined.

Fascinated by it, he continued to stare at her with a somewhat dazed expression, so that when she handed him the chaplet, which she had now succeeded in getting off her wrist, he failed to take it from her.

���X�����wĽ֮����������������@������Ҫ�L������������������߀����һ����ƫ���L�������ϡ������Ǻޛ]����������Ȼ���𡸽���һ�����ٿ������O���ݣ�ֻҊĘ���y�裬����ˮ�ӣ������c���t��ü�������䣬������������һ�N�����L�������X�ʹ��ˣ����O���˴��Ӂ��f�c����Ҳ���˽ӡ�

But though the sight of a beautiful girl may kindle inside him “a feeling rather warmer than admiration”, his “lust of the mind” does not seem to lead to any clearly sexual behaviour after his dream initiation into sexuality in chapter 5 and his first sexual intercourse with Xírén (which was officially sanctioned) in chapter 6. In chapter 77, Qíngwén’s cousin’s wife makes the following observation concerning the relationship between B��oyù and Qíngwén:

I was listening to you two for quite a while outside the window. You two were alone in the room, and if you had been secret lovers, I am sure you would have talked about it. But it turns out you and she have nothing between you.

���M��һ���ڴ��¼� ���݃�ֻ�����������͵�u�I���������M�в�Մ��춴����l֪��ɂ���߀�Ǹ������_��

(my translation)

The relationship between B��oyù and Qíngwén is extremely close and affectionate, and before Qíngwén was driven out of the household, they often slept in the same room. Still their relationship clearly did not include sexual intercourse, indicating that B��oyù’s relation to the girls, apart from the single incident with Xírén, is not a sexual one. After his first intercourse in chapter 6, he simply stops his own explorations of sexual desire.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing is not B��oyù’s lack of sexual behaviour, which we might understand as a conscious choice to show consideration towards the girls he loves. The most surprising thing is his apparent lack of clearly sexual impulses and fantasies beyond the aesthetic pleasure described in scenes like the one where he is admiring B��och��i’s arm. After chapter 6, there is hardly a trace of such impulses, nor of the inner struggle that would normally accompany, consciously or unconsciously, the decision to abstain from sexual behaviour or fantasising.[40] From this point, B��oyù appears as an idealised character, far less realistic than many other characters in the novel.

This cannot be ascribed to a general avoidance of such themes in the novel, since elsewhere The Red Chamber Dream does not shun concrete descriptions of sexual fantasies and behaviour. It seems, rather, to stem from a need to keep B��oyù pure from a kind of desire that the novel conceives of as both dangerous and shameful. A person as full of qíng as B��oyù is in constant danger of ending up like Ji�� Ruì, Qín K��q��ng, Qín Zh��ng, and all the other characters who die for love. He is also in constant danger of being reduced to a more vulgar and therefore shameful type of male lover than the ideals of “lust of the mind” would allow. In a sense, he is in constant danger of having his yù spill over and merge too strongly with his qíng, transforming his purified qíng (meaning variant ii) into the more strongly eroticised qíng (meaning variant i) discussed in the section on “Meanings of Qíng” above. In order to make him immune to these dangers, the author has to give him special treatment. This treatment consists in a kind of purification that rids B��oyù of much of his yù. The story of how B��oyù throws his jade (his yù, which “only I have got” and “none of the girls has got”) to the ground in chapter 3 is an anticipation of this attempted eradication of male desire.

Ironically, both the fierce repression of impulses in Confucians like Ji�� Zhèng and Ji�� Dàirú on the one hand and the novel’s attempt to purify qíng in Ji�� B��oyù on the other hand consider the impulses associated with yù, with desires and carnal lust, as their principal foes. Ji�� Zhèng and Ji�� Dàirú represent the repression of unwanted impulses by means of cruel, punitive action, in fact much like the typical images of the Freudian castrator, a super-ego in its early development, primitive and threatening. Ji�� B��oyù, on the other hand, meets the same impulses not with repression, but with denial. With the possible exception of his throwing to the ground of the jade in chapter 3, B��oyù’s solution to the problem of male desire is self-inflicted blindness rather than aggressive self-castration. Denial and avoidance are deeply rooted features in Ji�� B��oyù’s psychology (as seen in his many attempts to run away from unpleasant situations), and the denial of his sexuality after chapter 6 seems to reflect a blind spot in the novel as a whole, as it is never openly thematised. The idealisation of qíng is based on a willingness to close one’s eyes to the lack of a clear demarcation line between carnal lust and a “lust of the mind”.

Wáng Guówéi’s idea that yù �� ‘jade’ stands for yù �� (or �j) ‘desire’ may be speculative, but ties in neatly with B��oyù’s denial of male desire. In fact, the almost complete absence of the term yù ‘desire’ in the novel may be seen to reflect B��oyù’s blindness to his own lustfulness. Desire is always disguised as something else. While the ultimate destination of B��oyù’s qíng is a state of primary narcissism, his special relationship with the girls is the most important means to reach that state, and it should come as no surprise that male desire lies at the root of this relationship. Such desire, however, constantly threatens to contaminate qíng and break the spell that makes B��oyù’s relation to the girls so unique and must, therefore, never be given its proper name.

Qíng and non-attachment

One reading of The Red Chamber Dream is as a novel describing Ji�� B��oyù’s journey across the Ford of Error (see above), where he gradually discovers the emptiness of his attachment to qíng. The two characters aboard the raft crossing the ford, called by Hawkes Numb and Dumb, but more literally translatable as the Lay-Buddhist Wood ľ��ʿ and the Attendant Ash ������, are sometimes seen as representing B��oyù’s main objects of infatuation, Dàiyù and Qíngwén, who both die for their love for B��oyù. B��oyù’s awakening from his dream at the end of chapter 5 may be seen as an anticipation of his eventual awakening from the illusory dream of the world of desires, when he leaves home to become a monk. If this awakening ever takes place, however, it belongs in the lost or unfinished final chapters for which our only source is a few scattered remarks in the Red Inkstone commentary.

The theme of awakening is tightly linked to the novel’s many stories from a mythical realm that lies beyond, but is in constant interaction with this world. The main events narrated in the The Red Chamber Dream are framed by and occasionally interspersed with such otherworldly stories.[41] The most important inhabitants of this realm are a Buddhist monk and a Taoist sage, who both choose to enter this world for a while to save a few souls, and the fairy J��nghuàn, who guards the Land of Illusion and its not inconsiderable bureaucracy of souls. The mythical realm is also the place of origin of the stone left unused by the goddess N��w�� Ů�z when she repaired Heaven, transformed into an inscribed jade and brought into this world as B��oyù’s jade talisman (and, some would say, as B��oyù himself). It is the realm of the Divine Luminescent Stone-in-Waiting in the Court of Sunset Glow and the Crimson Pearl Flower, who enter this world as Ji�� B��oyù and Lín Dàiyù. It is the realm of the Taoist K��ngk��ng, who — apparently still in the otherworldly realm — becomes the first reader, critic and publisher of The Red Chamber Dream, and who eventually attains enlightenment and changes his name into the Qíng Monk ��ɮ. And it is the realm of guardians fetching the souls of those who are about to die, such as Ji�� Ruì and Qín Zh��ng, and probably also the abode of dead souls like those of Qín K��q��ng, J��nchuàn, Yóu s��nji��, and Qíngwén, who are able to enter into the dreams and thereby communicate with mortals while they are on their way to the other side, but who then seem to lose contact (only in the anonymous sequel do some thoroughly dead souls return as ghosts).

The philosophy underlying these parts of the novel is a synchretist mixture of Buddhism and Taoism, with emphasis on the transcendence of worldly desires.[42] According to this way of thinking, both qíng and l�� are basically illusory (Buddhism), and they are parts of a never-ending cycle of change that makes human striving futile (Taoism). It is only because we have not yet reached enlightenment that we still set such store by them. Thus, while B��oyù favours qíng over l�� and his father favours l�� over qíng, the mythopoetical parts of the novel go for a third alternative: the transcendence of both qíng and l��. Wáng Guówéi concluded that this is a novel about “the path to liberation” ��Ó֮��, and this path “lies in renouncing the world” ��춳���.[43]

The Red Chamber Dream gives two alternative paths to liberation. The first path is the traditional one, represented in the mythical realm by the Buddhist monk and the Taoist sage and in the more or less realistic parts of the novel by the retired official Zh��n Shìy��n ��ʿ�[, who attains enlightenment towards the end of chapter 1, after his daughter has been kidnapped, his house burnt down, and he has been completely ripped off by his greedy father-in-law. After losing everything he feels attached to, he is able to look through the vanity of his own attachments.

The second path, which originates in late Ming literature and thought (with philosophical ties to the Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of non-dualism[44]), is one in which qíng in its narrow meaning of ‘love, desire, passion’ (meaning 3, usage c, variants i and ii above) plays a much more central role. It helps a person to transcend the narrow confines of l��, though it is just a station along the way to final liberation. In the mythical realm, this is the path of the Taoist K��ngk��ng, who in chapter 1, upon reading The Red Chamber Dream, “start[ed] off in the Void (which is Truth)[,] came to the contemplation of Form (which is Illusion); and from Form engendered Passion; and by communicating Passion, entered again into Form; and from Form awoke to the Void (which is Truth)” ���Ҋɫ����ɫ������������ɫ����ɫ���. It is also the path outlined in chapter 5, where the fairy J��nghuàn tries to “initiate [Ji�� B��oyù] in the pleasures of the flesh and all that sort of thing in such a way as to shock the silliness out of him” ������•ɫ���¾�����B, in the hope that this may “succeed in bringing about an awakening in him some time in the future” �򼽌���һ��, and, in the words of the 1754 ���� edition, help him “attain enlightenment through qíng” �������. In the semi-realistic parts of the novel, then, the qíng-based path to liberation is the path of Ji�� B��oyù. Note, by the way, that in late Ming authors like T��ng Xi��nz�� ���@��, the l�� that qíng helps us to transcend is �� ‘reason, moral order’, while in The Red Chamber Dream it is primarily �Y ‘ritual propriety’.

Transcending qíng is not the same as ridding oneself of qíng. For instance, although the fairy J��nghuàn stands for ideals of transcendence, she does not object to holding B��oyù by the hand, prompting the following comment from a Red Inkstone commentator: “Great! Even J��nghuàn herself is a loveful creature!” �����������ǂ�����N��. And she says to B��oyù: “The reason I like you so much is because you are full of lust. You are the most lustful person I have ever known in the whole world!” �����������������¹Ž��һ����Ҳ.

Nor is transcending l�� the same as ridding oneself of l��. J��nghuàn makes, as we have seen, exhortations about “the teachings of Confucius and Mencius” and “the betterment of society”. And the Buddhist monk and the Taoist sage seem to support the l��-based relation between B��oyù and B��och��i rather than the qíng-based relation between B��oyù and Dàiyù, to judge from the fact that B��oyù wakes up from his dream crying:

Why should I believe what those old monks and Taoists say? I don’t believe in the marriage of gold and jade [B��och��i and B��oyù]. I believe in the marriage of stone and flower [B��oyù and Dàiyù].

���е�ʿ��Ԓ����ŵ�?ʲ�N�ǽ�����������ƫ�f��ľʯ������

(chapter 36).

Clearly, the monk and the Taoist had suggested that “the marriage of gold and jade”, which would be based on l�� rather than qíng, might be preferable (or, perhaps, unavoidable).

Rather than getting rid of qíng and l��, the core issue in the ideals of transcendence seems to lie in avoiding the attachment they easily bring with them. Both the search for emotional fulfilment by means of qíng and the quest for order by means of l�� are, in the end, futile attempts to change the natural flow of things. But so is the attempt to get rid of qíng and l��, which are, in the end, simply just parts of this flow. Qíng and l�� and the conflict between the two need to be accepted as facts, but not to be taken for important goals in life. “The path to liberation” seems to lie in accepting them without getting attached to them. Or so, at least, goes the theory.

It is hard to read The Red Chamber Dream, however, without noticing the immense sense of attachment running through the whole novel, a nostalgic bond to the past, to its beautiful girls and even some boys and married women, to its extravagant clothing and its delicious food, to its poetry and art, its imposing buildings and magnificent garden, its games and its playfulness, its freedom and its more or less well-protected innocence. We know, of course, that the actual author came from one of Nanjing’s richest and most powerful families at the time, whose entire property, unfortunately, was confiscated by the emperor when the author was probably around 13 (though some scholars insist he was 5), so that, when we meet him almost 30 years later trying to finish his novel in the outskirts of Beijing, he has become a poor drunkard trying to feed his family (and get more money to buy wine) by doing rock painting. But even without this knowledge, just by reading the novel, we can sense the massive feeling of loss underlying the whole narrative, the nostalgia for days that will never return, and the horror and desperation felt at the inevitability of the terrible destiny of the family. According to its first chapter, Cáo Xu��qín worked on the novel for ten years in what David Hawkes has translated as Nostalgia Studio ���t܎, but which is literally the studio for the mourning of everything that used to be red: the mansions (only very rich families have red mansions), the girls (red mansions is a conventional way of referring to the dwellings of the young girls of rich families, or the young girls themselves), the flowers (symbols of girls and of desire), and desire itself (red is the colour of desire). In the attempt to recapture bygone wealth and beauty there is a strong element of sentimental exaggeration and lyrical idealisation. For instance, the amount of beauty, talent, intelligence, sensitivity, and skilfulness amassed in the girls of the novel is impressive beyond any probability. All the equally impressive details of imposing buildings, delicate furniture, elegant clothing, precious jewellery, lovely make-up, exquisite food, and delightful drink — not to mention the vastness of the mansions and the garden — also bear witness to a nostalgic mind dreaming up a lost world far beyond any realistic measures. The underlying feeling, then, is by no means one of non-attachment, and if there is at all an attempt at accepting the flow of life, it is done with “hot and bitter tears” ����I (chapter 1), simply because there is no other way, as indicated by the ubiquity of the phrase wú nài �o�� (or one of its many variants: nài ��, nài hé �κ�, z��n nài ���� or ����, q�� nài �M��), referring to a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness, an unwilling acceptance of a reality that is forced upon one. If The Red Chamber Dream is suggesting that non-attachment and acceptance of the flow of life are a good cure to the losses brought upon one by life itself, it is prescribing a medicine which does not seem to have helped its author a lot.

The two characters who are described as being able to overcome their own attachment in the course of the narrative, Zh��n Shìy��n and Li�� Xi��nglián, simply just leave the scene along with the Taoist sage as soon as they have come to their realisation. The only intimation of the actual psychology behind the idea of non-attachment comes in Ji�� B��oyù’s pseudo-enlightenment in chapter 21, where he is able to regain his state of well-being by pretending that the girls who have hurt him are dead. One might see this as an aggressive reaction, a revenge against those who have hurt him. The main point in our context, however, is the fact that B��oyù’s pseudo-enlightenment is built on denial, a pretense that the objects of his own qíng and the conflicts surrounding them no longer exist. To the extent that the novel gives us any clue at all to the psychology behind the ideals of transcendence, it seems to be very close to the psychology of denial, especially the denial of male desire, a reaction the basic aim of which is to recapture the state of primary narcissism. If this is correct, the attempt to transcend qíng is little more than a more advanced step in the endeavour to retain or regain this childlike state of undisturbed well-being and unity.

The presence and absence of irony

To what extent does The Red Chamber Dream seriously suggest that the ideology of non-attachment and acceptance of the mythical realm is a valid approach to life? A closer look at the role this view plays within the novel as a whole suggests that the transcendence of qíng and l�� does not necessarily have prominence over the views favouring qíng over l�� or l�� over qíng.

First, transcendental wisdom belongs exclusively to the mythical realm and is not in this novel a part of real life. The Buddhist monk, the Taoist sage, the fairy J��nghuàn, and the Taoist K��ngk��ng, who are all portrayed as bearers of transcendental wisdom, belong to the mythical realm, though they do pay visits to the world of mortal beings. In chapter 1, Zh��n Shìy��n is originally a thisworldly character, but after he has reached enlightenment, we hear no more of him. In chapter 66, Li�� Xi��nglián “slashe[s] through the unnumbered strands that bind us to the world and its annoys” ���f�������zһ�]���M, and after that we see or hear no more of him. In addition, some of the dead or dying characters of the novel also arguably represent a kind of transcendental wisdom, such as Qín K��q��ng in her admonitions to Wáng X��fèng in chapter 13, Qín Zh��ng in his admonitions to Ji�� B��oyù in chapter 16, and Yóu s��nji�� in her parting words to Li�� Xi��nglián in chapter 66 and in her little dream visit to Yóu èrji�� in chapter 69. But Qín K��q��ng’s and Qín Zh��ng’s deathbed messages are actually more in favour of l�� than transcendence, and when Yóu s��nji�� visits her sister in a dream, she sounds much more vengeful than one would expect of a person of transcendental wisdom. Whatever wisdom they might have, however, is acquired at the very moment of leaving this world, presumably to enter the mythical realm.

Second, although stories from the mythical realm frame the whole novel, their way of thinking only occurs in an exceedingly small portion of the whole narrative. In other parts of the novel, there may be reminders of their existence, but most of the time they are simply quietly forgotten. For instance, to judge by the descriptions in chapter 1, the stone that was left unused by N��w�� has a central role in the narration, the whole narrative being first inscribed on it (before being copied by the Taoist K��ngk��ng), and we are reminded of this role in small passages in chapters 4, 8, and 17-18. Most of the time, however, the role of the stone as a quasi-narrator is not even hinted at, and the stone’s only presence in other chapters are in the form of B��oyù’s jade talisman. As for the Buddhist monk and the Taoist sage, they mainly appear in chapters 1 and 25, the Taoist sage also towards the end of chapters 12 and 66 (continuing into the beginning of chapter 67); in other chapters they are only mentioned a few times by other characters and do not appear in person. The fairy J��nghuàn mainly appears in chapter 5, and the Taoist K��ngk��ng only occurs in chapter 1. Even if Zh��n Shìy��n in chapter 1, Qín K��q��ng in chapter 13, Qín Zh��ng in chapter 16, Yóu s��nji�� in chapter 66 and 69, and Li�� Xi��nglián in chapter 66-67 are counted, there is in the vast majority of chapters no direct use of mythopoetical elements or reference to transcendental wisdom at all.

Third, the mythopoetical passages are full of humour and irony, of what the Chinese critical tradition calls “a playful pen” �[��Pī. The first chapter, which has several mythopoetical passages, uses the term “absurd” ���� three times—in addition to calling the mythical mountains from where the stone originates and to which it eventually returns “the Mountains of Great Absurdity” (my translation) ���ɽ. The stories of the goddess N��w�� repairing Heaven, the block of stone left unused and therefore howling and wailing in shame and lamentation, the “scabby” �]�^ Buddhist monk and the “limping” ���� Taoist sage behaving like madmen, and the Taoist K��ngk��ng engaging in overly serious conversation with the stone on the nature of good literature, are all witty and jocular, as is the folksy tone of the “Won-Done Song” ���˸� and its poetic commentary. Even the story of the Divine Luminescent Stone-in-Waiting in the Court of Sunset Glow and the Crimson Pearl Flower, though markedly more lyrical in sentiment, has a humorous side. In chapter 5, B��oyù’s dream visit to the Land of Illusion is also full of playful elements, and the obvious lustfulness of the fairy J��nghuàn has more than a touch of comedy. In chapter 12, the whole story of Ji�� Ruì is almost farcical, including the parts where he is visited by the limping Taoist. In chapter 16, the leader of the demons fetching the dying Qín Zh��ng to the other side is quite comical in his fear of the name B��oyù. Etcetera, etcetera. It is as if the novel is telling us all along not to take the wisdom of these passages too seriously.

Fourth, transcendental wisdom often occurs in stylistically marked passages, such as:

-    the rhymed verse of the “Won-Done Song” and its poetic commentary (chapter 1)

-    the rhymed verse of the registers of the beauties of Jinling ����ʮ���O���ԡ����ԡ��ָ���, the song suite “A Dream of Golden Days” �t�lj�, and other poetry in chapter 5

-    couplets of parallel lines, like the one marking the entrance to the Land of Illusion in chapters 1 and 5 (Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; Real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real ������r��������О�o̎�o߀��) and the one marking the entrance to the Temple of Perfect Knowledge ��ͨ�� in chapter 2 (As long as there is a sufficiency behind you, you press greedily forward. It is only when there is no road in front of you that you think of turning back �������N���s������ǰ�o·����^)

-    lines from chapter headings, such as “shock leads a cold-hearted young gentleman to renounce the world” �����һ������T (chapter 66) and “beautiful actors sever all bonds and enter nirvana” ���������wˮ�� (chapter 77, my translation).

Passages written in these styles often contain exaggerations and do not imply mimetic realism. For instance, the heading of chapter 22 contains the line “B��oyù finds Zen enlightenment in an operatic aria”  ���Č�����U�C, which seems to imply that Ji�� B��oyù reaches enlightenment in the course of the chapter, while it is quite clear, even to B��oyù himself, that his “enlightenment” was just a drunken stupor after his having been rejected by the girls. Furthermore, semi-poetic language also gives ample room for ambiguity and alternative interpretations. For instance, the line from the heading of chapter 77 that I have translated as “beautiful actors sever all bonds and enter nirvana” is translated by Hawkes as “three young actresses seek to escape matrimony in the cloister”. While my translation takes zh��n qíng ���� to refer to a renouncement of all attachment, of all qíng, Hawkes’s translation makes it refer quite concretely to the actresses’ refusal to marry; and while my translation takes gu�� shu��yuè �wˮ�� in its conventional meaning ‘to enter nirvana’, Hawkes’s translation takes it, again quite concretely, to refer to the Buddhist temple called Water-moon Priory ˮ����, where the young actresses actually end up. The Chinese chapter heading plays on this ambiguity between a lofty philosophical interpretation and a concrete down-to-earth one. The same type of ambiguity is found in the following line in chapter 1 of the 1754 edition ���籾:

�����ǵ��^һ�����f���w�ա�

Translation A: Basically it is all a dream [i.e. illusory], and the world in its myriad manifestations is nothing but emptiness.

Translation B: In the end, it will all be like a dream [i.e. a distant memory], and nothing will be left of this myriad of things.[45]

Translation A is a general philosophical statement about the illusory nature of everything, while translation B is a specific profecy about the future disappearance of present prosperity. The first reading adds to the novel’s philosophical depth, while the second reading provides a prophesy of the concrete events that are about to be narrated. Both translations are equally valid.

The exaggerations and intended ambiguities of semi-poetic passages sometimes makes it hard to know their concrete implications. For instance, the Red Inkstone commentary mentions how a now lost chapter describes Ji�� B��oyù “letting go of his hold onto the precipice” �������� (see the commentaries to chapters 21 and 25[46]). This phrase is usually understood to imply that B��oyù renounces the world, and the commentary uses the same phrase about Zh��n Shìy��n’s enlightenment in chapter 1 (p. 33). The commentary to chapter 21 does contain concrete statements about B��oyù leaving his wife and concubine to become a monk, but the phrase itself tells us very little about the concrete circumstances of his decision. Although “letting go” seems to imply some kind of deeper spiritual insight or enlightenment, it is impossible to know whether this is meant to reflect B��oyù’s actual state of mind or is just a part of poetic language use.

One possible, though in my opinion improbable, conclusion would be to read the mythopoetical elements framing and interspersing the narrative of The Red Chamber Dream as nothing more than a literary device of a type not unknown from earlier Chinese fiction. In this perspective, the philosophical ideas of these passages are just literary ornamentation and should not be taken seriously at all.

More plausibly, I will suggest that the irony of the mythopoetical passages serves to relativise the transcendental wisdom they express. Although theoretically the idea of transcending both qíng and l�� should lie on a “higher” level than the ideas of favouring qíng or of favouring l��, its actual position within the novel is weakened by the various factors mentioned above, and the mythopoetical passages should be read with a considerable amount of ironic distance. They represent, to return to Kundera’s terms, “not a single absolute truth”, but one among “a welter of contradictory truths”.

The playfulness of the mythopoetical passages is quite similar in tone to that of the passages expressing regret, remorse and repentance (see the section on “Qíng and the Sense of Guilt” above). In both cases, humour creates an ironic distance to ideas that might otherwise appear as overly serious and trite.

In comparison, the humour of other parts of the novel does not usually create ironic distance at all. For instance, the humour found here and there in the long stretches of narrative describing life in the Prospect Garden and B��oyù’s qíng for the girls is an integrated part of a huge lyrical and arguably quite sentimental web spun around a qíng-laden core of wonder and amazement, praise and admiration, longing and lamentation. As for the slapstick humour in some of the chapters describing the dangers of qíng, while allowing the reader to lean back and be amused by Ji�� Ruì’s blind and helpless love for Wáng X��fèng in chapter 12 and Wáng X��fèng’s outrageous and uncontrollable jealousy in chapters 43 and 68-69, still does not tend to undermine the utter seriousness of the sense of fear and danger involved. Many of B��oyù’s eccentric traits, especially his love for the girls and his contempt for everything masculine, are certainly described with humour, but again a humour that contributes to the impression of what an extraordinary boy he is rather than one creating ironic distance.

The psychology of qíng

If The Red Chamber Dream is a psychological novel built around a core of conflicting inner impulses, as indicated at the beginning of this chapter, we now begin to see the contours of some of the emotional conflicts involved. Whether the novel represents a defense of qíng, a warning against it, or an attempt to transcend it, there is no doubt that qíng is one of its main obsessions. This obsession has, I have indicated, its root in a psychological resistance against boundaries and responsibility, an unwillingness to let go of the sense of well-being and unity associated with the child’s early state of primary narcissism and with its privileged relation with a number of girls.

The attempt to retain or regain this state is encouraged by the lack of restrictions represented in the novel by Grandmother Ji��’s doting for B��oyù, by the carefree life in the Prospect Garden, and by the extreme freedom with which B��oyù moves among girls who are virtually always delighted with him. The resistance against boundaries is also stimulated by the association between restrictions and the cruel and punitive strictness represented in the novel by Ji�� Zhèng in relation to his son, Ji�� Dàirú in relation to his grandson, Lady Wáng in relation to goodlooking maidservants and actresses, and by the terrible forces punishing genuine but illicit love with death as soon as it becomes too strongly eroticised or sexualised. The attempt to hold on to the state of primary narcissism also aims at retaining a kind of purity and aesthetic pleasure untainted by the ugliness and shame associated with male sexual desire (and, by extension, with career-oriented masculine values). The main sources of this idealised state of mind are a flock of young and mostly unmarried, and hence pure, girls (and a few effeminate boys), who combine purity and intelligence with beauty and erotic attractiveness.

When facing the various threats to the state of primary narcissism, The Red Chamber Dream seems to reflect a basic psychological tendency towards avoidance or denial. These are Ji�� B��oyù’s instinctual reactions whenever trouble looms, usually in the form of other people’s anger or accusations, whether they come from his father, his mother, the Prince of Zh��ngshùn’s chamberlain, Ji��ng Yùhàn and J��nchuàn in his dreams, or the girls. This article has argued that a similar form of denial underlies the strange lack of sexual behaviour and fantasies in Ji�� B��oyù, which within the perspective underlying the novel is the only way to enable him to avoid the deadly dangers of love and (less successfully) the shame associated with male desire.

As indicated above, the passages of The Red Chamber Dream most directly describing qíng and the fear and shame surrounding it have little of the irony that is so typical of the passages expressing self-reproach on the one hand and non-attachment on the other. The lack of ironic distance reflects a lack of psychological distance. These parts of the novel, which actually constitute the bulk of the narrative, are much more expressive than reflective. The conflicts relating to qíng dominate the mental universe of the novel to such an extent that there is little room for the smiling afterthought that is typical of irony. This may be seen as a weakness, since it contributes to the novel’s tendency to uncritical and sentimental idealisation. But it may also be seen as a strength, making the novel more directly psychologically expressive than any previous work of Chinese fiction, and giving us an intimate view of the emotional battlefield underlying the narrative.

The irony of the passages expressing self-reproach or non-attachment seems to represent an attempt at stepping out of this self-enclosed universe. Some (though not all) of these passages are more reflective than expressive, thereby creating some cracks in the closed and self-contained lyrical world that dominates long stretches of the novel.

Admittedly, some of the passages that can be read as expressions of remorse or self-reproach have their own form of regretful sentimentality. Still, they are consistently humorous and ironic in a way the bulk of the narrative is not.

With regard to the mythopoetical passages, I have already voiced the suspicion that the philosophical idea of non-attachment, as expressed in the novel, in part represents psychologically little more than an elevated variant of the basic tendency towards avoidance and denial of the inner conflicts threatening the state of primary narcissism. It is as if the same psychological impulses that dominate the self-contained universe of qíng pop up again even within the attempts to overcome it.

Let us return, finally, to Milan Kundera’s characterisation of the novel as “the great prose form in which an author thoroughly explores, by means of experimental selves (characters), some great themes of existence”. There is no doubt that Kundera, both in his own novels and his literary thinking, prefers a reflective form to a directly emotional one. One might argue that the self-contained lyricism that dominates most of the narrative of The Red Chamber Dream is not really exploratory in Kundera’s sense, since its lack of ironic distance leaves so little room for reflection. One might also argue, however, that the very lack of a self-conscious reflective voice in large parts of The Red Chamber Dream allows us more direct access to the psychological impulses involved and brings them up in a more naked, unmodified form. Just as the direct expression of free associations with a minimum of self-criticism provides the basis for insight in psychoanalysis, the non-reflective form of these parts of The Red Chamber Dream brings us right into the middle of the emotional conflicts surrounding the great theme of existence called qíng.