Master Shi Collection: Volume 3. Prose and Poetry, Prose and Poetry Volume (Upper and Lower)

Author: Shi Tuo / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: In the past, half of my work involved: copying the dialects and colloquialisms used in Dream of the Red Chamber, reviewing works on Dream of the Red Chamber from the late Ming Dynasty onwards, and also reviewing the works of Mr. Zheng Zhenduo and Mr. Wu Han, who are now long gone. Before the liberation, Mr. Zheng Zhenduo had tried to discover the author of Dream of the Red Chamber from ancient books, and his student, Mr. Wu Han, also sought the author in ancient texts. Since the author was signed as "Laughing at the World in Lanling," and Yixian was part of Lanling County or Lanling Prefecture before the Eastern Jin Dynasty, both of them naturally checked the Annals of Yixian County and the Annals of Yanzhou Prefecture. To discover the author, it is said that Mr. Dai Wangshu checked the Annals of Macheng County after the liberation, because the daughter-in-law of Xu Jie was from Macheng, and it seemed that Shen Defu had once mentioned in his Chronicles of the Wild that the Xu family used Dream of the Red Chamber as a dowry. However, they were ultimately disappointed. After the liberation, Mr. Zheng Zhenduo rose from director to deputy director, too busy with cultural relics to even think about Dream of the Red Chamber anymore. Once—around the summer of 1957, I believe—we met by chance in Beijing and talked about work. I mentioned that I wanted to continue his unfinished mission and research the author of Dream of the Red Chamber. This "old man of fate," with his usual gestures and words, struck his hand diagonally downward and said, "It's absolutely impossible to research it! Absolutely impossible!" I also knew very well that simply searching ancient books would not yield the author. This was because the thoughts of the ancients were constrained by the imperial examinations, the cycle of karma, and feudal Confucianism. Who was the author of Dream of the Red Chamber? Dong Qichang knew, Yuan Hongdao and his brothers knew, Shen Defu knew, and Li Zhi, the teacher of Yuan Hongdao’s brothers—well, I imagine he probably knew too. Although Yuan Hongdao once paired Dream of the Red Chamber with Water Margin as External Classics and even compared Water Margin to Records of the Grand Historian, Shen Defu once called its author a great scholar of the Jiajing era, and Li Zhi once commented and revised Water Margin, seemingly with a "revolutionary" spirit, they still couldn’t break free from three constraints and reveal the truth, leaving later generations to waste their efforts. Other ignorant scholars could only curse the author for cutting off his lineage. Now, I firmly believe that as a compatriot of this great writer, we have a responsibility and obligation to provide some materials for the history of world literature. It is precisely because we live in a socialist era that we have the opportunity to accomplish what our predecessors could not. Personally, I may not get this chance. It doesn’t matter if I don’t get the chance; others will, and future generations will too. I hereby present some of my views over the past twenty years for the reference of other researchers.
Earlier, I mentioned that I knew very well that simply searching ancient books would not yield the author of Dream of the Red Chamber. So, is it considered unnecessary to continue the work of our predecessors? Not at all. Although they hit a wall when searching ancient books, at least they gave us inspiration: to take a different approach. Most writers of novels or dramas have had this experience: without sufficient training, they cannot write works of merit. This is still just considering the vast number of ancient and modern works from China and abroad that are available for us to read today. In the author’s time, however, there were no existing works reflecting social life for him to reference. He could still create a massive work of over a million words out of thin air—this was indeed due to his creative spirit. But if he lacked the necessary writing experience, no matter how hard he tried, he could never have accomplished it. Combined with Shen Defu’s "great scholar of the Jiajing era," it is easy to associate the author of the Guo Xun edition of Water Margin with him. Although only five chapters of the Guo Xun edition of Water Margin were discovered after the liberation, fortunately, the hundred-chapter version based on Guo Xun’s edition still exists, and two chapters that are almost identical to Dream of the Red Chamber are available for examination. Because these two chapters are almost identical, some people believe that Dream of the Red Chamber came first and Water Margin followed. My view is different. Storytelling was already very popular in the Northern Song Dynasty and had even entered the imperial court by the Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty. The author of the Guo Xun edition of Water Margin must have had some basis for his work—the basis being the manuscripts of storytellers at the time and place. For business purposes, storytellers across China had to make their stories vivid, easy to understand, and engaging to attract audiences. In my childhood, I listened to Romance of the Three Kingdoms (I believe other places also had Romance of the Three Kingdoms), but the storytellers’ version was different from the widely circulated Luo Guanzhong edition. There were occasional poems, "day" was changed to "said," "called," or "roared," and it didn’t use vernacular language; instead, it was straightforward, colloquial, and easily understood by both men and women. Storytellers passed down their manuscripts from generation to generation, with masters and apprentices continuously enriching the content. Take an example: by the time of the liberation, the manuscripts of the Ten Chapters of Wu and the Ten Chapters of Song passed down by the elderly storyteller Wang Shaotang in Yangzhou had each expanded to hundreds of thousands of words. The development of Chinese novels and ballads should first be credited to the artists. Precisely for this reason, I believe that the author of the Guo Xun edition of Water Margin based his work on the manuscripts of local storytellers and then refined them.
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