Reflections on Dream of the Red Chamber By Liu Zaifu

Dream of the Red Chamber is quite different. It regards the female gender as the best in the universe and places a group of females in the center of its spiritual drama. Even the most outstanding males in the novel are inferior to the females in wisdom. The Iliad looks at history from a male standpoint, whereas Dream of the Red Chamber looks at history from the standpoint of enlightened females. Lin Daiyu’s “Songs for Five Fair Women” and Xue Baoqin’s “Ten Quatrains on History” both make it very clear that the approach to history in Dream of the Red Chamber is characterized by its gentility, sensuality, and humaneness.

8.

From Homer to Shakespeare, from Dante to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and from Records of the Grand Historian to Dream of the Red Chamber, all the classics that have survived the test of history are the results of devoted creative efforts made by marvelous authors. Because they are born in the depths of life, time cannot corrode their link to the reality of life. Consequently, all true classics always maintain their liveliness and eternal attraction. The eternity of classics in fact shows the eternity of life. No classic can be produced simply by the promotion of a social organization or through publicity campaigns launched by those seeking to enhance their reputations.

Dream of the Red Chamber provides a model for literature. This great novel sifts everything in Chinese culture and crystallizes its essence into a literary classic that begins with an allegory of love between Divine Luminescent Stone-in-Waiting (similar to Adam) and Crimson Pearl Flower (similar to Eve). As it guides me in life, it tells me in particular that literature is an enterprise not of the head but of the heart and soul and as a writer one must devote one’s life to this enterprise of tears and joys.

9.

We always feel that The Classic of Mountains and Seas offers us too few myths. Since no one intentionally kept a record in primitive society, its stories survived in a natural manner, just like mountains and rivers, settling down in the collective memory of our nation as its people experienced the vicissitudes of history.