|
|
The Fourth: she likes you now, but not in the future. The Fifth: you like her, but she likes you not. The Sixth: she likes you, but you like her not.” Confronted with this string of propositions, Baoyu remained silent for a while before he suddenly burst out laughing and cried: “A river might be a thousand miles long, but all I need is a gourd of water to drink.” In this situation Baoyu clearly expressed his unswerving devotion to what was important to him.
The lesson from Baoyu has influenced my approach to Dream of the Red Chamber. In the history of human civilization countless books have been preserved, precisely “a river of a thousand miles.” Since our energy is finite, we should, of course, pick the best to read. After careful selection I have finally realized that the most valuable treasure in Chinese literature or even Chinese culture lies in Dream of the Red Chamber. This novel contains not only the richest treasure of human nature and of art; it also contains the richest intellectual and philosophical treasure. As I drink from the spiritual river in Dream of the Red Chamber, my life and my soul are enriched.
I have gone through roughly four phases in reading Dream of the Red Chamber: (1) reading outside the Grand View Garden and getting to know the rough outline of the novel; (2) entering the Grand View Garden, meeting the girls, and getting to know the gist of the novel; (3) the Grand View Garden (including the girls and Jia Baoyu) in turn entering into my own life and enabling me to understand the natural disposition of the novel; (4) studying the novel by stepping out of the Grand View Garden and getting to understand its spiritual realm. Wang Guowei once said that in reading a book one should be able to enter its world and then to step out of its world. By stepping out of the world of Dream of the Red Chamber, he gained an understanding of its universe, but it seems he did not enter into the lives of the girls in the Grand View Garden, and the garden did not enter into his life either. As a result, in his Critical Essay on Dream of the Red Chamber, he was unable to discover what inheres in the lives of Jia Baoyu and the girls. Unlike Wang Guowei, I have experienced how my life entered and absorbed the world of the novel.