amazon.com上一个来自美国亚特兰大的读者对红楼梦的评论！

作者：红楼梦未完 标签：评论

阅读次数：471

A Chinese classic that should be better known in the West　

December 2, 1998

Reviewer: snuffle@aol.com from Atlanta
　
This is one of the most entertaining, satisfying "big baggy"-type novels of all time. Readers who like long Victorian or Russian novels, or got all the way through "Clarissa," will get many hours of enjoyment from "Story of the Stone" ("Dream of the Red Chamber" is the more common title). It is about a cultured, wealthy family in early Ching dynasty China, with a teenaged hero called Bao-yu. Bao-yu spends all his time in the women's quarters, which is unheard-of for a boy his age but allowed because his grandmother spoils him. Instead of fulfilling his filial duty by studying for the civil service exams, he indulges in the same idle pleasures as the women of the household, eating, dressing, gossiping, composing poetry, and/or playing drinking games with his many girl cousins, aunts, mother, doting grandmother, myriad serving maids, a troupe of actresses, and the occasional nun from a convent located on the grounds. Bao-yu is a dreamy, precocious romantic, very spoiled but charming, and always (usually platonically) in love with several girls at once. However, his deepest feelings are for his cousin Dai-yu, his soulmate, who is sickly, orphaned, frequently whiny, and not considered a good match by the family. It is hard to believe that Cao Xueqin wrote about 300 years ago on the other side of the world, because he gives such a touching, ironic depiction of romantic love unfolding between two sensitive, self-conscious, and precocious kids. His characterizations of women are also sympathetic and insightful, aware of the suffering that society's conventions inflict on them. And the rest of the novel is a fascinating portrayal of traditional Chinese culture, manners, religion, entertainment, food, clothes, interior decoration, medicine, and family values. Family members and servants go about their lives, putting on funerals, having birthday parties, intriguing for improved status within the family, casting spells on enemies, eating lavish meals, entertaining Imperial guests and poor relations, threatening or committing suicide to save face, scheming to take concubines behind wives' backs, etc. etc. Symbolism in names, metaphors, dreams, poems, etc. abounds. The novel has literally hundreds of characters (David Hawkes helpfully organizes them by letting the family members keep their Chinese names and translating the servants' names into English, the actresses' names into French, and the monks' and nuns' names into Latin). Caveat lector: "DRC" is challenging even for a Chinese reader because of its allegories, wordplay, poetry, and cultural references. It is full of allusions to Chinese literature and history -- which can be frustrating since Hawkes does not provide explanatory footnotes. (I was able to get my Chinese boyfriend and his mother to explain some of the allusions.) Also, although the translation is unabridged and usually idiomatic, it sometimes grated on my (American) ears. Hawkes sometimes makes the characters talk painfully quaint British slang. But if you can overlook these difficulties, this is one of those novels that can conjure up a world and make its inhabitants real for the reader.