20201116 trans

Cao Runxin 曹润鑫

WOESLER, Martin

Prof. Dr. Martin Woesler (University Rome III/Witten University)

The Waves of the Stone –

Early Reception Between Instrumentalization and Exoticization

Abstract

The fame of the Dream of the Red Chamber spread quickly not across Asia, but also to Europe and the USA. This paper introduces the roles and motifs of different actors in the early distribution, like merchants, Western embassies, Chinese teachers of Western missionaries, missionaries themselves, translators, early Sinologists as well as literary critics. I introduce judgements on the novel before it was available in translation.

Chang Huiyue 常慧月

As motifs I identify exoticization (joy of otherness of fashion and dressing, customs), universalization (world literature), the instrumentalization of the novel as evidence for own hypotheses on literature (Davis’ poetry), the instrumentalization for language learning etc. I show a change of motifs over time from exoticization and instrumentalization for proving inferiority to Western novels to accepting the novel as part of world literature and a masterpiece of Chinese culture with a special value in documenting Chinese society. Of special interest are misunderstandings (Gützlaff) and deviations from the original (Kuhn, Minford).

Chen Han 陈涵

Key words

Dream of the Red Chamber, Western translation, Western dissemination, Western reception, instrumentalization, exotization, deviation

First (unproven) experiences of young Cao Xueqin with foreign literature

In 1947 the graduate student Huang Long from then Jinling University quoted the following passage from the book Dragon's Imperial Kingdom, which he claimed to have borrowed from the Central Library (today’s Nanking Library), in which William Winston ‘remembers’ an encounter of his grandfather Philip Winston with Cao Xueqin:

Chen Hui 陈惠

"The imperial kingdom was symbolized by a five-clawed golden dragon, a legendary reptile nonexistent since Creation. Of her indigenous produces shantung commanded the broadest popularity. This rendered her to merit the credit ‚Land of Silk’ in the Orient. There has been cherished as our precious heirloom a piece of home-spun fabric with an ornamental pattern of "dragon and phoenix" manufactured at Kiangning Textile Mill. It survived fires and swords. During my grandfather Philip's sojourn in China for trade in textiles, he contracted an acquaintance with Mr. Tsao Fu, the then Superintendent of Kiangning Textile Mill, and at the latter's request served as an initiator of textile technology.

Chen Jiangning 陈江宁

The host was hospitality incarnate and oftentimes indited extempore verses in token of rapport. As a reply, my grandfather delivered Biblical sermons and gave a graphic narration of Shakespeare's dramas. For audience he had merely those other than the juvenile and feminine. On the score of eavesdropping, Tsao’s pampered son suffered a lashing and castigation".[ Philip Winston: Dragon's Imperial Kingdom, Douglas 1874, p. 53. Quoted from: 吴新雷, 黄进德《曹雪芹江南家世考》，福建人民出版社, 1983, 304 pp., here pp. 103-104. See also:馬幼垣（Yau-Woon Ma）《實事與構想: 中國小說史論釋》，聯經出版事業股份有限公司, 2007年，384页。See also: 周汝昌《曹雪芹新传》外文出版社(1992)²1997, 353pp., here p. 101.]

Chen Jiaxin 陈佳欣

If this encounter has been made up, it shows how much effort Redology invested to come to new findings, if not, it may explain some of the special characteristics of the novel never seen in Chinese literature before.

Status of the book before its publication

Between 1754 and 1771 we have one new manuscript version per year in average and almost each manuscript carries new comments mostly from 脂砚斋 or from 畸笏叟. The author died on Feb 1, 1764, which did not end the commenting on the manuscripts.

Chen Jingjing 陈静静

The book was not officially published, but that did not prevented it from dissemination, as manuscript fragments were handed around since the 1750s and the novel was known to many scholars before its publication in 1791.

The preface to the 2nd edition in 1792 also points to the fact, that there had been a “long” tradition of scholarly research of the book and comments. These comments had not been taken over for the 1st and 2nd edition.

Chen Sha 陈莎

From inofficial manuscript versions to the printed book

One of the reasons why the book was not printed was that it was (wrongly) considered either sexually explicite literature (淫书) or against Confucianism, which could only passed on in manuscript versions.

Gao E claims in his preface of 1791, that he had heared before 1771 from this novel and that he checked whether it was against Confucianism, but could not find anything like this in it, so that it could be published.

Chen Sunfu 谌孙福

“One of the best works of fiction in Chinese literature was supposed to have been written by a member of this sect, and was suppressed by the Emperor because of offensive references to the reigning family contained in it. It was called the ‘Hung Lou Meng,’ or ‘Dream of the Red Chamber,’ and it resembles a large number of fairy tales threaded together rather than a modern novel. By an ingenious substitution of false characters, words, occasionally throughout certain portions of the work—something like incorrect spelling —the imperial interdict was evaded, and it has continued in print and popularity down to the present day. Foreign students of Chinese commonly read a portion of it, the smooth and excellent style making it an invaluable text-book.”[ See: He Tianyue 何天爵: The real Chinese question (真正的中国问题), New York: Dodd，Mead & Co. 1900, 386 pp., here p. 109.]

Chen Yongxiang 陈永相

Preparations of the 1st book edition

Gao E worked with Cheng Weiyuan, who ran the publishing house Suzhou Cuiwen Press (苏州萃文书屋).

According to the preface to the 1791 edition by Cheng Weiyuan, different 80 chapter manuscript versions were already circulating, some were sold for a high price at the Temple Market, others were copied by readers. Since the 80 chapter manuscript versions already contained content lists with 120 chapter headlines, he searched for and found (as he pretended) the 120 chapters.

Cheng Yusi 成于思

In the preface to the first printed edition he already refers to an existing number of readers, who share the love of the book with him. Also his description that some readers took over the effort to copy the book by handwriting shows that an early fan culture existed even before the printed version appeared.

Also, Cheng Weiyuan keeps the question of the authorship open, but points directly to Cao Xueqin, who claimed to have worked 10 years on the novel and rewritten it five times. The rewriting may refer to the production of new manuscript versions reflecting the ideas of the commentators.

Deng Jinxia 邓锦霞

1st Book edition 1791: 程甲本 Cheng A edition

According to the preface to the 2nd edition 1792, these early fans were called collectors and the 1st edition was produced with movable characters, which was faster than the woodblock print. The book contained 99 illustrations and more than 100 copies were printed. The first edition might have been printed in Peking at the end of 1791, the 2nd in early 1792 in Suzhou, leaving 72 days between the two editions, which may show that the Peking edition was sold out immediately. The 1791 edition was also soon translated into Mongolian: 蒙古王府本 Menggu ben.

Ding Daifeng 丁代凤

2nd Book edition in 1792: 程乙本 Cheng B edition

A second edition, with ‘corrections’ some consider mistakes today, was published in 1792 in Suzhou and sold well too. The 2nd edition claims to have removed many mistakes of the 1st edition.[ For an overview of the comparison of the two editions please refer to: 《《红楼梦》程乙本版本研究综述》，王丽敏，河南教育学院学报 (哲学社会科学版) Vol．33.] One of the differences is that the 程乙本 Cheng B edition changed expressions in ancient wenyan to more contemporary ones, like “索” was turned into “要”, “趁” into “赶”, “题” into “写”, “端” into “头”, “闻得” into “听见”, “记挂” into “惦记”, “殊不知” into “那里知道” etc., but not in every case. Altogether they changed roughly 20,000 characters.

Fang Jieling 方洁玲

There is also a change of the list of confiscated goods. What might have been the reason in this particular case to change the list of confiscated goods for the Cheng B edition? The list in the Jiaben is a documentation of richness and therefore lets the confiscation seem to be justified because of unjustified enrichment. In the Yiben, the list starts with mostly religious items like, Buddha statues, this lets the confiscation appear unjustified and shifts the sympathies of the reader towards the family. In the late 18th century, there was a turn towards Buddhism.

Gan Fengyu 甘奉玉

Many umlegitimized copies appeared. The book was delivered to Korea and shipped to Japan, where it was read in its original language.

The novel created a wave of interest in China comparable to the one of The Sorrows of the Young Werther in Europe since 1774. The first edition, printed in 1791 in Peking in a small number of copies (estimates range between 4 and 400) was soon sold out.

Gao Mingzhu 高明珠

Some scholars assume a suicide wave among readers who identified with Lin Daiyu. Many readers discussed whether they identified more with Lin Daiyu or with Xue Baochai, a discussion that lasts until today.

Gong Yumian 龚钰冕

Spreading to Japan and Korea

Captain王开泰 Wang Kaitai delivered 18 copies of a 9-volume edition of the Dream on December 9, 1793 to Japan, as we can prove in a store list of a Nanking ship arriving in长崎港Nagasaki (which started on November 3 in 乍浦 Zhapu): „红楼梦 九部十八套“.[ From 发货账本, quoted from: 《红楼梦 》在日本.] We know of an early mentioning of the Dream by the Korean author Lee, Kyu-Kyung李圭景 ( 1788- ? 李圭景(이규경)) in the 1830s.[ From 《五洲衍文长笺散稿》卷七《小说 辩证说》, quoted from: 《红楼梦》在韩国的流传和翻译.]

There were early (partial) translations of the novel into Manchurian.

Gu Dongfang 顾东方

Early Western notions of the book

The novel also caught the attention of Europeans living in China, like the missionaries, who started to translate parts of it into Western languages, as well as the British embassies to China, who collected also Chinese literature, brought it back to Europe or engaged in translation or dissemination.

Guan Qinqing 管钦清

The book seems to have run out of stock often and needed to be purchased from other cities, whereever it was available, like in about 1812 in Canton: Robert Morrison, a missionary who worked in Macao, may have been pointed by his Chinese tutor to the novel. In 1816 he published a dialogue between a student (maybe himself) and his Chinese tutor pointing to the time before December 1812, when he translated parts of the novel and therefore had a copy:

Gui Yizhi 桂一枝

Student: “What is the best book for students to read?” – [...suggestion of Daxue.] Tutor: [...] to read the Hung-low-mung will do very well. – Student: I have not seen the Hung-low-mung, have you seen it? – Tutor: I have not brought it with me, but if you wish to see it, I will write to Canton, and present it to you. Student: “Very good. I will trouble you to write for it.” – Tutor: “I will do so.” – Student: “How many volumes are there in the Hung-low-mung?” – Tutor: “Twenty volumes in all. In this book, the phraseology is entirely that of Peking.”[ From: “Dialogue V”, in: 《中文对话与单句》Dialogues and Detached Sentences in the Chinese Language, with a free and verbal translation in English, collected from various sources, Macao: East India Company Press 1816. [Chinese parts left out in this quotation.]]

Guo Lu 郭露

Between December 1812 and February 1813, Robert Morrison translated parts of chapter 4 and send it to Great Britain. He published entries about the Dream in his dictionary, of which the first volume appeared in 1815[ 《华英字典》A Dictionary of the Chinese language in three parts, Macao: East India Company Press 1815, vol. I 930 pp., the novel title is mentioned in volume I:614.] and more translation excerpts, e.g. from chapters 4 and 39, in his 1816 textbook edition.[ 《中文对话与单句》Dialogues and Detached Sentences in the Chinese Language, with a free and verbal translation in English, collected from various sources, Macao: East India Company Press 1816, e.g. pp. 194-200.]

Han Haiyang 韩海洋

Only 23 years of its publication, the novel already was part of the canonized Chinese literature of fiction and Robert Morrison used excerpts of it for his text books to teach Westerners Chinese, as well as expressions from it for his dictionary and sent letters with excerpt translations to Europe, for an intended 2nd vol. of his Horæ Sinicæ which never was realized.

The first British Embassies to China (among them especially Charles Bowra, John Francis Davies) also collected literature and among it the Dream of the Red Chamber.

Han Wanzhen 韩宛真

Early translation history in the West

In 1819, the first excerpt translations were published in Europe, in English (by John Francis Davis) and in French (by Davis, further translated by Bruguière). Significantly, they were published hidden in other larger works, in the English case, it was a Travel Report by Clarke Abel,[ 约翰．巴罗（John Barrow）：“Art. IV Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China, and of a Voyage to and from that Country, in the Years 1816 and 1817; containing an Account of the most interesting Transactions of Lord Amherst's Embassy to the Court of Peking, and Observations on the Countries which it visited. By Clarke Abel F.L.S. London 1818”，见：William Gifford（主编）, Quarterly Review 21:41 (1819年1月) 见第67-91页，特见第79-80页。这份期刊于1819年6月4号发行，总发行量13000份。笔者在这里参照了以下的索引并最终确定作者: „Gentleman's Magazine (Mar. 1844), 246-47. The article's author refers to #415 and #438 (including a specific reference), both of which are on the same topic and are by Barrow. Cf. also the discussion of infanticide (p. 76) and Raffles's account of Java reviewed by Barrow in #422. In his QR articles, it was Barrow's signature practice to refer to his own works.“, 参考„Quarterly Review Archive“ http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/qr/index/41.html。] and in the French case, it was a Chinese drama, La-song-euil.[ “Rêves de la Chambre rouge”, 见：»Avant-propos du traducteur francais«, 见: 安托萬．安德烈．包儒略(Antoine-André Bruguière), Lao-seng-eul [老生兒], Comédie Chinoise, suivie de San-iu-leou, ou Les trois étages consacrés, conte moral ; Traduits du chinois en anglais, par J. F. Davis de la factorerie de Canlon ; et de l'anglais en français, par A. Bruguière de Sorsum; avec additions du traducteur, 巴黎: Rey et Gravier / 伦敦 A. B. Dulau & Co. 1819 年, 227 页, 第141-164页, 见第150-151页。]

He Changqi 何长琦

These excerpt translations were done by John Francis Davis, he translated excerpts from chapter 3 and they were published by John Barrow in Great Britain and by Bruguière in France, both in 1819. Further translations were in 1846 by Robert Thom, excerpts of chapter 6, in 1868-69 Edward Charles Bowra chapters 1-8, in 1892-93 Henry Bencraft Joly chapters 1-56, in 1927 Liang-Chih Wang chapters 1-95, in 1929/1958 Wang Chi-chen an abridged full version, in 1958 Florence McHugh & Isabel McHugh a further translation from the abridged German version of 1938 by Franz Kuhn.

Hu Baihui 胡百辉

Regarding these translations, both the translation quality as well as the quality of the English used did not reach the status of world literature. Regarding full translations, we have in the 1960s Bramwell Seaton Bonsall, in 1973-1986 Hawkes/Minford and in 1978-1980 Yang/Yang. Among all the translators who embarked on this endeavour, only Hawkes (1923-2009) and Minford (1946-) achieved the goal to produce a translation which clearly falls into the categorization of world literature, the others, as Gladys Yang stated, “were a poor shadow of the original”.[ Yang 1980 3:621-622.]

Hu Huifang 胡慧芳

Early Misunderstandings

Before the novel was available in translation, we find a lot of misunderstandings and negative judgements on the novel: Morrison considered the novel to have been written in “Peking Dialect”, this mistake developed its own tradition.[ Even in 1995, you could read that the Dreams is written in Peking dialect, cf. Shu Changshan, Die Rezeption Thomas Manns in China, 1995, Frankfurt: Lang, 326 pp. At least Tong Yao, Die Vielfältigkeit der Literatur, 2006 mentions both Peking and Nanking dialects.] In 1842 Gützlaff[ “Dreams in the Red Chamber”, Friedrich August Gützlaff (1803-1851), “《紅樓夢》Hung Lau Mung, or Dreams in the Red Chamber; a novel. 20 vols. Noticed by a Correspondent”, in: Chinese Repository, issue 11 (1842) 266-273.] introduced the protagonist as „the lady Páuyu“ (p. 268), even “a very petulant woman” (p. 270) and “busy lady” (p. 272), and took Jia Yucun贾雨村 (instead of Jia Zheng 贾政) as Baoyu’s father.

Hu Jin 胡瑾

Also his overall judgement is “in expressing our opinion about the literary merits of the performance, we may say that the style is without any art, being literally the spoken language of the higher classes in the northern provinces.” and he recommends it for language learning (p. 273). Even in 1900, Herbert Allen Giles introduced the novel as have been written in “Peking dialect” and attributed to Cao Xueqin “of the 17th cent.”[ “HUNG-LOU-MENG: 紅樓夢 A famous Chinese novel in the Peking dialect, popularly known as the Dream of the Red Chamber, dealing chiefly with events of domestic life which are very graphically described, and attributed to Ts'ao Hsiieh-ch'in of the 17th cent.” See: Herbert Allen Giles, A glossary of reference on subjects connected with the Far East, 1900, pp. 127-128]

Ji Tiantian 纪甜甜

Also he claimed that the title “红楼梦” would be “a term which is not found anywhere in the text”,[ Giles 1885.] therefore was figurative and should be translated as “A Vision of Wealth and Power”. Actually the expression is found several times in the text, even in the title of chapter 25 and Baoyu actually very often falls asleep and dreams in the red bed-chambers of his female relatives and friends.

Jiang Fengyi 蒋凤仪

Early Reception of the novel in the West

We first must credit pioneers like J. Davis, who not only tried to systematize Chinese poetry with examples from the Red Chamber Dreams, but also sent the first translations of the novel out in the world and made it known in America and Europe just a decade after it has been published in China. Some sinologists used the story simply as a good example for learning Chinese (Morrison, Thom).

Jiang Hao 姜好

One can conclude that the Red Chamber Dreams transported a differentiated image of China, of fashion, of hair and clothes (Barrow, Bruguière, Goldsmith), of human relations (Goldsmith), and of a highly developed language. In this language, some poetical expressions were only understandable to those who had a broad knowledge of Chinese culture. The finesse of the differentiated use of the dialects according to the respective characters in the novel was simply overlooked (Morrison, Gützlaff, Thom) and only discovered much later.

Jiang Qiwei 蒋淇玮

The first phase of the Western reception was ethnocentric, partially due to the China-bashing of philosophers like Montesquieu, Herder, Hegel and to the imperialist spirit of contemporary Europe. The judgments on the novel are mostly driven by argumentation strategies; that is, the novel is used as a tool to prove one’s own existing attitudes. The novel is exploited to argue for:

Kang Haoyu 康浩宇

- exoticism (J. Davis, Barrow, Bruguière)

- the inferiority of Chinese literature (Gützlaff, Langdon Davies, Harte, Giles, Headland)

- polarization by confronting opposite conceptions like ideal of beauty etc. (Goldsmith)

- to proof own hypotheses, like a self-made categorization of Chinese poetry (J. Davis)

In this beginning phase, most comparisons were done within Chinese literature (Gützlaff: best of Chinese literature but inferior to Western literature, later: best of Chinese literature).

Kang Lingfeng 康灵凤

However, when Herder revised his China perception, and when the still inadequate perception of China called for a more differentiated image, the first translated extracts of this rich novel of manners helped to change the perception of China.

Finally Dream was compared to Western literature (Erkes, Wilhelm), was enshrined in the temple of world literature and was assigned attributes that added value to the Western reading experience (Clemons: “slowing down”).

Kong Xianghui 孔祥慧

Motifs for judgements

As motifs for the early judgements mentioned above, I identify exoticization (joy of otherness of fashion and dressing, customs), universalization (world literature), the instrumentalization of the novel as evidence for own hypotheses on literature (Davis’ poetry), the instrumentalization for language learning etc.

There is a change of motifs over time from exoticization and instrumentalization for proving inferiority to Western novels to accepting the novel as part of world literature and a masterpiece of Chinese culture with a special value in documenting Chinese society.

Kong Yanan 孔亚楠

The novel title

The book title changed from the first translations as “Red Chamber Dreams” to singular “Dream” in 1843 by德明 (А. И. Коваńко / A. I. Kovańko)[ „Traumgesicht auf dem rothen Thurm“, see> 德明 А. И. Коваńко (1808-1870, trans.): „Chun-lou-men (‚Traumgesicht auf dem rothen Thurm‘) oder ‚Geschichte des Steins‘（《石头记》）. Tschen-schi-in erfährt im Traume die Wiederbelebung des Steins; Zja-jui-zun verliebt sich in seiner Armuth in eine schöne Magd.“ , in: Das Ausland, Munich 26 (1843) 198-199, 201-203.] and in 1846 by Robert Thom[ Robert Thom 羅伯聃, “Extract from the Hung-low-mung, chapter VI”, in: Robert Thom, 《正音撮要》 The Chinese speaker. Extracts from works written in the Mandarin language, as spoken at Peking. Compiled for the use of students, by Robert Thom, Esq., H. M. Consul at Ningpo. Part I, Ningpo: Presbyterian Mission Press 1846, pp. 62-89].

Lei Fangyuan 雷方圆

Many scholars have discussed the question if it was more appropriate to call the novel “Story of the Stone” instead of “Dream of the Red Chamber”. Arguments for the latter are that the first printed edition and most of the printed editions afterwards carried this title, so that it reached its fame and was read under this title until today, there was also at least one 120-chapter manuscript copy, the 《乾隆抄本百二十回紅樓夢》Qianlong 120 chapter manuscript; with this title circulating before. However, e.g. the Hawkes/Minford translation and the German Schwarz/Woesler translation use both titles with “also called” in between.

Lei Kuangxi 雷旷溪

Some scholars argue that the German title Traum der Roten Kammer was grammatically and logically not correct in German, but you need more than a grammar teacher’s imagination to find the answer why this title prevailed: A book title, especially a poetic one of a work of literature, does not at all have to be grammatically correct or logical, the title is simply assigned with the first translations and translators and then naturally develops in the cultural field over time.

Li Haiquan 李海泉

Language development exactly works like this: New, seemingly incorrect forms of expressions come into existence, and become correct and a part of language simply because they are used. All translation decisions need to be balanced: They do not have to adhere only to a word-by-word translation, or to logic or grammar, but to what is a common expression or broadly accepted.

Li Lili 李丽丽

There are historical settings which influence these historical decisions, like the existence of the English translation title “Dream of the Red Chamber” at that time. Other reasons are that “Traum der” is simply shorter than “Träume im/vom roten Anwesen”, while the reader will still associate the logically correct meaning behind it. The word “Kammer” at the time when the novel was first published in Chinese was linked to luxurious rooms e.g. in castles, so very much appropriate. And the “red” is a leitmotiv.

Li Lingyue 李凌月

To pay tribute to historical developments of becoming a well-known expression, in the German edition, the mentioning of “rote Kammer” was capitalized into “Rote Kammer” in the new edition, very much alike “Red Chamber” in English at the very beginning of the English translation history.