Hung Lou Meng, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Book I quotes

More than any in these pages have been employed such words as dreams and visions; but these dreams constitute the main argument of this work, and combine, furthermore, the design of giving a word of warning to my readers.

Reader, can you suggest whence the story begins?

The narration may border on the limits of incoherency and triviality, but it possesses considerable zest. But to begin.

Reader, can you suggest whence the story begins?

The narration may border on the limits of incoherency and triviality, but it possesses considerable zest.

But to begin.

A stanza was furthermore composed for the purpose. This then, and no other, is the origin of the Record of the Stone. The poet says appositely:—

Pages full of silly litter,

Tears a handful sour and bitter; All a fool the author hold, But their zest who can unfold?

"T'ai Hsü Huan Ching," "The Visionary limits of the Great Void." On each side was a scroll with the lines:

When falsehood stands for truth, truth likewise becomes false,

Where naught be made to aught, aught changes into naught.

When falsehood stands for truth, truth likewise becomes false,

Where naught be made to aught, aught changes into naught.

Shih-yin meant also to follow them on the other side, but, as he was about to make one step forward, he suddenly heard a crash, just as if the mountains had fallen into ruins, and the earth sunk into destruction.

He is now grown up to be seven or eight years old, and, although exceptionally wilful, in intelligence and precocity, however, not one in a hundred could come up to him! And as for the utterances of this child, they are no less remarkable.

The bones and flesh of woman, he argues, are made of water, while those of man of mud.

'Women to my eyes are pure and pleasing,' he says, 'while at the sight of man, I readily feel how corrupt, foul and repelling they are!' Now tell me, are not these words ridiculous?

She had a pair of eyes, triangular in shape like those of the red phoenix, two eyebrows, curved upwards at each temple, like willow leaves. Her stature was elegant; her figure graceful; her powdered face like dawning spring, majestic, yet not haughty.

Her carnation lips, long before they parted, betrayed a smile.

Tai-yü eagerly rose and greeted her.

Her face showed the prints of sorrow stamped on her two dimpled cheeks. She was beautiful, but her whole frame was the prey of a hereditary disease. The tears in her eyes glistened like small specks. Her balmy breath was so gentle.

She was as demure as a lovely flower reflected in the water. Her gait resembled a frail willow, agitated by the wind.

Her heart, compared with that of Pi Kan, had one more aperture of intelligence; while her ailment exceeded (in intensity) by three degrees the ailment of Hsi-Tzu.

As soon as Pao-yü heard this remark, he at once burst out in a fit of his raving complaint, and unclasping the gem, he dashed it disdainfully on the floor.

"Rare object, indeed!" he shouted, as he heaped invective on it; "it has no idea how to discriminate the excellent from the mean, among human beings; and do tell me, has it any perception or not? I too can do without this rubbish!"

All those, who stood below, were startled; and in a body they pressed forward, vying with each other as to who should pick up the gem.

"

Friendships," Yü-ts'un remarked, putting on a smiling expression, "contracted in poor circumstances should not be forgotten!

This is a private room; so that if you sat down, what would it matter?"

If the union will you say, be strange, how is it then that their love affair will be but empty words? The one in her loneliness will give way to useless sighs. The other in vain will yearn and crave.

The one will be like the reflection of the moon in water; the other like a flower reflected in a mirror.

Consider, how many drops of tears can there be in the eyes? and how could they continue to drop from autumn to winter and from spring to flow till summer time?

Splendour at last.

Loving affection in a mirror will be still more ephemeral than fame in a dream.

That fine splendour will fleet how soon! Make no further allusion to embroidered curtain, to bridal coverlet;

"Born as I have had the misfortune to be," he went on to commune within himself, "in an honest, though poor family, how can I presume to enjoy his companionship!

This is verily a proof of what a barrier poverty and wealth set between man and man.

What a serious misfortune is this too in this mortal world!"

Nurse Li was both vexed and amused by the words she had just heard.

"Really," she observed, "every remark this girl Lin utters is sharper than a razor! I didn't say anything much!"

Pao Ch'ai too could not suppress a smile, and as she pinched Tai-yü's cheek, she exclaimed, "Oh the tongue of this frowning girl! one can neither resent what it says, nor yet listen to it with any gratification!"

Pao Ch'ai too could not suppress a smile, and as she pinched Tai-yü's cheek, she exclaimed,

"Oh the tongue of this frowning girl! one can neither resent what it says, nor yet listen to it with any gratification!"

"Don't be afraid!" Mrs. Hsüeh went on to say, "don't be afraid;

When lady Feng heard these words, her eyes got quite red, and after a time she at length exclaimed: "

In the Heavens of a sudden come wind and rain; while with man, in a day and in a night, woe and weal survene!

But with her tender years, if for a complaint like this she were to run any risk, what pleasure is there for any human being to be born and to sojourn in the world?"

"Why is this Mr. Jui so bent upon coming?' P'ing Erh having inquired, lady Feng readily gave her an account of how she had met him in the course of the ninth moon in the Ning mansion, and of what had been said by him.

"What a mangy frog to be bent upon eating the flesh of a heavenly goose!"

ejaculated P'ing Erh. "A stupid and disorderly fellow with no conception of relationship, to harbour such a thought! but we'll make him find an unnatural death!"

"My dear cousin," he smilingly pleaded, "do spare it!" and as Tai-yü dashed down the scissors and wiped her tears:

"You needn't," she urged, "be kind to me at one moment, and unkind at another; if you wish to have a tiff, why then let's part company!"

But as she spoke, she lost control over her temper, and, jumping on her bed, she lay with her face turned towards the inside, and set to work drying her eyes.

The imperial consort of the Chia family, we must now observe, upon catching sight, from the interior of her chair, of the picture presented within as well as without the confines of this garden, shook her head and heaved a sigh.

"What lavish extravagance! What excessive waste!" she soliloquised.

But of a sudden was again seen a eunuch who, on his knees, invited her to get into a boat;

"Since I've left this place," she therefore exclaimed with a sigh, "and don't often come here, you've become more and more unmannerly; while the other nurse does still less than ever venture to expostulate with you;

Pao-yü is like a candlestick eighty feet high, shedding light on others, and throwing none upon himself!

All he knows is to look down upon people as being filthy; and yet this is his room and he allows you to put it topsy-turvey, and to become more and more unmindful of decorum!"

"This must all be lies," Tai-yü answered sneeringly, "as I've never before heard of such a hill."

"Under the heavens many are the hills and rivers," Pao-yü rejoined, "and how could you know them all? Wait until I've done speaking, when you will be free to express your opinion!"

"Go on then," Tai-yü suggested, whereupon Pao-yü prosecuted his raillery. "In this Lin Tzu cave," he said, "there was once upon a time a whole swarm of rat-elves.

"I couldn't, of course," Pao-yü smiled, "presume to exercise any influence over you; but the only thing is that you are doing your own health harm!"

"If I do ruin my health," Tai-yü rejoined, "and I die, it's my own lookout! what's that to do with you?"

"What's the good," protested Pao-yü, "of talking in this happy first moon of dying and of living?"

"

I'm that very sad and very sickly person," Pao-yü explained laughing, "while you are that beauty who could subvert the empire and overthrow the city.

"

As he uttered these words, Lin Tai-yü burst out laughing with a sound of "pu ch'ih," and rubbing her eyes, she sneeringly remarked: "I too can come out with this same tune; but will you now still go on talking nonsense?

Pshaw! you're, in very truth, like a spear-head, (which looks) like silver, (but is really soft as) wax!

"

… still more as if inebriated, and like as if out of her head, and unable to stand on her feet, she speedily stooped her body, and, taking a seat on a block of stone, she minutely pondered over the rich beauty of the eight characters:

It's all because thy loveliness is like a flower and like the comely spring, That years roll swiftly by just like a running stream.

Of a sudden, she likewise bethought herself of the line:

Of a sudden, she likewise bethought herself of the line:

Water flows away and flowers decay, for both no feelings have.

—which she had read some days back in a poem of an ancient writer, and also of the passage:

But though old enough in years,

I'm nevertheless like a mountain, which, in spite of its height, cannot screen the sun from view.

Besides, since my father's death, I've had no one to look after me, and were you, uncle Pao, not to disdain your doltish nephew, and to acknowledge me as your son, it would be your nephew's good fortune!"

and is it likely you, uncle, aren't aware of these things? Besides, have I forsooth had a single acre of land or a couple of houses, the value of which I've run through as soon as it came into my hands?

An ingenious wife cannot make boiled rice without raw rice; and what would you have me do?

It's your good fortune however that you've got to deal with one such as I am, for had it been any one else barefaced and shameless, he would have come, twice every three days, to worry you, uncle, by asking for two pints of rice …