<紅樓夢> : その内なる軋み

Abstract

This article considers Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in's 曹雪芹 basic stance and attitude in the Hung-lou Meng. Setting up the 'girls' world of the Ta-kuan Yüan 大觀園 as a nucleus within the Chia 賈 family, he describes its day by day decline, the terminal point of this decline being the complete downfall of the family. Ts'ao's primary aim is to be found in this process of description. In the Ta-kuan Yüan, Lin Tai-yü 林黛玉 and Chia T'an-ch'un 賈探春 are two important characters bearing ambiguous positions who provide much of the novel's inner tension. Lin Tai-yü is of the Lin family, but economically, she depends on the Chias. Chia T'anch'un is an able member of the Chia clan, but, being a concubine's daughter, she must be content with a relatively unimportant position. Their respective ambiguous positions, stemming though they do from differing circumstances, allow them an insight into the overall workings of the Chia family, a wider view of the grand play of human relations therein. Hence they are able to perceive and to resist the immutable decline of the family. Lin Tai-yü resists being dragged into the vortex of decay in the Ta-kuan Yüan, even to the time of her death. Chia T'an-ch'un persists in attacking people who are unsuitable as members of the Chia clan, but her efforts cannot restore the family's fading fortunes. She finally can only resign herself to her insignificant role in the clan, even as her realization of the family's tragic fate becomes more acute. Both characters come to assume symbolic meanings in relation to the author's own true-life situation. Lin Tai-yü's death, on one hand, symbolizes Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in's dogged resistance to his own contemporaries' neglect of the Ts'ao family's fortunes, a family comparable perhaps to the Chia's. Never does he falter in the pursuit of his main theme, the downfall of a great family. Chia T'an-ch'un's insight, on the other hand, symbolizes Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in's understanding of the difficulties involved in resistance against a cancerous neglect. The overriding theme of decline is never derailed or dominated by these individual subthemes, instead it acquires a poignant intensity due to their presence. It is perhaps only natural, if tragic, that Ts'ao's contemporaries, caught up as they are in the headlong sweep of events, should be blind to their meaning, or if aware, should seem to neglect their import for the Ts'ao himself perhaps realizes this fact all too keenly. Still he plays out the workings of his own consciousness to the end. It is in the struggle between events, which come to have an awesome momentum of their own, and the consciousness which perceives the tragic meaning of those events as they lead to their inevitable destination that the power of the novel is born. The depiction of this struggle gives the reader, in turn, an awareness of the author's true strength amidst the trying circumstances of his life.