The Power Of Emotion

What the plays mean

The Power Of Emotion

As you know, I’ve got this project structured in a somewhat unusual way.

I published translation posts every other day. These aren’t full chapters of Dream of the Red Chamber. Sometimes they’re as short as a single poem. When we’re dealing with prose, I try to make them longer. However, I’m probably driving most of you nuts by stopping so often that you can’t get much of the flow of the story.

The rest of my posts count as “commentary.” I try to keep this commentary focused on the book, though I have wandered out into other literary subjects from time to time.

You might be wondering why I do it this way. Most people who know about this project assume that I’m just translating the text directly without taking the time to prod into these small details.

But the thing about Dream of the Red Chamber is that the details are actually the story. And that is absolutely the case here.

Wang Xifeng chooses two pieces from classical Chinese plays (or operas) to see performed, and she also refers to a third piece that is playing at the moment:

鳳姐兒立起身來答應了，接過戲單，從頭一看，點了一出《還魂》，一出《彈詞》，遞過戲單來，說：「現在唱的這『雙官誥』完了，再唱這兩出，也就是時候了。」

Wang Xifeng rose to her feet in response to the invitation. She took the opera playbill, look at it from the beginning, and then selected The Return of the Soul and The Ballad Singer.

She handed back the playbill. “One the current performance of Double Official Honors finishes,” she said, “it would be fitting to have these two sung.”

Now, if you’re just reading this novel and aren’t thinking much about it, you probably won’t care about where any of those opera pieces come from. Even if your native language is Chinese, there’s a good chance that you’re going to just skip over this part and that you won’t ask many questions.

But you’re reading this article, which means that you’re interested in diving into the nitty gritty details. And the interesting thing is that all three of these pieces come from literary works that deal with 情, or qing.

Qing is a concept that has come up again and again in this project. It’s hard to translate. Most translators of Dream of the Red Chamber seem convinced that it means something like “passion” or “lust.” I feel that it’s better translated as something closer to “emotion,” and I think today’s post will help clarify that position.

The first piece Wang Xifeng mentions is 還魂, or The Return of the Soul. It comes from an old play called 牡丹亭, or The Peony Pavilion. The Peony Pavilion is mentioned over and over again in Dream of the Red Chamber, and it’s obvious that Cao Xueqin was heavily influenced by it.

The Peony Pavilion is the story of a teenage girl named Du Liniang. Du Liniang falls asleep one day and has a dream where she sees a young scholar, who she falls in love with. She wakes up and realizes that it was a dream, but cannot get him out of her mind. Her lovesickness finally results in her becoming ill, and she passes away.

Before she dies, she convinces her maid to bury a picture of her in a certain place. And, years later, a scholar named Liu Mengmei dreams of a beautiful woman who convinces him to go to a certain garden. He comes across the picture of Du Liniang, falls in love with her, and is able to use the picture to revive her body. And that’s why this song is called 還魂, or The Return of the Soul.

As you can tell, this is an extremely emotional piece of literature, one that completely defies any sense of realism. This comes from a world where love and emotion can conquer anything, including death. It’s basically 情 in its purest form.

Next we have 彈詞, which I’ve translated as The Ballard Singer. This comes from a play called 長生殿, or The Palace of Eternal Life. It’s supposed to be the song that a former court singer would sing as he drifted around after the fall of the Tang dynasty. The end of the Tang was blamed on the extremely passionate relationship the Emperor had with Yang Guifei, one of the great beauties of imperial China.

The legend is that the Emperor was unable to deal with the famous rebellion of An Lushan because of how deeply infatuated he was with Yang Guifei. In other words, Wang Xifeng’s choice of 彈詞, The Ballard Singer, represents the opposite of her choice of 還魂, The Return of the Soul. In the case of this song, 情, or “passion” or “emotion” or whatever you want to call it, is the cause of calamity, not some magic that overcomes death.

And then you’ve got the third song: 雙官誥, or Double Official Honors.

I’m not entirely sure what play it comes from, though I also don’t think it really matters. My understanding is that this is the story of a faithful Confucian wife whose dedication to her husband causes her to receive two official honors.

The important thing to understand here is that it contrasts with both of the songs Wang Xifeng chooses. Double Official Honors is simply a calm and proper celebration of classic Confucian virtue. And remember that Confucianism in Dream of the Red Chamber is basically the opposite of 情, almost as if it were a world without emotion.

Anyway, in this one brief passage we can see a full debate about the world of emotion take place. And it’s the sort of thing you’d never think about unless you stopped and started asking questions about what is really going on.