The Titles of the Dream of Red Mansion

The Titles of the Dream of Red Mansion
It is impossible to talk about Chinese culture without reference to the classic literatures like the Romance of Three Kingdoms, the Journey to the West, the Water Margin, and the Dream of Red Mansion. However, I have only read the Dream of Red Mansion. Perhaps, reading the Dream of Red Mansion ahead of others novels is not reasonable because it is so excellent, nonetheless with some defects, compared with other novels that you always feel bored when reading them.

Frankly speaking, the English translation of titles of Chinese classic literatures above is not vivid as the origin and I am not sure that foreigners can understand its meaning exactly. Of course, it is impossible to translate classic Chinese literatures into English and convey the same meaning as the origin, just as it is impossible to translate English literatures into Chinese and convey the same meaning as the origin. Here I will talk about the titles of The Dream of Red Mansion.

In the first chapter of the novel, the author explains the origin of the book and at the same tells readers there are many titles of the novel. Now the most popular one is “the Dream of Red Mansion”, which appears in the title of the fifth chapter and the content of the fifth chapter. Another popular one is “the Story of the Stone”, which is the original title of the novel as far as scholars speculate. Why is it called “the Story of the Stone”? The reason is really simple. It is said that the whole story is carved on the stone, which ever appears in the human world with the birth of a baby and witnesses his life. The story is about that baby, who is the main character in the novel.

In addition to these two, there are another three different titles, “The Record of a Passionate Monk”, “Twelve Beauties of Jinling” and “the Precious Mirror of Love”.

According to the novel, the author tends to use the “Twelve Beauties of Jinling” as the title. However, I have to say that the translation is not accurate. If translated directly, it should be “Twelve Hairpins of Jinling”. In Chinese, the hairpin refers to woman, but beauty is not equal to woman, I think. “Jinling” is the hometown of the main characters. There are twelve main female characters in the novel and one of author’s main purposes is to show women’s talent, ability and misfortune; therefore, it is natural that the author names his novel “Twelve Beauties of Jinling”. The eleven poems in the fifth chapter imply their fortune.

In the first chapter, the author says that the novel is copied from the stone by a monk, who understands the essence of the world after reading the story on the stone and bringing the stories to the author and then changes his name into “Qingseng”, that is to say, Love Monk. Hence, some reader entitles the novel “the Record of Love Monk”.

A precious mirror ever turns up in the twelfth chapter and is made by a Goddess. A person suffering from unknown diseases will recover through looking at the back of the mirror; however, he will lose his life if he looks at the front of it. The author ever writes a novel named “the Precious Mirror of Love” before he writes the Dream of Red Mansion and the content of the Dream of Red Mansion is relevant to it in many aspects, so some readers call the Story of Stone “the Precious Mirror of Love”.

Above is what I know about the titles of the Dream of Red Mansion. The Dream of Red Mansion is a rare masterpiece. If you read it and ponder after reading it, you will gain great pleasure and learn more about feelings. I hope that you can read it and wish you gain pleasure from it.