中英雙語話中國歷史名人 第62期:曹雪芹

Cao Xueqin(1716~1763), styled Mengruan, had the literary names Xueqin and Qinxi Jushi. His ancestral home was Liaoyang, and later was received as member of the Orthodox White Banner of the "Eight Banners" of the Man nationality in the Qing Dynasty.

曹雪芹(1716~1763 )，字夢阮，號雪芹、芹溪居士,祖籍遼陽。先世本漢人，後入滿洲正白旗。

From his great-grandfather to his father's generation, four persons of three generations of the Cao's successively held the post of Jiangning Zhizao, a post in charge of satin-weaving for the use of the emperor or officials, for as long as 60 years, enjoying imperial favor for along time and living a life of luxury and dissoluteness.

曹雪芹曾祖到父輩，曹家祖孫三代4人歷任江寧織造達60年之久。

Emperor Kangxi lived in the office of Jiangning Zhizao four times during his six inspection tours to the south.

康熙6次南巡，有4次都以江寧織造署爲行宮。

During the reign of Emperor Yongzheng, the house of Cao Family was searched and their property was confiscated, their family, once prosperous and prominent, being on the wane.

雍正年間，曹家遭受抄家，由盛轉衰。

During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, great calamity befell the family again.

乾隆年間又遭巨禍，從此一敗塗地。

Living in such a family, Cao Xueqin endured all kinds of frustrations and tribulations in his lifetime, getting a full taste of misery and bitterness.

曹雪芹從繁華墜人貧困，一生歷盡坎坷與苦難，飽嘗了人世的辛酸與悲痛。

Imperturbably he began to ponder and reflect upon the past. He dipped his brush heavily in poignant tears to blend the tragedy of the age with culture and life, which resulted in A Dream of Red Mansions, the summit of Chinese classical fiction.

往事已成舊夢，他開始冷靜地回味與反思，對人生和歷史有了很多感悟，因此他能把時代的悲劇、文化的悲劇和人生的悲劇熔爲一爐，飽蘸辛酸之淚創作出中國古典小說的高峯之作《紅樓夢》。

Before he could complete the book, he passed away due to exhaustion, leaving behind merely 80 chapters of scribe's copy.

書未成，淚盡而逝，僅留下八十回抄本。

During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, Gao E combined the 80-chapter transcript with over 30 volumes of incomplete draft and produced a 120-chapter edition to be block-printed.

乾隆年間，高鶚根據八十回後的30餘卷抄稿，增補成一百二十回刊刻。

A Dream of Red Mansions was originally entitled The Story of the Stone. It took the author 10 years to read over marginalia and make additions and deletions five times. The fiction was the crystalization of Cao's talent, emotion, scholarship and painstaking effort.

《紅樓夢》初名《石頭記》，披閱十載，增刪五次，是曹雪芹一生才華、學問與心血的結晶。

Its main thread was the passionate love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, with the first five chapters as its key link. Through the depiction of the prosperity and adversity of the four big clans, namely, Jia family, Shi family, Wang family and Xue family, the author exposed and animadverted with profundity the evils of the feudal ruling class and feudal system. The tragedy of the times caused by the decadence and collapse of the Qing Dynasty was fully incarnated.

小說以寶黛愛情爲主線，以前五回爲綱，通過對賈、史、王、薛四大家族興衰的描繪，深刻揭露和批判了封建統治階級與整個封建制度的罪惡，比較全面地表現了清王朝腐朽沒落造成的時代悲劇。

A Dream of Red Mansions was penetrated with an intense feeling of predestination, the concepts of “nihility" and that “the nature of the things was the emptiness" . It contained the historical sense of vicissitudes and the experience of life piercing to the bones. It was endowed with rich implication of tragedy.

《紅樓夢》中滲透着強烈的命運感與“虛無”、“色空”的觀念，蘊涵着榮久必枯、興久必衰的歷史感受和透骨人髓的人生體驗，具有濃郁的悲劇意味。

As a great realistic magnum opus and a fiction of human feelings like an encyclopedia, it has been interpreted divergently by innumerable people.

這是一部偉大的現實主義鉅著，一部百科全比式的人情小說，兩百年來，它得到了無數人的無盡的闡釋。

The study of Cao Xueqin and A Dream of Red Mansions has already become a renowned cosmopolitan school called the Hongloumeng(A Dream of Red Mansions) scholarship.

對曹雪芹和《紅樓夢》的研究已成爲一門專門學問，稱爲“紅學”。