The Great Classical Novels Ⅱ

  

Journey To The West

　Journey to the West is a mythological novel based on many centuries of popular tradition. It was probably put into its present form in the 1570 by Wu Cheng’en (1500-82). This lively fantasy relates the amazing adventures of the priest San-zang as he travels west in search of Buddhist sutras with his three disciples, the irreverent and capable Monkey, greedy Pig, and Friar Sand. The opening chapters recount the earlier exploits of Monkey, culminating in his rebellion against Heaven. We then learn how Sanzang became a monk and was sent on his pilgrimage by the Tang emperor who had escaped death with the help of an Underworld official.
　　The main story, the journey, takes the priest through all kinds of entertaining trials and tribulations, mainly at thehands of monsters and spirits who want to eat him. Only the courage and powers of his disciples, especially Monkey, save him from death. Monkey is the hero of the fantasy, and the reader will soon learn why he has long been so loved in China. Will the pilgrims reach the Vulture Peak and obtain the Scriptures? The answer will only be found at the end of the l00-chapter novel.
　　The story is as full of imagination as Monkey can do magic, and travel with clouds and has down-to-earth humors. The illustrations are from the 19th-century Chinese edition. This is the first of the three volumes of the novel.

 Dream of the red chamber

A wide branched scholarship does not agree about the main theme of this novel, should it be a novel of sentiment, of social observation, of the decay of an aristocratic families, or even a veiled attack on Manchu rule. The frame of the novel is the contest of a Buddhist and a Daoist priest who make be born a young noble boy called Baoyu Jia and his girl cousin Daiyu Lin. With a loving detail describing the life of the two cousins in a huge noble mansion, between gardens and palaces, the symbolist of the triangular love between Baoyu, Daiyu and a second girl cousin called Baochai Xue that is of more plumper character than the ever sick Daiyu. Switching between their life, the divine world and dreams, Baoyu becomes deranged after the disappearance of a stone (the origin of the second title) he had in his mouth when he was born. Not knowing, his love Daiyu died, he is tricked to marrying Baochai. Becoming aware of being tricked, Baoyu leaves the world of the "red dust" and becomes a monk.
　　With hundreds of persons and their stories, paralleling the life and feelings of servants to the life of the main persons, the story is very complex and full of symbolisms. But it remains very interesting and convincing for its encyclopedic character, depicting the life of a noble family in the 18th century of China.
   These works are great value not only in the past, nor in the present but also in the future. Anyhow, a majority of us today are still enjoying them and drawing lessons from the incidents told on each page of them, deeply and gratefully.