Traditional Chinese Fiction and Fiction Commentary: Reading and Writing Between the Lines 0804727201, 9780804727204

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Traditional Chinese fiction and fiction commentary (Rolston SUP1997)
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Liberating Fiction from "Reality"

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Liberating Fiction from "Reality"

As we have seen in the previous chapter, Chinese fiction was often taken to be a subcategory of history yet was subject to charges of being "unhistorical." Fiction also needed a defense against the charge that it was "untrue." In this chapter we will see how fiction critics, for a variety of reasons, defended or even championed fictionahty. The reality portrayed in a fictional work must exhibit certain differences from the reality around us. The very granting to life a beginning, middle, and end and to human beings a recognizable and fairly consistent "character" is precisely what we do not experience in reality. But at the same time that fictional worlds exhibit more shape and closure than found in ordinary life, they are also incomplete and imperfect. No novelist can include all the information available in even the most cursory of glances but instead makes do with a few significant details and leaves the rest to us. Some hold that this kind of incompleteness is precisely what differentiates fictional from actual worlds (Dolezel, p. 194). We therefore end up with the rather confusing idea that the fictional world is both more and less complete than actual worlds. The crudest conception of the relation between a fictional world and reality is reflectionism, that is, the literary work does (or should) present nothing more nor less than an accurate and impartial reflection of the world, and the author is a passive reflector or mirror. In the Western tradition, although Plato denigrated representational art as twice removed from "true" reality, being but the imitation of perceivable objects already mere imitations of ideal forms, the faithful representation of the world as perceived by the senses, as in a mirror, was long held to be the highest goal in art. This was so even though Plato himself pointed out the superiority of the mirror over humanity at this game (Abrams, pp. 30-35). In mainstream Chinese aesthetics, little emphasis was placed on the description of the outside world for its own sake. Details from the outside world were incorporated into literary works as part of the symbolic ex-

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pression of the author's intent (P. Yu, p. 120). On the other hand, there was a considerable reluctance to treat images in poetry as fictional. Instead, they were seen as having ultimate reference to the poet's historical world (P. Yu, p. 218). A generalization with great currency is the idea that, compared to Western aesthetics, Chinese aesthetics tends to favor expressionism or impressionism (xieyi) over realism (xieshi). Let us see whether this generalization applies to traditional Chinese fiction criticism. Adjectives expressing a likeness between images in the fictional text and models in reality appear frequently in fiction criticism. Many of them, such as xiaowu ([capture] the likeness of things [or people]; e.g., SHZHPB 18, df 29; John Wang, "How to Read," p. 137) or xiezbao (to make a portrait, or the portrait itself; e.g., Wuhu laoren preface to the Shuihu zhuan, SHZZLHB 212) are intimately connected with painting, particularly realistic portraiture. However, the term bizhen (close to real), for instance, implies both a relation to reality and a recognition that the relation is not one of identity. That term is also used to discuss the likeness of a portrait to its subject and refers primarily to external appearance. Bizhen is not a highly regarded quality in poetry criticism1 or in literati painting (wenren hud). External likeness was also not a central concern of writers and readers of fiction in traditional China. Both painting and fiction criticism in traditional China stress the capturing (and passing on) of the spirit of the subject {chuanshen) as being of equal or greater importance than describing the external likeness (xiexing). Phrases are often compounded from two elements, one stressing attention to spirit, the other to appearance, such as chuanshen xiezhao1 or qiongshen jinxiang (completely capture the spirit and outward image).3 In Chinese painting theory, spirit was usually considered more important than mere likeness. The Buddhist notion that all external forms are only illusion, as well as the notion found in the Yijing and elsewhere that the constant transformation of outward form conceals patterns of coherence accessible to the wise, might be behind this tendency to look beyond outward appearance. Shen Zongqian gave several reasons for stressing chuanshen in the art of portraiture:

For instance, Xie Zhen (1495-1575) said, "When writing poetry, one should not be realistic [bizheri]"; Siming shihua (Poetry talks from Siming [Xie Zhen]), in Zhang Baoquan and Zhou Manjiang, p. 224. 2 E.g., Gu Kaizhi (391-467), "Hualun" (On painting), in Yang Danian, p. 91; and SHZHPB 24.483, Rongyu tang ed. cc. 3 For examples of usage, see Zhang Xie, p. 45, Shen Guiyu marginal comment on a poem by Li Bai (701-62); and RLWSHPB 763, Xianzhai laoren preface to the Rulin waishi (Rolston, How to Read, p. 250).

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The reason [the ancients] don't talk of [transmitting] the outward shape [xing] or appearance [mao] and only talk of [transmitting] the spirit [shen] is because there are cases in the empire of people having the same outward shape or similar appearance, but it is impossible for the spirit [of people] to be the same. If the painter only concentrates on outward likeness [xingsi}—whether [the face is] square or round, [the body is] fat or thin—then among several tens of persons, there will be people who look like [the portrait], and how could this be considered chuanshen} Now, there is before you a person. Formerly he was fat and now he is thin; formerly he was white of hair but now he is gray; formerly he was 'without whiskers, but now he has a full beard. When you first see him [again], you might not be able to recognize him, but when you look again, you will suddenly realize, "This is so-and-so." This is because outward form changes, but the spirit does not. If [in a painting] there is a small loss of likeness in the outward form, that is still all right, but the slightest distortion of the [subject's] spirit, and it is no longer the man [that you wanted to paint]. (Jiezhou xuehua bian, Yang Danian, p. 134)

In poetry, there was a subgenre concerned with the description of objects (yongwu, commonly translated as "singing of objects"). However, in it objects were chosen primarily for their symbolic value, and there was no great concern for the description of outward appearance. Critics again chose shen over xing: "When singing of objects, it is of course not permissible for it [the representation] to be not like [the model], but it is very important to avoid overconcentration [on this] and making it too like. Focusing on the form [xing] is not as good as focusing on the spirit [shen]" (Zou Qimo [d. 1670], Yuanzhi zhai cizhong; quoted in Wang Jide, p. 145w3). Priority was also given to spirit over form in fiction criticism. Xie Zhaozhe said in his postface to the Jin Ping Mei that it "exhaustively depicted the setting and outward image [qiongjin jingxiang] of the characters" in the novel, but he also said, "not only is the appearance [of the characters] very like, but their spirits are transmitted as well" (jPMZLHB 217). The term chuanshen appears often in the commentaries and essays of fiction critics. In the Rongyu tang commentary on the Shuihu zhuan, the "plausible" places are also said to be places where the spirit of the subjects is transmitted {chuanshen; "Shuihu zhuan yibai hui wenzi youlie," SHZHPB 27). In the Woxian caotang edition of the Rulin waishi, the commentator claims: "Most difficult of all is to capture the likeness of the spirit [shensi] of ordinary persons or things which can be observed by all eyes" (RLWSHPB 6.97, cc 1; S. Lin, "Chapter Comments," p. 260). Another way the preference for internal over external likeness was expressed was the ranking of huagong* (the attainments of the divinely inspired artist) over its homonym huagong^ (the attainments of the artisan). This distinction goes back at least to Su Shi's rating of the painting of Wang Wei (701-61) over that of Wu Daozi, another painter of the Tang dynasty, although Su used only the second term. Su Shi said that although Wu

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Daozi's painting was marvelous, it still belonged to the attainments of the artisan (huagong^), whereas Wang Wei had been able to capture the spirit beyond the image (de zhi yu xiangwai; Su Shi, "Wang Wei Wu Daozi hua"; quoted in Xia Xieshi, p. 108). The two huagong became a permanent part of both fiction and drama criticism through their use by Li Zhi, who contrasted the artisanly achievements of the Pipa ji to the more divine achievements of the Xixiangji ("Zashuo," Fenshu, 3.96-97). The hua in huagong^ is the word for painting, and there is a corresponding stress on likeness, as well as a recognition of the static nature of such images. The hua of huagong3- signifies dynamic transformation and is related to shen {shen as deities were powerful because of their ability to foresee changes), and these two terms were used to rank the different realms (Jing) that the poet was able to create in literature. Huajing (the divine realm) was ranked above shenjing (the realm of the spirits),4 and this ranking is evident in the saying chushen ruhua (out of the realm of the spirit into the divine realm), a phrase employed to praise fictional narrative (e.g., RLWSHPB 46.631, cc 2; S. Lin, "Chapter Comments," p. 290). Like chuanshen, huagong* was sometimes combined by fiction critics with terms emphasizing external likeness (e.g., huagong* xiaowu; SHZHPB 20.398, Rongyu tang ed. cc). Mirrors are an important metaphor in Chinese fiction criticism, but they are used to speak of the impartiality of the process of reflection rather than the reflection itself. Mirrors have no ego to distort the way they reflect objects. Bright mirrors {mingjing) were used as symbols for impartial judges who could try court cases without prejudice or influence from either side (e.g., SHQZ 8.124). Since both history and fiction in China are bound up with passing judgment on the characters that appear in their pages, the mirror became a symbol for the desired kind of objectivity. Wu Jiansi said of Sima Qian, "I think that when Sima Qian wrote this chapter ["Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices"], his mind must have been like a bright mirror or still water that must reflect completely the beauty and ugliness, the good and bad, of the objects that come before it" (2/69b, post-chapter comment). Jin Shengtan used the same language (which, of course, predates them both) to describe the author of the Shuihu zhuan (e.g., SHZHPB 61.1133, ic). The whole idea was put into a more modern idiom by a late Qing critic: "The description of characters in fiction should be like the way that a mirror shows reflections. . . . A mirror has no ego" (Man [pseud.], "Xiaoshuo xiaohua," Lunzhu xuan, 2: 262). The fiction critic who comes closest to a reflectionist model is the commentator in the Rongyu tang edition of the Shuihu zhuan. His commentary 4 Jin Shengtan discussed these two jing, plus a third, shengjing (the realm of the sages), in the first preface to the Shuihu zhuan, SHZHPB 5.

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contains phrases such as bizhen and ruhua (like a painting). But although he said the immortal nature of the novel comes from its foundation in preexisting events and that even someone meditating for nine years (as Bodhidharma supposedly did) could not write a novel without those underlying events ("Shuihu zhuan yibai hui wenzi youlie," SHZHPB 26), he was not claiming that those events are directly reflected in the novel. Rather, the same general types of persons and events were part of the world that the author knew (and our world as well), but the author filled out or made particular (shizhi) these general categories through the provision of personal names, histories, and other details.5 Although premodern critics did not generally take the Rulin waishi to be a direct reflection of the author's world, many held that people of the sort described in the book are to be found everywhere. Such statements were intended mostly to defend an author against charges of making up stories (pingkong niezao; e.g., RLWSHPB 4.64, Zhang Wenhu ic) or of being too harsh on people by exaggerating their faults (e.g., Huang Xiaotian, Rulin waishi, 7.68, ic). The importance of the author's experience is invoked in a famous statement by Wang Fuzhi (1619-92): "That which one has personally experienced, that which one has personally seen, that is a gate of iron [tie menxian] limiting us" (Xitang yongn xulun neibian; quoted in Guo Shaoyu, 3: 301). On the other hand, since in China the "investigation of things" (gewu) was often an intuitive and solipsistic pursuit, interest in things outside oneself commonly was investigation not so much of the other as of the self in the other. The nature of experience under these circumstances is quite different from what we might imagine in our model of "scientific" observation of the world. Thus Zhang Zhupo could argue that there was no need for the author of the Jin Ping Met to experience personally all the things that he described in the novel, because "there is nothing a genius cannot apprehend if he concentrates his mind on it" (jPMZLHB 39, lb Moreover, like Jin Shengtan's version of the Shuihu zhuan, the Rulin waishi ends with a poem in which the implied author speaks directly to the reader. When Wu Jingzi was writing the Rulin waishi, with its attention to the description of the public relations of men and women rather than private and domestic life, the most suitable structural model was the Shuihu zhuan.M The Shuihu zhuan had been praised for its structure from the earliest mentions of it. Furthermore, the shift from plot to characterization already apparent in Jin Shengtan's edition and interpretation of the Shuihu zhuan is very evident in the Rulin waishi. Another major influence on the Rulin waishi was the Shiji. As well acquainted as he was with the historical Sima Qian,35 in his fictional writing Wu Jingzi was probably influenced most directly by the Sima Qian elevated to "patron saint" of narrative in fiction criticism, particularly that of Jin Shengtan.36 The relationship between the Rulin waishi and the Shuihu zhuan is similar, in certain respects, to that between Joyce's Ulysses and Homer's Odyssey. T. S. Eliot thought that Joyce was primarily manipulating parallels between the ancient and modern world as a way of structuring his novel: "It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history."37 The Rulin waishi and Ulysses are alike in their ambition to present a broad and in-depth portrait of a society, including a wide variety of types of people, although the one describes events that take place in a span of over 100 years and the other deals with the events of a single day. Both authors were confronted with the problem of how to organize their material. Wolf-

34 T h e imprint of the Shuihu zhuan on t h e Rulin waishi was quite evident to H u a n g Xiaotian: "The organization of the chapters [pianfa] is modeled [fang] on that of t h e Shuihu zhuan. . . . This b o o k [the Rulin waishi] also has a biography [zhuan] for each character" (Huang Xiaotian, Rulin waishi, p. 16, comment after the Xianzhai laoren preface). T h e reference to each character having a zhuan is based on Jin Shengtan's comments o n the Shuihu zhuan (see Chapter 5 above). H u a n g Xiaotian also believed that individual sections, mostly in chaps. 38-39, were purposeful imitations of sections in the Shuihu zhuan (e.g., 39.361, ic). 35 Ping Buqing, in his Xiawai junxie, mentioned that W u Jingzi wrote an unfinished w o r k entitled Shi Hanjiyi (Recorded questions regarding the Shiji and the Hanshu; RLWSYJZL 249). 36 A reference to history in general and to the Shiji in particular can be seen in t h e title of the novel, which shares t w o of the same characters with t h e title of the collective biography of the Confucian scholars ("Rulin liezhuan") that makes u p chap. 121 of the Shiji. It is quite easy to produce a convergent reading of the Rulin waishi and the "Rulin liezhuan," since both are concerned with t h e distortions and manipulations of learning that arise after the intervention

of the state. 37 T. S. Eliot, " 'Ulysses,' Order, and Myth," in Mark Schorer, Josephine Miles, and Gordon McKenzie, eds., Criticism: The Foundations of Modem Judgment (New York: Harcourt, Brace and C o m p a n y , 1948), p . 270.

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gang Iser characterized the relationship between Joyce's Ulysses and Homer's Odyssey this way: If the novel is to uncover a new dimension of human existence, this can only present itself to the conscious mind of the reader against the background made recognizable by allusions and references which will thus provide a sufficient amount of familiarity. But the "uncreated conscience," which the novel is to formulate, cannot be the return of something already known—in other words, it must not coincide purely and simply with the Homeric parallel. Harry Levin has rightly pointed out that the links between Joyce and Homer are parallels "that never meet." While the Homeric allusions incorporate into the text a familiar literary repertoire, the parallels alluded to seem rather to diverge than to converge. Here we have the conditions for a rich interplay that goes far beyond the lines of interpretation laid down by the analogy or permanence theories. Indeed there arises a certain tension out of the very fact that there is no clearly formulated connection between the archaic past and the everyday present, so that the reader himself is left to motivate the parallelism indicated as it were by filling the gaps between the lines. This process only comes to the fore if one in fact abandons the idea of the parallels and instead takes the modern world and the Homeric world as figure and ground—the background acting as a sort of fixed vantage point from which one can discern the chaotic movements of the present.38

The Disappearing Narrator and the Reader-Commentator In the Rulin waishi, the marks of the narrator's presence drop away to a minimum.39 One job of the traditional narrator as oral storyteller was to guide the reader over transitions between the three modes of commentary, description, and presentation (see Chapter 9 above) and through changes of narrative focus, temporal or spatial. For many reasons to be discussed below, transitions and transfers of this kind are minimized in the Rulin waishi so as to require less narratorial intervention than is the case in other traditional Chinese fiction. The way narrative focus changes in the Rulin waishi is in accord, to a perhaps unprecedented extent, with the "billiard ball" technique (see Chapter 9 above). Narrative momentum is transferred from one setting to the next by physically moving a character associated with the first setting to the second. This technique is prominent in the chapters of Jin Shengtan's edition of the Shuihu zhuan. For partisans of the Rulin waishi, this was the approved way 38 Iser, pp. 182-83. Lipking (p. 631) speaks of the "continuous implicit marginal gloss of Ulysses" and comments on how "economical it would be to print the Odyssey as a running marginal gloss to Joyce's Ulysses." 39 This quality of the novel is surely behind He Manzi's remark (p. 36) that if you removed the chapter couplets and chapter-ending formula, the result would be indistinguishable from "a modern novel."

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to handle narrative transitions; traditional storyteller intrusions to manage such narrative transitions were labeled "vulgar shtick" {sutao; Huang Xiaotian, Rulin waishi, 38.358, ic). Another tactic for minimizing narratorial intrusion in the Rulin waishi is to remove almost all barriers to the progressive and steady flow of narrative time. In the Shuihu zhuan, the narrator sometimes stops to tie up loose threads in the old strand of the narrative before jumping to a new one, necessitating that he deal with the same block of time twice (e.g., SHZHPB 51.95051). Although Jin Shengtan did not go so far as to remove instances of the use of flashback in the Shuihu zhuan (already comparatively rare in the first half of that novel), he did change storyteller rhetoric that emphasized the change in temporal setting (e.g., SHQZ 49.805, 818w4). In the Rulin waishi, characters are almost never introduced directly by the narrator; instead they are introduced to the reader through the words of other characters or else just appear in the narration, to be introduced by themselves or other fictional characters. These techniques for unobtrusively introducing characters were praised by Jin Shengtan (e.g., SHZHPB 8.193-94, ic), and they are faithfully followed in the Rulin waishi. The few exceptions are clearly done for rhetorical effect, as in the remarks made by the narrator upon Zhuang Shaoguang's first appearance or the provision of a formal biography for Yu Yude in chapter 36. Like many other novels, the Rulin waishi begins and ends with segments in which the implied author is close to the surface. But in sharp contrast to the examples discussed in the preceding chapter, the narrator in Rulin waishi is stingy with his comments. There is an almost complete absence of rhetorical questions to the reader or self-references either to himself or his text (the only example of the latter occurs in a rare instance of the former, RLWSHPB 55.749). Narratorial intrusions of the informative kind are rare (Chen Meilin, "Lun Rulin waishi," p. 251, lists only nine examples), and narratorial quotation of poetry or set phrases that comment on the action or individual characters are completely absent, except in the chapter-ending couplets. It is also rare for the narrator in the Rulin waishi to make direct comments about fictional characters, and these tend to refer to characters whose moral probity is not in much doubt. The narrator does not inform the reader when characters are lying,40 nor does he explicitly indicate the true

« The most often cited example is how Senior Licentiate Yan's claim that he never cheated anyone is exploded by a servant's report that the owner of a pig appropriated by Yan has come to complain about it (RLWSHPB 4.61-62). In the 1803 edition, the commentator wrote, This incident makes the reader understand [Senior Licentiate Yan's character] without wasting too many words If a clumsy hand had done it, he would surely have said, 'Gentle reader pay heed: in reality Senior Licentiate Yan was such-and-such a person.' The writing then would be com-

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identity of characters who reappear under different or false names.41 In Zbigniew Slupski's words, "The reader is not guided by the narrator; he is simply presented with motifs and scenes which he must interpret for himself" (p. 125). In Chapter 10 we noted a trend to put remarks ordinarily made by a narrator into the mouths of fictional characters and indicated that Jin Shengtan did precisely this in his revision of the text of the Shuihu zhuan. This device is used heavily in the Rulin waishi, but the reader must pay careful attention to whether the remarks are reliable or whether the exact opposite meaning is implied, as in the case of Academician Gao's criticism of Du Shaoqing (RLWSHPB 34.466-67). It has been proposed that the suppression of explicit judgment of characters by the narrator in the Rulin waishi in favor of implicit judgment, either unexpressed or put into the mouths of represented characters, is related to the influence of drama, which has no narrator (Lu Decai, "Xiaoshuo," pp. 280-81). A far more likely source, however, is the popular conception in fiction criticism and elsewhere of how Sima Qian subtly blended commentary and narration in his Shiji (see Chapter 5 above). The Woxian caotang commentator praised this aspect of the Rulin waishi, saying that the novel contains examples of "directly narrating the incident without expressing one's judgment so as to let the truth of the matter reveal itself."42 The evaluation of the fictional characters by the reader is the main focus of the Rulin waishi, and accounts of readers' using the book as a primer in how to evaluate real persons (see the anecdote about Shen Baozhen mentioned in Chapter 7 above) are not entirely exaggerations. In the Rulin waishi the author set up both negative and positive criteria by which to judge the moral worth of the characters. The negative criteria are related to the degree to which characters in the novel are obsessed by "success, fame, riches, and rank." Nonattachment is also expressed positively through adherence to authorially sanctioned values such as filiality. In neither instance, however, are the actions taken by characters so much at stake as the attitudes and motives informing these actions. It is easy to be confused about Wu Jingzi's attitudes toward actions in the novel if they are examined one by one and out of context, but this becomes

pletely without flavor" (RLWSHPB 4.66, cc 5; trans, based on S. Lin, "Chapter Comments," p. 258). 41 For example, the reader is given only very subtle clues that there is something odd about Zhang Junmin (he is actually a character encountered earlier under the name of "Iron-arm" Zhang) when he shows up in the narrative (RLWSHPB 31.426). He is not unmasked until chap. 37. 42 RLWSHPB 4.67, cc 7; trans, based on S. Lin, "Chapter Comments," p. 258. Similar language appears in RLWSHPB 7.112, cc 3; S. Lin, "Chapter Comments," p. 263.

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less of a problem if due attention is paid both to their context and to the handling of similar actions elsewhere in the novel. This of course is precisely one of the major functions of extratextual commentary—to make the reader read individual sections of the novel with the novel as a whole in mind. It is important to remember that the motives behind the characters' actions are more important than the actual acts, since the same act performed for different motives must be judged differently. Yu Yude is presented as the character in the body of the novel most perfectly embodying Wu Jingzi's ideals. Some criticize him for not distinguishing between good and bad characters in his relations with others (e.g., Chen Meilin, Wu Jingzi yanjiu, p. 208), and he is specifically criticized for supposedly encouraging others to commit evil through overly lenient treatment of "malefactors" (e.g., Wu Zuxiang, p. 25). This ignores the transformative power attributed to such lenient treatment, and to good examples in general, in the novel. Yu Yude's actions are never presented as proceeding from any personal or ulterior motive and are shown to have a powerful influence on their beneficiaries. The Chinese word for virtue (de) also embraces the idea of power through the exertion of influence on others. Yu Yude's particular acts are also backed up by similar acts by positive characters elsewhere in the novel. Just as the traditional intratextual mode of commentary is largely nonexistent in the Rulin waishi, so too is the traditional mode of description almost completely absent. In this novel there is nothing exceeding the length of a couplet that can be assigned to that mode. Just as the decline in the commentarial mode was bound up with the growth of fiction commentary, so too was the decline of the mode of description (see Chapter 9 above). In the Rulin waishi, some of the functions of the old descriptive mode are achieved through the integration of description into the mode of presentation. The novel also makes use of a new descriptive mode modeled largely on classical prose that does not require formal markers to indicate its boundaries. In the Rulin waishi, the lyricism of the description and the reaction (or nonreaction) of the characters to the settings described are used to make comments on the characters who encounter the scenes. For instance, during Ma Chunshang's famous tour of West Lake, the author carefully plays off the natural beauty of the area against Ma Chunshang's rather limited field of vision, which lingers over food but avoids the sight of other temptations (such as women). Moved, finally, by the view from the top of Mount Wu, all he can do is quote two lines from one of the Four Books (RLWSHPB 14.202-7). The suppression of both the commentarial and the descriptive modes in the Rulin waishi has some interesting consequences. The severe curtailment of the commentary mode forces the reader to participate actively in the cru-

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cial process of judging and evaluating the moral worth of the characters. The transformation of the descriptive mode into a less intrusive form subordinated to characterization serves to draw the reader more deeply into the text and is an aid to evaluating certain characters in the novel. Although the predominance of the mode of presentation gives the illusion that the story is being directly perceived in an unmediated form by the reader, thus shortening the distance between himself and the world of the characters, the author could count on the fact that experienced readers of traditional fiction (with commentary attached) had internalized more complex reading strategies. These strategies would provoke them to compose a running commentary on the action in their heads as they read, leading them to maintain an appropriate "critical distance" between themselves and events witnessed by them in the text. For the traditional Chinese reader trained to look for the author in the text, the apparent disappearance of the author in the Rulin waishi was just an incitement to look harder, which in turn encouraged the turning of the reader's attention to ever subtler details in the text. The author was only apparently absent; the game of communing with the author was made more challenging but by no means impossible. The author is only pretending to be silent behind his pretense of showing rather than telling. Manipulation of the reader in an endeavor to ensure that he will accept the author's point of view is still at the heart of even a novel such as the Rulin waishi. The only difference is the subtlety of the process and the fiction that the author is doing nothing of the kind.43 43 Similar developments seem to have taken place in the West with the acceptance of Henry James's fiction and the critics' conception of it as emphasizing showing over telling. In the fiction of Flaubert and Joyce, there is a withdrawal of the author's personality from the surface of the text. Flaubert and Joyce spoke of this in the same terms used by the deists to describe God as a watchmaker. That fact, however, has not lessened interest in the personal lives of these authors.

14 Every thing All at Once: The "Honglou meng"

The Honglou meng is easily the most complex novel produced in premodern China. It is understandable, then, that it should also present the most complex solution to the challenge of extratextual commentary. To a greater or lesser extent, all the solutions examined in the three previous chapters were employed in the composition of this one novel. The Honglou meng is perhaps the novel in premodern China with the most fluid boundaries between text and commentary. This is partly a matter of historical accident. For almost half a century, the Honglou meng circulated in manuscript form in copies of varying length and completeness. Comments on the manuscripts reveal that the work was in a constant state of authorial revision up until Cao Xueqin's death, and there is evidence of tinkering with the text even before Cheng Weiyuan (ca. 1745-ca. 1819) and Gao E (1763-1816) edited and published it. The Honglou meng was, in many respects, a collaborative project. The manuscripts in circulation were, at least originally, prepared for a select audience of the author's family and friends, with all the editorial abandon that tends to go with such a mode of production. The commentary seems to have been an ad hoc affair done as a labor of love, but with little attention to systematization or developed argument. Only toward the end of the manuscript period were the original text and commentary subjected to anything that could be called editing.1 Before the printing of the novel in 1791-92,2 sections of the text might appear as extratextual commentary in one manuscript and as part of the main text in another. The relationship between the Honglou meng and previous fiction and fiction commentary is quite complex, but it can perhaps best be described 1 I refer to the "Youzheng" filiation of manuscripts, one of which (with a preface by Qi Liaosheng) was later photoreprinted with changes by the Youzheng shuju of Shanghai after the turn of this century (Rolston, How to Read, pp. 469-71). 2 Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan decided not to include the commentary in their editions, primarily because of the bulk and expense; see their joint foreword (yinyan), HLMJ 32 (Stone, 4: 387-88, item iv).