赛珍珠谈红楼梦(中英对照)
本文是美国女作家、1938年诺贝尔文学奖得主赛珍珠（pearl buck）在获奖仪式上的演讲《中国小说》（chinese novel）的节选。
hung lou meng, or the dream of the red chamber, the latest and most modern of these three greatest of chinese novels, was written originally as an autobiographical novel by ts'ao hsüeh ching, an official highly in favor during the manchu regime and indeed considered by the manchus as one of themselves. there were then eight military groups among the manchus, and tstao hsüeh ching belonged to them all. he never finished his novel, and the last forty chapters were added by another man, probably named kao o. the thesis that ts'ao hsüeh ching was telling the story of his own life has been in modern times elaborated by hu shih, and in earlier times by yuan mei. be this as it may, the original title of the book was shih t'ou chi, and it came out of peking about 1765 of the western era, and in five or six years, an incredibly short time in china, it was famous everywhere. printing was still expensive when it appeared, and the book became known by the method that is called in china, "you-lend-me-a-book-and-i-lend-you-a-book".
在中国的三部伟大小说中，《红楼梦》是最后完成的一部，也是最现代的一部。这部小说最初是曹雪芹写的一部自传体小说。曹雪芹是满洲执政时期的一名官员，颇为受宠，实际上已被满人看成自己人了。那时满人军队中有八大军事集团（即“八旗军”——译者），而曹雪芹就成为八旗军的人。他的小说并没有写完，后面那四十章是另一个人添补的，这人的名字很可能叫高鹗。早期的袁枚和现代的胡适都持同样的观点，认为这部小说是曹雪芹在讲自己的生活故事，这种看法可能有它的道理。这部书的原名叫做《石头记》，大约在西历1765年初现于北京，而在五、六年时间里就流传开了。在当时的中国而言，这样的流传速度是十分神速的。（要知道当时的）印刷费还是非常昂贵的，故这部小说的流行靠的应该是相互传阅，在中国的说法是“你借给我一本书，我也借给你一本”。
the story is simple in its theme but complex in implication, in character study and in its portrayal of human emotions. it is almost a pathological study, this story of a great house, once wealthy and high in imperial favor, so that indeed one of its members was an imperial concubine. but the great days are over when the book begins. the family is already declining. its wealth is being dissipated and the last and only son, chia pao yü, is being corrupted by the decadent influences within his own home, although the fact that he was a youth of exceptional quality at birth is established by the symbolism of a piece of jade found in his mouth. the preface begins, "heaven was once broken and when it was mended, a bit was left unused, and this became the famous jade of chia pao yü." thus does the interest in the supernature persist in the chinese people; it persists even today as a part of chinese life.
《红楼梦》的主题本身并不复杂，其复杂方面主要反映在内涵上。小说中对人物的研究、对人与人之间各种情感的描写也都非常高深，几乎是一部感情科学专著。小说写的是一个极其富有、倍受皇帝赏识的大家族，而事实上这个家族原来的一个成员（入宫）成了皇妃。但小说正是从这个家庭的家财散尽、昔日风光不再、开始走向没落入手的。这个家庭的最后一个、也是唯一的儿子贾宝玉，因为受到家庭内部腐败的影响，也日渐堕落。他出生时，嘴里含着一块具有象征意义的玉石，而让他拥有特殊的地位。小说的引子写道：很久以前，天破了一个大口，（女娲）修补（缺口）时，剩下一小块（石头），于是成了贾宝玉的那块名玉。中国人对超自然力一直就有兴趣，而时至今日，这种信仰还是中国人生活的一部分。
this novel seized hold of the people primarily because it portrayed the problems of their own family system, the absolute power of women in the home, the too great power of the matriarchy, the grandmother, the mother, and even the bondmaids, so often young and beautiful and fatally dependent, who became too frequently the playthings of the sons of the house and ruined them and were ruined by them. women reigned supreme in the chinese house, and because they were wholly confined in its walls and often illiterate, they ruled to the hurt of all. they kept men children, and protected them from hardship and effort when they should not have been so protected. such a one was chia pao yü, and we follow him to his tragic end in hung lou meng.
这部小说之所以能够在人们心目中占据一席之地，主要是因为小说所呈现的正是当时人们自己的家庭制度中的那些共性问题：母权制——从祖母到母亲甚至到丫鬟的力量都过于强大。那些丫鬟往往年轻漂亮且终身依附他人，且往往都是那种家庭中男儿的玩偶，（结果）不是丫鬟毁了男儿，就是被他们毁了一生。在（小说所描写的那个）中国大家庭里，女人手里握着最高的权力，且由于她们没有接受过什么教育，被完全禁锢在院墙里面，所以她们对家庭的支配让所有的人都受到伤害。她们会象管教孩子那样对男人严加看管，也不管男人本来需不需要此等待遇，她们就是愿意保护他们，不让他们受苦受累。小说中的贾宝玉就是这样一个男儿，而其悲剧式的结局，我们可从《红楼梦》里看得到。
i cannot tell you to what lengths of allegory scholars went to explain away this novel when they found that again even the emperor was reading it and that its influence was so great everywhere among the people. i do not doubt that they were probably reading it themselves in secret. a great many popular jokes in china have to do with scholars reading novels privately and publicly pretending never to have heard of them. at any rate, scholars wrote treatises to prove that hung lou meng was not a novel but a political allegory depicting the decline of china under the foreign rule of the manchus, the word red in the title signifying manchu, and ling tai yü, the young girl who dies, although she was the one destined to marry pao yü, signifying china, and pao ts'ai, her successful rival, who secures the jade in her place, standing for the foreigner, and so forth. the very name chia signified, they said, falseness. but this was a farfetched explanation of what was written as a novel and stands as a novel and as such a powerful delineation, in the characteristic chinese mixture of realism and romance, of a proud and powerful family in decline. crowded with men and women of the several generations accustomed to living under one roof in china, it stands alone as an intimate description of that life.
当文人们再一次发现连皇帝也在读这部小说，且小说在民间的影响是如此广泛而又巨大的时候，他们非要把小说竭力曲解成一个寓言故事，对此现象我实在无法解释。我可以毫无疑问地说，文人们自己很可能也在偷偷地阅读《红楼梦》。文人私下里偷读小说、而在公开场合却装聋作哑的样子，在中国早已成为家喻户晓的笑料。文人们多多少少、先先后后都写过他们的大作，用来证明《红梦楼》不是什么小说，而是一部有政治倾向的寓言，所描写的是中国在满洲外族的统治下走向衰落的过程。书名中的“红”字就表示满族；命中注定与宝玉结婚、但却早早死掉了的年轻姑娘林黛玉则是中国的化身；而成功地把那块宝玉弄到手、在和林黛玉竞争中取得成功的情敌薛宝钗，则象征着外族人，等等。文人们还说，“贾”这个姓氏，本身就是“假”的意思。不过所有的这些解释都十分牵强。小说就是小说，也只能代表小说，只是这部小说用了一种极具中国特色的描写方式，把现实主义和浪漫主义紧密结合在一起，从而有力地描写了一个曾经高贵无比、权倾一方的大家族的衰落过程。男男女女，好几代人，同在一个屋檐下，这样的情景本身就是对当时现实生活和典型环境的生动刻画和描写。