Chapter 48: 124 chapters, the love story of two wealthy young ladies

124 chapters, the love story of two wealthy young ladies

124 chapters,

the love story of two wealthy young ladies

Liu Guozong

Mention Lin Daiyu, and people involuntarily think of Cao Xueqin, think of Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber, think of Lin Daiyu's tear‑jerking, sorrow‑filled "Buried Flowers Verse," and also the joyful and sorrowful tales of the young men and women in the Jia Mansion's Daguanyuan.

In those various and sundry miscellaneous stories, what people care about most is still the marriage fate of Baoyu and Daiyu.

Why is that?

Because the love between Daiyu and Baoyu is pure, poetic, and can also be called noble. A pure, poetic, noble love story naturally attracts everyone's attention. But pure, poetic, noble things never have a satisfying ending—this has always been true, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign. Why is that?

Because the so‑called pure, poetic, and noble things are abstract and elusive, attainable only in longing. Just as the Classic of Poetry's "Reeds" says: "Reeds lush and green, white dew turns to frost; the one I long for, by the waterside… I follow her upstream, the road is blocked and long; I follow her downstream, she seems in the middle of the water." Pure, noble, poetic things are inherently elusive and unattainable; no matter which direction you pursue them from, you cannot obtain the satisfying answer you imagine. Daiyu and Baoyu have overly idealized the feeling and love they cherish in their hearts, so the outcome of their love can only be: one is the moon reflected in water, the other is the flower in a mirror.

The love match of Daiyu and Baoyu has no satisfying answer; the reason is simple: Daiyu's demands on her partner are too perfect, too noble, too idealized—put in today's slang, "she's a bit too much." This makes her inner wishes impossible to fulfill, so that the "flower's soul, poem's bone, moon's spirit" becomes "the wind sighs, autumn grows deep; the beauty, a thousand miles away, sighs alone."

The final outcome, of course, is: farewell to love! farewell to youth! returning to "return to the original purity."

We say this world originally has no perfect things; why do you insist that it must have them—doesn't that go against natural law? Laozi long ago said: "Under heaven's sacred tools, one must not act; to act is to ruin them, to cling is to lose them." Whoever demands too much perfection in people and affairs will lose perfection.

Indeed, there happens to be such a coincidence: a woman in contemporary England who, like Lin Daiyu, pursues perfection and meets a similar fate—Jane Austen.

Mention Austen, and in England she is as famous as Lin Daiyu. Because her demands on love and feeling are too pure, too noble, too perfect, too idealized—too "a bit much," in her own words, too "Pride and Prejudice," she indulges in self‑admiration; in the end, amid the bleak autumn wind, she too is swept into the "ditches and gullies."

Austen, the daughter of a clergyman, just like Daiyu, lost her father while her love was still in a vague state. She used her pen to fulfill others' love and others' feelings, but she herself retreated into a small building, remaining unknown, silently demanding and choosing, seeking the ideal love and feeling in her heart—pure, noble, and perfect.

In her novel Pride and Prejudice, beloved by English people and readers worldwide, the five flower‑like women each find their beloved. What is deeply disappointing is that she found the "beloved man" for others, yet when she herself was establishing the monument of English domestic love‑custom fiction, she quietly, alone, departed from the world she once loved.

Thus many people, while reading the beautiful stories she created for others, feel regret for her, just as we Chinese feel regret for Lin Daiyu: why do you demand such perfection, such nobility, such idealism from others—isn't that a bit too harsh?

Writing this, I cannot help but shout to the spirits of Daiyu and Austen: "Take a step back, and the sky will widen." But I wonder: are there still people in this world as obstinate as Daiyu and Austen? I want to shout: "Wake up, child!"……