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Verse upon the Stone, Cao Xueqin
Wednesday, 19 April 2023 07:10Unable to repair the azure sky,
Entered for years the mortal world in vain.
These words are the account of my two lives—
Pray who’ll record and publish my odd history?
无才可去补苍天，
枉入红尘若许年。
此系身前身后事，
请谁记去作奇传？
The frame story to the novel we know as The Story of the Stone or A Dream of Red Mansions (also better but misleadingly known as The Dream of the Red Chamber)* claims that the text that follows was an inscription on a stone discarded by the goddess Nuwa when she repaired the broken sky. This verse was on the reverse of the stone.
* In Qing times, the quarters of the daughters of upperclass households were conventionally painted red on the outside, and idiomatically "red mansion" also meant a young lady herself -- such as the sort of young lady that protagonist Baoyu obsessed over.
---L.
Entered for years the mortal world in vain.
These words are the account of my two lives—
Pray who’ll record and publish my odd history?
无才可去补苍天，
枉入红尘若许年。
此系身前身后事，
请谁记去作奇传？
The frame story to the novel we know as The Story of the Stone or A Dream of Red Mansions (also better but misleadingly known as The Dream of the Red Chamber)* claims that the text that follows was an inscription on a stone discarded by the goddess Nuwa when she repaired the broken sky. This verse was on the reverse of the stone.
* In Qing times, the quarters of the daughters of upperclass households were conventionally painted red on the outside, and idiomatically "red mansion" also meant a young lady herself -- such as the sort of young lady that protagonist Baoyu obsessed over.
---L.