《悦容编》与《红楼梦》

Making up for the Appreciator and A Dream of Red Mansions

晚明笔记小品《悦容编》记载了封建社会侍女闺秀在园居、陈设、服饰、仪态、素养等方面生活模式的追求和审美情趣,有不少地方与《红楼梦》相合,可以从中窥见《红楼梦》的某些文化渊源。曹寅《楝亭书目》收有《悦容编》的改编本,曹雪芹很可能读过此书,而在创作《红楼梦》时有所借鉴。

Making up for the Appreciator, a collection of essays in late Ming Dynasty, is a record of young ladies' and their maids' aesthetic taste and their pursuit of a life pattern in such aspects as garden dwelling, furnishing, dressing, and quality training, many of which echo A Dream of Red Mansions and suggest part of the cultural origins of the magnum opus. Lianting's Booklist by Cao Yin has collected the revised version of Making up for the Appreciator, and Cao Xueqing might have read the collection and drawn some salutary lessons from it in writing his Dream of Red Mansions.