《红楼梦》女娲补天神话与贾宝玉的形象特质M

The Myth of Nüwa Mending the Sky in Dream of the Red Chamber and the Character Traits of Jia Baoyu

《红楼梦》女娲补天神话是曹雪芹以远古女娲创世神话为缘起,大胆重构的以“无材补天”、“不堪入选”的“顽石”为重心的亚神话。“顽石”从传统意象原型中获取的生命特质构成了贾宝玉形象特质的先天说明:传统石文化中“石”自然本真、不加雕琢的基本内涵转化为了贾宝玉追求本真自然的“真石”之性;中国古典文学传统中“顽石”意象承载的坚定不屈、愚顽不合世俗的品质精神赋予了贾宝玉的坚决抵抗忠孝宿命的“顽石”精神;神话中“补天弃石”意象畸零、无用的命运暗合了《庄子》中的“散木”等意象所蕴含的“无用”思想,象征着贾宝玉于现实世界“惟显逸气而无所成”的弃石特质。贾宝玉作为补天弃石的精神本体,将相关的传统意象原型所蕴含的深层涵义显发出来,留与读者探索人类生命本真存在意义的思考,这便是贾宝玉形象的文化价值所在。

The myth of Nüwa mending the sky in Dream of the Red Chamber is a sub-myth reconstructed by Cao Xueqin based on the ancient creation myth of Nüwa, with a focus on the “stubborn stone” that is “unfit for selection” and “without material to mend the sky”. The life traits of the “stubborn stone” derived from the traditional imagery prototype form the innate explanation of Jia Baoyu’s character traits: the natural and unadorned essence of “stone” in traditional stone culture is transformed into the pursuit of the natural and authentic nature of the “real stone” that Jia Baoyu pursues;the qual-ity and spirit of the “stubborn stone” imagery in traditional Chinese literature, which embodies steadfastness, unyieldingness, and foolishness that do not conform to the secular world, endows Jia Baoyu with the determined resistance to loyalty, filial piety, and fate;the image of “mending the sky and abandoning stones” in the myth, which symbolizes the fate of deformity and uselessness, cor-responds to the “uselessness” philosophy contained in the imagery of “scattered wood” in “Zhuang-zi”, and represents Jia Baoyu’s characteristic of abandoning stones and failing to achieve anything in the real world. As the spiritual embodiment of mending the sky and abandoning stones, Jia Baoyu reveals the profound connotations of the related traditional imagery prototypes, leaving readers to explore the meaning of human life’s authentic existence, which is the cultural value of Jia Baoyu’s character.