In a short story published in 1819, the author Washington Irving created the literary figure Rip Van Winkle. To escape his wife’s nagging, the somewhat idle and hermitic man wandered upon the mountain with his dog. After drinking liquor with a group of men he met there, he fell asleep.
The man woke up as any other humans would, except it was 20 years later. Everything had changed: American Revolution taken place, his wife gone. . . .
The story is known as “李伯大夢(li3 bo2 da4 meng4)” in the Chinese world. 夢 refers to a dream. What Rip had is not a small dream but a “big” one. This “big dream” is often compared with the Chinese legendaries南柯一夢(nan2 ke yi2 meng4) or 黃粱一夢 (huang2 liang2 yi2 meng4)
A man named fell asleep under a big tree in his yard on his birthday after drinking with his family and friends. In his dream, he went through a series of successes such as topping at the Imperial Exam, married the princess, assigned as governor of 南柯county and gained the favor of the emperor.
Three decades passed and the man turned a father of 7 kids with fame and wealth and people loved him. Things began to turn against him, however, as the dream went on. He was dispatched by the emperor to fight a war and he lost it. He was discharged from his post and ended up an ordinary civilian with nothing.
Screaming and yelling the man woke up to find what he had gone through was only a dream.
This man was not alone in the Chinese history to have such a dream. A man surnamed Lu had a similar story to tell. On his way to the Imperial Exam, he met a Daoist priest at an inn, who gave him a pillow and claimed that it would guarantee a “sweet dream.”
Lu went to bed with the pillow when the inn keeper started to cook a crop called黃粱.
Like magic, Lu had a wonderful voyage of life similar to the dream mentioned above. He ended up a man of power and money with a beautiful wife and a big family, who enjoyed a long longevity of 80.
When Lu woke up from this sweet dream, the crop was not even done.
“Is it only a dream?” asked the puzzled dreamer.
“Isn’t life so?” replied the Daoist priest.
The great author 蘇軾(su shi4) also has a beautiful line on this dreamy life thing:
人生如夢，一尊還酹江月
(ren2 sheng ru2 meng4, yi4 zuan huan2 lei4 jiang yue4)
Life is a dream. Why don’t we make a libation to the moon on the river?
南柯一夢=南柯一梦
蘇軾=苏轼
人生如夢，一尊還酹江月=人生如梦，一尊还酹江月
沒有留言:
張貼留言