AMOR DE PERDIÇÃO AND A DREAM OF RED MANSIONS COINCIDENCES IN TWO TRAGIC TALES OF LOVE

Despite the fact that he lived and worked in such a distant land, despite the fact that Portugal is so different from China, Camilo Castelo Branco has won the hearts of growing numbers of Chinese readers with his novel Amor de Perdição, translated into Chinese at the beginning of this decade. The works of Camilo Castelo Branco are studied widely in university faculties across China and Amor de Perdição is always chosen as a supporting text in teaching Portuguese.

After reading the novel in his Portuguese course, one of my students was so impressed that he told the story to his mother who works in a paper mill in Shanghai. Later on, the Chinese version was published and the young man wanted to buy a copy. The first edition went out of print so quickly, however, that he came and asked me if he could borrow my copy to let his mother read it. When she had finished the book she said: "It is a very moving story, just like our Dream of Red Mansions".

What, you may ask, is the Dream of Red Mansions? This classical novel is regarded as the greatest, and also the most complex work in Chinese literature. Written by Cao Xueqin, the novel relates the fortunes and decline of an aristocratic family and the tragic tale of love between two rebellious young lovers. There are over one hundred characters from all classes of society, each one with his own behaviour and temperament. The Chinese work consists of three volumes and over one million written Chinese characters.

I also experienced something similar to what happened to my student's mother. When I read Amor de Perdição for the first time, as one of the books in the collection of Portuguese literature given to my department by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Instituto de Cultura e Língua, I was so moved that I set myself to learning about the life and work of the "first Peninsular novelist". I was, nevertheless, somewhat limited by my surroundings, and I only managed to read a few books by and about him. One of these was Camilo Castelo Branco by Alexandre Cabral, an excellent introduction to the author's works. Although I did not manage to read much, it was still enough for me to develop a great admiration for the novelist. His family, members of the country gentry which had fallen on hard times; his own life, full of misfortunes; his spirit which rebelled against the society in which he lived; his incomparable yet humble skill as a master of the Portuguese language; his works, particularly Amor de Perdição,: all these things reminded me constantly of Cao Xueqin. Consequently, in 1982 I attempted a comparative study of these two tragic tales of love -- Amor de Perdição and A Dream of Red Mansions. This essay, a summary of that study, is done in the awareness that "I am not a camilianista in the strict sense of the word... I do not think I can call on any other quality than that of being a reader" to take the words of Dr. Bigotte Chorão in his book Camilo, a Obra e o Homem. Dr. Chorão is, nevertheless, an intelligent, sensitive reader and he is a great scholar of Camilo's works. I am no more than an ordinary, simple reader and, as a foreign reader, I have covered very little ground as it is obviously difficult to find books on Camilo in China.

When they learn that I have written a comparative study on a Portuguese and a Chinese work, many people ask me whether they are in fact comparable, whether they are similar. I have always regarded the field of comparative studies as extremely wide and multifaceted. It can cover content, the form of expression, even the social effects caused by the works under consideration. Furthermore, any comparative study involves looking both at similarities and differences. If we take into account that every country (in this case China and Portugal) has its own history, its own culture, its own kind of society, and its own economy, and that the personal experiences of each writer are different, then we cannot try to find two identical works. However, given that there are often surprising similarities in historical development on a world scale, and given that there is contact and a certain level of exchange between various countries it is not inconceivable that there are works of literature which display varying degrees of similarities whether intentionally or not. Love is a universal, eternal theme and it is interesting that both of these tragic stories, Amor de Perdição and A Dream of Red Mansions, with their young ingenuous lovers trapped in an impossible love which is strangled by the implacable hands of those they love, are regarded as the most outstanding literary works in their respective countries. My work has thus involved an examination of three different points: firstly, the concrete content of the two loves; secondly, the social motivators behind the behaviour of the heroes; thirdly, the influence the authors' lives had on their work.

My original study is over fifty pages long and it is very difficult to condense it. I shall omit some parts in order to be more concise and explicit. First, I shall give readers a summary of the tragic love shared by Bao Yu and Dai Yu described in the Chinese novel.

The Jia family is of noble descent. The hero, Jia Bao Yu, was born with a precious piece of jade in his mouth and he was named Bao Yu (Precious Jewel) after this event. His cousins, Lin Dai Yu and Xue Bao Chai also live in the Jia's home. From the moment Xue Bao Chai arrives in the house there is a rumour that she has a golden jewel which was given to her by a monk who has foretold that she will only marry a man who has jade. As time goes by, however, living as he does in the company of many other young girls as well as his cousins, Bao Yu falls in love with Dai Yu. In the meantime, his parents and grandmother talk of the marriage of gold and jade and they decide to marry Bao Yu to Bao Chai and separate the lovers. Taking advantage of Bao Yu being sick, they tell him that he is to marry Dai Yu. Only once the marriage ceremony is complete and Bao Yu removes the red cloth, which according to the custom of the day covers the head of the bride, does he discover that he has been tricked. While the marriage is taking place, Dai Yu dies in despair. His dream has now been shattered and Bao Yu flees his home to become a monk, leaving his wife a widow.

There are two important points to be remembered in this plot. Firstly, it is clear that reality merges with fiction in the book and the author states right from the very first chapter that the two worlds -- one fictitious, the other factual -- are entwined, and that he hides true things by fabricating false stories. The family which serves as the stage to the plot is called 'Jia', a homonym for the Chinese character meaning 'falsehood': the characters' origins are fantastical.

The author says that in the divine world there is a grass which turns into a fairy after being watered every day by a servant from a celestial palace. The fairy decides to go with the servant on his descent to the human world so that with her tears, representing the life of the heroine, she may repay the servant, the hero, for the water he has brought her. The servant is carrying a precious piece of jade, in other words, a stone which has a spirit on which there is an inscription telling the story of the journey it will later make in the human world. This is why the novel is also known as The Story of the Stone. Is this ridiculous? I shall answer by quoting a poem taken from the first chapter of the novel:

Pages full of idle words

Penned with hot and bitter tears:

All men call the author fool;

None his secret message hears. **

Secondly, the Chinese novel consists of one hundred and twenty chapters of which Cao Xueqin is the author of the first eighty. The remaining chapters were written by Gao E. It is said that Cao in fact completed the entire work but the last part was lost for reasons that we still do not understand. Fortunately, in the fifth chapter which consists of a dream which the hero has, the author gives a vague idea of the tragic fate ahead for the most important characters, particularly Bai Yu and Dai Yu. That we can read the complete tragedy of Bai Yu and Dai Yu today is thanks to Gao E who was the only writer who successfully managed to piece together the work describing the marriage of gold and jade, Dai Yu's death and Bao Yu's escape. However, the truth is that even though he completed the work, he must have made some alterations to Cao Xueqin's original idea, both in terms of the lovers and the destiny of other characters in the novel, which he always painted through pink-tinted glass. The quality of the language used in the last third of the novel is also inferior to the first part. This is why Chinese readers never regard Gao E's conclusion in quite the same way as they see Cao Xue Qin's work. Although they accept Gao E's work, they never place the two authors in the same category. If one were to ask who wrote A Dream of Red Mansions, almost everybody would reply that it was Cao Xue Qin, the greatest Chinese writer ever to live.

On a first impression, the two novels are very different. If we take a closer look at them, however, they display very similar features, most importantly the purity, fidelity and hopelessness of the love destined never to be consummated, and the attitude shown by the parents.

In my opinion, the two tragic love stories each involve three young people all of whom are members of the aristocracy. First of all we have the lovers: Simão and Teresa, Bao Yu and Dai Yu. In addition we have the third party in each group: Baltasar and Bao Chai. The pairs of lovers are indomitable, rebellious and frowned upon by their families and society. Baltasar and Bao Chai are models of good behaviour and fit into their environment well. We can divide these six characters into three pairs according to their attitudes towards love and then we can examine them pair by pair.

A great many comparisons can be made between Simão and Bao Yu. In the first place, they are both very young and are more or less the same age. Secondly, they are both highly intelligent, a factor which plays an important role in the development of the plot as they both think, analyse and search for a solution to their problem without following blindly their families and society. Thirdly, they are both dissatisfied with their families and society and rebel against them.

Teresa and Dai Yu are also very similar. They are both only children and were both orphaned at a very early age, thus contributing to their rebellious spirit and temperament. Physically, they are both delicate and they both die from consumption, a chronic disease often employed by authors for tragic heroines, to emphasise their plight.

Baltasar and Bao Chai, although the former is a man and the latter a woman, both play similar roles in that they replace one of the lovers and prevent them from marrying.

How is it, you may ask, that they succeed in winning over their opponent and being chosen by the head of the family? The reason lies in the fact that their behaviour complies with the mores of the society in which they live. In the end, however, they are not the winners and theirs is also a sad end: Baltasar is shot dead and Bao Chai is abandoned, and given that in ancient China women could not marry a second time, she is effectively made a widow.

As I have already mentioned, the outstanding features of these two love affairs are purity, loyalty and fate. Where, you may ask, is this ingenuity shown and what point does it reach? Over a period of several years, from the day when Simão and Teresa fall in love at first sight, until they die, the two hardly ever speak face to face or even see each other. What they are both searching for before marriage, and what they express in their letters to each other, is a union of hearts and spiritual fidelity, not carnal relations. Bao Yu and Dai Yu, although they live in the same house, hardly have any contact with each other. They search for a spiritual victory and the uniting of their hearts without rushing into a consummation of their feelings. They hope to maintain the family's honour through an official marriage and thus achieve their goal, as in so many other love stories from ancient China. In comparison with Manuel, Simão's brother who eloped with the wife of a friend, and with Bao Yu's uncles and cousins who are capabale of raping women, the feelings of love displayed by the protagonists are as pure and sublime as the lotus which emerges from the mud.

Loyalty in love is shown by the fact that the heroes' attention never strays from the one they love, nor do they change under pressure. Simão is also loved by Mariana, but even though she is prettier, healthier and freer than Teresa, he always treats her like a sister and never takes advantage of her. Bao Yu also focusses all his feelings on Dai Yu even though Bao Chai is prettier, healthier and richer than Dai Yu. He is a nobleman with a fondness for pretty girls, but he loves Dai Yu alone. On one occasion he swears to his beloved that if she dies, he will become a monk. Later on, he will fulfill this pledge.

Let us now look at the two women and examine whether or not they are loyal in love. It is worth noting that once again there are similar episodes in both novels.

When Teresa finds out that Simão has been condemned to hang she becomes so sick that she is almost at death's door. She recovers, however, when she is told that his death sentence has been lifted. When she finally realises that her love for Simão will never materialise in this world as he leaves for India, she falls ill again and eventually dies. Teresa's suffering, recovery and subsequent death provides eloquent proof of her loyalty in love. For love she abandons her belongings, her freedom, and finally her life. The same process applies to Dai Yu who, when she hears that the decision has been made to marry Bao Yu to another woman, falls ill and only recovers when she finds out that she has made a mistake. Months later, however, when she discovers that the marriage of jade and gold has actually taken place, she dies.

These two loves, imbued with purity, bound with loyalty and depth of emotion, are both destined to be crushed. The heroes sacrifice everything for love, but still they are unable to win the right to marry the woman of their choice, and innocent love comes to a tragic end. This is the fatalism displayed in the two novels, a fatalism which taints the stories with tragic overtones, as the final fate which the lovers meet is meted out by human hands. The parents force their children to accept marriages with people they do not love and to abandon the man or woman they do love, thus giving the tragedies an added fatalism. Nevertheless, we can conclude that the fatalism expressed in these two love affairs is not, in fact, supernatural, but rather imposed by the family, society and times in which the protagonists live and which they, in their innocence, are incapable of overcoming, leaving them free only to choose between death or a flight from society.

Interference from the parents is the direct cause of these tragedies. In both novels the parents display a remarkably similar set of reactions and attitudes to their rebellious children and their passions, even though one novel is set in China and the other in Portugal. They both want to crush their children's rebelliousness. Neither of them let their children take control of their own feelings in love and marriage. They would rather condemn them to death than let them be free. Tadeu, when he hears that his daugher has rejected his cousin's love, says in an irate tone of voice: "You will marry!... If not, you shall die in a convent!". Dai Yu's grandmother, on learning that her granddaughter has fallen ill at the news of the marriage between gold and jade, states quite frankly that if the cause of the illness were anything but this she would happily spend all her money on a cure but, as it is because of the marriage, she still makes no attempt to save her.

Why should the heads of the families, loved by the protagonists, behave in this way? They clearly understand that destroying the youngsters' love for each other is tantamount to destroying their lives. Let us look at what they say in order to understand their cruel, inhuman attitude.

When Teresa's father discovers that she is going to die, he says: "Not that I want her to die, but if God were to take her she would die in peace and with her honour unblemished". Dai Yu's grandmother confesses that in fact she is to blame for the death of her granddaughter but she says that: "children who play together when they are young can be friends, but when they grow up and understand things they should be separated. These are the duties and obligations of girls". In other words, their love, however pure it may be, is regarded as untenable, an infraction of the honour of the family. To defend the so-called honour of the aristocrats and to meet their obligations, the heads of the families are directly responsible for the deaths of their own children. It is worth considering the case of Romeo and Juliet.

I have been told that Amor de Perdição bears greater similarities to Romeo and Juliet than with A Dream of Red Mansions. It is true that the Portuguese novel and Shakespeare's plot have in common the fact that the lovers belong to rival families but I think that the factors which set off the chain of events are not in any way similar. In Romeo and Juliet, neither family is aware of the protagonists' feelings, they do not interfere, nor do they create obstacles or try to destroy their passion. Also, there are quite a few people disposed to help them. The reason behind the tragic turn of events lies simply in a mistake quite separate from the intentions of the protagonists. Furthermore, the death of the lovers leads to a reconciliation between the two families which relieves, to a certain extent, the bitter taste of the tragedy and serves as a kind of compensation to the reader. But in Amor de Perdição, apart from the fact that the lovers are from families which detest each other, the development of the plot takes a completely different path. The implacable feelings of the two lovers, the sacrifices they suffer and the tragic fate to which they commit themselves all remind me of several events in the Chinese novel. In this respect, I would argue that the Portuguese and Chinese works are more similar.

In Amor de Perdição, after Baltasar dies, Mariana takes on an increasingly important role. In the Chinese novel Qing Wen can, in some ways, be compared with Mariana. Qing Wen is a very pretty, audacious and independent girl, just like Mariana. What they both display in their relationship is a disinterested love. This means that they can assist their friends by acting as go-betweens and making a variety of sacrifices for them. Qing Wen also dies for Bao Yu.

Let us now look at Cao Xue Qin's life. There has been a lot of discussion over a period of decades concerning the date of birth and death of this great writer. According to a certain school of thought, he was born in 1715, according to another, in 1724. Similarly, his death is dated at either 1763 or 1764.

The author's great-great-grandfather had won great honour for his deeds in the Qing wars against the previous dynasty (the Ming). From that point on, he had become richer and more influential. His great-grandmother was Emperor Kang Xi's wet-nurse and his great-grandfather was Textile Commissioner in Jiangning. This was a lucrative position which was always given to the men closest to the Emperor. When he died, his great-grandfather took over the position and so it passed down through the generations according to orders from Emperor Kang Xi. His grandfather won the emperor's special admiration and confidence when he played host to the emperor on four of his six visits to the South, a detail which is also mentioned in the novel.

In 1722, Emperor Kang Xi died and his fourth son won the throne after a series of manoeuvers and intrigues. In order to strengthen his position, he began to eliminate those who had been loyal to his father and his brothers. By 1727, he had ordered the Cao family's property to be confiscated, bringing to an end the wealth and power of the family which had lived for over sixty years to the south of the Yangtse River, only to end up as the victim of political intrigues from the imperial house.

Cao Xue Qin was born in Nanjing but left the City with his family for Peking after the confiscation. Where he lived and where he spent his youth are questions which nobody has been able to answer, as no documents from the period have ever come to light. All we know from friends' poems is that in the latter part of his life he lived in the western suburbs of the capital and spent ten years writing A Dream of Red Mansions. Life had given so little to him that his family was reduced to eating gruel while he, a womaniser and heavy drinker, was forced to produce and sell paintings in order to satisfy his own habits and keep his family alive. In 1763 or 1764 his only son died, a shocking event which only hurried the poor, sick writer to a quicker death.

Now that we are more familiar with Cao Xue Qin's life, I would like to examine the following points on the basis that the personal experiences of authors affect the novels they write.

Firstly, both novels are a mixture of reality and fantasy and because of this are capable of moving the reader. A Dream of Red Mansions is a novel with a certain amount of autobiographical content. Some scholars believe that Bao Yu is modelled on Cao Xue Qin or his uncle. Rather than writing a family tree and history, however, I think he is more interested in creating a work of literature. He invents the family, its life and the contents of the work, putting in everything he has observed, felt, tried and heard.

Camilo insists that Amor de Perdição is the story of his uncle's passion, but in fact I feel that the story comes nearer to his own passion for Ana Plácido. Moreover, we can attribute to Camilo many of the comments made previously about Cao Xue Qin. It is my belief that both Simão and Bao Yu are taken from real life and remodelled by the authors to make them more moving.

Similarly, both novels describe young people's fight against injustice and against tyrannical parents, who wish to impose a partner whom they have chosen. In other words, they describe and condemn the old order.

Both authors were treated badly by life. Cao Xue Qin fell from luxury to penury and Camilo was pursued by poverty and scandal throughout his life. This made them more sensitive to the old order and gave them the insight to write of the ingenuous love shared by their protagonists. Of equal importance is the fact that both novels are based on a fatalistic attitude and the supernatural powers of clairvoyance.

Both authors use rich language appropriate to each character and situation. Exceptional intelligence, education from an early age and the meticulous observation of the outside world are, in my opinion, the mark of success of these authors' works.

Finally, the proof of their success can be seen in the fact that both novels are greatly enjoyed by their readers and have had a lasting effect on them down the generations.

I think that these books, with their powerful energy would never have been written had it not been for the combined experience and talents of Camilo Castelo Branco and Cao Xue Win. Both the books and their authors are sure to remain in the memory of the world as shining lights in the history of mankind.

To bring my article to a close, I would like to mention the following two points. Firstly, I have always considered Camilo Castelo Branco and Cao Xue Qin's works to be miniatures of life, vivid reflections of the world in which each one lived. Many characters, customs and events described can be compared. For example, Camilo Castelo Branco was always biased towards women, as was Cao Xue Qin and it is worth comparing the women they create in their works.

Secondly, in my experience as a teacher of Portuguese, I have come to realise that there are many works of literature from China and Portugal which can be compared. Take, for example, the tragic love affair of D. Inês and King Pedro I which has inspired many literary creations of which I would give a special mention to Castro by António Ferreira and the verses Camões devotes to her in the Lusiads. Chinese history has also witnessed two similarly tragic love affairs, firstly that of Yang Tai Zhen, Emperor Tang Ming Huang's favourite concubine, celebrated, amongst others, by Bai Ju Yi in his famous poem Ode to Eternal Hate. Secondly, there was Zhen Fei, Emperor Guang Xi's favourite concubine who has been the subject of countless plays, films and so on. When, I wonder, will we see a comparative study of these love affairs?

** Cao Xuequin, The Story of The Stone, Vol. I, p. 51, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.

* Portuguese lecturer in the University of Foreign Studies in Shanghai (Portuguese Department), Ms Wang has researched aspects of Portuguese culture with the support of a scholarship from the Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa. She is currently preparing a Chinese translation of A Queda de um Anjo by Camilo Castelo Branco.