The acknowledgement that the text seeks to exact from its reader is ... not only that fiction betokens a systematic reinforcement of illusion, but also that it focalizes, ironically, both the need and danger of that reinforcement. ... The profound paradox emerging from Cao Xueqin's masterpiece seems to be that the illusion of life, itself a painful avowal of the non-reality and untruth of reality, can only be grasped through the illusion of art, which is an affirmation of the truth of insubstantiality.
Cao Xueqin