嶺上艱行 The Hard Climb Over the Ridge
這嶺上，真個是：这岭上，真个是：
三藏捨身拚命，上了那峻嶺之間。行經半日，更不見個人煙村舍。一則腹中饑了，二則路又不平。正在危急之際，只見前面有兩隻猛虎咆哮，後邊有幾條長蛇盤繞。左有毒蟲，右有怪獸。三藏孤身無策，只得放下身心，聽天所命。又無奈那馬腰軟蹄彎，即便跪下，伏倒在地，打又打不起，牽又牽不動。苦得個法師襯身無地，真個有萬分悽楚，已自分必死，莫可奈何。三藏舍身拚命，上了那峻岭之间。行经半日，更不见个人烟村舍。一则腹中饥了，二则路又不平。正在危急之际，只见前面有两只猛虎咆哮，后边有几条长蛇盘绕。左有毒虫，右有怪兽。三藏孤身无策，只得放下身心，听天所命。又无奈那马腰软蹄弯，即便跪下，伏倒在地，打又打不起，牵又牵不动。苦得个法师衬身无地，真个有万分凄楚，已自分必死，莫可奈何。
逐句解 Line by line
Upon this ridge, the sight was truly this:
One line of prose to open the door, and the mountain poem walks through it.
Cold and soughing, the wind through the rain-swept woods; loud and rushing, the water down the ravine.
Every line of this poem is built the same way: one describing character, then a doubled pair of sounds — 寒颯颯, "cold, whoosh-whoosh"; 響潺潺, "loud, rush-rush." Chinese uses these doubled syllables constantly and English has almost no way to carry them; a translation can suggest the effect but not reproduce it. What you are missing is a poem that is half noise.
Fragrant and heavy, the wild flowers in bloom; dense and clustered, the tumbled rocks in heaps.
馥馥 (fù fù) and 叢叢 (cóng cóng) keep the pattern going, and the poem holds it across all six of its lines — 香馥馥, 密叢叢, and so on down. The line itself pairs scent against stone: the one thing on this ridge that is pleasant, and the one thing that is in the way.
Clamouring and noisy, the deer and the apes; in troop upon troop, the river-deer and the roe.
獐 (zhāng) is the river-deer and 麂 (jǐ) the muntjac, both small deer of the southern hills. Neither is dangerous. That is rather the point — the ridge is teeming, and none of it is company.
Clashing and jumbled, the many voices of birds; still and hushed, no trace of the doings of men.
喧雜雜 against 靜悄悄 — racket and hush, poured into the same mould, and the hush is the frightening half. 人事靡, "of the doings of men, none," is the first flat statement that they have walked out of inhabited country. The very next line has the elder shaking.
That elder — trembling and fearful, his heart ill at ease;
The poem turns from the place to the man and keeps its shape while doing it: 戰兢兢, trembling. 寧 is níng, to be at peace — not nìng, "rather" — so 心不寧 is a heart that will not settle. Four couplets have described the ridge; the fifth describes what the ridge does to a person.
this horse of his — its strength failing and timid, its hooves scarce to be lifted.
And the horse gets the other half of that couplet. The poem ends by putting its two travellers side by side — the man's fear, the animal's exhaustion — against a mountain that is not paying either of them any attention.
Sanzang, staking his very life, climbed up among those steep ranges. He had journeyed half a day, yet still saw not a single hearth-smoke or hamlet. For one thing, his belly was hungry; for another, the road was rough. Just at this moment of peril, he saw ahead of him two fierce tigers roaring, and behind him several long snakes coiling; on the left were venomous insects, on the right monstrous beasts. Sanzang, alone and at his wits' end, could only lay down all thought of himself and submit to the will of Heaven. And there was no help for it, for his horse, its loins gone weak and its hooves buckling, knelt down at once and lay prostrate on the ground: beat it as he might, it would not rise; pull it as he might, it would not stir. The poor Master had not an inch of ground to set himself, and in truth was in the bitterest of straits, having already given himself up for dead, past all remedy.
聽天所命, "submitting to the will of Heaven," is Xuanzang's defining move. He has no weapon, no magic, and no plan; all he can do is stop struggling. In this novel that is not quite the defeat it sounds like, because giving up is reliably the moment help arrives. 已自分必死 uses 分 as fèn, "to reckon as one's lot" — he has already filed himself under dead.
A set-piece of wild country, and one of the best in the chapter. The poem works almost entirely through doubled sound-words — cold wind, rushing water, heavy scent, tumbled rock, clamouring animals — so that the ridge arrives as noise before it arrives as scenery. Then, in its last two lines, it folds the travellers into the picture: one trembling monk, one failing horse.
The prose that follows turns the screw. Tigers ahead, snakes behind, venomous things left, monsters right — a ring closing on a man with nothing to fight it with. And then the horse, his last resource, simply lies down and will not be beaten or dragged upright.
This is the shape the early pilgrimage keeps taking. Xuanzang is stripped of every option until he gives himself up for dead — and the giving up is the cue. In this book, "nothing to be done" is not the end of a scene; it is the signal for the next one.