第三十四回
魔王巧算困心猿
大聖騰挪騙寶貝
The Demon King, by artful reckoning, confounds the Mind-Monkey; the Great Sage, by shifting sleight, filches away the treasures.
原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
葫蘆烏黑
The Blackness of the Gourd
大聖到他葫蘆裡，渾然烏黑。把頭往上一頂，那裡頂得動，且是塞得甚緊，卻才心中焦躁道：「當時我在山上遇著那兩個小妖，他曾告訴我說：不拘葫蘆、淨瓶，把人裝在裡面，只消一時三刻，就化為膿了，敢莫化了我麼？」一條心又想著道：「沒事，化不得我。我老孫五百年前大鬧天宮，被太上老君放在八卦爐中煉了四十九日，煉成個金子心肝，銀子肺腑，銅頭鐵背，火眼金睛，那裡一時三刻就化得我？且跟他進去，看他怎的。」大圣到他葫芦里，浑然乌黑。把头往上一顶，那里顶得动，且是塞得甚紧，却才心中焦躁道：「当时我在山上遇著那两个小妖，他曾告诉我说：不拘葫芦、净瓶，把人装在里面，只消一时三刻，就化为脓了，敢莫化了我么？」一条心又想著道：「没事，化不得我。我老孙五百年前大闹天宫，被太上老君放在八卦炉中炼了四十九日，炼成个金子心肝，银子肺腑，铜头铁背，火眼金睛，那里一时三刻就化得我？且跟他进去，看他怎的。」
逐句解 Line by line
大聖到他葫蘆裡，渾然烏黑。把頭往上一頂，那裡頂得動，且是塞得甚緊，卻才心中焦躁道：「當時我在山上遇著那兩個小妖，他曾告訴我說：不拘葫蘆、淨瓶，把人裝在裡面，只消一時三刻，就化為膿了，敢莫化了我麼？」
大圣到他葫芦里，浑然乌黑。把头往上一顶，那里顶得动，且是塞得甚紧，却才心中焦躁道：「当时我在山上遇著那两个小妖，他曾告诉我说：不拘葫芦、净瓶，把人装在里面，只消一时三刻，就化为脓了，敢莫化了我么？」
Inside his gourd the Great Sage found it black as pitch. He butted his head upward, but there was no budging it — and it was stopped up very tight indeed. Only then, in a fret of the heart, he said: “That time on the mountain, when I met those two little imps, they told me: gourd or vase, once a man is bottled inside, in one hour and three quarters he melts into pus. Might it not melt me?”
渾然烏黑 (hún rán wū hēi), "black as pitch." 那裡頂得動 (nǎ lǐ dǐng de dòng), "no budging it" — rhetorical nǎ, complement de; 塞得甚緊 (sāi de shèn jǐn), "stopped up very tight" — 甚 the intensifier shèn. 就化為膿了 (jiù huà wéi nóng le), "melts into pus" — 為 read wéi, to become.
一條心又想著道：「沒事，化不得我。我老孫五百年前大鬧天宮，被太上老君放在八卦爐中煉了四十九日，煉成個金子心肝，銀子肺腑，銅頭鐵背，火眼金睛，那裡一時三刻就化得我？且跟他進去，看他怎的。」
一条心又想著道：「没事，化不得我。我老孙五百年前大闹天宫，被太上老君放在八卦炉中炼了四十九日，炼成个金子心肝，银子肺腑，铜头铁背，火眼金睛，那里一时三刻就化得我？且跟他进去，看他怎的。」
Then a second thought came to him: “It's nothing — it can't melt me. Five hundred years ago, when Old Monkey made his great uproar in Heaven, I was set by Lord Lao Zi in the Eight-Trigrams Furnace and refined nine-and-forty days, tempered into a heart and liver of gold, lungs and bowels of silver, a head of bronze and back of iron, fiery eyes and golden pupils — how could an hour and three quarters melt me? I'll just go along in and see what he's up to.”
化不得我 (huà bù de wǒ), "can't melt me" — potential de; likewise 化得我 (huà de wǒ). 八卦爐中 (bā guà lú zhōng), "in the Eight-Trigrams Furnace" — 中 read zhōng. 銅頭鐵背 (tóng tóu tiě bèi), "bronze head, iron back" — 背 read bèi, the noun.
總評 Commentary
Trapped in the very treasure he had schemed to master, Wukong's first response is fear, and the narrator lets us hear it plainly — 焦躁, a fret of the heart, at the recollection that the vessel melts a man to pus in an hour and three quarters. The candor is disarming: the Great Sage, undone by his own over-cleverness, is for a moment simply a creature shut in the dark, doing the arithmetic of his own dissolution.
The second thought is the recovery, and it is a roll-call of the novel's own backstory: the uproar in Heaven, the nine-and-forty days in Lord Lao's furnace, the body tempered to gold and silver, bronze and iron. The same ordeal that was meant to destroy Monkey made him indestructible, and here that indestructibility is his one certainty in the black gourd. Fear yields to the cool resolve to 且跟他進去，看他怎的 — go along and watch — the trickster already turning captivity into reconnaissance.