棒劍交鋒 Cudgel and Sword
這一場在洞門外好殺。咦！这一场在洞门外好杀。咦！
逐句解 Line by line
It was a fine fight there outside the cave-door.
好殺 (hǎo shā) — "a fine slaughter, a grand fight," the stock formula introducing a battle-賦.
Lo!
The exclamation 咦 (yí) — "lo, behold" — marks the turn from prose into set-piece verse.
The gold-banded cudgel and the seven-star sword — they clashed, and their rosy light was like flung lightning.
對撞 — "struck against each other." The couplet opens the duel-賦 on the flash of the two weapons meeting.
A long, cold air pressed on men with its chill; broad, murky clouds curtained ridge and weir.
悠悠 / 蕩蕩 — paired reduplicatives, "long-drawn" and "vast, billowing." 嶺堰 (lǐng yàn), "ridge and embankment," the whole landscape darkened by the battle’s fury.
That one, all for his flesh-and-blood’s sake, gave not a hair’s mercy;
那個 (nà ge) — "that one," the old fiend, deictic nà. 些兒 (xiēr), "a bit, a whit," 兒 the suffix (er); 不放善, "granted no quarter."
this one, only for the scripture-seeking monk’s sake, allowed not a hair’s delay.
只為 (zhǐ wèi) — "solely for the sake of," 為 the preposition wèi. 毫釐, "a hair’s breadth"; the antithetical couplet weighs the fiend’s cause (a brother) against Wukong’s (the pilgrimage).
The two sides each nursed a common hate; the two parties each harbored a rising wrath.
二處 (èr chù) — "the two parties," 處 read chù. The couplet’s parallelism (兩家 / 二處) balances the antagonists’ equal fury.
They fought till Heaven darkened and Earth grew dim and gods and ghosts took fright; the sun paled, the mist thickened, and dragon and tiger warred.
殺得 (shā de) — "fought until," 得 the degree complement de. 龍虎戰, "dragon and tiger battle," a figure for two mighty champions locked in combat.
This one ground his teeth, filing jade-white spikes; that one glared, spitting golden flame.
剉玉釘 — "gnashed jade pegs," a hyperbole for grinding teeth. 那個 (nà), "that one"; the balanced ferocity carries the couplet.
Back and forth, each played the hero; without cease, cudgel and sword went tumbling and wheeling.
逆英雄 — "showed off their heroism." 不住翻騰, "tumbling without pause," closes the verse on the ceaseless whirl of the duel.
The battle-賦, ushered in by the formulaic 好殺 and the exclamation 咦, magnifies the single combat into a cosmic event: chill winds, curtaining clouds, a darkened sun, gods and ghosts taking fright, dragon and tiger at war. Such hyperbolic set-pieces are the vernacular novel’s way of raising a fight above mere brawl.
Its rhetorical spine is antithesis. The paired lines (那個 / 這個, 兩家 / 二處) hold the two causes in strict balance — the fiend fighting "for his flesh and blood," Wukong "for the scripture-seeking monk" — so that the combatants’ equal fury mirrors the equal justice each claims. The verse grants the old fiend a genuine grievance even as it sides, structurally, with the pilgrimage.