大聖戎裝 The Monkey King in Armor
逐句解 Line by line
His body sheathed in golden mail, all agleam,
The portrait opens on his armour; 亮堂堂, “all agleam.”
his head crowned with a golden cap, bright and flashing.
映映 (yìng yìng), “flashing”; the reduplicatives give the figure a shimmer.
In his hand he hefts the gold-banded cudgel,
金箍棒, the gold-banded cudgel; 一根 takes yì before first-tone 根.
his feet tread cloud-shoes, all of a matching set.
相稱 (xiāng chèn), “matched, of a piece” — 稱 as chèn (“to fit, suit”). The gear is a complete panoply.
A pair of fierce eyes like gleaming stars,
似 is sì (“like”); 一雙 takes yì before first-tone 雙.
two ears past his shoulders, jutting and hard.
過肩, “past the shoulders”; 查又硬, “jutting and hard” (查 = chá, a vernacular “sticking out”).
A wiry frame, rich in transformations;
身才 = 身材, “physique”; 變化多, “rich in transformations” — his protean shape-shifting noted even in a still portrait.
a voice ringing clear as bell and chime.
響喨 = 響亮, “resounding”; 鐘磬, bell and chime-stone — the resonance of ritual instruments.
Pointed snout and bared fangs — the stable-keeper Bìmǎwēn,
尖嘴咨牙, “pointed snout, bared fangs” (咨牙 = 齜牙) — the simian features the grand armour cannot disguise; he is still 弼馬溫, the stable-keeper.
his heart set high on being the Sage Equal to Heaven.
The couplet's clinch sets the low title against the high ambition: a horse-groom by office, 齊天聖 by aspiration. The portrait ends exactly where the chapter's tension lives.
The portrait poem is built on a single, pointed antithesis that the closing couplet makes explicit. Nine lines array Wukong as a martial paragon — golden mail and cap, the gold-banded cudgel, star-bright eyes, a voice like bell and chime, a frame “rich in transformations.” Then the last couplet undercuts the grandeur: beneath the panoply he is still 尖嘴咨牙, pointed-snouted and fang-baring, still officially 弼馬溫, the stable-groom — and yet 心高要做齊天聖, his heart set on being Equal to Heaven.
That gap between body and ambition is the chapter in miniature. The verse refuses to let the reader forget either term: the monkey is genuinely formidable (the army about to be routed is not imagined), and he is genuinely a parvenu, a beast in borrowed magnificence reaching for a cosmic title. Seen through the eyes of 巨靈神, who is about to lose to him, the figure is impressive; seen whole, it is the 心猿 dressed for a part it has assigned itself. The poem's craft is to hold admiration and irony in one frame, so that the coming victory feels both earned and absurd.