陰陽相鬥 A Rhapsody on the Battle
這一場怎見得好戰：这一场怎见得好战：
逐句解 Line by line
And how was this a fine fight to look upon? Thus:
怎見得 — "and how was it a fine fight?" — is the storyteller's standard way of announcing a set-piece description; 得 is the attainment dé. The tag is scene-setting and rides with the verse it introduces.
The woman fiend's fierce bearing waxed; the Monkey King's high spirit rose.
興 is xīng, to rise or flourish, not the xìng of mood. The matching predicate settles it: 長 is zhǎng, to wax, so both halves are verbs of increase. 興 is also the first rhyme-word, and the whole piece rhymes on that sound throughout.
Marshal Tianpeng contended for his share of the merit, brandishing his muckrake wildly to show what he could do.
天蓬元帥 is Bajie's old rank from his days in heaven, wheeled out here for mock-epic effect — rather like calling a suburban dad "the Colonel". 鈀 is fixed across the corpus as pá.
That one — her hands many, her trident close, wreathed about with smoky light; these two — their tempers hot, their weapons strong, the mist rising off them in steam.
兵強 takes 強 as qiáng, strong — against the qiǎng, "force yourself", of Tripitaka forcing up his spirits a few passages back. 那一個 against 這兩個 sets the single demon opposite the pair of brothers, and the poem keeps that division running to its last couplet.
The woman fiend acts for one end only, to find herself a mate; how should the man of religion consent to spill his primal essence?
元精 is the Daoist term for the primal yang essence, and holding on to it is the entire physical basis of the adept's practice — think of it as a capital sum that must never be spent. The couplet states the stake of the fight in plain words.
Yin and yang, ill-matched, grapple and will not loose; each displays its bold powers and contends in bitter spite.
相持 takes the mutual xiāng. 不對 means "not paired, ill-matched" rather than "incorrect": the couplet reads the whole brawl as a failure of the two principles to join properly.
Yin at rest nourishes the nutritive breath, yet thinks to stir and stir; yang drawn in settles the defensive breath, and loves to be clear and clear.
榮 and 衛 are terms from medicine — the nourishing and the defending breaths that circulate through the body, roughly supply line and garrison. 榮 is the older way of writing the first of them. The doubled 動動 and 清清 keep their ordinary readings.
So it falls out that the two sides have no concord between them, and trident, rake and iron rod wager the winning and the losing.
兩處 takes 處 as chù, here meaning the two parties rather than two places. 賭輸贏 drags the language of the gaming table into the battle: they are wagering the win.
This rod has force in it, and the rake is abler still, and the woman fiend's steel trident meets them point against point.
更 is gèng, the comparative — "abler still". It is not the gēng that closes this same poem three couplets later; the two are specified separately. 丁對丁 is "nail against nail", blow answering blow.
Before Poison-Foe Mountain the three of them give no ground; outside the Cave of the Lute the two of them show no mercy.
三 counts all three fighters, 兩 only the pair of brothers. The poem plays these numbers against each other from beginning to end.
That one would be glad to get the Tang Monk and pair with him as phoenixes pair; these two must follow their elder and fetch the true scriptures home.
喜得 takes the attainment dé. 諧鳳侶, to be matched as a pair of phoenixes, is the conventional figure for marriage, and it is set directly opposite 取真經 in the answering line. Marriage against scripture, one line each.
Startling heaven and shaking earth they came together in battle, and fought until the sun and moon were without light and the very stars were altered.
只殺得 is the "fought until" construction and takes the linking de, not the attainment dé. 星斗更 takes 更 as gēng, to change or shift — it is the predicate of the clause, so the adverb gèng is impossible here; it is also the closing rhyme. 星斗 takes 斗 as dǒu.
The frame of this poem is not military but medical. Inside eleven lines it reaches for 陰陽, yin and yang; for 榮 and 衛, the nourishing and defending breaths of the physicians; and for 元精, the primal essence. A three-way brawl outside a cave mouth is being described in the vocabulary of the body's internal economy, and the effect is to make the fight legible as something other than a fight.
The fourth couplet says outright what is at stake. The demon acts 只因求配偶, for no reason but to find a mate; and the question set against her is how a man of religion should consent to 泄元精, to spill his primal essence. In the inner-alchemical reading this novel keeps always within reach, losing that essence would end the pilgrimage as finally as death would. The rod and the rake are not really what is defending Tripitaka here.
Against this the poem sets a running play of number. That one against these two; three giving no ground before the mountain, two showing no mercy outside the cave; and in the last couplet, that one who would pair as phoenixes pair against these two who must follow their elder for the scriptures. The arithmetic keeps refusing to balance, which is the point — 陰陽不對, yin and yang ill-matched, is stated in the fifth couplet and then acted out by the counting.
The closing line is the biggest gesture in the chapter so far. Sun and moon lose their light and the stars themselves shift. That is ordinary battle-poem hyperbole, but placed here it prepares the reader for a defeat: nothing gets described on this scale unless something is about to go wrong.