這一場好殺 A Fine Fight It Was
逐句解 Line by line
Skirt and hairpin — she was at bottom a monster grown perfected; for her son's sake she nursed her hatred of the wretched ape.
裙釵, "skirt and hairpin," is a standing shorthand for a woman. 修成怪 is "a monster made by cultivation" — she has come by her powers through the same discipline an immortal uses. 為 is wèi, "for the sake of."
Pilgrim, for all that fierce anger rose in him, gave way to the fair one because his master's road was blocked.
讓娥流, "yielded to the woman" — 娥 is a beauty, and 流 marks the class or sort of person. The couplet is careful to say his restraint is practical rather than chivalrous: it is the blocked road that governs.
He had begun by asking to borrow the banana-leaf fan; he would not display his valour, but bore it with a patient softness.
驍雄 is valour, martial prowess. 耐性柔, "endured with a soft temper." Three couplets in, the poem is still explaining why the Great Sage has not simply won — which suggests the narrator expects us to be wondering.
The Rākṣasī, understanding nothing, swung her sword and hacked; the Monkey King, meaning well, spoke of the ties of kin.
無知, "without understanding," is the poem's judgement rather than any character's. 說親由 is "set out the grounds of the kinship" — the verse gives Pilgrim's argument a benefit of good faith that the prose has been rather more sceptical about.
How should a woman contend with a man? In the end the male hardness bears the female down.
The couplet states a period commonplace as though it settled the question, and the story immediately proceeds to disprove it: within thirty characters she has blown him eighty thousand lǐ away. 剛 is the yang principle, hard and active, against the yielding yin.
This one's gold-banded iron cudgel, how fierce it was; that one's frost-bright blue-edged blade, how thick and close it fell.
甚 is shèn here, the intensifier "very," not the questioning shén the chapter uses at five other places. 這個…那個, "this one… that one," is the standard verse frame for a duel, switching between the fighters line by line.
Striking at the face, hurling at the head, in bitter hatred they held to it and would not leave off.
相 is xiāng, marking something done to each other, not the xiàng of appearance. The line breaks its seven-character measure into two three-character bursts before resuming, so that the rhythm imitates the exchange of blows.
Warding left and screening right, they plied their skill; meeting in front and parrying behind, they gave their cunning rein.
騁 is to give rein to, to gallop. The couplet is pure technical vocabulary of the martial romance, and its job is to fill the passage of time that the next couplet will measure.
Only when the fight had reached its deepest pitch did they notice the sun going down in the west.
沉酣, "deep-steeped," absorbed as in drink. 不覺, "without noticing" — the fighters have lost the whole afternoon, and the poem marks the time because the fight is about to end by means that have nothing to do with skill.
Then the Rākṣasī quickly brought out the true fan, and with a single fanning she stirred up what would make gods and demons grieve.
真扇子, "the true fan" — that adjective is doing quiet work, since a false one is going to matter a great deal before this chapter ends. 將 is the handling word jiāng. 一搧 uses the verb 搧 for the act, against the noun 扇 in the same line.
The battle poem is unusually argumentative for its kind. Most such set-pieces in this novel are pure spectacle — weapons, postures, weather — but this one spends its first four couplets explaining the fighters' motives, and specifically explaining why the Great Sage has not simply won. He was angry; he yielded because his master's road was blocked; he asked first; he would not display his valour.
That is a great deal of justification, and it suggests the narrator expects the reader to find the restraint odd. The fifth couplet then produces the period commonplace — how should a woman contend with a man, in the end male hardness bears the female down — as though it settled the matter.
The story disposes of that claim within thirty characters. She loses the exchange of blows, as the poem says she must, and then takes out the fan and removes him from the mountain entirely. The confident line about male hardness is left standing immediately above the passage that refutes it, and the novel does not comment.
The rhythm is worth noticing at the seventh couplet, where the seven-character measure breaks into two three-character bursts — 劈面打，照頭丟 — before resuming. The line imitates the exchange of blows, and it is the only place in the poem where the form gives way to what it is describing.