變化無窮 Transformations Without End
行者笑道：「我行者笑道：「我
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim laughed and said, "I —
Five characters, and they cannot be separated from what comes next: the quotation opens here and 我, "I," is the grammatical subject of the poem's first line, which the edition prints on the line below. Tag and verse are one sentence.
"From of old my home was the Great Eastern Continent of Superior Spirit; before the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit I cultivated myself from my earliest years.
The poem rhymes on -ou all the way through and every rhyme word is level in tone: zhōu, xiū, zhōu, tóu, chóu, hóu. The opening line rhymes at its midpoint as well as its end, which is the standard way to start. The continent's name needs a word on it: this edition writes 東勝大神洲, with 神, spirit — where the standard Buddhist geography writes a different character meaning body. The 勝 in the middle is superior rather than victory, so the name is the Great Eastern Continent of Superior Spirit. This edition's reading is what is printed here, with the difference noted rather than smoothed away.
"In person I bowed before the Patriarch of Spirit Terrace and Inch of Heart, and the martial arts I completed there were thorough indeed.
靈臺方寸 names the mountain where Pilgrim trained, and the joke is that both halves of the name also mean "the heart" — Spirit Terrace and Inch of Heart are old poetic words for the mind. The place and the faculty are the same phrase. 甚 is shèn, "thoroughly."
"I can churn the seas and bring the dragon's dam to heel; I am good at shouldering mountains and running the sun down.
降 is xiáng, to subdue or bring to heel — not the jiàng that means to descend. Nothing in this line sits in a rhyme position, so the sense alone decides it, and the same goes for 擔 at dān, the verb of carrying something on the shoulder.
"At binding monsters and seizing demons I am reckoned first of all; I shift the stars and move the Dipper till gods and spirits grieve.
斗 is dǒu, the Dipper — the constellation — where automatic transcription supplies the dòu that means fighting. 第一 sits right before a pause, so its second character keeps the plain tone yī with no adjustment.
"I have robbed Heaven and turned the Earth about, and my fame stands high — I am the handsome stone monkey whose transformations have no end."
The closing half-line runs to nine characters where every other half-line in the poem runs seven. Breaking the metre on the last line to fit the name in is a standard way of ending a self-portrait.
The portrait answers all three of the old man's questions, but not in the order they were asked. Origin comes first and gets one line of fourteen characters; capability takes the last three lines and forty-four; and the name is held back to the final four characters of all. It is a résumé with a birthplace at the top and a signature at the foot.
What changes here is the manner rather than the material. In prose he boasts; in verse he recites, and the recitation is orderly, chronological and metrically regular until the last line. Churning seas, shouldering mountains, moving the Dipper — all of it offered as work already done, not as things he proposes to attempt.
And then the form gives way. Two extra characters arrive to make room for 美石猴, "handsome stone monkey," and the poem ends on what he calls himself rather than on anything he has done. The rhyme still lands.