更不忍見 He Cannot Bear To Look
寡人見他遭此離別，更不忍見；一見即如見他玉容，病又重幾分也。」行者道：「且休題這話，且將金串取來。如捨得，都與我拿去；如不捨，只拿一隻去也。」寡人见他遭此离别，更不忍见；一见即如见他玉容，病又重几分也。」行者道：「且休题这话，且将金串取来。如舍得，都与我拿去；如不舍，只拿一只去也。」
逐句解 Line by line
"Seeing what a parting she has come to, I cannot bear the sight of them;
The edition cuts the sentence here with a semicolon and the two halves are read apart. They match in depth, but the second raises the stakes — cannot bear to look becomes the illness gets worse — and a member that escalates is not a parallel one.
"one look and it is as though I saw her jade face, and the sickness goes a few degrees the heavier."
重 is zhòng, heavy, as an illness is heavy. 分 is a graduated fraction, a degree on a scale — so the king measures his grief the way a physician measures a dose, which is how this kingdom has been discussing his condition from the start.
Pilgrim said: "Let that talk be for now, and have the golden bracelets fetched.
且休題 shuts the subject down without unkindness: not now, leave it. 且 falls twice in fourteen characters, once to stop something and once to start something.
"If you can bear to part with them, let me take both; if you cannot, I shall take one only."
The edition cuts this at a semicolon too, and here the two halves are read together: the same if-frame twice with opposite conditions, two members each, and the second contracts rather than escalating. 捨得 takes the light de — to be able to bear parting with something.
Two semicolons, two sentences of the same outward shape, and they behave differently for a reason visible on the page. The king's pair escalates — cannot look becomes falls iller — and the halves will not sit together. Wukong's pair does the opposite, offering both and then one, and reads as a single breath.
That difference is also the difference between the two men in this scene. The king cannot stop the subject growing on him; every mention of the bracelets recruits the face, the illness, the parting. Wukong closes it in three characters, asks for the object, and immediately offers to take less of it.