Canonical Classics ← 第七十一回
第七十一回
xíngzhějiǎmíngxiángguàihǒu
guānyīnxiànxiàngyāowáng

Pilgrim Under a False Name Subdues the Monster Hou · Guanyin Shows Her Image and Puts Down the Fiend King

躊躇未定
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

躊躇未定 She Cannot Decide

niángniangjiànshuōxīnzhōngchūlíngérkǒngjiànchūlíngéryòukǒngshānglesūnxíngzhěxìngmìngzhèngchóuchúwèidìngyāowángyòucuīdào:「kuàichūlái。」zhèniángniangnàizhǐjiāngsuǒyàokāilesānlíngéryāowángniángniangjiànshuōxīnzhōngchūlíngérkǒngjiànchūlíngéryòukǒngshānglesūnxíngzhěxìngmìngzhèngchóuchúwèidìngyāowángyòucuīdào:「kuàichūlái。」zhèniángniangnàizhǐjiāngsuǒyàokāilesānlíngéryāowáng


逐句解 Line by line

niángniangjiànshuōxīnzhōngchūlíngérkǒngjiànchūlíngéryòukǒngshānglesūnxíngzhěxìngmìng niángniangjiànshuōxīnzhōngchūlíngérkǒngjiànchūlíngéryòukǒngshānglesūnxíngzhěxìngmìng

Hearing this the Queen was startled at heart: if she did not fetch the bells out he might grow suspicious; if she did fetch them out she feared for Sun Pilgrim's life.

One sentence, cut in the source at a semicolon and carried whole here because its two halves are built to the same pattern — 欲 plus verb, then 恐 plus what is feared, twice over. Only the first half names her; the second simply carries on. 怛突 is a start of alarm, the physical jolt in the chest.

zhèngchóuchúwèidìngyāowángyòucuīdào:「kuàichūlái。」 zhèngchóuchúwèidìngyāowángyòucuīdào:「kuàichūlái。」

While she was still hesitating, undecided, the fiend king pressed her again: "Bring them out, quickly."

躊躇 is a doubled-sounding word for wavering — both characters carry the foot radical, so the image is of shifting from one foot to the other. 催逼 pairs urging with forcing.

zhèniángniangnàizhǐjiāngsuǒyàokāilesānlíngéryāowáng zhèniángniangnàizhǐjiāngsuǒyàokāilesānlíngéryāowáng

The Queen had no choice. She turned the key in the lock and handed the three bells to the fiend king.

is in 只得, the lexicalised had no choice but to. is yào: 康熙 金部十七畫 gives the character one band and glosses it 關下牡也, the bolt-pin of a gate, and 戸鑰, a door key — the physical thing she is turning.


總評 Commentary

This is the only passage in the chapter written from inside the queen's head, and it is a genuine dilemma: refuse and he suspects her, comply and she may be killing the man who came to rescue her. The sentence lays the two horns out in matched clauses — 欲不取出…恐他見疑 against 欲取出…又恐傷了 — and gives her no way between them.

What makes it painful is that she is wrong. The bells in the chest are three hairs. Nothing she does with them can hurt anybody, and Wukong knows it, and the fiend does not, and she does not. She spends the passage agonising over a choice that has already been taken away from her.

怛突 is a good word and a rare one: a jolt of alarm felt physically, in the chest. 躊躇 in the next line is its opposite in tempo — both characters are built on the foot radical, so the picture is of somebody shifting weight from one foot to the other, unable to move.