Canonical Classics ← 第八十六回
第八十六回
zhùwēizhēngguài
jīngōngshīmièyāoxié

The Wood Mother Lends His Strength to Fight the Monster · The Metal Lord Works His Art to Destroy the Fiend

重漫苔蘚
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition 含詞賦 With rhapsody

重漫苔蘚 A Stone Path Under Moss

zhǎnglǎoxīnránsuìqiáozibìngzhòngtóngxíngxiàng西nán𨓦qiánláiduōguǒjiànzhǎnglǎoxīnránsuìqiáozibìngzhòngtóngxíngxiàng西nán𨓦qiánláiduōguǒjiàn

shíjìngzhòngmàntáixiǎncháiménpéngluòténghuāshíjìngzhòngmàntáixiǎncháiménpéngluòténghuā

逐句解 Line by line

zhǎnglǎoxīnránsuìqiáozibìngzhòngtóngxíngxiàng西nán𨓦qiánláiduōguǒjiàn zhǎnglǎoxīnránsuìqiáozibìngzhòngtóngxíngxiàng西nán𨓦qiánláiduōguǒjiàn

The elder was glad to go, and so did not ride, but walked along with the woodcutter and the four of them, winding away to the south-west; and after no great distance they saw indeed:

Tripitaka getting off the horse to walk beside the man he saved is the whole courtesy of the scene in one clause. The character 迤𨓦 ends with a rare one that many fonts will not carry, so a reader may see a box in its place — the pair means winding along a slanting way. And 同行 here is travelling together, so keeps xíng; the machinery reads it as the trade-guild sense instead, which is the one place in this chapter it takes that reading wrongly.

shíjìngzhòngmàntáixiǎncháiménpéngluòténghuā shíjìngzhòngmàntáixiǎncháiménpéngluòténghuā

A stone path deep under moss and lichen; a brushwood gate all tangled with flowering vine.

The scene-setting turns domestic. 柴扉, a brushwood gate, is the same image the ant poem closed on many passages back, where the point was a creature slipping through one unnoticed — and here it is a real gate with a real woman about to be standing at it.


總評 Commentary

The description that follows is built exactly like the one for the fiend's cave: matched pairs, four characters then eight, scenery doing the work. The difference is what it is describing.

Every element here is poor and none of it is grim. A path nobody has swept, a gate made of sticks, a vine that has been left to grow over it. The cave got rare flowers and jasper grass; the good house gets moss.