This ordinary scene...

I'm finally reading the Journey to the West. It's a really horrible translation that i have, but that's all i have.... actually i don't know if it is a horrible translation - because i don't know the original text, but it is a bit stodgy and i wish it was more fluid the prose... anyway... it has to be read in small pieces. Like toilet reading. Previously when i read it as a child - the comic version, of course - it was just a rip roaring adventure. Every issue... it was fantastic... i suppose it's the closest we'd come to in Chinese culture to the Ramayana - it even has a monkey as a central character.

Now it appears to be straightforward Bhuddist propaganda. With some John Bunyan and Carl Jung thrown in. But this reading i took away that contrast between the prose and the poetry. I don't know if the whole thing was written in poetry, but in this translation, the switch between the two is striking. Prose is for all the bits which Monkey - and everyone else - behaves like assholes. Poetry is reserved for descriptions of nature - which seems to be the only thing that gets away untarnished by the goings on in the everyday affairs of men.

Book One is filled with unending and repeated, but strangely addictive, examples of unblemished, pristine scenery.

Thick, misty clouds,
Dense with cypress and pine.
The thick and misty clouds fill the gates with colour;
The dense strands of cypress and pine surround the door with green.
For a bridge there is a dried-out log,
And wild fig coils around the mountain peaks.
Birds carry red petals to the cloud-filled valley;
Deer tread on scented bushes as they climb the stone tower.
Before the gates the season brings out flowers,
As the wind wafts their fragrance.
Around the willows on the dyke the golden orioles sing;
Butterflies flit among the each-trees on the bank.
This ordinary scene can yet compete
With lesser views of Fairyland.

Then we come to bits where Monkey gets really angry because he hears a Taoist monk and a white snake spirit discussing the theft of the Bhudda's robe or the possibility of eating the hapless monk, and he then brings his cudgel down on their heads and whacks them to death.

"In his anger, he picked the corpse up and tore it to pieces, then went into the recesses of the mountain, in search of the fellow (the monster that had run away.)"

And that's what the whole book is like... stunningly beautiful descriptions of nature, followed by graphic descriptions of Monkey maiming something, but not before he has changed into fifteen thousand different shapes and then begging the monk to spare him from the pain which the band of metal around his head gives him when he recites this verse which constricts his skull.

I can see why it has remained such a blockbuster. It just shows how human beings have not changed in about 500 years. Maybe more.

Oh this is classic...

A description of the Black Wind King of the Mountains...

His bowl-shaped iron helmet shone like fire;
His black bronze armour gleamed.
A black silk gown with billowing sleeves,
A dark green silken sash with fringes.

In his hands a spear with black tassels,
On his feet a pair of dark leather boots.
Lightning flashed from his golden pupils;
He was indeed the Black Wind King of the mountains.

"This wretch looks as though he's been a brick-burner or a coal-digger," Monkey though as he smiled to himself. "He's so black he must be the local soot-painter."

All that magnificent glory undermined by the sordid mind of Monkey. I wonder if Monkey ever progresses in the book, or does he just stay the same? The base, dismissive, arrogant gobshite that he's always been. Well, i have another two and a half books to go... i'll find out soon enough.