The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 1 Read online

  Finally, one strong argument against a Yuan origin of the novel ostensibly stems from a different kind of textual evidence, not the massive presence of religious topoi and rhetoric, but the novel’s use of official and bureaucratic titles that began only in the Ming. If Qiu were granted the novel’s authorship, so this argument goes, how could a Yuan verbal artifact employ nomenclatures not known until centuries later? Against this seemingly irrefutable thesis, contemporary readers loyal to the Yuan and Quanzhen Sitz-im-Leben for the text’s initial production have countered with the argument that the hundred-chapter novel, though its essential form and content emerged in the Yuan, might have been modified in subsequent production. Later editions of the Ming also seem to display here and there the titles of officials that were in use only in the Qing. Are we then to assume a Qing authorship for the Ming novel?91

  In summary, this vexing dispute over the novel’s authorship, similar to that on the priority of its textual versions, has also seesawed back and forth for nearly a century without resolution. We now know that there exist several texts from the Yuan to the Ming with the name “The Record of the Westward Journey or Xiyouji.” The extant Yuan text is not a novel at all, but its firm association with Qiu Chuji, a Yuan Daoist and the second patriarch of the Quanzhen lineage, prods us to wonder whether Qiu had connection to some other texts with the same or a similar name, now lost, that recount the evolving story about Xuanzang’s pilgrimage. Apart from a fully formed drama of twenty-four scenes also titled XYJ, a local prefectural gazetteer credits a minor late Ming official with a book or composition by the name of XYJ, but there is no information on what sort of a work that is. Most Chinese scholars in the early decades of the twentieth century since Hu Shi have embraced Wu Cheng’en as the most likely author of the first printed, full-length version of the novel. In more recent decades, doubts about Wu’s authorship are heard with increasing frequency, and much of this “revisionist” critique of Hu’s thesis arises from readers’ escalating attention to the actual linguistic content and rhetorical affinities of the fiction text that are difficult to reconcile or harmonize with the content in Wu Cheng’en’s known writings.92

  This last problem has persuaded two of the most astute scholars of traditional Chinese fiction outside of China to withhold full support for Wu’s authorship. After a comprehensive survey on aspects of the novel manifestly related to Quanzhen Daoism, the late Professor Liu Ts’un-yan of Australia, though constrained to deny the novel’s initial authorship to Qiu Chuji, nonetheless plainly asserted the “high possibility” of a Quanzhen version of the narrative existing prior to the 1592 edition, written by someone belonging to that same religious community “.”93 He does not rule out a Ming date for the author or final redactor, but he is less certain about late-Ming literati’s familiarity with some of the subtle and hidden allusions in Quenzhen writings, an estimation that may not be entirely accurate. In his equally long and erudite chapter on this novel, probing with special acuity its religious and philosophical rhetoric, Professor Andrew Plaks of the United States has entertained “a remote possibility” of “a prototype” for the novel as “a Yuan (or even a late Sung) composition,” but his chapter’s final thesis considers the novel, ex-emplified by the Shidetang and other editions, to be “essentially a product of the sixteenth-century intellectual milieu.”94 The conclusion reached by these two specialists may indicate scholarly open-mindedness or cautious equivocation that, paradoxically, may further validate the insight of someone like Wu Yujin cited earlier. To argue for a possible Yuan prototype or some version of XYJ that eventually was brought to its completed form in the 1592 printed version by a nameless author or final redactor—is this not analogous indeed to that Qing reader’s interesting use of the transformation of official history (that is, the Three Kingdoms) into fiction by different hands of author and redactors to gloss his understanding of the formative process for the hundred-chapter Xiyouji?

  III THE USES AND SOURCES OF POETRY

  Unlike any typical Western work of fiction since the Renaissance, The Journey to the West is made up of prose heavily interlaced with verse of many varieties and lengths. Incorporation of poetry into prose narration is not, of course, unique to Chinese vernacular fiction. For distant Western parallels, one may point to the early satiric fragments of Menippus, the later Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, a work like Aucassin and Nicolette, and the writings of Bunyan and Rabelais. In Chinese literature, however, this form of writing has enjoyed more sophisticated and artful cultivation, for the use of poetry to serve specific literary functions is already a characteristic of Tang fiction and drama.95 In such narrative works as the Yingyingzhuan and the Songyue jianü , poems advance the action by revealing the emotional conditions of the characters, or serve as set pieces of dramatic dialogue, a feature that later dramatic literature develops extensively. The growing popularity of Buddhist literatures and the development of religious prosimetric writings called transformational texts (bianwen ) further motivated the employment of narrative, descriptive, and didactic verse in prose fiction.

  No reader of the Dazhidu lun or the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa sūtra, to pick two examples at random, can fail to perceive that characteristic which Maurice Winternitz has called “an old form of Buddhist composition”: namely, that of “expressing an idea first in prose and then garbing it in verse, or [of] commencing the presentation of a doctrine in prose and then continuing it in verse.”96 Nor can that reader fail to notice, when he or she turns from the Buddhist canon to the transformational texts, how the addition of poetry to summarize or develop the prose has become one of the defining features of this popular form of writing.

  Since the discovery of these bianwen texts in the caves of Dunhuang in 1899, their historical basis is well known. Dating from the eighth and ninth centuries, many of the texts took as their subject the Leben und Treiben of Buddhist saints and heroes, though many other secular stories dealt with persons and events from Chinese legend or history as well. The origin of the religious bianwen has been traced to the evangelism of Buddhist monks, who sought to accommodate their more abstruse doctrines to a popular audience through storytelling, a practice for which the Buddha himself might be said to have provided the exemplary precedent.97 Not incomparable to some of the patristic and medieval epic paraphrases of biblical themes in the West (e.g., the Libri Evangeliorum IV of Juvencus, the Carmen Paschale of Sedulius, the anonymous but massive Old Saxon Heliand, and the De Vita et Gestis Christi of Jacobus Bonus), these bianwen consisted of imaginative elaborations and expansions of individual episodes in a Buddhist sūtra, with events and persons freely altered or added. Alternating between short sections of semiliterary prose and lengthier sections composed mainly of the penta- or heptasyllabic poetic line, the bianwen may amplify a relatively short unit (about one or two hundred characters) of the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka sūtra or the Vimala-kīrti-nirdeśa sūtra into a narrative of several thousand characters in length.98 In all probability, these stories were first sung or chanted during temple festivals, and, to judge from observations made in the Gaoseng zhuan (Biographies of Eminent Monks, compiled by Huijiao , 497–554 CE), popular reaction to the presentations, especially those describing the agonies of hell, could be extremely emotional.99

  The popularity and success of the Buddhist bianwen may be seen in the widespread emulation of its form by subsequent authors of secular topics drawn from both history and folklore. The mixture of poetry and prose in narration as a distinctive mode of composition thus made its mark permanently on Chinese literary history, exerting enormous influence on the development of popular drama and the practice of storytelling from then on. The indebtedness of Chinese colloquial fiction to these art forms in turn has been a familiar theme of modern scholarship. Scholars who have studied the formal characteristics of the dramatic and narrative literature in medieval China have noted such poetic functions as commentary, moral judgment, exemplum, and summary.100 By the time of the Ming-Qing novelists, the combin
ation of verse and prose in narration had evolved into a highly flexible medium. In the exploitation of this technique, few writers could rival the author of The Journey to the West in creative skill, keen observational power, vivid vocabulary, and sure command of a wide variety of poetic forms.

  One of the unusual features shared by the four or five monumental classics of traditional Chinese fiction is, interestingly, the differentiated and peculiar use of poetry. In the The Three Kingdoms, for example, a small number of poems selected from mostly known but unidentified historical poets provide mainly choric commentary on characters and incidents, thereby, in fact, validating once more one of the most significant functions of the traditional literati lyric—that of singing about history or yongshi . In The Plum in the Golden Vase, on the other hand, “the lyrics of actual popular songs . . . and a complex mosaic of borrowed language, comprising proverbial sayings, catch phrases, stock epithets and couplets and quotations from early poetry and song, and formulaic language of all kinds inherited from the literary tale” are brilliantly and massively deployed to express “the spoken or unspoken thoughts of the characters.”101 In the Qing novel The Story of the Stone (or Hongloumeng, Dream of the Red Chamber), the lyrics—all composed by the author, as far as we know—function primarily to reveal the subjectivity and development of the protagonists and to act occasionally as a futile though deeply moving critique of a decadent Confucian morality.

  The Journey to the West’s very many poems are mostly original.102 They excel in formal varieties and assume a large share of the narrative responsibility. At every opportunity, the author eagerly displays his poetic skills by weaving into the fabric of his tale a poem of the style of the jueju (a rhymed quatrain of penta- or heptasyllabic lines with fixed tonal pattern), or of the lüshi (an eight-line rhymed poem with lines of the same length and one fixed tonal pattern), or of the pailü (a long poem using a single rhyme scheme for virtuosic effect, with the middle parallel couplets often constructed like those of a lüshi serially extended), or of the ci (generally, a short, rhymed lyric of irregular meter and of two parts or sections, with one or more patterns of different tones or pitches), or of the fu (the rhyme-prose or rhapsody, rhymed or unrhymed). Running the length of the first chapter alone, which tells of Monkey’s birth and his life up to the time when he was given the name Wukong, are no fewer than seventeen poems exemplifying nearly all the forms just mentioned. Though it is not at all apparent in the widely read, abridged translation by Arthur Waley (pp. 11–12), there is a poem depicting the monkey’s frolic “under the shade of some pine trees,” and another lüshi sketches the curtainlike waterfall immediately after its discovery by the monkeys.

  A comprehensive study of the narrative’s poetry would require a separate monograph much lengthier than this introduction. Here I can only point out some of the most important functions of the verse in the narrative: it describes scenery, battles, seasons, and living beings both human and nonhuman; it presents dialogues; and it provides commentary on the action and the characters. Poems in the last category make frequent use of religious themes and rhetoric as well as allegorical devices. I shall study some of these in the final section.

  It is not without reason that the author of XYJ has been ranked by C.T. Hsia as “one of the most skilled descriptive poets in all Chinese literature,”103 for much of the descriptive verse in this narrative is marked by extraordinary realism, vivid delineation, and vivacious humor. Though it may be impossible to duplicate the terse rhythm of the three-syllabic line with end rhymes used in the poem portraying the frolic of the monkeys (chapter 1), I have attempted to catch something of its characteristic vigor in my translation.

  Swinging from branches to branches

  Searching for flowers and fruits;

  They played two games or three

  With pebbles and with pellets. [see 1: 102].

  Another example of this type of poetic sketch may be taken from chapter 89, where we have the following poem on a butterfly.

  A pair of gossamer wings,

  Twin feelers of silvery shade:

  It flies so swiftly in the wind,

  And dances slowly in the sun.

  With nimble speed passing over walls and streams,

  It blithely with the fragrant catkins flirts;

  Its airy frame loves most the scent of fresh flowers,

  Where its graceful form unfolds with greatest ease.

  A third example of the poet’s descriptive power may be taken from chapter 20, where Tripitaka is asked to depict a violent gust that the pilgrims encounter on their way. “Look at this wind!” he said.

  Augustly it blows in a blusterous key,

  An immense force leaving the jade-green sky.

  It passes the ridge, just hear the trees roar.

  It moves in the wood, just see the poles quake. [see 1: 399].

  These three poems are but brief illustrations of the author’s superb poetic eye and his uncanny ability to capture in a few lines the essential qualities of his subject. That subject may be a mosquito (chapter 16), a bee (chapter 55), a bat (chapter 65), a moth (chapter 84), an ant (chapter 86), a rabbit (chapter 95), or one of the numerous monsters with whom Tripitaka’s disciples must engage in combat, the battle itself, or the scenery of the different regions through which the pilgrims must pass. But what the reader meets again and again in these poems is an enthralling spectacle of exquisite details. Indeed, if judged by some of the traditional norms of Chinese lyric poetry, most of the poems of The Journey to the West might be considered inferior products because of their graphic and, occasionally, unadorned diction. The language is often too explicit, too direct, too bold, to be evocative or suggestive. They do not seek that quality of metaphorical elusiveness which most Chinese lyric poets cherish and seek to inculcate in their verse.

  What is scorned by tradition, however, may turn out to be a poetic trait of special merit in XYJ. For what the author has sought to express in these poems is hardly the kind of lyricism suffused with symbolic imageries so characteristic of the earlier poetry of reclusion, nor is he attempting to achieve the subtle fusion of human emotion and nature that many of the Tang and Song poets aimed for. Most of all, he is not trying to enlist the service of the lyrical tradition to realize the ancient ideal of “expressing serious intent or aspiration (shi yan zhi).” None of these descriptive poems bears profound moral ideas or weighty philosophical substances. Often they lack “weight and solidity,” in the words of one critic,104 but that is precisely because they are not meant to be read as independent poetic entities. Their complete integration into the narrative as a whole is what gives them their “epic” force. Divorced from their contexts, the lengthy similes of Homer or Vergil are no more impressive than the balladic lines of “Chevy Chase.”

  Through the many poems of scenic depiction, what the author of XYJ seeks to convey to us seems to be the overpowering immediacy of nature, with all its fullness and richly contrasting variety, as the main characters in the narrative experience it. To give us this sense of munificence in the natural order, the verse frequently uses what may be called delayed amplification. In the first chapter, where the Flower-Fruit Mountain (the birthplace of Sun Wukong) is introduced, part of the testimonial fu poem reads:

  Its majesty commands the wide ocean;

  Its splendor rules the jasper sea;

  Its majesty commands the wide ocean

  When, like silver mountains, the tide sweeps fishes into caves;

  Its splendor rules the jasper sea

  When snowlike billows send forth serpents from the deep. [see 1: 100–1].

  When the monkeys, the subjects of Sun Wukong, later enjoy a feast, the delicacies include

  Golden balls and pearly pellets;

  Red ripeness and yellow plumpness.

  Golden balls and pearly pellets are the cherries,

  Their colors truly luscious.

  Red ripeness and yellow plumpness are the plums,

  Their taste—a fragr
ant tartness.

  Again, the setting we are made to see of the abode of the Bear Monster in chapter 17 is a cave which is surrounded by

  Mist and smoke abundant,

  Cypress and pine umbrageous.

  Mist and smoke abundant, their hues surround the door;

  Cypress and pine umbrageous, their green entwines the gate.

  In these lines of poetry, repetition is the apparent means by which the poet partially overcomes the limitations inherent in his medium: the extreme economy of construction and the tendency toward conventional diction. One does not need to read much classic Chinese verse to recognize that poets use phrases such as “wide ocean (),” “snowlike billows (),” “red ripeness (),” “yellow plumpness (),” and “cypress and pine umbrageous ()” so regularly that they are formulaic. In this regard, most of the novel’s scenic poems show little interest in moving beyond traditional descriptive vocabularies and metaphors. The extensive employment of wuxing (Five Phases) and alchemical terminologies in most of the commentarial poems, though exceptional, has antecedents in many of the minor poets from the Tang on who were religious adepts. What the author has done in the narrative that merits our attention is the way he breaks up into separate lines the phrases that ordinarily would be joined together. Instead of simply stating “Cypress and pine umbrageous, their green entwines the gate,” he first mentions the cypresses and the bamboos before proceeding to their appearance and condition. This procedure retards the movement of the poetic line by giving a more leisurely pace to a metrical rhythm that is normally terse and rapid. The repetitions compel our attention and serve to enhance the amplitude of the poetic utterance. Cumulatively these poems impress us with the encyclopedic range of the poet’s interest and the fineness of his vision, for there is hardly anything that is too mundane or too exotic for his scrutiny. Foodstuff of all kinds, household utensils, birds, animals, and insects, plants and flowers of sundry varieties, the beings of heaven and hell—all proceed unhurriedly before us in their colorful and manifold plenitude, and we are also given a profound sense of “God’s plenty.”