Monkey

I refer to Arthur Waley’s famous translation and abridgment of the novel Journey to the West, purportedly written by Wu Cheng’en in sixteenth-century China.

The story has the underlying theme of a quest—the protagonist Monkey, born from a stone egg, an impetuous, impatient, self-centered creature, occasionally violent but ultimately good-hearted, seeks knowledge and eternal life. His exploits get him in trouble with the Jade Emperor who imprisons him beneath a mountain for five hundred thousand years. He is released by the monk Tripitaka when he promises to accompany him to India to bring the Buddhist scriptures back to China.… show more.

I’ve always been fascinated by the ways writers can transmute real-life events into art. Dante was indirectly doing this when he turned his life of exile into his underworld journey, but Wu Cheng’en’s 1592 novel is actually based on the travel account of a seventh-century monk, Master Xuanzang, who’d journeyed to “the West” -- India -- in search of Buddhist texts. In Wu’s imaginative vision, the monk has to surmount 81 dangers on the way, aided by a river ogee, a talking horse, and a mischievous, irascible monkey named Sun Wukong, “Monkey Enlightened to Emptiness”. Who knew that enlightenment could… show more.