Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 2 passages · 117 Chinese characters · reading time 1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 4 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.
The Yishi (遺事) says: Wang Yuanbao (王元寶) was a great rich man of the capital. He always built his house with gold and silver, and plastered the walls with red clay. Within the house, too, he kept a Hall for Honoring the Worthy (禮賢堂), with railings of aloeswood and birch, the floor of the pond laid with wufu stone (碔砆), and brocade-patterned stone for the foundation stones. Again he strung coins on copper wire and laid them along the flower paths of the back garden, prizing it that even when it turned to mire it should not be slippery. When guests came from the four quarters it was as though they had come to their own house, and so the men of that time called it the rich man's den of the Wang house (富窟).
王郞富窟眞奢僭。鄧氏銅山敢抗當。惟有一端堪採處。箇中兼置禮賢堂。
Master Wang's rich man's den was indeed extravagance beyond his station,
and it ventured to match even the copper mountain of the Deng (鄧氏).
Only in one thing is there something worth the taking:
that within it he kept a Hall for Honoring the Worthy as well.