Visiting the monk Yangyeon, I sing of the painting of a white crane that he keeps訪養淵師。賦所蓄白鶴圖。
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 · 1 passages · 110 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 5 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 crane is a thing from beyond the dust,
and its kind came forth in the beginning from the immortals.
Within the jade cage it has no heart,
and beside the pearl tree it shakes out its wings.
And so Zhi Daolin (支道林)
let one go into a thousand li of sky.
How is it that the monk now loves it so very much
that he has had it painted and set before his eyes?
A true crane, even so, cannot be kept;
how much less can it be handed on in paint?
Slowly I reason out the principle of it:
the monk's purpose was not of that sort.
To let it go, he fears, would lose its numinous form;
to keep it, he fears, would draw it to the things of the world.
Neither letting go nor keeping,
there is nothing better than the hand that paints.
And so he paints the true likeness of Qingtian (靑田),
and the outstanding wings pass over the red mist.
By leanness he sees the form of the Way,
and by clearness he nourishes the wholeness of heaven.
I have seen the painting that draws from life (寫生),
but I have not been able to make the writing that draws from life.