Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 11

Sent to Jinju, a Gisaeng of Seogyeong寄西京妓眞珠

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 · 28 Chinese characters · reading time 0.3 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 11 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.

國色詩名世盡知。無由會面浪相思。一言堪喜還堪恨。誤把文章當奕碁。

The beauty of the kingdom and the fame of poetry — all the world knows them, yet there is no way to meet, and we long for each other in vain. One word of yours is a joy, and a grief as well: wrongly you have set letters up against baduk.

Interlinear notes 1

眞珠云。願一生見詩人李某,國碁龜從。誤字一作輕。

Jinju had said: "All my life I have wished to see the poet Yi So-and-so and Gujong (龜從), the kingdom's master of baduk." In some copies the character 誤 stands as 輕.