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Burning My Drafts焚藁

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 · 60 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 13 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.

少年著歌詞。下筆元無疑。自謂如美玉。誰敢論瑕疵。後日復尋譯。每篇無好辭。不忍汙箱衍。焚之付晨炊。明年視今年。棄擲一如斯。所以高常侍。五十始爲詩。

When I made songs in my youth, I set brush to paper with never a doubt. I thought them like fine jade myself, and said, who would dare to speak of a flaw? Later I took them out and pondered them again: in not one piece was there a good phrase. Unable to bear their fouling my box, I burned them and gave them to the cooking of breakfast. If next year I look back on this year, I shall throw things out just the same. That must be why Gao, the Regular Attendant (高常侍), only began to write poems at fifty.

Interlinear notes 1

焚三百餘首

Over three hundred poems were burned.