Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 19
Encomium on the Lay Devotee Soseong (小性居士) — with a preface小性居士贊幷序
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 19 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.
1Preface
予於聆首座足庵。見小性居士眞。敢再拜作贊云。
At the Jogam hermitage (足庵) of Yeong (聆), the Head Seat, I saw the portrait of the Lay Devotee Soseong, and making bold to bow twice I compose this encomium.
2Encomium
剃而髡則元曉大師。髮而巾則小性居士。雖現身千百。如指掌耳。此兩段作形。但一場戲。
Shaven and made a monk, he is the Great Master Wonhyo; with his hair grown and a kerchief on his head, he is the Lay Devotee Soseong. Though he appear in a thousand bodies, in a hundred, it is no more than pointing at the palm of one's hand. That he made himself a form in these two ways was only one round of play.