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 · 129 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
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
予讀淵明本傳及詩集。愛其曠達。故贊之云。
I read the biography of Yuanming (淵明) and his collected poems, and loving his breadth of spirit I compose this encomium.
Over a zither without strings
his heart was glad, and glad again.
People say that if there are to be no strings
it would be better to have no zither at all.
If there is a zither but no strings,
how should there be any sound from it?
But if we say that he lodged his meaning in it,
then all things whatever are so.
Yuanming delighted in wine
and was drunk, simply, day after day.
If there is a cup but no wine,
can one get drunk?
The bent of a man of penetration —
how should people grasp it easily?
What is to be gathered in is the inward;
what may be let go is the outward.
If one longs after the outward,
then desire alone spreads,
and how should it stop at strings?
Seeking and searching will know no surfeit.
And if one lets go the inward,
one calls down an early breaking off.
The true man decocts the elixir
and so invites long life.
Wine too is a divine medicine,
and if it is not drunk, sickness follows.
Strings one may rather forget,
but wine cannot be parted from.