Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 19
Inscription for the Geomungo (琴)琴銘
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.
我琴無調。孰商孰宮。琴是何物。聲從何沖。其泠泠溜溜者。傳聲於石瀨乎。其瑟瑟飀飀者。借韻於松風乎。若以泠泠者付乎瀨。瑟瑟者還于松。則其復寥乎寂乎。反於大空者乎。
My geomungo has no melody; which note of it is sang (商) and which is gung (宮)? What kind of thing is a geomungo, and where does its sound well up from? That in it which seems to trickle and flow — has it carried the sound over from a stony rapid? That in it which seems to blow forlornly — has it borrowed its rhyme from the wind in the pines? If the trickling were handed back to the rapids and the forlornness returned to the pines, would it then be empty and still once more, returning to the great void?