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 · 168 Chinese characters · reading time 1.7 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 21 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.
The Hermit had a mirror. It was clouded with dust and dim as though worm-eaten, like the moon hidden in cloud. And yet morning and evening he looked into it, just like a man dressing his face. A guest saw it and asked: "A mirror is for reflecting the face; or, failing that, it is what a gentleman faces in order to take its clearness. Now your mirror is dim as though fogged, so that it can no longer reflect a face, and there is nowhere in it to take its clearness either. And yet you do not cease to look into it. Is there some reason for this?"
The Hermit said: "When a mirror is bright, the handsome delight in it and the ugly shun it. But the handsome are few and the ugly are many. If they once looked into it they would surely smash and break it before they stopped, and so it is better to leave it clouded with dust. The clouding of dust may eat away its surface, but it does not make it lose its clearness. If by one chance in ten thousand I meet a handsome man, it will not be too late to grind and polish it then. Ah, the men of old faced a mirror in order to take its clearness, and I face a mirror in order to take its dimness — why should you think it strange?" The guest could not answer.