Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 4

On the Eighth Day of the Sixth Month I Obtained a Gayageum and Played It for the First Time六月八日。旣得加耶琴始彈。

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 · 48 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 4 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.

1First Poem

舊譜渾忘了。新聲未自翻。唯餘數三弄。隨指仙將言。

The old scores I have quite forgotten, and new tunes I cannot turn out for myself. Only three or four tunes are left to me, and as my fingers move it is as though an immortal spoke to me.

Interlinear notes 2

二首○示朴學士。

Two poems. Shown to Academician Pak (朴學士).

凡不彈七年。

For all of seven years I had not played.

2Second Poem

畫金檀柱鴈行連。較得秦箏欠一絃。錦瑟减絃君會否。誰知此亦有由然。

The birchwood bridges, painted in gold, stand linked in a row, yet set beside the Qin zither it is one string short. Do you know why the fifty-stringed se (瑟) had its strings reduced? Who knows that this too has its reason for being so?