Asking for a portrait to be painted又以長篇二首。求墨竹與寫眞。 求寫眞
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 · 130 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 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.
You, in the matter of ink bamboo,
have already attained the skill of samadhi.
With your strength to spare you paint the true likeness of men,
so marvelous beyond measure that the true form is matched just as it is.
My face is most unsightly;
what would be gained by painting it?
In copying the likeness of a man, now as of old,
there is no need to reckon fair or foul.
What is precious is to leave a model behind,
to show to those who come after, on and on.
Were it not so, then sages and worthy men
would be well-nigh lower than the birds and beasts.
Birds and beasts, too, are painted still,
and kept at one's side to delight in — is it not so?
I am a trifling body, yet
the offices I passed through were enough to run a course in;
my longing for the Way may be called deep as well,
and the ground of my mind is quite without stain.
My years, too, are past seventy,
so I may be said to have lived long.
Gladly I asked to withdraw from office,
and what I delight in is only the zither and wine.
How laughable — what should I doubt further?
I am an idle old man between heaven and earth.
To paint me would still do no harm;
by this I divine whether it shall be so or not.
Interlinear notes 2
音漠
The sound is "mak."
妙絶眞寘偶 — 眞 is also read as a modifier meaning "truly." — translator