Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 5

Matching the Rhymes of Jeong, Librarian-Director, Who Replied to the Poem I Sent Earlier and Came in Person to Give Me Ink Bamboo and a Portrait次韻丁秘監和前所寄詩。以墨竹影子親訪見贈

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 · 235 Chinese characters · reading time 2.1 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 5 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

僕前者輕以紙本。求得墨竹四幹。愛翫之際。猶以爲歉。更以絹素乞掃數朶。兼乞寫眞。今月某日。伏蒙垂和前詩。以墨竹二幀影子一幀。親訪見贈。感荷感荷。觀其詩語。精緻淸警。眞蹈詩人閫域。則詩名之震世。亦不爲不久。而畫復如此。畫者。藝也。藝必爲世所嗜。故藝之能奪詩名久矣。先朝學士洪灌。能詩亦能書。世皆以能書洪灌呼之。不以詩名。洪君甞憤之。予以謂若洪君者。詩與書相敵。故藝能混而掩之矣。如學士之詩。絶勝無二。雖藝之工也。又豈奪之之有耶。况墨竹寫眞。是士大夫之事。而又且得之於天。則公雖欲已之。得乎。甚善甚善。予當秘之十襲。傳爲子孫萬世之寶矣。謹依韻和成詩四首。奉寄云。

Earlier I lightly sent over some paper and received four stalks of bamboo painted in ink. Even while I cherished and delighted in them I still thought them too few, and so I begged him to add a few more branches on white silk and asked besides that he paint my portrait. On a certain day of this month he kindly replied to my earlier poem and came himself to give me two sheets of ink bamboo and one portrait. I am grateful, grateful.

Looking at the words of his poem, they are exact, clear and startling, truly treading the ground of a poet; it cannot be said that his name as a poet has rung through the world for only a short while. And now his painting is like this as well. Painting is a skill. A skill is bound to be what the world likes, and so his skill has long since robbed him of his name as a poet.

Academician Hong Gwan (洪灌) of the former court was good at poetry and good at calligraphy as well, yet the world all called him "Hong Gwan the good calligrapher" and did not name him for his poetry. Master Hong once burned with anger at this. In the case of a man like Master Hong, I think, his poetry and his calligraphy were a match for each other, and so the skill got mixed in and screened the poetry. But as for the Academician's poetry, it is outstanding beyond compare; however fine his skill, how could it rob him of that?

Still more, to paint bamboo in ink and to draw a portrait are the business of a gentleman and a thing received from Heaven, so however much the Lord might wish to give them up, could it be done? It is truly good, truly good. I shall wrap them in ten layers and keep them hidden, to be handed down as a treasure of my descendants for ten thousand generations. I humbly follow his rhymes in four poems and send them up.

Interlinear notes 2

而安

Ian (而安)

幷序

With a preface attached

‹ Matching the Rhymes of Jeong, Librarian-Director, Who Replied to the Poem I Sent Earlier and Came in Person to Give Me Ink Bamboo and a Portrait — Thanking Him for the Ink BambooContentsWritten on First Giving Up the Five Pungent Foods ›Listen to this piece