Jeong Ian Painted My Portrait and I Made an Encomium for It Myself丁而安寫予眞。自作贊曰。
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 · 80 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 11 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 beard is coarse and yet soft
the lips are thick, and red besides
What manner of man is this?
He seems to resemble Chungyeong (春卿)
Is it Chungyeong indeed?
Is it the shadow, or the form?
Even the form is empty and delusive
being only like a dream
how much more this shadow —
it is but a dream within a dream
Up and down for sixty years
this one paltry body
in the midst of eight widths of white silk
carries itself gravely, as though a man
To paint the heart is hard indeed
yet a little of it shows in this true likeness
All you my sons and grandsons
do not laugh at my ugliness
only pass that heart of mine on
and bring no shame upon your forebears
Interlinear notes 1
Chungyeong (春卿) is the courtesy name of the author, Yi Gyubo. Here he is playing the sly innocent about his own portrait. — Translator