Short Letter to Scholar No, Who Passed in the Same Examination Year與同年盧生手簡
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 · 138 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 12 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.
So-and-so reports. Yesterday I was on night duty in the Western Wing (西掖), and only withdrew past noon the next day. Last evening I opened the short letter you had sent and learned in full the intent with which you came; before I had read it through, my heart was already moved to pity.
I too of late, since the state granaries are empty and leaking and the salary is not given in due time, often go through what it was to starve in Chen (陳); and this is not something you do not know in detail. I suppose the sound of geese and wild geese crying in your house is worse than in mine, and that this is why you reached out to me so. This is what Mei Shengyu (梅聖兪) called "great poverty begging from small poverty" — how can we not laugh at each other?
It is fitting that you should beg from me. I cannot plead having or not having and leave your urgent need unattended. Tipping the sack out to the bottom, I send you so much white rice; please do not scold it as trifling. The rest I shall say when we meet. And so forth.
Interlinear notes 1
鵝雁之聲 — Some take this as likening the clamor of a starving household to the crying of geese and wild geese. — translator