Preface to the corrected printing of the Gyewon pilgyeong jip — Seo Yugu校印桂苑筆耕集序 徐有榘

The Gyewon pilgyeong jip in twenty volumes is what Master Choe Goun of Silla wrote in answer to public and to private occasions while he was in the headquarters at Huainan in Tang, and after he came back east he put it in order with his own hand and sent it up to the court together with a memorial.

Master Choe's name was Chiwon, his courtesy name was Haebu, and Goun was the name he took. He was a man of Okgu in Honam. In his youth he was bright beyond all his fellows, and at twelve he followed a merchant ship into the Central Plain, and at eighteen he passed the examination for the presented scholar (jinshi) degree. A long while after, he was appointed constable of Lishui county, and when his term was up he left the post.

Just then came the rising of Huang Chao, and Gao Pian, commander in chief of the marching headquarters of all the circuits, opened his headquarters at Huainan and called Master Choe to be his inspecting officer. Every memorial, every report, every piece of writing and every announcement came from Master Choe's hand, and his Proclamation Denouncing Huang Chao was passed on and recited throughout all under heaven. Gao Pian reported him to the throne, and he was appointed attendant censor of the palace and given the crimson fish pouch. Four years later he was made an envoy bearing the state credentials and came back east, and he served King Heongang and King Jeonggang, and became a Hallim academician and vice minister of the Ministry of War, and went out to be prefect of Museong. In the time of Queen Jinseong he took his household and went into Mount Gaya in Gangyang commandery, and there he ended his life, and his grave is at Hongsan in Hoseo. Some say that Master Choe became an immortal, and this is idle talk.

Here was a man born in an out of the way land in a corner of the sea, and he went north to study while still of tender years, and he took the examination and office as one picks up a straw, and in the end he sounded his name through a whole age by his writing, and among all who came up as guest candidates in that same time not one went before him. How could he not be truly a bold and outstanding scholar? And while he stayed some years in the headquarters he knew that Gao Pian was not equal to great things, and that the wild falsehood of Lü Yongzhi and Zhuge Yin and their sort would surely come to ruin, and he withdrew and stood clear of it. Three years after he left, the rising broke out at Huainan. In this too he has something of the gentleman who knows the first small signs and sees clearly. His person and his writing, in short, are fit to be handed down and must not be let to perish.

By the memorial he sent up, there were besides this collection one volume of modern style rhapsodies, one volume of modern style poems, one volume of miscellaneous poems and rhapsodies, and the Jungsan bokgwe jip in five volumes. The Treatise on Arts and Letters in the Tangshu speaks of the Gyewon pilgyeong in twenty volumes and a collected works in thirty volumes. But all the rest are not handed down, and only this collection has gone through the cutting of blocks again and again. The blocks were lost long ago, and printed copies too are very rare.

In the autumn of the gyesa year, while I was inspecting Honam, I came on my rounds to Museong and paid my respects at Master Choe's academy, and I walked back and forth between the stone tortoise and the Yusang Terrace, and looked down and looked up at the traces he had left, and there was a sighing in me that would not be spent. Just then Master Hong Yeoncheon sent this collection to me, saying, "This is a writing of near a thousand years that has not been cut off, but has held on like a single thread. Have you no thought of putting old books about in the world?" I felt as though I had come by a great jade disc, and fearing that the further off it went the more it would be scattered, I hurried to prove and correct it and printed it with the chwijin movable type, and I placed the copies apart, at the Museong Academy in Taein county and at the Gaya temple in Hapcheon commandery.

Ah. A house known for its wine will surely hang out the name of Du Kang, and a good sword blade will surely be marked with the name of Ou Ye, and this is so that the root is not forgotten. Of the collections of poems and prose of our Eastern Country that are handed down today, there is no way but to take this collection for the founding ancestor, and this too is the root and the beginning of the garden of arts in the Eastern Country. How then could one leave it to sink away and wear to nothing and make no plan for it?

The works he made after he came back east are scattered and are not handed down. Only among the temples and the shrines and the graves, if one parts the thickets and scrapes off the moss, some ten and more pieces may still be got. To gather them and add them to the original collection and cut them in blocks so that they last and are handed on, this I have quietly had a mind to do, and I have had no leisure for it. Looking into the histories, they say that in the first month of the second year of Zhonghe Wang Duo took Gao Pian's place as commander in chief of the marching headquarters of all the circuits, and that in the fifth month the office of Palace Attendant was added to Gao Pian and he was relieved of the post of Salt and Iron Transport Commissioner. Gao Pian, having lost his hold on the troops and then been loosed from his hold on the revenues, pushed up his sleeves and cursed aloud, and sent up a memorial pleading his own case, and his words were not respectful, and the emperor had Zheng Tian draft an edict to rebuke him sharply. Now look into this collection, and there is the Memorial of Thanks for the Added Office of Palace Attendant, and it does no more than take the fault on himself in yielding words, and there is not one word in it of hot anger or of arrogance. There is also the Memorial of Thanks for the Gift of an Imperial Message of Comfort, which says, "I look up to the imperial word, and it deeply approves my poor government, and says that the troops are in harmony and the common people are at rest." The comfort and encouragement he was granted were as warm and as earnest as this. Then what the histories call "an edict drafted to rebuke him sharply" may well be no true record of that time.

Looking further, the Zhonghe reign stopped at its fourth year, and yet Master Choe set down the year and the month of his memorial as the sixth year of Zhonghe. It may be that Master Choe put out to sea in the tenth month of the fourth year of Zhonghe, and reached his own country only in the spring of the year after, and put this collection together and sent it up the year after that, and so he had not yet heard that the reign name had been changed to Guangqi a year before.

On the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the gabo year, Seo Yugu of Dalseong writes this in the Gwanpung Hall of the provincial office of Honam.