To Minister Pei Qianyu of Xuanshe — the second宣歙裵虔餘尙書 第二
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) 桂苑筆耕集 · Choe Chiwon · 886 (Tang, 6th year of the Zhonghe era · Silla, 12th year of King Heongang) · 1 passages · 175 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 7 — Enclosures A collection Choe Chiwon made by choosing out of the writings of his four years in the headquarters of Gao Pian, military commissioner of Huainan under the Tang, binding them into twenty volumes and presenting them to King Heongang of Silla in 886. It holds 366 pieces — memorials and reports sent up to the emperor, the proclamation denouncing Huang Chao, letters to the several military commissioners, orders and dispatches issued to those under him, Daoist and Buddhist texts for services, funeral offerings, records written for the outer wall of Chengdu and for a painting of Annam, and the reports and poems he sent up to Gao Pian. Here is the first report, which begins "I am a man of Silla," and the proclamation against Huang Chao with its line, "Not only do all the men of the world think to kill you openly; the ghosts under the earth have already discussed cutting you down in secret." The last volume holds the poems he made on the voyage home to the country he had left at twelve. It is the oldest collection by a Korean that survives, and when Hong Seokju and Seo Yugu printed it with movable type in 1834 they called it "the root and the beginning of the writing of our Eastern Country." Their two prefaces are translated with it.
1On seeing the memorial in which he declined the summons to care for his parent
He has been so good as to send down a letter in his own hand and to show me besides the draft of the memorial that lays out his feelings. I hold it and read it without weariness, and my joy and my congratulation have more to give. Of late the manners of the age have gone badly astray, and filial duty is often wanting. Men serve their parents thinly and put the serving of themselves first. They only race and strive to bring honor to their own persons, and they take no thought of parting and leaving. Now I see the Minister decline the summoning writ from afar and send up an earnest memorial. He sets out how he has shared the cares of the state until now, and he does not boast of his rich achievements, and he asks that from now on he may care for his parent at home. He has truly taken the words of the model to heart. Still more, if the Minister went to the traveling court he would surely rise to the chancellor's seat. Yet he will not go near the plum cauldron, and asks instead to carry his parent's litter. This is to flee the honor of the high seat and the dragon robe and to long only for the joy of the striped coat. He will set his name level with the memorial of Li Mi for ten thousand ages, and he will make the price of the poems of Shu Xi stand long for a thousand autumns. In this we see him cultivate a fair name and spur the current of the age across its course. How should it be only fine talk of high virtue? It is truly a full deed of the restoration. I have no way to bow and offer my congratulations. I only cling and lean upon him the more keenly, and so on.