Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 8 — Enclosures

To Prince Li Keju of Youzhou — the fourth幽州李可擧大王 第四

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 · 203 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 8 — 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.

1In praise of his purpose in seeking out old books

別奉榮緘。遠搜古籍。其於降歎。無以喩陳。且近者。列土諸侯。盈庭多士。唯以宦塗銳志。少於儒術留心。而乃侍中大王博古通今。去華取實。燕碣石之接土。已繼芳蹤。漢維城之好書。遠符仁旨。是以。訪遺編於汲冢。尋墜簡於魯宮。然則荊軻易水之歌。徒矜壯氣。召伯甘棠之詠。虛播政聲。豈若博采聖人之書。用光君子之道。但懷鑽仰。敢覬切磋。況某久擁戎旃。難親講席。耽讀闕五千卷之數。藏貯無三十車之多。自奉指蹤。願申誠懇。遍令列肆。廣集異書。冀資日益之功。寧憚風詠之過。必可徵名東觀。承乏西齋。伏惟俯賜鑑察云云。

Apart from this I received his glorious letter, saying that he seeks out old books from afar. My admiration is beyond the reach of words. Of late the lords who hold parceled lands and the officers who fill the court sharpen their will only upon the road of office, and few set their hearts upon the arts of the scholar. Yet the Palace Attendant and Prince is broad in what is old and open to what is now, and he puts away show and takes what is solid. The land that borders the Stone of Jie in Yan already carries on a fragrant trace, and the love of books in the royal kinsmen who were the wall of Han answers his benevolent purpose from afar. So he seeks the remaining volumes in the tomb at Ji and looks for the fallen slips in the palace of Lu. If it is so, then the song of Jing Ke at the River Yi only boasts a stout spirit, and the song of the sweet pear for the Elder of Shao only spreads abroad a name for governing. How could they match the gathering in wide of the books of the sages, to give light to the way of the gentleman? I only hold a heart that bores into them and looks up to them; do I dare hope to cut and polish beside him? Still more, I have long held the war banner and can hardly come near the lecture mat. What I have read hungrily falls short of five thousand scrolls, and what I keep has nothing of the thirty cartloads. Since I have received what he points to, I wish to spread out my earnest care. I have ordered all the shops about to gather rare books widely. I hope it may serve the work that grows day by day; why should I shrink from the fault of chanting in the wind? Surely a name may be called to the Eastern Pavilion, and an empty seat filled in the Western Study. I humbly ask that he bend down and look upon this, and so on.

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