Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 9 — Enclosures

To Minister of Works Zhou Bao of Zhexi浙西周寶司空

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 · 206 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 9 — 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.

1Thanking him for choosing a man to write the stele

昨奉緘翰。兼寄示書碑樣。眷私旣深。披閱無倦。其於榮抃。無以喩陳。某每念久握兵戎。累移節制。雖纘弓裘之業。未揚鍾鼎之勳。況乃來暮歌稀。行春化拙。豈期睿獎。特采微勞。許標不朽之規。遠降非常之寵。至如仲尼儒術。始流芳於沂水之湄。元凱戰功。方掛美於峴山之頂。愚實何效。遂叨此榮。司空念切憂忘。事諧響應。猥垂恩力。妙選書工。所謂知臣者莫若聖君。成我者固須良友。有始有卒。念玆在玆。彼雖未起雕鐫。此已先深銘鏤。今者干戈務擁。筆硯事疏。不及別請他人。敬遵來命。唯望早成刊勒。實賴獎憐。其碑詞同封呈上云云。

The other day I received his letter, and with it he sent me a sample of the writing for the stele. His private kindness is deep already, and I read it over without weariness. There is no way to liken or declare my glory and my delight. I always think how long I have held the weapons of war and how often I have moved from one command to another, and that though I have carried on the calling handed down from my fathers I have not yet raised the merit that is cast on bell and tripod. Still more, the song "Why so late in coming" is rare with me, and my teaching on the spring circuit is clumsy. How could I have looked for the sage's encouragement, that he should pick out my small labor, allow it to be marked in a form that will not rot, and send down from afar so uncommon a favor? The learning of Confucius first sent its fragrance along the bank of the Yi; the war deeds of Yuankai have just now hung their beauty on the crest of Mount Xian. What has my foolishness truly accomplished, that in the end I should receive this glory unworthily? The Minister of Works, whose thought is keen to make men forget their cares and whose deeds answer like an echo, has stooped to lend me his kindness and his strength and has chosen a master of the brush with rare judgment. This is what is meant when they say that none knows the servant like a sage ruler, and that he who would complete me must wait upon a good friend. To have a beginning and to have an end — I think of this, I think of this. There the carving has not yet begun, but here it is already cut deep. Now I am busy holding shield and spear and far from the work of brush and inkstone, and I have no leisure to ask another man, so I respectfully follow the order he has sent. I hope only that it may soon be cut and set up, and truly I lean upon his encouragement and his care. I send up the text of the stele in the same wrapper. And so on.

‹ To Minister of Works Zhou Bao of Zhexi — the second Contents To his lordship Wang, Commander in Chief — the third ›Listen to this piece