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 · 116 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 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.
His worthy father the Chief Minister did not listen to talk of my dullness and emptiness, but early let his kindness fall upon me. He always thought of my earnest wish to hold to the swan, and often sent me letters tied to the wild goose. Every stroke was a trace of Tao Kan's own hand, and never the off-hand dictation (口占) of Chen Zun. I have treasured them, and the letters will never fade — how should it be only three years? They are bright and glorious, and the favor in them has its source — twice as worthy as ten sections. Still more, with the Minister himself I once leaned upon the lane of the phoenix and met his dragon writing already. His pure talk I looked up to deeply as to Arong, and his rare courtesy I could grasp as from Hou Yu. I look up at the high mountain and stop there; on what day should I forget it? Now from afar I am honored with his glorious letter, and he has laid upon me praise beyond my worth. Forever I speak of my clapping and my gratitude, and I labor only to cut it into stone. And so on.