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

To Minister Zheng Ningji of Bizhou — the second壁州鄭凝績尙書 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 · 122 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.

1To one who drafted the imperial rescript and sent a letter besides

某素無材術。謬荷寵章。頃握兵權。方擧上將軍之令。爰沾睿渥。叨承大馬之榮。仰覩鳳書。深慙豹略。此時未審尙書躡八花塼之影。綴五色筆之詞。刻畫恩深。游揚意重。不獲早申感激。遠謝褒稱。又奉華緘。方知麗藻。雖早榮紙貴。固無愧於士安。而每想筆乾。實有慙於玄照。旣多闕禮。何贖深辜。伏惟眷私。終賜恕察云云。

I have no talent or art by nature, yet wrongly I have borne the writ of favor. Of late I held the power of arms and was just raising the orders of a senior general when I was steeped in the sovereign's rich grace and unworthily received the glory of the Grand Marshal's office. Looking up at the phoenix writing, I was deeply ashamed of my own grasp of the art of war. At that time I did not know that the Minister had trodden the shadow of the eight-flower tiles and woven the words of the five-colored brush, that his kindness was deep as carving and painting and his intent weighty in bearing me up, and so I could not set out my gratitude early or thank him from afar for his praise. Now I receive his splendid letter besides, and only now do I know his fair style. Though the glory of making paper dear came to him early, so that he need not blush before Shi'an, yet whenever I think how my own brush runs dry I am truly ashamed before Xuanzhao. My failures of courtesy are many already; with what shall I redeem so deep a fault? I humbly ask that in his private kindness he grant me pardon and understanding to the end. And so on.