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 · 178 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 10 — 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 praised the memorial asking for an imperial progress
From afar I received your benevolent kindness, and you showed me the draft of the memorial. My admiration is beyond any words to set forth. I trained early in the arts of war and wished to aid the king's strategy. I am not ashamed to view heaven through a tube and to pierce the earth with an awl, and I still labor to gather clods of earth and to lead a trickle of water. So I have dared to offer my loyalty again and again, hoping to turn the sage gaze. If the six dragons should come down through the gorges, how would that be the same as the five horses crossing the river? The rites and music of the central court would not be marred, and the merit and counsel of one who treads in his forebears' footsteps would lie here. And indeed you have shown favor to one of your own kin and have supported me with a memorial, bestowing praise as rich as the dragon robe beyond my worth, so that I see the marvel of your colored brush all the more. An old poem says, "I do not grudge the singer his pain, but grieve only that one who knows the tune is rare." Today I have been lucky enough to meet one who knows the tune. Yet in your glorious letter you match me with the virtue and work of Wang Dao and rank me with the schemes of Liu Kun. When I look back at my own trifling talent, how could I bear such empty praise? Now the pure repute of Wang Dao has already been yielded to the Minister of the first seat, and the utmost sincerity of Liu Kun has been entrusted to the Vice Director of Xiangyang. I trust your bright mirror will look into this foolish heart forever. And so on.