Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 12 — Dispatches

To Li Zhi of Huaikou — to one raised to Grand General of the Right Guard淮口李質

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 · 107 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 12 — Dispatches 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.

1How many men can take a rank and feel no shame?

報李質。得進奏院狀報。知質轉授右衛大將軍。且自數年。君恩溥合。官榮職賞。可謂均沾。然而成功可爲受爵無愧者。屈指而數。能復幾人。唯質久戍淮壖。遠防寇孼。勤勞最至。品秩尙卑。今授大將軍之名。乃滿烈丈夫之望。更宜愼守。無慮湮沈。慰愜歎嘉。不離懷抱。遣此不具云云。

A notice to Li Zhi. I have had the report of the Bureau of Memorials and learn that you have been moved and given the post of Grand General of the Right Guard. For some years now the ruler's kindness has spread wide, and office and glory, rank and reward, may be called evenly bestowed. Yet of those who have achieved something and can take a rank without shame, how many are left when you count them on your fingers? You alone have long guarded the Huai shore and have kept off the host of calamity far away. Your diligent toil has been the greatest, and your grade was still low. Now the name of Grand General is given you, and it fills the hope of a stout-hearted man. Be careful again to hold it fast, and have no fear of sinking out of sight. Comfort and content, praise and admiration, do not leave my breast. I send this and cannot set it all out, and so on.