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A separate letter to the Minister, my examiner上座主尙書別紙

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 · 230 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 19 — Reports and 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.

1You would be a minister in the mountains, but what of the living souls of the world

不審近日。尊體寢膳何似。道惟滌慮。德以潤身。致五福之併臻。迎百靈之所薦。伏惟節宣無爽。時望有歸。某竊窺曩史之傳芳。備載達僚之晦迹。疏太傅登其祖帳。僅涉沽名。陶朱公泛彼柏舟。未忘邀利。豈若尙書中庸守志。大隱存神。表獨見之能。察未萌之事。遂得高揚素節。夙避危時。到處煙塵。不汙指鴻之目。終年雲水。能怡夢蝶之心。然而宸鑑屢回。物情猶鬱。欲作山中宰相。其如天下蒼生。卽期大駕還京。必赴上台虛位。斯乃萬乘瞻矚。四方禱祈。某海燕含泥。忝棲雲屋。池蛟得雨。早脫塵塗。感恩自比於互鄕。仰德但思於闕里。唯願泥沙賤質。永資陶冶深恩。卑情不任攀戀虔祝涕泣之至。謹狀。

I do not know how your honored person has been sleeping and eating these days. The Way washes care away, and virtue makes the body rich. The five blessings arrive together, and you meet what the hundred spirits offer up. I bow and think that your health is without fault, and that the hopes of the age have somewhere to turn. I have quietly looked into the fragrance handed down by the histories of old, which set out in full how officials of attainment hid their tracks. Grand Tutor Shu, when he climbed into the farewell tents, barely touched on buying a name. Lord Tao Zhu, when he floated that cypress boat, had not forgotten to court a profit. How could they match you, Minister, who hold to your purpose by the mean and keep your spirit whole in the great seclusion, who show the power of seeing alone and examine matters before they sprout? So you have raised your plain integrity high and avoided the dangerous times early. The smoke and dust of every quarter cannot stain the eye that points at the wild goose, and the clouds and waters of the whole year can gladden the heart that dreams of the butterfly. And yet the gaze of the throne turns back to you again and again, and the feeling of the world is still pent up. You would be a minister in the mountains, but what of the living souls of the world? Soon the imperial carriage will return to the capital, and you must go to the empty seat at the highest terrace. This is what the lord of ten thousand chariots looks to, and what the four quarters pray for. I am like a swallow of the sea holding mud in its beak, undeservedly lodged in a house of clouds, like a dragon of the pool that has met with rain, escaped early from the dusty road. In my gratitude I liken myself to the men of Huxiang. In looking up to your virtue I think only of Queli. I wish only that this cheap stuff of mud and sand may draw forever on the deep kindness that shapes it. The feeling of one low cannot bear his longing, his reverent prayer, and his tears, and it reaches its height. Respectfully submitted.

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