Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 19 — Miscellaneous Letters

Letter of thanks to Song Xuan, the attendant censor謝宋絢侍御書

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 · 104 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 19 — Miscellaneous Letters 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 lent me an official carriage so that I could leave the inn

伏蒙殊造俯念移居。借賜官車。得離旅館。簦笈則免勞自負。簞瓢則各識所安。如承命駕之恩。但勵抹輪之志。今者卜隣甚靜。學殖可成。唯扃袁粲之門。不掃陳蕃之室。雖乘機立事。輸他附勢之榮。而守道安貧。贏得愛閒之樂。旣諧素志。但感深恩。伏惟終始俯賜念察。謹狀。

I have received a rare kindness. You stooped to think of my moving house and lent me an official carriage, so that I could leave the inn. My umbrella and book box are spared the labor of being carried on my own back, and my bowl and gourd each know where they may rest. Since I have received the kindness of a carriage at your command, I shall only strive after the resolve that wears the wheel away. Now the neighborhood I have chosen is very quiet, and the planting of learning can come to growth. I shall only bar the gate of Yuan Can and leave the room of Chen Fan unswept. Though I hand over to others the honor of seizing the moment, setting up affairs and clinging to power, yet by keeping the Way and resting content in poverty I win the joy of loving leisure. This already suits my plain purpose, and I am moved only by your deep kindness. I humbly trust that from first to last you will stoop to keep me in your thoughts. Respectfully submitted.