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 · 141 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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.
1The well frog that lay alone by the north window hurries to the eastern hall
I submit this. On the tenth of this month I was able to wait upon the Grand Commandant and see him. The wind was still on the Bohai, and the road to Penglai was open. I was ashamed that I am no treasure of the mat, and I unworthily became a guest inside the gourd. His warm face was kind to me, and my mean substance gained honor. The phoenix wing and the dragon scale allowed me to cling to them at last, and the foolish hawk and the dull dog were called and pointed out by his special leave. He urged me to a heart of restraint and care, and he instructed me with a meaning of praise and kindness. All this is because you, deputy commissioner, did not cast off my thin skill and spoke weighty words for me again and again. At first, when I lay alone by the north window, I was like a frog leaping in a well. How could I have reckoned that I would hurry in honor to the eastern hall, like a crane riding in a carriage? I already know that wind and cloud are what I lean upon, and in the icy valley I have no leisure to sit at ease. In my gratitude there are only tears, and my sincerity stops where words end. Since I have unworthily joined the army, it is hard to ask for leave, and so I cannot wait upon you and set out my thanks.