Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 20 — Enclosures

A separate letter sent up to the Grand Commandant: the fourth上太尉別紙

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 · 132 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 20 — 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.

1Waiting ten days for a wind at Rushan, I met the winter

某舟船行李。自到乳山。旬日候風。已及冬節。海師進難。懇請駐留。某方忝榮身。唯憂辱命。乘風破浪。旣輸宗愨之言。長楫短篙。實涉惠施之說。雖仰資恩煦。不憚險艱。然正値驚波。難踰巨壑。今則已依曲浦。暫下飛廬。結茅茨以庇身。糝藜藿而充腹。候過殘臈。決撰行期。若及春日載陽。必無終風且暴。便當直帆。得遂榮歸。謹具別狀啓申。伏惟云云。

Since my ship and baggage reached Rushan I have waited ten days for a wind, and the winter season has already come. The pilot says it is hard to go forward and earnestly asks to stay. I have just been unworthily granted honor for my person, and I fear only that I may disgrace my commission. In riding the wind and breaking the waves I have already offered the words of Zong Que, and in long oars and short poles I truly touch the argument of Hui Shi. Though I lean on the warmth of your kindness and do not shrink from danger and hardship, I have met the very season of startled waves and cannot cross the great gulf. So now I have taken shelter in a curved inlet and come down for a while from the high cabin. I thatch a reed hut to shelter my body and mix goosefoot and bean leaves to fill my belly, and I wait for the last of the twelfth month to pass before I settle the date of travel. When the spring days carry warmth there will surely be no wind that blows all day and rages, and then I shall set sail straight and fulfill my glorious return. Respectfully I draw up this separate letter and report. I humbly consider, and so on.