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 fifth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 · 207 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 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.

1A warm winter may mean much great wind at sea

某啓。自叨指使。唯欲奮飛。必期不讓秋鷹。便能截海。豈料翻成跂鼈。尙類曳泥。雖愼三思而行。且乖一擧之儁。旣勞淹久。合具啓陳。某嘗讀國語。見海鳥爰居止於魯東門之外。展禽曰。今玆海有災乎。夫廣川之鳥獸。常知而避其災。是歲也海多大風冬暖。伏見今年自十月之交。至于周正月。略無觱發。發覺温燠。必恐魯修濫祠。豳改成詩。靜思漢祖之興歌。大風可懼。遙想田橫之竄迹。絶島難依。遂於登舟。近浦止泊。籠鵠無失。藩羊自安。唯願時然後行。必當利有攸往。泛艆艘而不滯。指渤澥而非遙。冀申專對之能。早遂再來之望。伏惟云云。

I submit this. Since I unworthily received your direction I have wished only to rise and fly, looking to yield nothing to the autumn hawk and to cut across the sea at once. How could I have reckoned that I would turn instead into a turtle on tiptoe, still like one dragging through mud? Though I am careful to think three times before I act, for now I fall short of the boldness of one stroke, and my long delay is a labor, so it is fitting that I set this out fully. I once read the Guoyu and saw that when the sea bird yuanju settled outside the east gate of Lu, Zhan Qin said, "Is there a calamity at sea this year? The birds and beasts of the broad rivers always know a calamity and avoid it." In that year there was much great wind at sea and the winter was warm. I humbly observe that this year, from the turn of the tenth month to the first month of the Zhou calendar, there has been almost no biting wind and I feel it is rather warm. I fear that Lu will surely keep up excessive sacrifices and that the airs of Bin will alter their poem. Thinking quietly of Gaozu of Han raising his song, the great wind is to be feared; thinking far off of Tian Heng hiding his traces, a cut-off island is hard to lean on. So I boarded the ship and then stopped and anchored at a near inlet, and the swan in the cage loses nothing while the sheep by the hedge is at ease of itself. I wish only to go when the time is right, for then there will surely be profit in having somewhere to go. I shall float the great ship without hindrance and point at Bohai and find it not far, and I hope to unfold the skill of answering on my own and to fulfill early my wish to come again. I humbly consider, and so on.

Interlinear notes 1

The received text has 發, taken here as an error for 頗 and read as "rather." — tr.

‹ Text for the sacrifice to the god of Mount Chanshan Contents A separate letter sent up to the Grand Commandant: the fourth ›Listen to this piece