Yetgeul › Pilwon Japgi (Miscellaneous Jottings from the Garden of the Brush) › Postface

Colophon — Yi Se-jwa跋

Pilwon Japgi (Miscellaneous Jottings from the Garden of the Brush) 筆苑雜記 · Seo Geojeong · 1487 (Joseon, 18th year of King Seongjong) · 1 passages · 214 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min

Pilwon Japgi (Miscellaneous Jottings from the Garden of the Brush) Postface Jottings that Seo Geojeong set down at leisure as his brush ran, cut on blocks at Uiseong in 1487. It holds 177 passages of court and country over the hundred years from the founding of Joseon to the reign of King Seongjong. Men are left just as they were — Yu Gwan, who held up an umbrella against a leaking roof; Hwang Hui, who did not grow angry even when a servant child made water on his papers; Choe Yundeok, who shot a tiger and did not know what beast it was; Seong Gan, who read out the whole of a library in one night. Beside them stand passages where the author sets out his own thought: the one in which he told King Sejo that the four pillars of a fate run out at five hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred and so the books of destiny cannot be trusted, and the ones arguing over the doctrine of geomancy and the rules for posthumous titles. He grades the character of the Chinese envoys one by one, and here too is the place where he says of the Samguk Sagi that "it is not a book that hands down what can be trusted." The three prefaces by Paeng So, Pyo Yeon-mal and Jo Wi, and the colophon by Yi Se-jwa, are translated with it.

1Yi Se-jwa's colophon — a wing to the history of the state

右筆苑雜記。吾座主四佳徐相公閑中信筆所著也。丁未春。弘文校理兪侯好仁。出守義城來也。公付以手抄一本。俾鏤諸梓。遂走書於余以勖之。僕聞命以來。凡鳩工供費之事。一皆移諸傍邑。因堅囑兪以壽其傳焉。吁是書皆吾東方國家之典攷。賢臣之事蹟。該而備。博而卞。實羽翼於國乘者。非滑稽小說之比也。況公之德業文章。固將冠一世而聳百代。奚待此書之傳而後益顯耶。然後之人觀是編。亦足以知公學問之博。而祖宗制作之盛。賢士大夫嘉言懿行。亦將爲法於後世。夫豈小補哉。成化紀元二十三年九月日。門人觀察使漢原李世佐謹跋。

The Piwon japgi above is what my examiner, Chancellor Seo Saga, wrote with a free brush in his hours of leisure. In the spring of the jeongmi year, when Lord Yu Ho-in, an editor in the Hongmungwan, went out to govern Uiseong, the duke gave him a copy he had written out in his own hand and had it cut in blocks, and then he sent a letter to me to urge me on. Since I received his word, in all the work of gathering the craftsmen and meeting the costs I moved everything to the neighboring counties, and I pressed Lord Yu firmly, so that the book might be handed down long. Ah, this book is wholly the old records of the country of the East and the doings of its worthy ministers. It is complete and full, wide and discerning. It is truly a wing to the history of the state, and not a thing to set beside jesting tales. Moreover the duke's virtue and works and his writing surely crown one age and will tower over a hundred generations. Why should they wait until this book is handed down to shine the brighter? Yet when men of later days look on this book, it is enough to let them know how broad the duke's learning was. And the abundance of what the ancestors made, and the fine words and noble deeds of worthy scholars and officials, will become a rule for later ages. How could that be a small help? On a day in the ninth month of the twenty-third year since the Chenghua era began, his disciple Yi Se-jwa of Hanwon, provincial governor, respectfully writes this colophon.

Contents Volume Two ›Listen to this piece