The Family Book

No Pil 노필

Muk-jae (墨齋) · 1464–1532

"From boyhood he had no taste for office. He would not write the set-piece essays the examinations required, and gave himself to moral philosophy instead. A diviner once told him he would place first in the year of the Earth Tiger; he laughed, saying he would be past fifty by then and cared nothing for rank. In the spring of 1519 the court held a special examination by recommendation, for men of known character. He was put forward, and passed, as the diviner had said.

"He held the post a few months. That same year the reform party fell; he was stripped of office and returned home, and is said to have gone gladly. He named his retreat for a 'drunk stone,' after Tao Yuanming, who would lie down drunk upon a rock. There he kept his books, declined every later summons, and did not serve again."

Ok-chon 옥촌

No Geuk-hong · 1553–1625 · staff officer

"He served as secretary and staff officer to Gwak Jae-u, the Righteous Army commander called the Red Coat General, and took part in the planning of the camp. In 1597 he helped hold the fortress at Hwawang, which the enemy did not venture to attack. When the war ended the court offered him a commandery and a magistracy. He declined them, saying he had done no more than his duty, and went home to farm and to teach."

Ip-jae 입재

No Geuk-u · 1527–1602

"He studied under Jo Sik of Nammyeong, who wore a bell at his waist and kept a sword beside him, and held that learning counted for nothing unless it was acted upon. When the Japanese came he wiped his eyes and rose, raising a militia though he was already sixty-five. At the death of his parents he kept the three years' mourning beside the grave, eating only gruel. He died soon after the war's end."

Hwa-am 화암

No Geuk-wi · 1551–1604

"He disliked the contention of the examinations and did not sit them. Two brothers of the village once fell to quarreling over a field. He covered his eyes and said he could not bear to watch, that the bond of brothers was given by Heaven and they would trade it for a clod of earth; and the two were ashamed and gave way. His kinsman Mae-juk-wa (노극성), the 'plum-and-bamboo studio,' was of the same quiet line."

Guk-dam 국담

No Hae · 1598–1663 · Ok-chon's grandson

"When the court fell to debating whether to fight the Qing or come to terms, he sent up a memorial against the peace, holding that a state which lives on by becoming a vassal has already suffered the worse death.

Better the country broken and in the right than whole and in service. the sense of his memorial, as the book gives it

"After the king's surrender he went home and planted chrysanthemums, which flower in the cold, and did not take office again."

Sa-mae-dang 사매당

No Pyo · 1598–1646

"He was born the same year as Guk-dam. He studied under Jeong Gu of Hangang, and when the old scholar was struck down by palsy he attended him without leaving, watching over his medicine and his food by day and by night. His teacher gave him four plum trees in thanks; he planted them at his house and named his hall for them, the Hall of the Four Plums."

Mang-ho-jeong 망호정

No Jeom · 1600–1671

"On the bank of the Nakdong he built a pavilion and called it Mang-ho-jeong, the lake-view pavilion. There the scattered gentry of the district gathered to drink and to write, and, in his own phrase, to forget the aging world for a while. The pavilion still stands at Changnyeong, and a branch of the family takes its name from it."

Song-cheon 송천

No Seok-tae

"After two wars had passed through the country within a single century, he set himself to record them: a chronicle of the kingdom and a geography of the district, that the deeds of the militia generation might not be lost from the official histories, which had their own cause to forget. The work never circulated, and never left the family."

Banggok 방곡

"Fragrant Valley" · late 1600s–early 1700s · poet

"The fourth volume is his alone, a book of poems. He was often ill, wrote steadily to his friends, and was asked for the verses at every sixtieth and seventieth birthday in his circle. In one poem he dreams that his late teacher hands him a text, and wakes ashamed, skilled (he feared) in fine words but not in the deeper learning the man had prized.

Guest, come in, but leave the talk of glory and rank at the door. I already know my name is not on the list. from "Living in Seclusion"

"He kept to a small circle in the country, and wrote, to the end, of his friends and his own poor health."