Hoai Thanh with Nghe An Homeland
I remember, when I was in my first years of primary school in Hue, the school had a rule: students had to write their name, year of birth, and hometown on the "ê-ti-ket" (notebook label). In the hometown section, my father showed me: "Kim Cam village, Kim Nguyen commune, Nghi Loc district, Nghe An province". That place is my paternal hometown, where my father was born. Later, that village was also called Hoang Cac village. It is currently hamlet 22, Nghi Trung commune, Nghi Loc district.
In the essay "Returning to the Village" (1), Hoai Thanh recalls his old impressions of his hometown: "In the past, I still thought my province was one of the poorest in the country, my district was one of the poorest in the province and my village was one of the poorest in the district." Before the August Revolution and then two wars along with many other historical changes, that land was probably still at the bottom of the list of poverty.
But poverty can never be erased, it can never destroy the will to overcome the fierce challenges of heaven and earth and history, it cannot make the people here bow their heads and accept their disadvantaged fate. On the contrary, the people here have raised their heads high with the spirit of Nghe An, contributing to the country, to history, to the national culture many heroes, martyrs, talented people... remembered by many generations of Vietnamese people.
"At the beginning of this century (20th century BC), there were Lao winds that turned the night white, white hair, continuously throwing endless groups of war horses as fierce as Mongolian horses onto the village fields that were heated to over 100 degrees and burned down tiled and thatched houses. On those nights, our grandfather and Hoai Thanh, after the collapse of the Van Than movement, stayed up all night burning incense to finish writing the Nam Su Dien Ca (Let's burn incense until morning - To see how long the wind and rain will last?). (2).
In 1909, on July 15, in the scorching heat of the Lao wind, Hoai Thanh was born from that poor village. "During the years of the early century, what I call the people of Nghe - Tinh were born through a continuous mixing, kneading and nurturing, every minute by nurturing, education, in general, an endless life according to a predetermined formula of combination... And at that time, Vietnamese mothers and wives, one after another, stood up to defeat the barbarians (invaders-Dr.) in the forever heroic Thermophyles battles" (3).
The homeland has given Hoai Thanh "a very special capital, such as being rich in all knowledge about the village's gardens and fields, proficient in bird catching, kite flying, separating straw stalks to catch perch, climbing trees to get bird nests, searching for chestnut flowers on the banks of ponds at noon, and finally, please allow me to call it the seed capital of poetry so that later, if I find good soil to sow, I can also hope to cultivate it into poetry: Sister An! Do you see anything? You only see the setting sun and the green grass!".
Like that, the two of us
Like Hoai Thanh
Thus, children were born during the years of national destruction and family ruin" (4).
Hoai Thanh stayed in his hometown until he turned nineteen. During his childhood, Hoai Thanh more or less participated in farm work while studying at the village school. When he went to primary school in Vinh, he had to work as a tutor and open a summer class to support himself and his family. In 1928, he went to Hanoi to study at Buoi School (now Chu Van An School - PhD). Before that, in 1927, while studying in Vinh, he participated in the movement to demand amnesty for Phan Boi Chau and the memorial service for Phan Chu Trinh. And, according to Nguyen Duc Binh - the son of Hoai Thanh's paternal uncle who studied in the same class and school as Hoai Thanh at that time - recounted in the article I quoted some passages above that the student Nguyen Duc Nguyen (Hoai Thanh's real name) was always at the top of the class and received an honorary degree from the school every year. "And one morning, people saw a gentle and fearful student in front of the supervisor transform into a kind of small leader, initiating a vibrant movement that attracted every student in the school to join him in living according to the national spirit: eating, dressing, speaking in Vietnamese clothes, Vietnamese style, Vietnamese language instead of French" (5). Because of such patriotic activities, while studying in Vinh, Hoai Thanh was recorded in his school report: "Has a bad mind, must be closely monitored" (6). In the same year 1927, while still studying in Vinh, Hoai Thanh joined the Tan Viet Revolutionary Party.
Studying at Buoi School, Hoai Thanh continued to participate in Tan Viet Party activities. In early 1930, Tan Viet was broken up. Hoai Thanh was arrested by French secret police at the Hanoi Secret Police Department and then sent back to Vinh and imprisoned in Vinh Prison. Hoai Thanh was sentenced to 6 months of suspended imprisonment so he was allowed to return to Buoi School to continue studying. One day, French secret police searched Hoai Thanh's drawer and found anti-political books so they expelled him from the school. Hoai Thanh had to teach privately to support himself and study by himself until he passed the Western Baccalaureate exam (at that time, if he was expelled from school, he could not take the local Baccalaureate exam - TS). In mid-1930, Hoai Thanh went to work for Pho Thong newspaper in Hanoi. Also working at the newspaper's editorial office were writer Ngo Tat To and his cousin Nguyen Duc Binh.
Hoai Thanh's articles were anti-French colonialist and were often censored. At that time, the colonialist government's policy was not to censor French-language newspapers. So Hoai Thanh discussed with the newspaper owner to publish Le Peuple (People) to freely attack French colonialists and their lackeys. This was the first French-language newspaper in the North. The newspaper sold very well. The newspaper had 3 issues, and while issue 4 was being printed, there was a French order to expel Nguyen Duc Binh and Hoai Thanh. Both were imprisoned at the Hanoi Secret Service and then taken to Vinh and handed over to the district and village chief for house arrest in their hometown. At that time, it was the end of 1930, the Nghe-Tinh Soviet movement was at its peak. Hoai Thanh wrote in "Autobiography": "I was bewildered and did not understand anything (meaning I did not understand the Nghe - Tinh - TS Soviet movement). I only knew one thing: with a suspended prison sentence and a sentence of expulsion, I could be arrested and very possibly killed. At that time, the Foreign Legion posts were densely located in my hometown, and every day they still killed people without any reason. In addition, famine was raging. I went to Vinh to find a job. Billet, the chief of Vinh's secret police, called me and asked me to be his henchman. I refused. Not long after, I found a teaching position in the house of a Chinese man, the owner of the Cong Hoa Hotel in Vinh. Bui Huy Tin, the owner of the Dac Lap Printing House in Hue, passed by and knew that I had a bachelor's degree, so he negotiated to bring me to Hue to work as a mortician in the printing house (1931)" (7).
Hoai Thanh worked as a mortise repairman, then taught privately, wrote for newspapers, wrote the book Literature and Action, and wrote Vietnamese Poets for more than 15 years in Hue. At the end of 1945, following a decree of President Ho Chi Minh (signed on October 10, 1945) on the establishment of the University of Literature, Hoai Thanh was sent to Hanoi to teach at the university. The national resistance war broke out, Hoai Thanh returned from Viet Bac to his hometown, taking his wife and children to Viet Bac until 1955 when he returned to Hanoi to take on new duties: Head of the Department of Arts, Professor of the University of Education and General Studies, Vice President of the Institute of Literature, General Secretary of the Literature and Arts Association, Editor-in-Chief of the Literature and Arts Weekly, etc. As the years passed, Hoai Thanh was only able to visit his hometown for a short while, a couple of days, sometimes just a few hours, then had to leave immediately for work. The nostalgia for his hometown still ached in him. It was not until 1961, nearly thirty years later, that Hoai Thanh had the opportunity to actually return to the village for a while. The emotions and impressions of that trip back to the village were vividly recorded by Hoai Thanh in the article "Returning to the Village" first published in Thong Nhat Newspaper No. 224 - published on September 15, 1961. Hoai Thanh emotionally wrote: "My feet walked on the smooth sandy village road as if I were going back to the past, a distant past not only because of the years but also because of the great changes that had occurred.
From afar, I could see the sparse bamboo shoots behind the old garden. Those bamboo shoots were so dear to me. Back then, when I had to leave home to study in the province, when I turned back to look at the swaying bamboo shoots, my tears just flowed, I couldn’t hold them back. In my young mind at that time, in the midst of a life full of indifference, lies and cruelty, only here was there love. Now, life has changed and the way I look at life has changed, but those bamboo shoots still have a special place in my heart.
I know every bamboo bank, every corner of the field, every turn on the road. I walked into the old garden. The old house was gone. The trees my teacher had planted in the past were scattered, only a few remained. But in the new setting, I still clearly remembered everything that was old. It seemed like I remembered more clearly than I saw, the old image was more vivid than the scene unfolding before my eyes. I remembered the guava tree by the pond, I remembered the well in the corner of the garden where the south wind bathed me coolly, I remembered the hibiscus row outside the alley where my younger brother hurried out to welcome me home to give me some candy, I remembered the xoan trees where every spring we used to string flowers into purple beads, I remembered the yellow star bushes behind the house where magpies often made nests, I remembered the bamboo bed where my mother died, my teacher's reading table, I remembered so many gentle, pitiful faces.
Returning to the countryside that year, Hoai Thanh: "I suddenly spoke with my hometown accent, an accent that is very difficult to understand for other regions because not only does it not distinguish between heavy and high tones, but at first hearing it seems like there are no accents to distinguish one from another. But when I hear it, it sounds light and clear."
In the article, Hoai Thanh vividly recorded the people and miserable life in the old countryside with scenes of poor people starving to death, scenes of thugs collecting debts, scenes of Westerners, French secret agents, and Foreign Legion soldiers torturing people "more fiercely than a pack of rich dogs". Along with those tragic scenes was an invisible world full of ghosts and gods that weighed heavily on the lives of gentle people, helpless before the times. Hoai Thanh wrote: "Those shadows have weighed heavily on a period of my life, especially on my thoughts during my youth. So even though I miss my youth, I do not want to return to my old life a thousand times... Saying that on the way back to my hometown, I felt like I was going back to the past, but in fact, it was because I still carried the past within me. My perception has changed in many ways. But regarding my village, my perception is almost the same as the old perception. It can be imagined that I have been sleeping for thirty years, and now suddenly waking up, the whole life around me has completely changed."
Hoai Thanh respectfully recorded in his memoir the positive changes in the life of his village despite the many hardships at that time. At the end of the memoir, Hoai Thanh happily recorded his overwhelming emotions when returning to his beloved village: "The whole life that had been dark and dense for hundreds of years, even thousands of years, has suddenly become filled with light. Certainly, in many other localities, the achievements we have achieved are much greater. But I have never felt the revolutionary cause as miraculous as when I look back at my village"...
If God had given my father a hundred years of age (in 2009, Hoai Thanh would have been 100 years old), I would definitely hold his hand so that we could go back to visit our hometown together. I believe that when we got off at Quan Hanh station, we would have walked a short distance to the old Hoi Temple grounds (now there is a gas station on that ground) and he would have asked: "Where are the banyan tree and Hoi Temple?". Without waiting for my answer, he would have urged me: "Let's go to the cemetery to burn incense for my grandfather, ancestors, relatives in the Nguyen Duc family, uncle Nguyen Duc Cong (a patriot who participated in founding the Vietnam Restoration Association, executed by the French colonial government along with patriot Tran Huu Luc at Bach Mai shooting range, Hanoi in 1916. The two of them were buried together in the same grave at the Nguyen Duc cemetery, Hanh Tau branch. Nguyen Duc Cong was the father of Nguyen Duc Binh - PhD.) and your younger brother Nguyen Duc Kien." I believe that after burning incense at the family cemetery, my father will stop by the family church, burn incense and certainly he will ask to go straight into the village to visit the old house and garden, chat with relatives and constantly express his joy, happiness and surprise at the change that he could not imagine when he returned to the village in 1961!
Lang Ha, Hanoi, mid-April 2008
TS
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All the quotations of the authors: Nguyen Duc Binh (from note 2 to note 5), Hoai Chan (note 6) and Hoai Thanh (notes 1 and 7) in this article I have extracted from Hoai Thanh Complete Works (volume 3 and volume 4). The book was collected and compiled by Tu Son. Van Hoc Publishing House - Hanoi - 1999.
(1) Ibid. Vol. 3, p.928.
(2) Ibid. Vol. 4, p. 1035
(3) Ibid. Vol. 4, pp. 1036-1037
(4) Ibid. Vol. 4, p. 1038
(5) Ibid. Vol. 4, p. 1042
(6) Ibid. Vol. 4, p. 1025
(7) Ibid. Vol. 4, p.913.
Writer Tu Son (Hanoi)
