Poet Pham Quoc Ca: Longing for my homeland

(Baonghean) - “I only lived half in the real world at that time. Half of my mind lived in the world that writers and poets created”. Poet Pham Quoc Ca recounted in a memory of his childhood like that. And even now, I see that he is still the same, still living only half in the real world, the other half he devotes to his hopes, in poetry…

I met him, first through Facebook, then through phone calls. The doctor, poet, translator, critic... whom I secretly admired was unexpectedly simple and unusually approachable. He hesitated a bit when I told him I wanted to write a portrait of him, but then he still opened his heart to me. He told me about his passion for literature, about his childhood memories, about his time as a soldier, and about his nostalgia for his homeland...

“Must become a poet”

It was a small village by the Bung River - Tho Khanh village, Dien Ky commune (Dien Chau), where Pham Quoc Ca was born and ignited a love that gradually became endless for literature. Pham Quoc Ca and his brothers became great examples of studiousness in this poor village, despite the many hardships that befell the family, especially after his father died of a serious illness.

He said: “My family was so poor that we didn’t even have a desk, we had to use an old door as a desk. But poverty didn’t mean much to the boy who was always immersed in the world of literature.” Pham Quoc Ca had an uncle who was a literature teacher, and the house had a bookshelf. So “I was lucky to devour that bookshelf, like a mouse falling into a jar of rice.” He said that the boy - I at that time - only lived half of real life, the other half was in the world created by writers. That made him feel happier and richer.

Poet Pham Quoc Ca. Photo: TV

The fierce anti-American war took place in his homeland. During those days, Pham Quoc Ca was a boy who wore a straw hat to school every day. The classrooms were in dark basements with oil lamps covered with butter tubes. He remembered most the memory of poet To Huu, who visited his hometown when he was on a business trip to Zone IV. “For me, meeting poets was like seeing people from Heaven.”

Perhaps thanks to his love for literature, the hardships and difficulties of that time suddenly became easier for the young Pham Quoc Ca. He was an excellent student, achieving 5 points (the highest score at that time) in all subjects, and twice won the first prize in the provincial Literature competition in 1964 and 1970.

In 1965, he was honored to receive an award from Uncle Ho, who wrote in ink on the first page of the notebook given to him: "Uncle Ho's award to Pham Quoc Ca". He said he was moved, looking at those thin, sacred lines for a long time. Later, he gave the notebook back to the school before leaving for the army.

In 1967, during the review period for the provincial Literature exam, Pham Quoc Ca and his friends were taken home by teacher Nguyen Trong Ban for further training. There, he read the book “Vietnamese Poets” by Hoai Thanh - Hoai Chan. At that time, the book had to be “read secretly” and he still remembers his feeling at that time: “My soul was shocked. It was this book that guided my life: I must become a poet!”.

At the age of 17, Pham Quoc Ca volunteered to join the army after hearing the call of the Fatherland. He said: “I eagerly went to war with the silent, romantic desire to become a military poet.” In the backpack of that dreamy young man were two volumes of the novel “War and Peace” by Lev Tolstoy…

Soldier, teacher

Pham Quoc Ca became a soldier of the Special Forces Battalion, Division 9, fighting in Cambodia and the Southeast from 1970 until the day of total victory. The battlefield was not as dreamy as the young man with his poetic aspirations had painted.

However, another world, fierce and naked, helped him to have more emotions and love. It did not disappoint or callous him at all. In the midst of the bombs, in the midst of life and death, under the rolling barbed wire fences of the night reconnaissance of the enemy base...

Pham Quoc Ca silently held back his tears and resentment, and when he returned to the rear base, the young soldier copied the fiery verses into his notebook. Pham Quoc Ca’s first published poem was “In the siege tunnel” printed in 1972 in the Division’s “Brave Soldier” magazine: “We were in the siege tunnel/ It was pouring rain and steel/ Our whole bodies were stained red with the soil of our homeland/ Looking at each other made us feel closer and more affectionate…”.

Image of soldier Pham Quoc Ca. Photo archive

The theme of war and soldiers is an important theme in all of Pham Quoc Ca's poems. Not only because he was a soldier carrying his wounded comrades under the enemy's bullets. Not only because he stood by, holding the hands of the Squad Leader before closing his eyes, mourning for his loved ones back home.

Not only because he took care of and witnessed the last moments of his young comrade-in-arms who had not yet had time to say his love, but also because his hometown became the focus of American bombardment. American bombs turned the peaceful, poetic village shaded by bamboo and coconut trees into a flat land. And also because of the war, he had a martyr brother who remained forever on the battlefield of Tay Ninh. He had a mother who was forever bewildered by the pain of losing her own flesh and blood...

On his wedding day, Pham Quoc Ca wore the worn-out uniform of a soldier who had gone through the war. And in his poems, the pain of war can make people cry: “I searched for you throughout the forests/ Names carved into the wood grain/ Where are you?/ Fire and smoke in all four directions/ Bombs seemed to fall on you” (written on the anniversary of his death - The poem won first prize in the Poetry Contest on the theme of war invalids and martyrs of the Ho Chi Minh City Literature and Arts Association in 1984). Or “The years I fought the Americans in the deep forests/ Mother was cold and wet during many rainy seasons there/ Watching my direction, the rumbling sound of explosions/ Mother’s heart was bombed every day” (At dawn, I will leave).

Pham Quoc Ca wrote a lot about soldiers and war, even when he returned from the battlefield to study at the Faculty of Philology, Hanoi University, and until much later. After graduating from university, Pham Quoc Ca became a lecturer at Dalat University (1983). From 1989 to 1990, Pham Quoc Ca became a Russian language intern at the Pietchigorsk University of Foreign Languages, Russian Federation. After successfully defending his doctoral thesis in 2004, he worked at the Faculty of Philology, Dalat University from that day until his retirement.

Now, even though meeting him as a poet - Chairman of the Lam Dong Literature and Arts Association, it is not difficult to recognize the "teacher" qualities in Pham Quoc Ca. Gentleness, modesty, discretion, modesty, caution and neatness. Pham Quoc Ca has lived quietly like the land he chose, wanting to hide in the wind, the pines, the hills and the quiet lake...

Half a life of "dreaming of the countryside"

Having been attached to the highland of Da Lat for more than 30 years, Da Lat has given him many favors, but for Pham Quoc Ca, he has devoted half of his soul to "dreaming of his homeland". He said: "Tho Khanh village is a part of my soul, creating the most lyrical part in my poetry".

Covers of the two books "Poetry written in Albums" and "Poetry and some literary issues" by author Pham Quoc Ca.

Always in Pham Quoc Ca's mind, the small Bung River on Dien Ky land is not only a dear memory associated with his childhood years, but also almost a signal of consciousness guiding him to the past, the origin, awakening the deep love and sorrow that once stirred in him as well as in the hearts of many Dien Ky people. Bung River, Bung Bridge, Si Market, the years of war, the brothers and friends who have fallen forever, lying on the motherland. It seems that all are reflected in the small river that does not have a name on the map of the Fatherland. But it must have been present, always present in another map, the map that people cannot see with their eyes but can only feel with their hearts. "Remembering the days of the north wind / Rain flying obscures the fields / Wet straw next to the rows of bare xoan trees / The cow is emaciated, each strand of winter" (Remembering Homeland).

I met him, standing silently “By my mother’s grave”, going to “Visit my sister”, startled “Awake to the sound of chickens” (like the names of his poems). Then, in the endless journey of exile, I met him and suddenly remembered: “I left behind the coconut village of Tho Khanh/ The moonlit river where I loved you”, “I left behind the house for the wind to blow/ Every night the moonlit garden was empty/ Many Thanh Minh festivals did not return to burn incense at my mother’s grave/ Missing the yellow afternoons of sunset” (The house left behind).

His hometown, a strange land, poverty, and brutal war could not stop the tradition of learning of the people. Until later, the names of teachers such as Pham Dat, Nguyen Trong Ban, Nguyen Hoe are still imprinted in Pham Quoc Ca's memory. "Vietnamese Poets" by Hoai Thanh - Hoai Chan, the book that "oriented the life" of Pham Quoc Ca to become a poet, seems to still be open on a page somewhere on the teacher's bookshelf, in the old house that Pham Quoc Ca always believed was there waiting for him to return, still beckoning him with soaring and seductive words. To follow his poetic feelings, Pham Quoc Ca had the opportunity to return to Tho Khanh village, Bung river, the mother who swallowed her tears while seeing him off to the army, and the things that were attached to his life. Returning, once again, with the echoes of poetry.

Thuy Vinh