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News
December 11, 2002
Vietnam's Revolutionary Poet To Huu Dies
HANOI, Vietnam (Associate
Press) - To Huu, Vietnam's most well-known Communist revolutionary poet and
a former Politburo member, has died at age 82.
Huu died in Hanoi on Monday at Military Hospital 108 after a long illness, a
family member said Wednesday. His funeral was to be held on Friday.
He was to be buried at the elite Mai Dich Cemetery, reserved for senior
Communist Party officials.
Huu was born in October 1920 in the imperial capital of Hue as Nguyen Kim Thanh.
He began writing poetry at the age of 6. He became active in politics and joined
the Communist Party in 1938.
At age 19, he was imprisoned by the French but escaped three years later.
Fighting alongside Ho Chi Minh, Huu publicly proclaimed that "I am both a
revolutionary and a poet. For me, poems are a weapon for the revolution," Thanh
Nien (Youth) newspaper reported.
One of his most famous poems, "Since Then," described his awakening to Communism
as the moment when the "sun of truth shone on my heart." His works continue to
be taught in schools throughout Vietnam.
In post-war Vietnam, Huu held a number of senior government posts. He joined the
elite Politburo in 1976 and was appointed deputy prime minister in 1980. Huu was
ousted from the government in 1986 for mishandling the economy.
Huu is survived by two daughters and one son.
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To Huu, Vietnam
Poet and Communist Voice, Dies at 82
By Douglas Martin
(New
York Times) - To Huu, who was often called the poet laureate of the
Communists' victories over the French and the Americans in Vietnam and who went
on to high posts in the country's postwar government, died in Hanoi on Monday.
He was 82.
His death was reported yesterday by Agence France-Presse.
"He was a great poet who used his poetry as a means to gather and encourage
people around the revolutionary cause over the decades," said the newspaper
Saigon Giai Phong, which is controlled by Vietnam's Communist government.
To Huu was one of a group of Vietnamese poets who wrote about little else than
the Vietnam War, urging people to fight, uphold socialism and defeat the United
States. But Nguyen Ngoc Bich, an expert on Vietnamese literature, argued in a
1972 publication that To Huu transcended his peers.
In a lecture included in a booklet "Some Aspects of Vietnamese Culture"
(Southern Illinois University, 1972), Mr. Ngoc Bich wrote that To Huu "alone
manages to instill some force and vitality into his work." He added, "The others
are no more than hacks."
But the poet's ideology was never subtle. In a poem quoted in The New York Times
magazine in 1981, To Huu lamented the death of Stalin. It read in part:
Oh, Stalin! Oh, Stalin!
The love I bear my father,
my mother, my wife,
myself
It's nothing beside the love I bear you.
Oh, Stalin! Oh, Stalin!
What remains of the earth
and of the sky!
Now that you are dead.
Doan Van Toai, the author and a former South Vietnamese dissenter who had come
to oppose the Communists, wrote that it seemed "incredible" that such a poem
could be written in Vietnam, which is known for the strength of family love.
In To Huu's poem, "Since Then," quoted in "A Thousand Years of Vietnamese
Poetry" (Knopf, 1975), he wrote of the moment he discovered Communism, "summer
light has burned in me." Another poem in the same book celebrates the joys of
sabotaging a road.
To Huu was born Nguyen Kim Thanh in Thua Thien Province in 1920 and educated in
Hue, according to "Dictionary of the Vietnam War" (Peter Bedrick Books, 1981).
He became a Communist as a student in 1938, and was jailed the following year
for his political activities.
He escaped from prison in 1942 and was appointed in August 1945 as a regional
information chief for the Viet Minh, the guerrilla opponents of the French
colonizers.
After the defeat of France in 1954 and the partitioning of Vietnam, To Huu
became deputy culture minister in the North Vietnamese government. In 1956, he
was appointed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
During the war with the United States, he held various positions in the
government, including chief of the propaganda, education and scientific boards
of the Central Committee organization. In 1976, he rose to the ruling Politburo.
He became deputy prime minister and was considered a candidate for prime
minister until he was dismissed from the cabinet in 1986 for mishandling the
economy.
His ability to combine true lyricism with revolutionary propaganda was his
greatest legacy, as suggested by the poem "Little Luom." It tells of his nephew
being killed in "a jet of blood." The poem ends gently:
His cap askew
he whistled away
like a warbler
on a garden path.
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