Vietnam’s great poet To Huu passes away
HANOI - To Huu, one of the great poets and an important politician of Viet Nam in the early 20th century, passed away in Ha Noi in the morning of Dec. 9.
A State funeral board for the deceased will be headed by Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and State memorial and funeral services will be held on Dec. 13.
To Huu, whose real name was Nguyen Kim Thanh and nickname was Lanh, was born in 1920 in Phu Lai village near the former imperial city of Hue. He wrote poems at an early age. At the age of 18 his poems were printed and he joined the Indochinese Communist Party (now the Communist Party of Viet Nam). He was arrested by the enemy in April of 1939. He escaped from Dac Lay prison in March of 1942 and continued with his revolutionary activities in central Thanh Hoa province. He became the President of the Hue Uprising Committee in the August Revolution in 1945.
Since then, he had held many important positions in the Party and State apparatus.
He was member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam Central Committee, and former Vice Chairman of the Council of Ministers (now the Government) of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.
He was awarded the State's Gold Star Order, the 60-year Party membership badge, and many other distinctions.
His revolutionary activities linked with his poet life which was marked with five collections of poems. In 1946, his first collection of poems entitled "Poem" (then changed into "Since Then") were made first public appearance on the press. The "Poem" combined his works written from 1937 to 1946. The "Northern Viet Nam" was understood as the song for the whole country in the anti-colonialist stage. Life in the liberated northern region and the implementation of the five-year national construction plan were reflected in a collection of poems titled "Rising Wind". During the anti-imperialist resistance war, he introduced the collection "Going to the Battle Front", praising the Vietnamese army and people's militant spirit.
His most recent collection was "A Musical Sound". He has been presented with the Ho Chi Minh Award - the highest distinction of the State for the literary and artistic circles.
Vietnam News Agency - December 11, 2002
To Huu
Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam whose verse continued to inspire his countrymen long after his fall from grace
Although he rose to become Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam and had been a long-serving member of the country’s Communist Party, To Huu is most celebrated in his homeland as a poet. Long after he had fallen from grace in the hierarchy of the party his poems continued to be studied in schools across Vietnam, where they had inspired soldiers and civilians in the struggles, first against colonial France in the 1950s and then against the forces of South Vietnam, increasingly backed by the Americans from the early 1960s onwards.
During the Vietnam War, Huu’s poems were frequently printed in newspapers as a bulwark to resolve. Welcome Spring ’71 — which appeared on the front page of a special Tet (lunar new year) edition of the Hanoi daily paper in 1971 — exhorted the «co-op lasses seeing their dear ones off to the front» to fresh efforts to keep the home fires burning, while expressing the sense of ache felt by all Vietnamese over the continuing division of their country.
Hanoi aches for our heart is in Hue and Saigon!
O South, our southern homeland,
This spring Uncle (Ho Chi Minh) no longer writes poems.
With the Central Committee’s call burning hot in its heart, Our nation as one man is marching to the firing line,
We shall strike, strike thunder blows
To shatter the hawks’ wings, and bash in their heads.
His contemporaries regarded such verses as being an important part of the epic evolution of modern Vietnam.
To Huu, whose real name was Nguyen Kim Thanh, was born in the imperial city of Hue in the southern part of what was then the French colony of Indo-China in 1920. At 18 he joined the Indo-China Communist Party, but — in a country that was «protectively» occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War — he was jailed in 1940 as a result of his revolutionary activities. But in 1942 he escaped from prison to rejoin the revolutionary underground, by then called the Revolutionary League for the Independence of Vietnam, known as the Viet Minh. Following the Japanese surrender he was among the Viet Minh forces that seized control of the country and proclaimed its independence as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Huu, by now known for his propaganda skills in both verse and prose, was appointed regional information officer for the central region of Vietnam.
The return of French forces to their old colony and their attempt to reassert their authority began a long struggle, during which Huu’s poems inspired his countrymen with revolutionary zeal. After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 led to the end of its hold over Vietnam and the division of the country, Huu was appointed Deputy Culture Minister in the North Vietnamese Government based at Hanoi. In 1956 he was appointed to the central committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
When the struggle to subvert the South Vietnamese regime began — becoming from 1961 effectively a war against American forces in the country — Huu held various senior party and government positions. But his chief role was, again, as an inspirer of his countrymen and women against the foe.
After the American withdrawal and the reunification of Vietnam he continued to prosper, and he was made Deputy Prime Minister in 1980. In March 1982 he was elected to the Politburo at the fifth party congress, a momentous meeting during which General Giap, who had defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu and been Defence Minister in the fight against the Americans, was removed from his Politburo seat. The 1982 congress was also remarkable for the fact that Huu’s poems were quoted on several occasions and he was regarded as being, more than ever, a coming man.
But in truth he was a revolutionary socialist of the old school and the economic reforms that were being introduced into Vietnamese business and financial life were not to his taste. However, he was blamed for a disastrous monetary reform plan, introduced in September 1985, which replaced the Vietnamese D10 note with a new D1 note and reduced the dong’s foreign exchange value from D1.20 to the US dollar to D15 to $1.
Part of the aim of the exercise had been to contract the money supply by eliminating illegal cash holdings. But a leak in the currency reform plans defeated this. Inflation rose by 50 per cent by the end of the year and by 700 per cent by the autumn of 1986. Held responsible for the chaos, Huu was forced to step down as Deputy Prime Minister in June 1986. Thereafter he wielded no further political influence. But he continued to be revered in his country as a poet who had put his art at the service of the revolutionary cause.
To Huu, Vietnamese poet and politician, was born in Hue in 1920. He died in Hanoi on December 9, 2002, aged 82.
The Times - December 11, 2002
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