Poetry
Việt Bắc
Not translated into English
Tố Hữu · 1954
Synopsis
In October 1954, those who fought the war in the mountains of the North come back down towards Hanoi. The poem that gives the collection its name is the dialogue of those who leave and those who stay, in the manner of the alternating songs in which a boy and a girl part: they recall the nights on guard, the shared hunger, the paths and the smoke of the villages. Around it, the pieces cover the years of war, from the call to arms to victory.
Context
The main piece was composed in October 1954, between the Geneva accords of July and the entry of the troops into the capital. It uses the six-and-eight-syllable couplet of village songs, and above all the pair of pronouns by which two lovers address each other, so that the separation of the cadres and the inhabitants takes the form of a private farewell. The device made its fortune in schools: it is learned like a song, and its popular form long served as a model for the official poetry of the North.
Who it is for
Short, in Vietnamese, and made to be spoken aloud. The dialogue requires knowing who is speaking to whom, which the text never makes explicit.
Prizes and reception
The most taught of the Vietnamese poems of the twentieth century, and the title by which its author is still known, despite seven other collections.