Vietnam Honors
Once Banned Writers
By Scott Stearns
Hanoi
10 March 2007
Four Vietnamese writers who belonged to a
dissident intellectual circle in the 1950's, and
who were long censored and jailed by the
government, have received one of the country's
top artistic prizes. Only two of the four, the
poets Hoang Cam and Le Dat, are still alive. The
awards are an apology of sorts to writers who,
despite government hostility, became some of the
best-loved figures of 20th century Vietnamese
literature. Matt Steinglass reports from Hanoi.
Hoang Cam is 86-years-old. His friend Le Dat is
85. It is decades since they were the leading
lights of Vietnam's new literature, decades in
which their poems were often banned, and they
suffered government harassment and imprisonment.
But Vietnamese censorship has loosened in recent
years, and the government has embraced some of
those it once criticized. On Saturday, an
official from the Ministry of Culture awarded
the National Prize to Hoang Cam, Le Dat, and
their late colleagues Phung Quan and Tran Dan.
The official praised Hoang Cam's high artistic
values, and his contributions to the
construction of socialism and the defense of the
country.
In the early 1950's, Hoang Cam wrote patriotic
poems encouraging Ho Chi Minh's soldiers in the
battle for independence from France.
After independence in 1954, Hoang Cam and the
other men honored Saturday joined two
independent magazines, called Nhan Van and Giai
Pham, or "Humanism" and "Beautiful Flowers".
The magazines published articles and poems that
criticized the brutal land reforms Ho's
communist government was carrying out. In
December 1956, as Le Dat recalls, the government
shut the magazines and cracked down on their
writers.
Le Dat says Phung Quan and other prominent
writers were sent to prison. He says even the
magazine's readers risked losing their jobs or
being sent to forced labor.
Hoang Cam was unable to publish officially for
30 years, but his poems were widely distributed
underground. In the early 1980's, he was jailed
over politically suggestive poems like The Dieu
Bong Leaf, about a beautiful woman who tricks a
young admirer.
But since Vietnam's cultural opening in the late
1980's, Hoang Cam's works have gradually become
part of official culture.
At Vietnam's National Poetry Day last week,
Nguyen Huu Quy, a poet at the Vietnamese Army's
cultural magazine, praised Hoang Cam's work.
Quy says Hang Cam's poetry captures the
character of the Vietnamese people.
Censorship in Vietnamese literature today is
less oppressive than in the days of strict
Communism and "Socialist Realism." But artists
here still know where the limits are. Direct
criticism of the Communist Party's political
power remains taboo.
Nguyen Ngoc is the former editor of Van Nghe,
Vietnam's main cultural magazine. He was pushed
out of his position in 1988 for being too
progressive.
Ngoc says the awards for Hoang Cam and his
colleagues are welcome, but too little and too
late. He says, in fact, the state should
apologize to them.
Poet Le Dat agrees that the awards come too
late, but says he's pleased just the same.
Le Dat says he is happy mainly for his wife and
children, because they have suffered so much
from his involvement in the Nhan Van-Giai Pham
group 50 years ago. He says he has an
inferiority complex towards them, and that the
award will help him pay his debts to his family.
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