Tố Hữu

Vietnamese revolutionary poet and politician
Tố Hữu (4 October 1920 – 9 December 2002) was a Vietnamese revolutionary poet and politician. Tố Hữu is considered one of the most important Vietnamese poets of the 20th century. His poems are known for their lyrical beauty, their political engagement, and their insights into the Vietnamese people. Tố Hữu's poetry is a valuable record of the Vietnamese revolution and the Vietnamese people's struggle for independence. His poems are also a testament to the power of poetry to inspire and to give voice to the oppressed. He published seven collections of poems, the first of which was the 1946 collection entitled Từ ấy (Thenceforth), which included many of his most popular and influential works that were written between 1937 and 1946. Following the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, he became a prominent figure in the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam.

Tố Hữu, whose real name is Nguyễn Kim Thành, was born 4 October 1920 in Hoi An, Quang Nam province, as the youngest son of the family. At the age of 9, he and his father returned home and lived in Phu Lai village, now in Quang Tho commune, Quang Dien district, Thua Thien province. His father was a poor scholar, could not earn a living and struggled to earn a living, but he liked poetry, liked collecting proverbs and folk songs. He taught To Huu to write old poems. His mother was also the daughter of a scholar, knew many folk songs of Hue and loved him very much. His parents helped to nourish the soul of To Huu poetry. In 1938 he met a teacher, who had given him the pseudonym "Tố Hữu", taken from Đỗ Thị's sentence which means "big willpower available in my son". Tố Hữu accepted this name but interpreted it as a "pure friend". His mother died when he was 12 years old. At the age of 13, he entered Hue National University. Here he was directly exposed to the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Gorky, and approached through books, combined with the mobilisation of members of the Communist Party of Vietnam (Le Duan, Phan Dang Luu, Nguyen Chi Dieu) soon communist ideals. In 1936 he joined the Indochina Democratic Youth Union. In 1938 he was admitted to the Indochina Communist Party. In April 1939, he was arrested, tortured and exiled to Thua Phu Prison (Hue) and transferred to Lao Bao Prison (Quang Tri) and many other prisons in the Central Highlands. In March 1942, he escaped from the prison Đắc Glêi (now in Kon Tum), went to Thanh Hóa and contacted the party (through his secret activities in the district Hậu Lộc, Thanh Hoa province). In 1945, when the August Revolution broke out, he was elected Chairman of the Rebellion Committee of Thua Thien Hue. Tố Hữu moved quickly and successfully through what became the Communist Party of Vietnam. During the pre unification period (before 1975) Tố Hữu was most influential in setting cultural policy in North Vietnam, especially in deciding the bounds of what was permissible for intellectuals and artists to publish and perform during this tightly controlled period. His control of intellectual and artistic production was matched only by Trường Chinh and Hồ Chí Minh himself. Intellectual discontent with this control was expressed by the poet Lê Đạt who, during the Nhân Văn affair, declared that Tố Hữu considered writers and artists petty bourgeois elements, and regarded literature as a mere tool of politics. As an example, he mentioned the case of Nam Cao whom Tố Hữu compelled to write a work on the rural taxation system, a topic with which the writer was by no means familiar. He continued to hold many important party and government posts, including member of the Politburo, Secretary of the Central Committee, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (as the government cabinet was then called), and the same post that was later renamed Deputy Prime Minister. As the leader of the cultural section, he was named as the chief instigator of the persecution of intellectuals during the Nhân Văn affair. However, according to the musician Văn Cao, one of the prominent victims, the main author of this policy was Trường Chinh, the general secretary of the communist party at that time. According to Văn Cao, Tố Hữu, as a poet, was not sufficiently hard hearted to pursue such a policy on his own. (See the article at the Vietnamese Wikipedia). During his career, Tố Hữu was awarded the Gold Star Order, the 60 year membership badge, and the Hồ Chí Minh Award, the highest award for literary and artistic accomplishments conferred by the Vietnamese state. Tố Hữu enjoyed a steep rise in the party and government culminating in an equally steep and precipitous decline. He was blamed for the disastrous 1985 attempt at monetary reform and the ruinous inflation that resulted from its unsuccessful implementation. Inflation had risen 700% by 1986. Tố Hữu had to step down from his position as deputy prime minister and played no further political role in Vietnam. Despite his political fall from grace, Tố Hữu remained the Communist Party's poet laureate. He died in 2002, at the age of 80.