Être mère au Viet Nam (ii)

from poet Chế Lan Viên and La Maison des Éditions en Langues Étrangères

A mother’s work in Viet Nam

(Làm mẹ ở Việt Nam)*

Thi Viện reports on the interweb that in the posthumous complete works, Chế Lan Viên toàn tập (NXB Văn học, 2002) editor Vũ Thị Thường titles the poem from the first line given in that edition,

Làm bà mẹ Việt Nam.

Làm mẹ is an activity, mother’s work. Instead, Làm bà mẹ is abstract motherhood, what 2 grandmothers and 1 mother do in common. In its favor, the first line of the second stanza of the poem, Hỡi Đức Bà, Notre Dame, Holy Mary echoes Làm bà mẹ as it would not Làm mẹ, as the French version, ô Sainte Marie, recalls être mère only as an idea not by repetition of a word.

A mother’s work in Viet Nam is not easy, elsewhere, it is to teach children to gather flowers, with us, it’s to teach them to get down in the trenches, other mothers teach them birdsong and music, for us our task is to teach them to tell the thrumming of a B-52 from ack-ack, from the Phantom’s terrible groan

Làm bà mẹ Việt Nam thực chẳng dễ dàng
Đâu dạy con hái hoa, đây dạy chúng xuống hầm
Ai dạy cho con hòa âm của chim và của nhạc
Ta phải dạy cho chúng phân biệt tiếng những B, những AD và những F rít gầm

o Holy Mary across 1969 years you have held your child in your arms, do you know that the mothers of Viet Nam wither waking night after night for month after month far from their children taken away to safety? These are times when the only task is to teach children to become men, these are times when it is required to do more: teach them to become heroes, such is the task of mothers in my country.

Hỡi Đức Bà
Suốt một-nghìn-chín-trăm-sáu-mươi-sáu năm Bà luôn được bế con
Bà biết chăng các bà mẹ Việt Nam hàng tháng héo hon
Bởi phải ngủ xa con mình đi sơ tán
Có những thời chỉ cần dạy sao cho con được nên người
Có những thời phải làm thêm tí nữa:
Dạy cho chúng trở nên anh hùng, đấy là việc làm của bà mẹ ở quê tôi

Note that the text from the 2002 edition specifies that the poem speaks from 1966. Thi Viện, drawing on the 2002 collected works, dates the poem to 1967. Perhaps it appeared in Chế Lan Viên’s collection Hoa ngày thường - Chim báo bão that year. The 1977 anthology pictured here names him as a consultant to the entire collection and dates his composition to 1969, as the French poem announces.

Thi Viện presents the poem on the interweb with this final line:

Viết đọc trong một buổi vô tuyến truyền hình ở nước ngoài

Written and read in a broadcast for television transmitted abroad

that does not appear in the French translation shown from La Maison des Éditions en Langues Étrangères. I take it to be an editorial note from Vũ Thị Thường in 2002 if not annotation by the poet on his own work.

This variorum of date and text and title and translation suggests to me the life of a poem in hard struggle for a nation in the world, and the work of poets and editors like mothers and fathers in Viet Nam.

With love to my friend Hữu Ngọc and his chief Nguyẽn Khắc Viện, who edited and published this volume in great hopes for peace in 1977, at the publishing house where Ngọc welcomed me 20 years later and I met Viện on his deathbed around the corner.

This is the second Viet Nam letter of 2 so far addressing Mireille Gansel’s translation “Être mère au Viet Nam” with poet Xuân Diệu and editor Hữu Ngọc from the work of poet Chế Lan Viên. The first appeared on November 30, 2022.

We twice have addressed as well their translation “Poème des chauffeurs de camion sans pare-brise” by poet Phạm Tiến Duật, first on December 18, 2022, the again on January 8, 2023.

We have written once only on the 3 friends’ translation “Chaque jour je viens quand même” from poet Hoàng Trung Thông on November 7, 2022, “Questions sous terre” from poet Tế Hanh on December 9, 2022, and on “Les fleurs s'ouvrent sur ta tombe” from poet Thanh Hai on February 7, 2023.

We have written letters as well about Sang et Fleurs, her collection of translations with Xuân Diệu from poet Tố Hữu. We sent the first of 5 on February 28, 2023, the second on March 3, 2023, the third on March 9, 2023, the fourth on March 12, 2023, and the fifth on March 24, 2023.

We have written once so far about her recollection and study of translation, Traduire Comme Transhumer.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.