Le communisme vietnamien (v of 5)
From Céline Marangé
‘In
his memoirs the general Tran Do recalled to mind the deep impression he and the framers to come of the Vietnamese policy of “Renovation” felt on a study trip to Moscow in 1981. Attending a conference on literature and its ties with political power, they were dumbfounded to hear professors they revered evoke in public the tragic fate of numerous artists and men of letters under Stalin. The situation none less dramatic of numerous Vietnamese intellectuals, as much as the impossibility of touching upon, not even in private, the similar subject in Viet Nam, came to mind brutally, in sorrow.’
[This is not a translation.]
Dans
ses mémoires
Closer to memo than memories. The exit interview of a man of state. Not the bildung of a belle lettrist.
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ses mémoires le général Trần Độ
General with 2 stars, according to the wiki. With 3 stars, according to the wreath his superior general sent to the funeral. Either way, the author of many other people’s lives. I don’t know, for example, why he summoned and lectured me in 1996. I did as I was told.
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ses mémoires le général Trần Độ se remémore
Se remémore. Not se souvenir, what you do when you hunt for your keys. Se rememorer, to recollect many details into coherence. What a reader might write that Marcel Proust does with his madeleine.
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ses mémoires le général Trần Độ se remémore la profonde impression
Deep impression. Profonde is a dimension, a quantity. Not the quality of vague import only, as in English. They call a run of a book an impression. Cold type at that time and place pressed a depth into the paper of a book. La profonde impression. The historian says the general recalls being imprinted.
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ses mémoires le général Trần Độ se remémore la profonde impression que lui-même et
She says he recollects his impression et that on others. Again, not an author only of his own life alone. One of like mind among peers. There is no such thing as 1 copy of an imprint.
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ses mémoires le général Trần Độ se remémore la profonde impression que lui-même et les futurs artisans
Artisans. Workers. We are speaking of Communists, after all. Not the word here in the United States of America this century for artisanal beer, an advertising notion which conjures France’s legislated assurance of quality.
Up at the top I translated artisans as framers. That is how we refer to the authors of our federal constitution. Some of them were indeed artisans in our sense of printer or silversmith but most never had worked a day in their lives as a worker.
This general and his colleagues served as prisoners then soldiers. They were not framers nor workers but cadre the frame of their revolution and wars then of the policy of Renovation.
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ses mémoires le général Trần Độ se remémore la profonde impression que lui-même et les futurs artisans de la politique vietnamienne de “Renouveau” éprouvèrent
Éprouvèrent. They felt the deep impression. They probed it. Proofed it as distillers do alcohol. Suffered it like prisoners under the question. Eprouver is the body thinking. Not feeling without thought or the other way around. Both sense and sensibility. I wonder how Descartes used that verb.
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ses mémoires le général Trần Độ se remémore la profonde impression que lui-meme et les futurs artisans de la politique vietnamienne de “Renouveau” éprouvèrent lors d’un voyage d’études à Moscou
On a study trip to Moscow. Ever heard of our generals going abroad together to study?
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ses mémoires le général Trần Độ se remémore la profonde impression que lui-même et les futurs artisans de la politique vietnamienne de “Renouveau” éprouvèrent lors d’un voyage d’études à Moscou en 1981.
In 1981 our man served as head of the committee on education and propaganda. Another man I also knew traveled that year to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as an interpreter.
He brought home a few precious apples for his family who recalled to me their joy at the occasion. That is, he schlepped fruit from an arctic country to a tropical one. 5 years after unification 2 of the world’s biggest rice bowls were starving.
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Assistant
Attending, as in those attending, on the list of attendance, with also the elevated sense of listening and the necessary presence of the attending physician. Understanding and witnessing like acolytes and communicants at the eucharist.
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Assistant à un colloque sur la littérature
Ever heard of our generals studying literature?
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Assistant à un colloque sur la littérature et ses liens avec le pouvoir politique
Ever heard of our generals studying political power? Setting aside any voyage abroad to study literature.
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Assistant à un colloque sur la littérature et ses liens avec le pouvoir politique, ils furent stupéfaits
They were stupefied. Was it the first time they had heard what Joseph Stalin did to the intellectuals of his Party, his comrades in revolution and civil war?
The first time I heard of Stalin was about how his men stabbed and stabbed and stabbed Zenaida Reich to death at home while they tortured in prison her husband Vsevelod Meyerhold, the great Bolshevik stage director, before execution.
Neither was at all dissident. Nobody was. Stalin had come to power by killing all red or white who opposed his Party or his rise. In power, he eliminated his loyal comrades.
Now, was this delegation of Communists stupefied in 1981 because they had not heard the stories of 1924-1954 before? Their man Ho was there for the terror in 1937.
Had he kept it all to himself? Sounds like him.
Whether or not the murder of the Bolsheviks in 1937 was news to them in 1981 surely the public setting of the discussion stupefied Ho’s old general and staff. Russians run their mouths about such things in private. Gossip and joking about murder remains today a national hobby as it was in 1981 and ever had been.
Stalin was fine with gossip. Gossip was the whole point. Gossip about his terror. It was meant to terrify individuals one by one. Speaking out loud, as the actor or the chorus, for the assembled citizens was a different thing.
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Assistant à un colloque sur la littérature et ses liens avec le pouvoir politique, ils furent stupéfaits des professeurs qu’il révéraient
Revere. Not our silversmith on a horse. Révéraient as in reverence and Reverend.
Ever heard that our brass revere as a group even one professor of literature and politics? This general and his staff engaged together over their adult lives with literature as an activity of institutions and a body of knowledge and an occasion of personal development and political power.
This is not literature as a hobby or a fond memory of study while young, or a daydream in escape from responsibilities. This is not a junket for Human Resources.
Tran Do was one of Ho Chi Minh’s generals who defeated France, the United States of America, the Republic of Viet Nam, the People’s Republic of China, and Kampuchea. He and his people revered professors of literature.
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Assistant à un colloque sur la littérature et ses liens avec le pouvoir politique, ils furent stupéfaits des professeurs qu’il révéraient évoquer en public le sort tragique
Tragique? I demur from this description of the fate of numerous artists and men of letters under Stalin. Tragedy moves from blindness to insight.
It ends when audience, chorus, and the tragic hero all grasp the same reality. The USSR rather whisked its intellectuals off stage and to the cellars of Lubyanka.
Those they brought back upstairs to testify in court lied and everyone gave them countenance. Cruel and shabby not tragic.
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Assistant à un colloque sur la littérature et ses liens avec le pouvoir politique, ils furent stupéfaits des professeurs qu’il révéraient évoquer en public le sort tragique de nombreux artistes et hommes de lettres sous Staline. La situation non moins dramatique
Non moins dramatique. Not less dramatic indeed. Because neither situation was dramatic at all. The show trials in Moscow were false drama.
In the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam they just ran intellectuals off the stage and cast them out as wandering ghosts. Unheard, unseen, not even a show.
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La situation non moins dramatique de nombre d’intellectuels vietnamiens, ainsi que l’impossibilité d’effleurer,
Effleurer. To touch lightly as when handling petals of a flower.
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La situation non moins dramatique de nombre d’intellectuels vietnamiens, ainsi que l’impossibilité d’effleurer, ne serait-ce qu’en privé, pareil sujet au Vietnam,
Don’t touch the situation of Vietnamese intellectuals even with delicate finesse even in private. You don’t tell funny stories about the Party in Viet Nam. Well, now they do. Among workers. Or to a foreigner. If you have got juice. But before the Renovation, no. In 1981 the visiting brass, heroes of independence and unification, were stupefied to hear professors they revered grasp the rose by the thorns.
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La situation non moins dramatique de nombre d’intellectuels vietnamiens, ainsi que l’impossibilité d’effleurer, ne serait-ce qu’en privé, pareil sujet au Vietnam, leur apparurent brutalement, douloureusement.
Apparurent. At the colloquium in Moscow the situation of intellectuals back home in Viet Nam leur apparurent, brutalement, douloureusement.
What ghosts do, appear brutally out of nowhere. Douloureusement means in the pain of grief. Not malheureusement unhappily as when searching for the car keys. Sancta Maria suffers dolor watching her son flogged and broken on the cross.
There you go. Yeah.
Next paragraph, the historian quotes the general recalling to his mind a peer breaking down weeping for her father. Ugly not art.
Leave drama and tragedy alone. In Moscow in 1981, hearing of the terror before 1953, the ongoing situation of their own intellectuals of the Party appeared to the general’s delegation brutally in wounding sorrow. Life not art.
Hang on. Come to think of it, for the revolutionaries to at last to see their cause that way, for the general to recollect those memories in 2001, for the historian to write about them in 2012, for me to read her in 2024, is indeed drama.
Agonist and chorus and audience. Blindness and insight. Hubris and nemesis and catharsis. Pity in terror. Tragedy.
D
ans ses mémoires le général Trần Độ se remémore la profonde impression que lui-même et les futurs artisans de la politique vietnamienne de “Renouveau” éprouvèrent lors d’un voyage d’études à Moscou en 1981. Assistant à un colloque sur la littérature et ses liens avec le pouvoir politique, ils furent stupéfaits des professeurs qu’il révéraient évoquer en public le sort tragique de nombreux artistes et hommes de lettres sous Staline. La situation non moins dramatique de nombre d’intellectuels vietnamiens, ainsi que l’impossibilité d’effleurer, ne serait-ce qu’en privé, pareil sujet au Vietnam, leur apparurent brutalement, douloureusement.
This is the fifth of five Viet Nam letters on Le communisme vietnamien by Céline Marangé. The first begins with how I found the book.
The second letter judges the book by its cover.
The third letter bears down on the Vietnamese in the photograph.
That sharp dresser on the cover by my middle finger. That man, in the tones of a bourgeois in Ha Noi speaking of an arriviste from Nghe An. Who in the world?
My fourth letter addresses the back of the book.
Index. Point with the index between a thumb and middle finger to the index of a book. It indicates the contents and points you inside.
Today’s fifth letter at last reads Céline Marangé’s analytic narrative. Well, the first paragraph of her introduction. Small bites. Long chew.
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.
I have just now deleted a bizarre error. Yesterday I mistook apparurent, a conjugation of apparaitre, for a verb appururer that does not exist. I asserted that this verb is transitive where apparaitre is intransitive. The gaucherie was an enthusiasm that came as I put the letter to bed. Reason returned while walking the dogs this morning. Grevisse and Robert made it all go away, after my nap. Regrets.