Sang et Fleurs (i)

from poet Tố Hữu and translator Mireille Gansel with poets Xuân Diệu and Pierre Emmanuel at Les Éditeurs français réunis

In Vietnamese language he is Tố Hữu.

Their T sounds more like our initial D. The o with a hat, that is what they call it, sounds with lips rounded. The accent aigu marks a rising tone, so the name is Dough as when surprised,

(You put) Dough (in your cocktail)? rather than Homer Simpson’s defeated d’oh or Maria’s clear sounding Do (a deer, a female deer.) Now, the poet was from Hue where they swallow everything

so maybe he said Tố like a frog’s croak. Hữu, with an initial aspiration of u with the whisker, lips drawn back, huh, with the tilde that doubles it into a dipthong with the lips-rounded ooo.

Dough? Huh-uh-ooo. Frog croaks then gets stepped on. In a manner of speaking. We are translating here. We do what we can.

On their book Mireille Gansel just calls him To Huu. Close enough in French.

This was the first Viet Nam letter of 5 addressing Sang et Fleurs from poet Tố Hữu and translator Mireille Gansel with poets Xuân Diệu and Pierre Emmanuel at Les Éditeurs français réunis.

I sent 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.

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.