Comments on: Hồ Xuân Hương

By: Linh Dinh

Linh Dinh — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:41:54 +0000

Hi Lavendercare,
Curious about your identity, I googled “Lavendercare Dinh” and just “Lavendercare,” but nothing came up. You wrote that you attended Dalat College of Letters and Saigon University of Pedagogy, so you had to be in your 20′s, at least, when you arrived in an English-speaking country, but your English is very good and natural-sounding, and very American, too, I must add, with even a wartime, propagandistic overtone when you urge people to “open their mind and their heart,” which echoes the U.S. military’s aim of “winning hearts and minds.”
Arriving in the US, many Vietnamese immigrants change their first name to better fit in. My brother swapped Phong for Vincent, for example; My stepmother went from Ha to Amy. The idea is to sound less exotic and more American. If you actually chose Lavendercare after arriving, then please accept my apologies, but I have a hard time believing it. I certainly don’t believe you were given that name in Vietnam. You also posted your comments on my personal blog, signing as “Le Pham,” so who are you, Le Pham, Lavendercare Dinh or neither? Why hide under a pseudonym?
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By: Linh Dinh

Linh Dinh — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:41:11 +0000

Hi Lavendercare,
I made two main observations in my post:
1) The Ho Xuan Huong poems are primarily folk poetry, not just influenced by folk poems, as claimed by Balaban. Inspired by a historical Ho Xuan Huong, many poems were likely written by other people, and modified through oral circulation lasting nearly a century. Instead of emphasizing this doubtful authorship, Balaban chooses to highlight the poet’s biography, as sketchy as it is, and even her anatomy, as buxomly presented on the cover.
2) Balaban’s Vietnamese is not just accented, it is incomprehensible. I cannot speak German either, but I don’t claim to do fieldwork with it. Balaban’s mythologizing of himself is not just dishonest, it borders on the bizarre, and I quote from his publisher’s book description: “During the Vietnam war, John Balaban traveled the Vietnamese countryside alone, taping, transcribing, and translating oral folk poems known as “ca dao.” No one had ever done this before, and it was Balaban’s belief that his project would help end the war.” How could Balaban travel the countryside “alone,” speaking such an impenetrable Vietnamese? If he had guides and translators, why not acknowledge them? And what’s this about “no one has ever done this before”? Vietnamese have been anthologizing ca dao poems since the 19th century.
You write, “To me, Mr. Balaban is a true hero and I cannot thank him enough!” It’s true that translators are not often given their due, but has anyone ever claimed that his translation project might “end [a] war”! Nguyễn Ngọc Bích and particularly Huỳnh Sanh Thông also translated many Vietnamese poems at the same time, but without the clamor of self-importance and congratulation.
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By: Lavendercare Dinh

Lavendercare Dinh — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:53:45 +0000

Dear Editor,
I was shocked to see that the Poetry Foundation would publish such an article as “Ho Xuan Huong” by Linh Dinh which is nothing more than a personal attack against the celebrated poet and translator John Balaban.
Reading his unkind remarks on Ca Dao Viet Nam: A Bilingual Anthology of Vietnamese Folk Poetry (Unicorn Press, 1980, not the Copper Canyon Press, 2003 edition), I cannot help sharing with your readers some of my observations:
In his so-called “Blog,” Linh Dinh wrote, “Nearly all the folk poems in Balaban’s book could be found in Nguyễn Văn Ngọc’s Tục Ngữ Phong Dao”
1. First of all, this is not true. The majority of the poems in Ca Dao Vietnam do not appear in Nguyen Van Ngoc’s book. Exactly four (4) of the poems in Balaban’s book of 49 poems come from Nguyen Van Ngoc’s Tuc Ngu Phong Dao. And that 1938 book is acknowledged in Balaban’s introduction.
As everyone knows, Vietnamese folk poetry has been created for thousands of years (as old as Viet Nam itself) mostly by the ordinary people who could not read or write. As a child growing up in the countryside, I heard a lot of lullabies recited by my grandmother, mother, neighbors, and even uncles long before reading Nguyễn Văn Ngọc’s collection of ca dao in my years of study at Dalat College of Letters and Saigon University of Pedagogy. I think it would be ridiculous for Linh Dinh, due to his lack of knowledge and thorough research, to falsely accuse Balaban that he “didn’t have to get off the beaten paths, risking stepping on shit-smeared punji sticks or bouncing betties, to gather poems already available in every Saigon bookstore.” If you listen to Balaban’s recordings on his website http://www.johnbalaban.com, you can hear gun and mortar fire in the background of some of the poems. Balaban’s 2003 introduction, page 10 and following, makes clear that these poems were recorded in the countryside of Vietnam during the war. To prove my point, I would invite Linh Dinh to visit Balaban’s website at http://www.johnbalaban.com and to listen to the voice of those real Vietnamese folk poets recorded on Balaban’s tape to realize that Linh Dinh is the one who is “mixing fiction with poetry,” not Balaban.
2. Linh Dinh wrote, “At the back of the Ca Dao book, there are a dozen photos of weird looking Vietnamese, the supposed sources and quarries of Balaban’s ethnographic prowess.” Linh Dinh is looking at the 1980 first edition of Ca Dao Vietnam, published by Unicorn Press which includes photographs of some of the ca dao singers. The “weird looking Vietnamese” in those photographs are monks and recluses from Con Phung Island in the Mekong and clearly identified as such.
3. Linh Dinh’s also wrote, “When my wife and I heard [Balaban] perform some Vietnamese poems in North Carolina in 2004, we couldn’t understand, literally, a single word.”
I wonder who among us, who speak a foreign language, do not have to deal with accent problem due to the differences between language structures. I do. For this, I can speak from my own experience. It is totally up to the native speakers to open their mind and their heart when listening to the non-native speakers who try to communicate to them. As an English non-native speaker himself, I think Linh Dinh should know better.
Regarding Spring Essence: Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong (Copper Canyon Press, 2000), Linh Dinh’s criticism is based on what I consider nonsense, “Balaban never admits that these Hồ Xuân Hương poems are really a part of the folk tradition.”
On the contrary, the introduction to Spring Essence, page four and following, and including various endnotes, makes clear Ho Xuan Huong’s connection to the oral folk tradition that …”gives her poetry a special Vietnamese dimension filled with the aphorisms and speech habits of the common people.”
John Balaban deserves a special thanks from Vietnamese for presenting our oral and literary traditions to the Western readers, as well as for his tremendous efforts to preserve our Vietnamese Nom heritage, I am afraid that any sort of negative attitudes like the one reflected in Linh Dinh’s article would do him no justice, and at the same time, contribute to discourage non-Vietnamese scholars from their keen interest in the Vietnamese literature. To me, Mr. Balaban is a true hero and I cannot thank him enough!
In conclusion, Linh Dinh’s so-called “discussion” on Balaban’s translations of Ho Xuan Huong’s poetry and Ca Dao Viet Nam has nothing to do with the literary critique but rather sounds personal and reveals a sense of competitiveness and jealousy. There must be a better way to promote one’s work than attacking others.
Sincerely,
Lavendercare Dinh
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By: Lavender Dinh

Lavender Dinh — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:46:08 +0000

Linh,
See more LETTERS regarding Marilynn’s episode on Poetry Magazine’s NEW online issue.
Best,
Lavendercare
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By: Joseph Hutchison

Joseph Hutchison — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:28:27 +0000

Linh! Have you seen the blistering letter exchange between Joseph Bednarik (Marketing and Sales Director at Copper Canyon Press) and Marilyn Chin regarding Balaban’s vs. Chin’s translations of Ho Xuan Huong? It is ENTIRELY apropos of your post, and Chin passionately and accurately dissects Bednarik’s comments. Take a gander at it when you can.
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By: Chris L

Chris L — Tue, 20 May 2008 06:25:33 +0000

Why bother with the “not to flog Balaban overly much” before flogging him? Being cutesy? As the kids would say, passive aggressive much?
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By: dwayne

dwayne — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:55:15 +0000

Linh,
I read this book a number of years ago and always liked the poems. Good to hear more of the folk source of the poems. After I read the book, I wrote Balaban a letter and he wrote me back. I thought it was cool of him to take the time and send me some more things on translation. From what you’ve writtenly briefly here though, it seems that the story of a folk tradition around one woman is just as interesting as the legend because it would really demand a sort of rethinking of how women of that time period were viewed.
dwayne
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