Tuệ Sỹ (Phạm Văn Thương), Phạm Công Thiện, Henry Miller, and Friedrich Nietzsche
It would take a book-length study to do justice to any one individual listed in the heading, let alone four. At any rate, the following is not even a critical essay of the thoughts and merits of the above writers. Rather, it is a quick compilation of my impressionistic, haphazard, amateurish observations about them through their works and their lives while the observations are still fresh in my mind and while I am still alive. In the future, it might be expanded into something more substantial. It is a labor of love since I admire them in varying degrees of intensity. I welcome feedbacks and corrections and additional information.
The piece is written in English instead of Vietnamese for the sake of speed and possible international audience.
I must confess at the outset I have not read all the works written by the above writers. Neither have I read any in-depth critical studies about them. As I mentioned above, this piece is meant to be a gathering of my embryonic and impressionistic thoughts of the writers, based on my past readings and current information available on the Internet via Google Search.
Tuệ Sỹ (Phạm Văn Thương) (1943-present)
When I was coming of age in the 1960's in Vietnam, I didn't hear of Tuệ Sỹ. Since coming to America in 1975, I have occasionally heard of him. A few years ago, I translated a short poem of his into English which is now in the archive of a forum of which I am no longer a member. Unfortunately, I didn't keep a copy for myself (I write and translate rather prolifically, but have a stupid and lazy attitude about record-keeping). All I remember is that it was about ants crawling in the grass. The recent strong and well-written article by Tuệ Sỹ prompted me to have a closer look at this Buddhist monk, scholar, poet, and freedom-fighter who once was condemned to death for daring to fight against the oppressive and widely considered inhumane regime which is riding roughshod over basic human rights in Vietnam. The article is reproduced here in its entirety.
TRÍ THỨC PHẢI NÓI
Kính thưa quí vị,
Hân hạnh gửi đến quý vị một vài ý nghĩa phiến diện về những điều đè nặng tâm trí tôi trong suốt thời gian ở tù. Nhưng điều trước tiên tôi muốn bày tỏ ở đây là sự tri ân của tôi đối với đồng bào hải ngoại, với sự cộng tác của quốc tế, đã can thiệp một cách có hiệu quả khiến cho bản án tử hình dành cho tôi trở thành bản cáo trạng dành cho những người tự cho có quyền xét xử tôi và phán xét những người đã hành động theo lương tâm. Tiếp theo, sự can thiệp đã khiến cho Nhà Nước Cộng Sản Việt nam phải tuyên bố trả tự do cho tôi, nhưng nhiều người bạn tù của tôi vẫn còn bị khổ trong các trại tù. Trong số đó có nhiều người bị giam cầm gần 25 năm, vượt quá thời hạn mà luật Hình sự của Nhà nướcViệt Nam quy định đối với việc thi hành các bản án giam giữ có thời hạn.
Ở đây, tôi cũng xin bầy tỏ sự cảm kích sâu xa đối với các cộng đồng Việt Nam hải ngoại đang đấu tranh cho một nước Việt Nam trong sáng và tự do. Tôi cũng xin gởi lời cảm ơn đến các nhân sĩ Hòa Lan, trong tình cảm nhân loại đã trực tiếp can thiệp với chính phủ Việt Nam cho tôi được sang thăm viếng đất nước Hòa Lan, để có thể có điều kiện tự do hơn nói lên tiếng nói thầm lặng mà đã một phần tư thế kỷ bị bóp nghẹt.
Trong những năm gần đây, trước cả khi tôi được lịnh phải rời khỏi nhà tù để trở về chùa, có rất nhiều đồng bào ta từ nước ngoài về thăm và càng ngày càng chứng kiến những đổi thay được nói là đáng khích lệ. Khích lệ theo chiều hướng nào, còn tùy theo cách nhìn mỗi người. Riêng tôi, tôi không có được may mắn là chứng nhân trực tiếp trước những thay đổi của đất nước, mặc dù tôi đang sống trong lòng quê Cha đất Tổ. Đó là điều tốt hay xấu, cũng còn tùy cách nhìn của mỗi người.
Mặc dù không có cái may như nhiều đồng bào sau khi sống tự do 15, 20 năm ở nước ngoài về thăm quê, thấy được những đổi thay từ trên thượng tầng, thấy được sự giầu sang của đất nước qua những tiện nghi vật chất từ các khách sạn năm sao dành cho cán bộ cao cấp và khách nước ngoài, từ những tiếp đón niềm nở và linh đình của những nhân vật thuộc thượng tầng xã hội, với những đặc quyền xã hội mà điều kiện chính trị dành cho, nhưng tôi có cái "may mắn" khác - nếu cho đó là may mắn - được sống chung trong một thời gian rất dài với thành phần được xem là "cặn bã" của xã hội. Chính từ xã hội gọi là cặn bã ấy tôi đã chứng kiến những đổi thay trong nhà tù như là ảnh chiếu của những "đổi thay to lớn" của đất nước. Sự chứng kiến đơn giản và dễ hiểu thôi
Cũng như người ta chỉ cần nhìn vào rác rưởi phế thải được dồn ra sân sau mà có thể biết những thứ đã được tiêu thụ ở sân trước. Chúng tôi, một số người từ lâu đã được học tập để thành thói quen suy nghĩ số phận dân tộc từ những đống rác, đã tự mình đặt thành nhiều câu hỏi cho lương tâm nhân loại, cho ý nghĩa tiến bộ của xã hội loài người, và trên tất cả là một câu hỏi lịch sử: "Đất nước đã thấm bao nhiêu xương máu của bao nhiêu thế hệ ông cha và bè bạn để dồn lại thành những đống rác như thế, những đống rác càng ngày càng to phình lên một cách khủng khiếp".
Việt Nam đang là một đống rác khổng lồ. Đó không phải là ý nghĩ riêng của tôi, mà là nhận xét của nhân vật cao cấp nhất của đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam. Đây không phải là ý nghĩa kinh tế. Nó bao trùm tất cả mọi khía cạnh đời sống: văn hóa, chính trị, và cả tôn giáo. Vậy thì, một câu hỏi cần phải được đặt ra cho những ai còn có chút tự trọng dân tộc: Tại sao một dân tộc luôn luôn tự hào với truyền thống bốn nghìn năm văn hiến, bỗng nhiên để cho đất nước mình trở thành một đống rác, kho chứa tất cả những gì xấu xa nhất của nhân loại văn minh? Nguyên nhân từ đâu và do ai?
Trong gần mười lăm năm trong tù, điệp khúc tôi phải thường xuyên học tập để ca ngợi tính can đảm của đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam: "Cán bộ làm sai, đảng tri... Đảng làm sai, đảng sửa." Tôi cũng thường xuyên trả lời: Đó không phải là sự can đảm, mà là thái độ cai trị khinh dân; xem dân như là vật thí nghiệm cho những tư duy không tưởng, học thuyết viễn vông của mình.
Tôi cũng thường xuyên bị học tập rằng, chính sách đoàn kết dân tộc của đảng là làm cho "dân tin đảng và đảng tin dân." Tôi cũng thường xuyên trả lời: làm cho dân tin đảng; đó là điều tất nhiên và dễ hiểu thôi vì có đáng tin thì người ta mới tin được; vì đảng cần được dân tin tưởng để tồn tại, dù chỉ là tin tưởng giả tạo. Nhưng "dân tin đảng" có nghĩa là thế nào? Nếu đảng không tin dân thì đảng xử lý dân như thế nào? Câu trả lời thực tế: Cả nước trở thành một nhà tù vĩ đại.
Ngày nay, khi không còn ở trong nhà tù nhỏ như mười lăm năm trước nữa, tôi không còn có điều kiện để được lên lớp chính tri. Tôi hy vọng đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam không còn có cái can đảm như xưa, để thử nghiệm học thuyết của mình thêm nhiều lần nữa; và cũng không thi hành chính sách "đại đoàn kết" như xưa, để dân có thể sống tự tại mà không bị đảng nghi ngờ.
Mặc dù có những thay đổi lớn nhìn từ góc độ nào đó, nhưng thực tế tôi biết chắc rằng có một điều không thay đổi. Đó là: "đảng Cộng Sản vẫn tự coi mình là ân nhân của dân tộc và do đó có độc quyền quyết định số phận của dân tộc"(mà là ân nhân hay tội đồ gì thì quần chúng và lịch sử trước mặt sẽ phán xét). Đó là điểm khác biệt với các chế độ chuyên chính lừng danh trong lịch sử.
Đây cũng chính là nguyên nhân của một trong những điều mà các đảng viên bảo thủ cho là "rác rưới tư bản". Điều đó là nạn tham nhũng. Bởi vì, quan liêu, hách dịch, thái độ kẻ cả ban ơn, vừa là bản chất và vừa là dưỡng chất của tệ nạn tham nhũng của Việt Nam hiện nay.
Mọi tội phạm xảy ra đều do một bên gây hại và một bên bị hại. Trong tham nhũng, mới nhìn thì không có ai bị hại một cách rõ ràng. Trước mắt, người đưa hối lộ và người nhận hối lộ đều nhận được những điều lợi nhất định.
Như vậy người bị hại chính là quần chúng, không đủ đặc quyền để tham gia nhằm hưởng lợi trực tiếp từ nạn tham nhũng. Nghĩa là những thành phần cùng khốn của xã hội chẳng có gì để cho, nên chẳng nhận được gì, vì vậy họ trở thành nạn nhân. Tính cá biệt của nạn nhân tham nhũng ở Việt Nam hiện tại là do thái độ ban ơn của những kẻ có chức quyền đối với "thần dân" dưới sự cai trị của mình.
Tham nhũng ở Việt Nam không chỉ là thỏa thuận song phương để dành những hợp đồng kinh tế béo bở. Nó bòn rút xương tủy của nhân dân; những người cùng khốn phải còng lưng lao động để có tiền đóng thuế.
Tham nhũng là gốc rễ của các tệ nạn xã hội khác. Vì nó tổ chức bao che và nuôi dưỡng chung. Nó xói mòn mọi giá trị đạo đức truyền thống. Bảo vệ hay phát huy văn hóa dân tộc trên cơ sở đó chỉ là lá chắn cho tệ nạn tràn lan mà thôi.
Tôi nói, tham nhũng là sân sau của quyền lực. Bởi vì chính những người dân cùng khốn, là tiếng nói luôn luôn bị áp chế bằng sự dọa nạt, là những người bị trấn áp bởi bạo quyền chuyên chính khốc liệt nhất, nhưng cũng lặng lẽ chịu đựng nhất. Đó là những chứng nhân cho mặt trái của tham nhũng và quyền lực; nạn nhân trực tiếp của tất cả sự áp chế của nó đối với giá trị nhân phẩm.
Có lẽ tôi muốn kể lại đây một câu chuyện thương tâm, để chúng ta hiểu phần nào bản chất tham nhũng trong một chế độ thường tự hào là không có người bóc lột người. Chuyện xảy ra trong trận lụt vào cuối năm vừa qua.
Tại xã Hương Thọ huyện Hương Trà tỉnh Thừa Thiên có một gia đình nghèo khổ sống lênh đênh trên một chiếc đò. Khi cơn lụt ập đến, gia đình này là duy nhất có ghe ở địa phương miền núi này, do đó đã vớt được trên 80 người khỏi cảnh chết chìm. Sau nước rút, thỉnh thoảng có vài phái đoàn đến cứu trợ.
Các gia đình khác đều nhận được cứu trợ. Chỉ trừ gia đình anh. Lý do:không có hộ khẩu, vì lâu nay gia đình này nghèo quá, phải sống "vô gia cư" phiêu bạt trên các sông suối nên không có hộ khẩu thường trú. Dân làng biết ơn anh, xin chính quyền địa phương cấp hộ khẩu cho. Nhưng thiếu điều kiện nhập hộ: gia đình anh không có đủ 400,000 đồng VN để hối lộ. Khi các thầy của tôi lên cứu trợ, dân làng tự động đến tường thuật sự việc để các thầy giúp đỡ. Các thầy giúp đủ số tiền, nhưng với điều kiện phải giấu kín nguồn gốc. Vì sẽ còn nhiều vấn đề rắc rối khác.
Điều tôi muốn nói ở đây không phải nhắm đến tệ nạn tham nhũng. Mà là nhân cách của gia đình nghèo khốn ấy; và thái độ chịu đựng sự bất công một cách thầm lặng đáng kính phục. Dù sống dưới mức tận cùng khốn khổ, anh vẫn giữ vẹn giá trị nhân phẩm của mình. Làm ơn cho nhiều người, nhưng không kể ơn để được đền bù. Chỉ có dân làng biết ơn và tự động đền đáp. Nhưng dân ai cũng nghèo khổ và lại gặp hoạn nạn như nhau, lấy gì chu cấp cho nhau?
Khắp cả đất nước này, có bao nhiêu trường hợp như vậy. Đó là những cuộc sống ở sân sau của quyền lực, sống trong bóng tối của xã hội. Nếu họ không lên tiếng, ai biết họ ở đây. Nhưng họ lại không lên tiếng. Vì không thể, hay vì không muốn? Do cả hai. Điều mà quý vị biết rõ là tôi đang nói chuyện ở đây cũng chỉ là cách nói "lén lút qua mặt chính quyền." Tôi chưa biết ngày mai của tôi ra sao, khi những điều tôi nói không làm hài lòng Đảng và Nhà nước.
Hoàn cảnh đất nước Việt Nam như thế cho nên dân ta phải chịu quá nhiều đau thương và tủi nhục. Đối với giới trí thức nói riêng, mà xã hội Việt Nam truyền thống rất tôn trọng, điều tủi nhục lớn nhất là họ không thể thay những người dân thấp cổ bé miệng nói lên một cách trung thực tất cả những uất ức, những khổ nhục mà họ phải chịu.
Bởi vì, tại Việt Nam ngày nay những người có thể nói thì ngòi bút đã bị cong; những người muốn nói thì ngòi bút đã bị bẻ gẫy.
Nhưng tôi biết rõ một điều, và điều đó đã được ghi chép trong lịch sử: Trí thức chân chính của Việt Nam không bao giờ khiếp nhược.
Trân trọng kính chào quí vị.
Tuệ Sỹ
Tu Viện Quảng Hương, Sài Gòn, VN
(INTELLECTUALS MUST SPEAK
My fellow countrymen:
I would like to convey to you several superficial ideas and concerns that weighed heavily on me during my imprisonment. But first of all, I would like to express my gratitude to you, my fellow countrymen in and outside of Vietnam. With the support of international opinions, you succeeded in voicing your strong disagreement with the death sentenced imposed on me. You petitioned on my behalf to those who had thought they had the right to pass judgment on those who acted in accordance with their conscience. Your petition and intervention forced the Vietnamese Communist authorities to release me from prison, but many fellow prisoners of mine still suffer from incarceration. Among these prisoners, there are several who have been imprisoned nearly 25 years, exceeding the time limit stipulated by the penal code of Vietnam regarding sentences with set time limits.
I also would like to express my deep appreciation to overseas Vietnamese communities which are fighting for a free and democratic Vietnam. I also would like to thank the concerned humanists of the Netherlands, who directly communicated with the Vietnamese government so that I could visit the Netherlands, affording me the opportunity to voice what has been muffled for a quarter of a century.
In recent years, prior to my release from prison and back to the Buddhist temple, there were many Vietnamese expatriates who returned home for visit and thus witnessed what were considered encouraging changes. It was up to the perspective of the individual expatriate to determine which direction the changes were encouraging. As for me, I did not the luck to witness directly the changes in the nation, despite the fact that I lived right in the heart of the fatherland. Whether or not that was a good thing, it would be up to the perspective of each individual.
I did not have the luck, like that enjoyed by the expatriates who after living overseas in freedom for 15 or 20 years, returned home for a visit and saw the changes from the top down, witnessing the prosperity of our nation as evidenced by the material comforts provided by five-star hotels reserved for top officials of the nation and for tourists, and by the warm and lavish receptions given by persons of the top echelons of society , who enjoy special privileges through political connections. But I had a "luck"of my own---if it was indeed a luck---to live for a very long time with the elements that were considered the "scum and dregs" of society. Precisely from the perspective of these scum and dregs of society I considered the changes in the prison as the reflection of "the great changes" of the nation. The changes were simple and easy to understand.
The garbage in the backyard of a house reflects what was consumed by the inhabitants of the house. We are those who have been trained and conditioned to think from the perspective of a people residing in a garbage dump, and have asked ourselves various questions concerning the conscience of mankind, the meaning of human progress, and above all this historical inquiry: "How much blood did our forefathers shed in order to bequeath this land for us and why has this land become a gigantic garbage dump that gets bigger with each passing day?"
Vietnam is a gigantic garbage dump. That's not my personal opinion, but is an
observation of the highest ranking official of the VietNamese Communist Party. The observation does not pertain to economic matters. It covers several aspects of life: culture, politics, and religion. So, an imperative question is posed to those who still possess ethnic pride: Why did a people who always take pride in having a culture four thousand years old suddenly let their country become a garbage dump containing the worst features of humanity? What are the causes and who should be held responsible?
In almost fifteen years of being incarcerated, the refrains that I had to endure and to "study" was about the courage of the Vietnamese Communist Party: "If the cadres commit errors, the Party will punish...If the Party commit errors, the Party will rectify itself." I often retorted that the slogans had nothing to do with the courage; rather, they reflected a governing attitude that was full of contempt for the populace, regarding the populace as nothing more than a guinea pig to be used in deluded and nonsensical ideology.
I was also regularly forced to study that the policy of national solidarity (sic!) of the Vietnamese Communist Party was to make "the people believe in the Party and the Party believe in the people". I also replied that:
-"To make the people believe in the Party" is a matter of course and easy to understand because people only believe in what is believable. And the Party needs the people in it so it can survive, even if the belief is a fiction and man-made.
-But what is the meaning of the slogan "To make the Party believe in the people"? But what if the Party does not believe in the people, then how would the Party act? The practical answer to this question is that the whole country has become a colossal jail.
Since I am no longer incarcerated in a tiny cell for fifteen years as I once was, I don't have the "qualifications" to move up in courses of study concerning political indoctrination. However, I hope that the Vietnamese Communist Party no longer has the courage as it did in the past so it would not continue experimenting its ideology and practicing its policy of "Great Solidarity", so that the people can live by themselves without inviting any suspicion from the party.
In spite of the big changes as seen from a certain angle, I know for certain that there is an unchanging fact. That is, "the Vietnamese Communist Party regards itself as the benefactor of the people and thus has the exclusive right to decide the fate of the people" (but being a benefactor or a criminal, it's up to the people and history to decide). This self-regard of the Vietnamese Communist Party has set it apart from other notorious totalitarian regimes in human history.
This self-regard is the cause of one of several phenomena that the conservative elements within the Party have labeled as "capitalist garbage." One phenomenon is corruption which is brought about and nurtured by the mandarin, haughty, favor-granting attitude of the Party.
A crime has occurred. Ordinarily, there would be a criminal and his victim. But in corruption, at first glance,there appears no victim.The bribe giver and his taker both derive certain definite benefits.
Therefore the victim is the public who have no special privileges to enable them obtain the direct benefits from the corruption. That means the lowest strata of the society have nothing to offer, and hence receive nothing. That's why they are the victims. The peculiar feature of the victims of corruption in Vietnam is the attitude of public officials that they grant and confer favors to the "subjects" under their administration.
Corruption is not only about the mutual agreement involving companies and fat cats. It also sucks the marrow out of the populace, those who have to sweat and slave in order to have money to pay taxes.
Corruption is the root cause of other social ills because it is organized and enjoys protection. It erodes all traditional moral values. To protect and promote a nation's culture on the back of corruption is to use a fig leave to stem the spread of social ills.
I am saying that corruption is the back yard of power. It is the poverty-stricken folks whose voice is muffled by threats and intimidation. It is they who are oppressed by the most totalitarian brute force, but they are also the ones who suffer in silence the most. They bear witness to the seamy, unseemly side of corruption and power; they are the direct victims of corruption and power which have trammelled on their human dignity.
Perhaps I should speak about a heart-rending episode so we can understand a little bit about the nature of corruption in a regime which has brazenly boasted that there is no exploitation of humans by humans in the land it rules. This episode took place in the year-end flood of last year.
In the village of Hương Thọ, District of Hương Trà, Thừa Thiên Province, there is a poor family that ekes out a living by means of providing a ferry service with their little houseboat. When the flood came, the family was the only one in this foothill locality which had a boat. They used it to rescue 80 people from drowning. After the floodwater receded, several aid organizations arrived at the scene.
All families in the affected village received aid, except the houseboat family. Reason: because this poor itinerant family was no part of the village on account of having no fixed address and being not counted among the inhabitants of the village. The villagers were
grateful to the family and petitioned the local authorities to include the family members as village inhabitants. The local authorities ruled that the family members did not qualify for inclusion simply because they did not 400,000 đồng (Vietnamese currency, less than $20 in U.S. dollars. A person can live on a dollar a day in Vietnam) for bribery. When the monks from my temple arrived in the village to render assistance to the flood victims, the grateful villagers voluntarily told the monks the complete story about the poor houseboat family. The monks came up with money but they told everybody in the village not to tell the local authorities where the family came from, otherwise there might be problems for everyone concerned.
The thing I want to talk about is not really the corruption per se, but the dignity of the poor boat family and their admirable quiet resignation to the injustice. Despite living in poverty, they maintained their dignity. They rendered aid to the flood victims, but they did not solicit financial assistance from the people whose lives they saved. But the villagers were grateful and tried to find ways to help them. However, the villagers themselves were poor and adversely affected by the flood and could only help them via from the monks.
Throughout this land of ours, there are many cases like that of the boat family. They illustrate what life is like in the back yard of power, in the darkness of society. But the affected people do not speak up. Is it because they cannot or they would not? Both. You know clearly what I am speaking about is just my way of "sneak talking past the authorities". I don't know what tomorrow will hold for me if what I am speaking now does not please the Vietnamese Communist Party and the government.
The situation in Vietnam is such that our people have to put up with so much suffering and humiliation. With regard to the intellectual class, for whom our people traditionally hold in high esteem, their biggest humiliation is they cannot speak for the people in the lower strata
of society in order to articulate the anger and the humiliation endured by the poor.
The fact is that in Vietnam nowadays, those who can speak up are already bought out; those who want to speak up are already imprisoned.
But I do know one thing, and it was recorded in our history: True intellectuals in Vietnam are never cowardly.
Respectfully yours,
Tuệ Sỹ
Quảng Hương Monastery,
Sài Gòn, VIetnam"
I came across the above article in one of Vietnamese language forums. Unfortunately the date on which the article was written was not shown. I have an impression that, based on the information gleaned from the article and from the web, Tuệ Sỹ is still in Vietnam and under house arrest, and did not avail himself of the opportunity to seek political asylum, as lesser men would do, when he was invited to speak in the Netherlands after his release from jail. If my inference is correct, that would make him all the more admirable in my eyes because the article is a brave and clear condemnation of the Vietnamese Communist rulers and a quiet but urgent call for the Vietnamese intellectuals to fulfill their traditional duty to speak up against tyranny and to spearhead a movement to overthrow it.
Here we have a monk admitted into the monastery at the tender age of seven; well versed in languages (Chinese, Pali, and Sanskrit), required of a serious student of Buddhism, in addition to the sine qua non European languages (English, French, and German) expected of a modern Vietnamese intellectual; university lecturer; knowledgable of western philosophy, especially of Foucault and Heidegger---a flamboyant, risk-taking, Nietzsche-influenced Frenchman and a staid German whose interests are about the nature and structure of power and domination, and being, respectively; wrote lyrical poetry; progressively advanced in the Buddhist hierarchy to the current position Venerable (Thượng Tọa) and held a leadership position in a Buddhist organization in Vietnam which has been opposed to the Vietnamese Communist Party leaders for the way they have oppressed religions and their manner of governance in Vietnam. For this he and his fellow Buddhist scholar, Thích Trí Siêu (Lê Mạnh Thát) were sentenced to death, but later commuted and released under international outrage and pressure. According to the Wikipedia, Tuệ Sỹ has been under house arrest since 2003.
Man has built-in fears which help him stay alive and pass on his genes. Among the fears, the biggest must be fear of death for a normal, functioning sane person. He would do everything within his powers to postpone death. To be in a position where another human has a power to extinguish his life would be the most distressing situation a man would find himself. But that was Tuệ Sỹ precisely found himself in 1984. Yet Tuệ Sỹ has done nothing to disgrace himself, not when he was sentenced to capital punishment for "plotting to overthrow the government", or since he was released from prison and confined to house arrest. He has continued speaking up. The scathing indictment of the sole power structure in Vietnam: the Vietnamese Communist Party, contained in the above article "Intellectuals Must Speak" speaks volumes about this Buddhist scholar. Perhaps it is fitting for a man who has read extensively about Foucault and Heidegger, about power and being.
It is Tuệ Sỹ's talent as a lyrical poet which has endeared himself to the Vietnamese educated folks. For a list of his poems, please see Những bài thơ của nhà thơ Tuệ Sỹ - Vườn thơ ở tkaraoke.com in Google Search. Almost all of his poems are good and touching. They invariably leave the reader intoxicated and transformed and thirsty for more. For instance, you wouldn't expect the following would be written by a Buddhist monk.
Giấc Mơ
Ta tìm em trong giấc chiêm bao
Nỗi buồn thu nhỏ hàng cây cao
Lửa cháy quanh trời ta vẫn lạnh
Bóng tối vương đầy đôi mắt sâu
Yêu em dâng cả ráng chiều thu
Em đốt tình yêu bằng hận thù
Cháy đỏ mùa đông ta vẫn lạnh
Giấc mơ không kín dãy song tù
Tuệ Sỹ
A Dream
I looked for thee in a dream.
Sorrow in the fall of mine was small,
But the trees stood tall.
Despite the raging fire all around me,
I still felt cold deep inside.
My eyes were steeped in darkness.
In a late afternoon I lovingly offered thee this autumn of mine
Thou destroyed love with a burning hatred
It burned throughout the winter and I still felt cold
My dream couldn't cover up the prison cell's bars
Translated by Wissai
May 17, 2013
The affectionate second personal pronoun "em" in Vietnamese in the above poem could be taken to mean a person of either gender or the land of Vietnam. Such is the beauty of poetry where it is open to ambiguity and suggestiveness. The reader must bring himself to a work of art if he is to truly enjoy it.
Apparently Tuệ Sỹ has kept his monastic vows. There have been no scandals in his personal life. He looked ascetic and gaunt with fierce intelligence in his eyes which are set in a big head with beautiful ears. He is also an accomplished piano player. From the 2003 audio interview conducted by a Vietnamese Youth organization in Australia and is currently available on the web, his voice was soft and he had a plain, unpretentious, unhurried way of speaking even when he talked about painful, unpleasant encounters with the police and security personnel of the Vietnamese Communist regime who set out to make his life and the life of freedom fighters like him miserable. He is evidently understanding of the follies of lesser men. He may evince annoyance at those who are mired in darkness but none of the contempt.
Phạm Công Thiện (henceforth PCT) (1941-2011)
On the other hand, PCT, an alleged enfant terrible of the Vietnamese Letters during 1960's, had the arrogance of a gifted man and the annoyance and contempt for men of lesser abilities, despite his being an ordained Buddhist monk at one time. Despite having no formal high school education, PCT made a name for himself in 1965 with the publication of "Ý thức mới trong văn nghệ và triết học". I read it in the summer of 1968 after I finished my first year in college at the Faculty of Letters in Saigon. I was very impressed with the young author's knowledge and urgent, passionate voice. I journeyed to "Hố Thẳm của tư tưởng " (1967) in the same summer and I was put off by the author's undue arrogance and display of intemperance. He made it clear that he considered himself a genius, especially when it came to understanding Zen Buddhism. From my recollection, he dismissed everybody else's views, including those of D.T. Suzuki. He questioned other writers' knowledge of the German language. I soon got busy with my studies and subsequent interests and didn't read anymore of his works until recently. But I kept a thought in my mind that I would revisit PCT someday. I have lived in Houston on and off since 1984. I didn't know that PCT lived there until he departed from this world in 2011, otherwise I would have made a point to seek him out. His death occasioned a flurry of articles on the web extolling his genius. From there I learned he also wrote poetry, a poem of which was once set to music by Lê Uyên Phương under the name "Tôi đứng trên đồi mây trổ bông"
Mười năm qua gió thổi đồi tây
Tôi long đong theo bóng chim gầy
Một sớm em về ru giấc ngủ
Bông trời bay trắng cả rừng cây
Gió thổi đồi tây hay đồi đông
Hiu hắt quê hương bến cỏ hồng
Trong mơ em vẫn còn bên cửa
Tôi đứng trên đồi mây trổ bông
Gió thổi đồi thu qua đồi thông
Mưa hạ ly hương nước ngược dòng
Tôi đau trong tiếng gà xơ xác
Một sớm bông hồng nở cửa đông.
From "Serpent's Day of Birth" (Ngày Sinh Của rắn)
For over ten years winds blew across the western hills
I struggled to follow a scrawny bird's flying shadow
One early morning you came back with a lullaby
Over the forest trees white clouds hung low
Now across eastern and western hills the winds blow
Over the homeland's parched meadowlands down below
In my dreams you still stand at the door
While I stand upon a hill amidst the blooming clouds
The winds blew across the hills of pine in the fall
I left the country in the summer rain, going against the flow
I was pained by the rooster's plaintive crow
A rose was blooming in early morn at the eastern door
Wissai/NKBa'
2011
The following two quotes would be sufficient to testify to PCT's self-conception and probably his character as well (more about his character later):
"Ngay đến Heraclite, Parmenide và Empédocle, bây giờ tao còn xem thường, tao coi ba tên ấy như là ba tên thủ phạm của nền văn minh hiện đại, chưa nói đến Socrate, đó là một tên ngu dại nhất mà ta đã gặp trong đời sống tâm linh của ta". Ông coi những nghệ sĩ như Goethe, Dante như những thằng hề ngu xuẩn. Và đối với Sartre, Beauvoir: "Nếu họ muốn xin gặp tao, tao sẽ không cho gặp mà còn chửi vào mặt họ". Về thiền tông: "Tao đã gửi thiền tông vào một phong bì tối khẩn đề địa chỉ của bất cứ ngôi chùa nào trên thế giới". Về dạy học và các văn sĩ cùng thời: "thời gian tao học ở Hoa Kỳ, tao đã bỏ học vì tao thấy những trường đại học mà tao học như Yale, Columbia chỉ toàn là nơi sản xuất những thằng ngu xuẩn, ngay đến giáo sư của tao chỉ là những thằng ngu xuẩn nhất đời, tao có thể dạy họ hơn là họ dạy tao...Bây giờ nếu có Phật Thích Ca hay Chúa Giê Su hiện ra đứng giảng trước mặt tao, tao cũng không nghe theo nữa. Tao là học trò của tao và chỉ có tao làm thầy cho tao. Tao không muốn làm thầy ai hết và cũng không để ai làm thầy tao. Còn các văn sĩ ở Sài Gòn, đọc các bài thơ của các anh, tôi thấy ngay sự nghèo nàn của tâm hồn anh, sự quờ quạng lúng túng, sự lặp đi lặp lại vô ý thức hay có ý thức: trí thức "mười lăm xu", ái quốc nhân đạo "ba mươi lăm xu", triết lý tôn giáo "bốn mươi lăm xu" ( Hố Thẳm của tư tưởng, chương 5. Cited in Việt Wikipedia)
"I even have no respect for Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles. I consider those three the three criminals of contemporary civilization, not counting Socrates, the most stupid guy I have ever met in my spiritual life." He (PCT) regarded artists like Goethe and Dante as stupid clowns. With respect to Sartre and Beauvoir: "if they want to meet me, I wouldn't agree to meeting them. I would even curse them out". Regarding Zen Buddhism: "I enclosed Zen Buddhism in an express mail addressing to a Buddhist temple anywhere in the world". About teaching and contemporary writers: "The time I studied in the U.S., I dropped out of school because universities like Yale and Columbia where I studied only produced stupid graduates. Even my professors were the most stupid dudes. I could teach them more than they could teach me... Now if Buddha or Jesus Christ appears, I would not even listen. I am my own student and only I can be my teacher. I don't want to be anybody's teacher or anybody's student. About the writers in Saigon, I have read your poems, and I saw the poverty of your souls, the awkward fumblings, the mindless repetitions, or the mindful repetitions: the intellectuals worth 'fifteen cents', the compassionate patriots 'thirty cents', the metaphysics 'forty five cents' (Hố Thẳm của tư tưởng [The Abyss of Thought], Chapter 5)"
"Lời người dịch
Có ba quyển sách ảnh hưởng sâu đậm đến cuộc đời tôi, đó là quyển Milarepa do W. Y. Evans-Wentz xuất bản, viết về đời sống của Bồ tát Tây Tạng Milarepa, quyển thứ hai là quyển nhật ký của Nijinski, một nghệ sĩ múa người Nga, quyển thứ ba là quyển Ecce Homo của Nietzsche, tức là quyển này đây.
Nhiều lúc điên gàn vớ vẩn, tôi tưởng tượng rằng tôi bị mù mắt, bị bại liệt cả thân thể một ngày nào đó thơ mộng trong kiếp này hoặc kiếp sau, trong một căn nhà đổ nát, tôi nằm dài trên nệm đất, trời nắng dữ dội, mắt tôi không thấy gì cả, nhưng lỗ tai tôi còn nghe được tiếng thở của trái đất thì có một người nào đó sẽ độ lượng chịu cực đọc cho tôi nghe năm mười trang trong quyển Milarepa hoặc quyển Ecce Homo của Nietzsche. Chắc lúc ấy mắt tôi sẽ bừng sáng lại được, và tôi vùng lên đứng dậy, không còn bại liệt nữa. Tôi sẽ chạy đâm đầu vào núi cấm để chờ ngày núi nổ banh ra làm hai thì tôi sẽ khoan thai bước ra hiện nguyên tính! Lúc ấy cỏ xanh sẽ nhảy múa dưới chân tôi, chân tôi sẽ lướt trên cỏ như ma đi hỏng chân. Nhưng điều chắc chắn là tôi sẽ không là ma, mà là một cái gì rất hiền lành, rất dễ dạy, rất chậm chạp, vô danh, miệng cứ cười một nụ cười nhè nhẹ như không khí.
Tôi thường mang tiếng là giỏi sinh ngữ, thực sự thì tôi khinh bỉ những kẻ nào biết nhiều thứ tiếng. Tôi vẫn nghĩ rằng chữ Việt là chữ khó đọc nhất, vì chữ Việt không có văn phạm và ngữ pháp, không có ngày nào tôi không dở Tự điển Việt Nam của Hội Khai Trí Tiến Đức và quyển Việt Nam tân tự điển của Thanh Nghị để học từng chữ A, từng chữ B, tôi chịu khó học lại từng dấu hỏi, dấu ngã để nhìn lại những nét mặt quen thuộc của bà con làng xóm mà từ bao nhiêu năm lang bạt kỳ hồ tôi đã bỏ quên một cách ngu dại. Đối với tôi, tiếng Việt còn giữ lại một niềm bí ẩn nào đó mà cả đời tôi cũng không thể nào khoét sâu vào được. Có lẽ khi sắp chết thì niềm bí ẩn kia sẽ hiện nguyên hình…
Còn tiếng ngoại quốc? Tôi coi những thứ tiếng ngoại quốc như những trò chơi nhảm nhí. Hồi 13-14 tuổi, tôi đã học tiếng Nga, tiếng Ý, tiếng Tây Ban Nha, tiếng Đức, tiếng Hoà Lan, tiếng Ba Lan, vân vân. Đến năm 18-19 tuổi, tôi lại học thêm tiếng Phạn, tiếng Pali, tiếng Hy Lạp, tiếng Tây Tạng, vân vân. Bây giờ có lẽ tôi đã quên hết mọi thứ tiếng, tôi chỉ nhớ một tiếng A của chữ Phạn, chỉ nội có tiếng A này có lẽ tôi phải đầu thai đến một trăm kiếp nữa thì mới hiểu nổi hết tất cả ý nghĩ kỳ lạ của tiếng A trong chữ Phạn!
Sở dĩ tôi say mê ba quyển sách kể trên (Milarepa, Nijinsky và Nietzsche) là vì tôi coi ba quyển sách này như là ba quyển văn phạm vỡ lòng để đi vào tiếng A của chữ Phạn! Tại sao thế? Xin cho tôi giữ lại một chút kín đáo về đời sống tâm linh mình.
Bây giờ tôi xin nhường lời lại cho Nietzsche.
Và đây là người mà chúng ta mong đợi, Ecce Homo!
Phạm Công Thiện
Ngày 5 tháng 11, 1969"
("Translator's Note
There were three books that left a deep impact on my life:" Milarepa" by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, about the Tibetan bodhisattva, "The Diary of Nijinski", a Russian dancer, and "Ecce Homo"by Nietzsche, the book you have in your hands.
There were times I was attacked by random madness. I imagined that I was blind and paralyzed all over the body on a certain dreamy day in this life or next. I would lie on the earthen floor in a dilapidated house. I couldn't see but I could still hear the breathing of the earth and the voice of a kind-hearted person who would read for me the few pages from "Milarepa" or "Ecce Homo". Probably my eyes would then be able to see and I would be able to stand up, no longer paralyzed. I would run towards the forbidden mountain and butt my head against it until it splits into two so that I would nonchalantly emerge with my original essence! At that time the green grass would dance at my feet and my feet would glide over the grass as if I were a ghost. But one thing for sure, I would not be a ghost, but something very harmless, very docile, very slow, with no name but with a mouth spreading into a smile as light as air.
I have a reputation as being gifted with languages, but I despise those knowing a lot of languages. I always think the Vietnamese language is the most difficult to read because it has no grammar nor rules. There is not a single day that passes by without my consulting the Vietnamese Dictionary by The Asoociation of Mind and Morals Advancement and the Modern Vietnamese Dictionary by Thanh Nghị in order to learn each word beginning with a letter A, and then with a letter B, and to relearn the spelling to reacquaint myself with my old neighbors that I stupidly neglected during my years of wandering. To me, Vietnamese retains a certain mystery that I cannot penetrate during my lifetime. Maybe just before I die, the mystery will unveil its essence...
About the foreign languages? I consider them as frivolous games. When I was 13-14 years of age, I already studied Russian, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Polish, etc...When I was 18-18 years old, I moved on to Sanskirt, Pali, Greek, Tibetan, etc...Now perhaps I forgot all of them. I only remember the letter A of the Sanskrit language. Perhaps I need to have one hundred reincarnations before I can master all the mysterious meanings of the letter A of Sanskirt!
The reason why I love the three above-mentioned books (Milarepa, Nijinski, and Nietzsche) is that I consider them the three basic grammar books to the letter A of Sanskrit. Why is it so? Please allow me to maintain a little bit of privacy of my spiritual life.
Now I let Nietzsche speak.
And here's the man we are waiting for. Ecce Homo.
Phạm Công Thiện
5th day of November, 1969")
What can we make of the man who was arrogant and narcissist and self-conscious, who talked gibberish and yet was capable of writing beautiful poetry? PCT was a self-taught man who lectured at colleges, not only in Vietnam, but also in France and the U.S., and who had a friendship with Henry Miller, a wild, anarchistic spirit who made money largely on the basis of various semi-autobiographical "novels" that was considered "obscene" and banned in the U.S. for many years, though several establishment writers and critics were of the opinion that his first book, "Tropic of Cancer" had some literary merits and was worth reading. We are known by the company we keep and the way we treat our spouse and children in addition to the manner we express our thoughts on top of the contents of our thoughts and the impact of our thoughts on our contemporaries and succeeding generations. Based on those criteria, PCT did not do too well.
Being at one time an ordained monk apparently was not as serious to P CT as it was to Tuệ Sỹ. I do not know whether or not PCT's decision to seek carnal pleasures came about after he renounced his monastic vows. At any rate, he wrote in his books about the sexual romps he had with European women. He smoked cigarettes, even in his later years. His photos on the Net revealed an intelligent but smug and arrogant face, totally the opposite of those of Tuệ Sỹ.
In 1970 he left Vietnam for good and never came back. In France, he met, courted, and legally married Ms. Lê KhắcThanh Hoài who came from a distinguished family and whose father was a physician and university dean. He had five children with her during a ten-year period. She divorced him later and did a great job raising her kids on her own. She wrote about her life with him in a book that the reader can read for free here:
http://rongmotamhon.net/
According to a close relative of Ms. Ms. Lê KhắcThanh Hoài, who happens to be a friend of mine, Henry Miller broke off relationship with PCT when he felt he was being unfairly "used", but I suppose Henry Miller himself during his lean years before WW II in Paris constantly hit on his friends for financial assistance, so when he became well-off and famous, lost and "artistic" souls felt no qualms in asking him for help.
Unlike Nietzsche who has been influential to all kinds of men of letters and thinkers and is likely to stand the test of time (Encyclopedia Britannica of Philosophy said that" Nietzsche once wrote that some men are born posthumously, and this is certainly true in his case. The history of 20th-century philosophy, theology, and psychology are unintelligible without him. The German philosophers Max Scheler, Karl Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger laboured in his debt, for example, as did the French philosophers Albert Camus, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Existentialism and deconstructionism, a movement in philosophy and literary criticism, owe much to him. The theologians Paul Tillich and Lev Shestov acknowledged their debt as did the “God is dead” theologian Thomas J.J. Altizer; Martin Buber, Judaism’s greatest 20th-century thinker, counted Nietzsche among the three most important influences in his life and translated the first part of Zarathustra into Polish. The psychologists Alfred Adler and Carl Jung were deeply influenced, as was Sigmund Freud, who said of Nietzsche that he had a more penetrating understanding of himself than any man who ever lived or was ever likely to live. Novelists like Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, André Malraux, André Gide, and John Gardner were inspired by him and wrote about him, as did the poets and playwrights George Bernard Shaw, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, and William Butler Yeats, among others. Nietzsche’s great influence is due not only to his originality but also to the fact that he was one of the German language’s most brilliant prose writers.), PCT is only known by the Vietnamese and maybe by the Japanese, and only by folks of strange sensibilities like himself. Despite his arrogance and self-declared genius in languages, as far as I know, PCT strangely did not set forth his thoughts in languages that might help him reach a wider audience. Please correct me if I am wrong, I have a feeling that PCT was not a systematic thinker. I don't know what he stands for and what his views are, despite being a philosopher (as so declared in his website which included meager information about his life and his works, but none about his ideas or original contributions about the human thought) and a university lecturer of philosophy. All well-known modern Western thinkers and philosophers set forth their views. They have followers and detractors, but they make impact and leave legacy. Besides inspiring a Japanese doing a doctorate thesis about him, what impact PCT has had on the Vietnamese and the world? He was also oddly politically inactive in the face of the VCP's destruction of Vietnam although he did write a strange piece in defense of Tuệ Sỹ and Lê Minh Thát when they were condemned to death by the communist authorities in Vietnam in for "plotting to overthrow the government". However, in that piece, he also included gratuitous excessive information about himself in the interest of self-glorification.
".....Lê Mạnh Thát và Tuệ Sỹ đã quên mình mà hết lòng thành thì tất nhiên nhị vị cảm được tất cả những đổ vỡ bi đát của quê hương và kiếp người: Hai người đã được hết tất cả tính mệnh của Việt Nam thì tất nhiên nhìn thấy được những gì vẫn giữ lại Việt tính, và họ đã lên đường trở thành những Ðạo sư dẫn đường cho cả dân tộc. Lúc Hà Nội kết án tử hình Tuệ Sỹ và Lê mạnh Thát hay bất cứ kẻ nào khác vô danh đã tranh đấu cho quyền làm người Việt Nam thì chính Hà Nội đã kết án tử hình toàn thể dân tộc.
Khi mà toàn thể dân tộc Việt nam bị một chế độ tàn bạo kết án tử hình thì đó cũng là lúc chế độ ấy đang tự hủy diệt trong lòng địa chấn linh diệu của Ðại mệnh Việt Nam
Phạm Công Thiện
California ngày 18.10.1988
Chú Thích Cần Biết:
Về những tác phẩm khảo luận nghiên cứu của Lê Mạnh Thát và những tác phẩm văn thơ của Tuệ Sỹ, tôi sẽ đề cập cặn kẽ vào dịp thuận tiện khác,
Bài này được viết ra với đôi điều nhấn mạnh cần thiết về đôi ba nét sống tri thức và tâm linh của Tuệ Sỹ và Lê Mạnh Thát để phổ biến cho cộng đồng trí thức quốc tế: Tôi lên tiếng một cách lễ độ với tư cách là nguyên Giáo sư Triết học Tây Phương Viện Ðại Học Toulouse, Pháp Quốc, nguyên Giáo sư Phật Giáo Viện College of Buddhist Studies, Los Angeles, Hoa Kỳ, nguyên Giám Ðốc Soạn Thảo Tất cả Chương Trình Giảng dạy cho tất cả Phân Khoa Viện Ðại Học Vạn Hạnh từ năm 1966-1968, nguyên khoa trưởng Phân khoa Văn Học và Khoa Học Nhân Văn của Viện Ðại Học Vạn Hạnh từ năm 1968-1970, sáng lập viên và nguyên chủ trương biên tập tạp chí Tư Tưởng của Viện Ðại Học Vạn Hạnh, 1966-1970. Ngoài ra đối với những hội Văn Bút Quốc tế, với tư cách là nhà văn và tác giả vài chục quyển sách đã xuất bản tại Việt Nam và hải ngoại từ 1957-1988."
(....Lê Mạnh Thát and Tuệ Sỹ forgot about their own welfare and were utterly selfless in their struggle because they felt the collapse of their fatherland and the bankruptcy of the human soul. The two monks took upon themselves to save Vietnam. That meant they recognized what the Vietnamese essence was and they became the spiritual leaders for their people. When the Hanoi regime condemned to death Lê Mạnh Thát and Tuệ Sỹ or whoever else because simply these individuals fought the right to exist as Vietnamese, the regime also put to death the entire Vietnamese people.
When the entire Vietnamese people were condemned to death, the regime also placed itself in the path of self-destruction within the miraculous axis of the the Great Fate of Vietnam.
Phạm Công Thiện
California, 18 of November, 1988
Necessary Note:
I will speak at length on a different occasion the scholarly researches done by Lê Mạnh Thát, and the poetical works of Tuệ Sỹ.
This article was written in order to bring to the attention of international intellectual circles. I am speaking up with gravitas as a former professor of Western Philosophy at University of Toulouse, France; former professor of Buddhism at College of Buddhist Studies, Los Angeles, U.SA.; former Director of Curriculums for all courses at Vạn Hanh University, Saigon, Vietnam during 1966-1968, former Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Vạn Hanh University, Saigon, Vietnam during 1968-1970; founder and editor of the Journal Thoughts published by Vạn Hanh University during 1966-1970.
With regard to PEN International, I am speaking up as a writer and author of over twenty books published in Vietnam and elsewhere during 1957-1988"
I think PCT's contribution to the Vietnamese culture lies in his poetry which shows true poetic sensibilities expressed in an original language, and not at all in the area of philosophy or even in translated works. I also think on the international scene, PCT has remained an unknown for a long time, and is likely to be so in the foreseeable future.
Henry Miller ( 1891-1980)
To speak of Henry Miller (henceforth HM) was to recall fondly my tumultuous, event-filled summer days of 1967. I just freshly came back to Vietnam from one-year sojourn in the United States. I was going through both sexual and romantic stirrings in addition to experiencing anxieties and heady expectations of starting college in a few months. Despite my family's discouragement, I decided to enroll at Faculty of Letters, majoring in English. I had a foolish desire to be as good at English as I could be. I was falling in love with a girl and with the English language. I would listen to the American Forces Radio if I was not busy reading American fiction. I came across Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" during a browsing of used books at a bookstall in Saigon.
I read the book over the period of two days. I was enthralled with HM's musings on just about everything under the sun and his frank, almost pornographic, but very funny descriptions of his sexual escapades. From HM I learned a lot of dirty words as well as big words. HM had a big vocabulary and occasionally he would just suddenly throw one appropriate polysyllabic word in just to jolt the reader.
During that summer, I journeyed other books of his and was lucky to find "Tropic of Capricorn", "Sexus", "Plexus", and "Nexus". They were more or less the same: repetitious, rambling discourses on religion, philosophy, arts, and writers and artists with occasional lyrical passages.
Later I learned that during his stay in Paris before World War Two, HM and his lover, Anais Nin, when they were having financial difficulties, were at one time commissioned to write straight pornography for an underground publisher in Paris. If my recollection was correct, the rate was one dollar a page. I have read a collection of HM and Nin's pieces in a paperback form. They were not good and failed to titillate me.
HM had a knack to make friends and form lifelong friendships with writers and artists (he painted watercolors and enjoyed playing ping-pong in the nude. If my memory does not fail me, I believe Playboy magazine did an interview with him). I was not surprised that he had a friendship with PCT. I understood that they had a correspondence. I don't know if the correspondence was ever published. I have a feeling that HM and PCT were kindred spirits although PCT came across far more arrogant and unhinged. More importantly, HM was at heart an artist and did leave an international legacy and did make an impact on some of his noted contemporaries and younger writers. He was a trend setter. He redefined what "novel" could be, where elements of autobiography and imagination could co-exist and become indistinguishable. My approach to writing short stories has been influenced by HM and lately by Scott Wolven. No less than a writer of fame and success, Norman Mailer, wrote glowingly and in awe of HM, in "Genius and Lust". On the contrary, as noted before, despite his offensive self-declared genius and talents, PCT was only a legend in his own mind and the minds of a handful of admirers who are not big names in arts or philosophy.
I have not read HM in years. All I now remember in association with HM are three things: first, he helped me obtain a sexual liberation of sorts; second, an amusing episode in "Tropic of Capricorn" where HM, as an adolescent, had sex with his hirsute piano teacher by the railroad track in one hot summer evening in New York; and third, this beautiful, lyrical passage from "Tropic of Cancer":
"Twilight hour. Indian blue, water of glass, trees glistening and liquescent. The rails fall away into the canal at Jaurès. The long caterpillar with lacquered sides dips like a roller coaster. It it not Paris. It is not Coney Island. It is a crepuscular melange of all the cities of Europe and Central America. The railroad yards below me, the tracks black, webby, not ordered by the engineer but cataclysmic in design, like those gaunt fissures in the polar ice which the camera registers in degrees of black."
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
The summer of 1967 also marked my lifelong fascination with Friedrich Nietzsche (henceforth FN). It all began with an encounter with a quote in which he wrote "It's hard to live with men because silence is difficult". The quote resonated deeply with me because I was born to talk. Loquaciousness is my second nature, but ironically I do long for silence. Anyway the quote prompted me to start investigating FN.
I started, of course, with Thus Spake Zarathustra. Even as raw as I was back then, I recognized it was a book of poetry written in prose. I was struck by the beauty of the language, even in English translation. I went to Khai Trí bookstore in Saigon that very weekend to purchase a primer on the German language. I am embarrassed to report that 46 years later I still cannot read any Nietzsche book in the original. That is why I have always been fascinated to see my own brother-in-law have no problem to navigate via reading in no fewer than 10 languages, among which is German. His brain must be wired differently than mine. Ditto for PCT's brain. You may recall that PCT claimed that he knew a staggering number of foreign languages. I would love to see how PCT expressed himself just in English in order to determine if the man was truly a legend or a fraud. If any reader has any reference to something in which PCT wrote in English or French or even Spanish, kindly let me know. I would appreciate that very much.
Anyway, after "TSZ", I moved on other books of FN, but had a problem to finish them, except "Twilight of the Idols" and "Ecce Homo". The beauty of reading FN's books is that you can open any page in random and still find a gem of thought which is applicable in real life, expressed in striking, powerful manner. I have read FN in this manner in addition to reading about him. I read FN for solace and strength. I fancied that I have much FN within me or rather, he crystallized for me thoughts and ideas which I could not quite articulate as beautifully as he did. If you want to read just one book of FN, I urge you to read "Ecce Homo" which was already translated into Vietnamese by PCT. I have not read this translation (I don't need to), but I have read the English translation by Walter Kaufman, an authority on FN and a native German speaker, at least six times.
Not to be exposed to FN is to miss somebody who could transform your life, who could help you embrace life, who could assist you in seeing more clearly, in thinking a bit more deeply. It would be tedious and embarrassing for me to summarize some FN's earth-shaking views. I strongly recommend that you go to the Net and find those out for yourself.
Not to read FN is like spending all your life relying on Fox News for what's happening in this world or like reading just the Bible for spiritual guidance and for learning how the world was formed or like eating just rice and bean day in and day out for sustenance.
To read FN is to know the real McCoy and to realize that he was far more authentic and lovable and original than PCT although he himself was quite boastful.
Though FN was not married (he was very smitten with Lou Salome', a formidable Russian intellectual woman) and was quite lonely, he did have several male friends and a fervent fan by the name of Peter Gast (who persuaded FN to adopt the title "Twilight of the Idols". I think it was FN who added the beautiful extra notation, "How to philosophize with a hammer" after the title) who was useful to him during his moments of sadness when he realized his books were falling on deaf ears. Yet he was convinced of his greatness and the beauty of his language (he was also a poet and a piano player, like Tuệ Sỹ). He once wrote that he would be famous after his death and that only he and the poet Heine were the master stylists of the German language. Both boastful statements proved to be right. PCT was famous in his late youth and early adulthood, but I doubt if his star will shine in the same firmament of artists and thinkers, as FN is doing and to the lesser extent, HM and Tuệ Sỹ. FN was no coward. Like Tuệ Sỹ, he cared about the country in which he was born and grew up. He volunteered as an artillery man in the Franco-Prussian War and was discharged after sustaining a wound. He wrote that the idea about the will to power and affirmation of life and strength, as opposed to an embrace of Christian slave mentality and Jewish notion of "resentment", came to him when he saw a parade of German troops readying for the front line in a town.
FN died of madness brought on tertiary syphilis after being a mental invalid for over ten years during which he could not read or write anymore. However, it was said that he once poignantly remarked during his long illness after he lost consciousness of who and how great he was, that "yes, I once wrote books".
When I have difficult moments to survive in this treacherous, lies-filled world, I opened a storehouse in my mind where certain sayings and statements and a brief poem of FN help me regain my footing and equilibrium:
"If you look into the abyss long enough, it will look back at you."
"When we figure out the why, we will come up with the how to live."
"The Jews love life. They will sacrifice everything, including truths, in order to live. Most, if not everything, they said about God and His special relationship with them were absolute lies and tales of fiction."
"What does not kill me, will make me stronger."
"To be weak is to invite attack"
"Don't die before your time. Die a timely death."
"At the bridge I stood
lately in the brown night.
From afar came a song:
as a golden drop it welled
over the quivering surface.
Gondolas, lights, and music---
drunken it swam out into the twilight.
My soul, a stringed instrument,
sang to itself, invisibly touched,
a secret gondola song,
quivering with iridescent happiness.
---Did anyone listen to it?
Conclusion:
All the four writers and artists briefly "examined" above are men of talents. Three were unhinged and skated on the thin ice of braggadocio and madness and were attracted to the Abyss. All three appeared to love life with a gusto. They were all dead.
The one who actually went mad was the greatest of all. His impact has been far-reaching. Even common folks have heard of him, but few have bothered to sit down and read his books. If they do, I really doubt if they look at the world the same again, especially in terms of morality and religion.
The one who was the most crazy and the most boastful was the least known and perhaps the least artistic. I have a feeling that he could be an autistic savant.
His former associate and fellow monk has survived a long incarceration period (over 15 years) in the Vietnamese Communist hell hole. Yet despite threats and intimidation, he has continued fighting against the Vietnamese Communists. He looked gaunt and frail in the photos. He is still going on at the age of seventy, the age PCT perished despite living in freedom and material comforts in developed societies since 1970. Perhaps Tuệ Sỹ has quiet strength and didn't indulge in vices like smoking and sexual escapades with white women like his former associate PCT did. His widow once disclosed that PCT had a lot of women friends on account of his "talents."
Wissai/NKBa'
May 19, 2013
Sent from my iPad
It would take a book-length study to do justice to any one individual listed in the heading, let alone four. At any rate, the following is not even a critical essay of the thoughts and merits of the above writers. Rather, it is a quick compilation of my impressionistic, haphazard, amateurish observations about them through their works and their lives while the observations are still fresh in my mind and while I am still alive. In the future, it might be expanded into something more substantial. It is a labor of love since I admire them in varying degrees of intensity. I welcome feedbacks and corrections and additional information.
The piece is written in English instead of Vietnamese for the sake of speed and possible international audience.
I must confess at the outset I have not read all the works written by the above writers. Neither have I read any in-depth critical studies about them. As I mentioned above, this piece is meant to be a gathering of my embryonic and impressionistic thoughts of the writers, based on my past readings and current information available on the Internet via Google Search.
Tuệ Sỹ (Phạm Văn Thương) (1943-present)
When I was coming of age in the 1960's in Vietnam, I didn't hear of Tuệ Sỹ. Since coming to America in 1975, I have occasionally heard of him. A few years ago, I translated a short poem of his into English which is now in the archive of a forum of which I am no longer a member. Unfortunately, I didn't keep a copy for myself (I write and translate rather prolifically, but have a stupid and lazy attitude about record-keeping). All I remember is that it was about ants crawling in the grass. The recent strong and well-written article by Tuệ Sỹ prompted me to have a closer look at this Buddhist monk, scholar, poet, and freedom-fighter who once was condemned to death for daring to fight against the oppressive and widely considered inhumane regime which is riding roughshod over basic human rights in Vietnam. The article is reproduced here in its entirety.
TRÍ THỨC PHẢI NÓI
Kính thưa quí vị,
Hân hạnh gửi đến quý vị một vài ý nghĩa phiến diện về những điều đè nặng tâm trí tôi trong suốt thời gian ở tù. Nhưng điều trước tiên tôi muốn bày tỏ ở đây là sự tri ân của tôi đối với đồng bào hải ngoại, với sự cộng tác của quốc tế, đã can thiệp một cách có hiệu quả khiến cho bản án tử hình dành cho tôi trở thành bản cáo trạng dành cho những người tự cho có quyền xét xử tôi và phán xét những người đã hành động theo lương tâm. Tiếp theo, sự can thiệp đã khiến cho Nhà Nước Cộng Sản Việt nam phải tuyên bố trả tự do cho tôi, nhưng nhiều người bạn tù của tôi vẫn còn bị khổ trong các trại tù. Trong số đó có nhiều người bị giam cầm gần 25 năm, vượt quá thời hạn mà luật Hình sự của Nhà nướcViệt Nam quy định đối với việc thi hành các bản án giam giữ có thời hạn.
Ở đây, tôi cũng xin bầy tỏ sự cảm kích sâu xa đối với các cộng đồng Việt Nam hải ngoại đang đấu tranh cho một nước Việt Nam trong sáng và tự do. Tôi cũng xin gởi lời cảm ơn đến các nhân sĩ Hòa Lan, trong tình cảm nhân loại đã trực tiếp can thiệp với chính phủ Việt Nam cho tôi được sang thăm viếng đất nước Hòa Lan, để có thể có điều kiện tự do hơn nói lên tiếng nói thầm lặng mà đã một phần tư thế kỷ bị bóp nghẹt.
Trong những năm gần đây, trước cả khi tôi được lịnh phải rời khỏi nhà tù để trở về chùa, có rất nhiều đồng bào ta từ nước ngoài về thăm và càng ngày càng chứng kiến những đổi thay được nói là đáng khích lệ. Khích lệ theo chiều hướng nào, còn tùy theo cách nhìn mỗi người. Riêng tôi, tôi không có được may mắn là chứng nhân trực tiếp trước những thay đổi của đất nước, mặc dù tôi đang sống trong lòng quê Cha đất Tổ. Đó là điều tốt hay xấu, cũng còn tùy cách nhìn của mỗi người.
Mặc dù không có cái may như nhiều đồng bào sau khi sống tự do 15, 20 năm ở nước ngoài về thăm quê, thấy được những đổi thay từ trên thượng tầng, thấy được sự giầu sang của đất nước qua những tiện nghi vật chất từ các khách sạn năm sao dành cho cán bộ cao cấp và khách nước ngoài, từ những tiếp đón niềm nở và linh đình của những nhân vật thuộc thượng tầng xã hội, với những đặc quyền xã hội mà điều kiện chính trị dành cho, nhưng tôi có cái "may mắn" khác - nếu cho đó là may mắn - được sống chung trong một thời gian rất dài với thành phần được xem là "cặn bã" của xã hội. Chính từ xã hội gọi là cặn bã ấy tôi đã chứng kiến những đổi thay trong nhà tù như là ảnh chiếu của những "đổi thay to lớn" của đất nước. Sự chứng kiến đơn giản và dễ hiểu thôi
Cũng như người ta chỉ cần nhìn vào rác rưởi phế thải được dồn ra sân sau mà có thể biết những thứ đã được tiêu thụ ở sân trước. Chúng tôi, một số người từ lâu đã được học tập để thành thói quen suy nghĩ số phận dân tộc từ những đống rác, đã tự mình đặt thành nhiều câu hỏi cho lương tâm nhân loại, cho ý nghĩa tiến bộ của xã hội loài người, và trên tất cả là một câu hỏi lịch sử: "Đất nước đã thấm bao nhiêu xương máu của bao nhiêu thế hệ ông cha và bè bạn để dồn lại thành những đống rác như thế, những đống rác càng ngày càng to phình lên một cách khủng khiếp".
Việt Nam đang là một đống rác khổng lồ. Đó không phải là ý nghĩ riêng của tôi, mà là nhận xét của nhân vật cao cấp nhất của đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam. Đây không phải là ý nghĩa kinh tế. Nó bao trùm tất cả mọi khía cạnh đời sống: văn hóa, chính trị, và cả tôn giáo. Vậy thì, một câu hỏi cần phải được đặt ra cho những ai còn có chút tự trọng dân tộc: Tại sao một dân tộc luôn luôn tự hào với truyền thống bốn nghìn năm văn hiến, bỗng nhiên để cho đất nước mình trở thành một đống rác, kho chứa tất cả những gì xấu xa nhất của nhân loại văn minh? Nguyên nhân từ đâu và do ai?
Trong gần mười lăm năm trong tù, điệp khúc tôi phải thường xuyên học tập để ca ngợi tính can đảm của đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam: "Cán bộ làm sai, đảng tri... Đảng làm sai, đảng sửa." Tôi cũng thường xuyên trả lời: Đó không phải là sự can đảm, mà là thái độ cai trị khinh dân; xem dân như là vật thí nghiệm cho những tư duy không tưởng, học thuyết viễn vông của mình.
Tôi cũng thường xuyên bị học tập rằng, chính sách đoàn kết dân tộc của đảng là làm cho "dân tin đảng và đảng tin dân." Tôi cũng thường xuyên trả lời: làm cho dân tin đảng; đó là điều tất nhiên và dễ hiểu thôi vì có đáng tin thì người ta mới tin được; vì đảng cần được dân tin tưởng để tồn tại, dù chỉ là tin tưởng giả tạo. Nhưng "dân tin đảng" có nghĩa là thế nào? Nếu đảng không tin dân thì đảng xử lý dân như thế nào? Câu trả lời thực tế: Cả nước trở thành một nhà tù vĩ đại.
Ngày nay, khi không còn ở trong nhà tù nhỏ như mười lăm năm trước nữa, tôi không còn có điều kiện để được lên lớp chính tri. Tôi hy vọng đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam không còn có cái can đảm như xưa, để thử nghiệm học thuyết của mình thêm nhiều lần nữa; và cũng không thi hành chính sách "đại đoàn kết" như xưa, để dân có thể sống tự tại mà không bị đảng nghi ngờ.
Mặc dù có những thay đổi lớn nhìn từ góc độ nào đó, nhưng thực tế tôi biết chắc rằng có một điều không thay đổi. Đó là: "đảng Cộng Sản vẫn tự coi mình là ân nhân của dân tộc và do đó có độc quyền quyết định số phận của dân tộc"(mà là ân nhân hay tội đồ gì thì quần chúng và lịch sử trước mặt sẽ phán xét). Đó là điểm khác biệt với các chế độ chuyên chính lừng danh trong lịch sử.
Đây cũng chính là nguyên nhân của một trong những điều mà các đảng viên bảo thủ cho là "rác rưới tư bản". Điều đó là nạn tham nhũng. Bởi vì, quan liêu, hách dịch, thái độ kẻ cả ban ơn, vừa là bản chất và vừa là dưỡng chất của tệ nạn tham nhũng của Việt Nam hiện nay.
Mọi tội phạm xảy ra đều do một bên gây hại và một bên bị hại. Trong tham nhũng, mới nhìn thì không có ai bị hại một cách rõ ràng. Trước mắt, người đưa hối lộ và người nhận hối lộ đều nhận được những điều lợi nhất định.
Như vậy người bị hại chính là quần chúng, không đủ đặc quyền để tham gia nhằm hưởng lợi trực tiếp từ nạn tham nhũng. Nghĩa là những thành phần cùng khốn của xã hội chẳng có gì để cho, nên chẳng nhận được gì, vì vậy họ trở thành nạn nhân. Tính cá biệt của nạn nhân tham nhũng ở Việt Nam hiện tại là do thái độ ban ơn của những kẻ có chức quyền đối với "thần dân" dưới sự cai trị của mình.
Tham nhũng ở Việt Nam không chỉ là thỏa thuận song phương để dành những hợp đồng kinh tế béo bở. Nó bòn rút xương tủy của nhân dân; những người cùng khốn phải còng lưng lao động để có tiền đóng thuế.
Tham nhũng là gốc rễ của các tệ nạn xã hội khác. Vì nó tổ chức bao che và nuôi dưỡng chung. Nó xói mòn mọi giá trị đạo đức truyền thống. Bảo vệ hay phát huy văn hóa dân tộc trên cơ sở đó chỉ là lá chắn cho tệ nạn tràn lan mà thôi.
Tôi nói, tham nhũng là sân sau của quyền lực. Bởi vì chính những người dân cùng khốn, là tiếng nói luôn luôn bị áp chế bằng sự dọa nạt, là những người bị trấn áp bởi bạo quyền chuyên chính khốc liệt nhất, nhưng cũng lặng lẽ chịu đựng nhất. Đó là những chứng nhân cho mặt trái của tham nhũng và quyền lực; nạn nhân trực tiếp của tất cả sự áp chế của nó đối với giá trị nhân phẩm.
Có lẽ tôi muốn kể lại đây một câu chuyện thương tâm, để chúng ta hiểu phần nào bản chất tham nhũng trong một chế độ thường tự hào là không có người bóc lột người. Chuyện xảy ra trong trận lụt vào cuối năm vừa qua.
Tại xã Hương Thọ huyện Hương Trà tỉnh Thừa Thiên có một gia đình nghèo khổ sống lênh đênh trên một chiếc đò. Khi cơn lụt ập đến, gia đình này là duy nhất có ghe ở địa phương miền núi này, do đó đã vớt được trên 80 người khỏi cảnh chết chìm. Sau nước rút, thỉnh thoảng có vài phái đoàn đến cứu trợ.
Các gia đình khác đều nhận được cứu trợ. Chỉ trừ gia đình anh. Lý do:không có hộ khẩu, vì lâu nay gia đình này nghèo quá, phải sống "vô gia cư" phiêu bạt trên các sông suối nên không có hộ khẩu thường trú. Dân làng biết ơn anh, xin chính quyền địa phương cấp hộ khẩu cho. Nhưng thiếu điều kiện nhập hộ: gia đình anh không có đủ 400,000 đồng VN để hối lộ. Khi các thầy của tôi lên cứu trợ, dân làng tự động đến tường thuật sự việc để các thầy giúp đỡ. Các thầy giúp đủ số tiền, nhưng với điều kiện phải giấu kín nguồn gốc. Vì sẽ còn nhiều vấn đề rắc rối khác.
Điều tôi muốn nói ở đây không phải nhắm đến tệ nạn tham nhũng. Mà là nhân cách của gia đình nghèo khốn ấy; và thái độ chịu đựng sự bất công một cách thầm lặng đáng kính phục. Dù sống dưới mức tận cùng khốn khổ, anh vẫn giữ vẹn giá trị nhân phẩm của mình. Làm ơn cho nhiều người, nhưng không kể ơn để được đền bù. Chỉ có dân làng biết ơn và tự động đền đáp. Nhưng dân ai cũng nghèo khổ và lại gặp hoạn nạn như nhau, lấy gì chu cấp cho nhau?
Khắp cả đất nước này, có bao nhiêu trường hợp như vậy. Đó là những cuộc sống ở sân sau của quyền lực, sống trong bóng tối của xã hội. Nếu họ không lên tiếng, ai biết họ ở đây. Nhưng họ lại không lên tiếng. Vì không thể, hay vì không muốn? Do cả hai. Điều mà quý vị biết rõ là tôi đang nói chuyện ở đây cũng chỉ là cách nói "lén lút qua mặt chính quyền." Tôi chưa biết ngày mai của tôi ra sao, khi những điều tôi nói không làm hài lòng Đảng và Nhà nước.
Hoàn cảnh đất nước Việt Nam như thế cho nên dân ta phải chịu quá nhiều đau thương và tủi nhục. Đối với giới trí thức nói riêng, mà xã hội Việt Nam truyền thống rất tôn trọng, điều tủi nhục lớn nhất là họ không thể thay những người dân thấp cổ bé miệng nói lên một cách trung thực tất cả những uất ức, những khổ nhục mà họ phải chịu.
Bởi vì, tại Việt Nam ngày nay những người có thể nói thì ngòi bút đã bị cong; những người muốn nói thì ngòi bút đã bị bẻ gẫy.
Nhưng tôi biết rõ một điều, và điều đó đã được ghi chép trong lịch sử: Trí thức chân chính của Việt Nam không bao giờ khiếp nhược.
Trân trọng kính chào quí vị.
Tuệ Sỹ
Tu Viện Quảng Hương, Sài Gòn, VN
(INTELLECTUALS MUST SPEAK
My fellow countrymen:
I would like to convey to you several superficial ideas and concerns that weighed heavily on me during my imprisonment. But first of all, I would like to express my gratitude to you, my fellow countrymen in and outside of Vietnam. With the support of international opinions, you succeeded in voicing your strong disagreement with the death sentenced imposed on me. You petitioned on my behalf to those who had thought they had the right to pass judgment on those who acted in accordance with their conscience. Your petition and intervention forced the Vietnamese Communist authorities to release me from prison, but many fellow prisoners of mine still suffer from incarceration. Among these prisoners, there are several who have been imprisoned nearly 25 years, exceeding the time limit stipulated by the penal code of Vietnam regarding sentences with set time limits.
I also would like to express my deep appreciation to overseas Vietnamese communities which are fighting for a free and democratic Vietnam. I also would like to thank the concerned humanists of the Netherlands, who directly communicated with the Vietnamese government so that I could visit the Netherlands, affording me the opportunity to voice what has been muffled for a quarter of a century.
In recent years, prior to my release from prison and back to the Buddhist temple, there were many Vietnamese expatriates who returned home for visit and thus witnessed what were considered encouraging changes. It was up to the perspective of the individual expatriate to determine which direction the changes were encouraging. As for me, I did not the luck to witness directly the changes in the nation, despite the fact that I lived right in the heart of the fatherland. Whether or not that was a good thing, it would be up to the perspective of each individual.
I did not have the luck, like that enjoyed by the expatriates who after living overseas in freedom for 15 or 20 years, returned home for a visit and saw the changes from the top down, witnessing the prosperity of our nation as evidenced by the material comforts provided by five-star hotels reserved for top officials of the nation and for tourists, and by the warm and lavish receptions given by persons of the top echelons of society , who enjoy special privileges through political connections. But I had a "luck"of my own---if it was indeed a luck---to live for a very long time with the elements that were considered the "scum and dregs" of society. Precisely from the perspective of these scum and dregs of society I considered the changes in the prison as the reflection of "the great changes" of the nation. The changes were simple and easy to understand.
The garbage in the backyard of a house reflects what was consumed by the inhabitants of the house. We are those who have been trained and conditioned to think from the perspective of a people residing in a garbage dump, and have asked ourselves various questions concerning the conscience of mankind, the meaning of human progress, and above all this historical inquiry: "How much blood did our forefathers shed in order to bequeath this land for us and why has this land become a gigantic garbage dump that gets bigger with each passing day?"
Vietnam is a gigantic garbage dump. That's not my personal opinion, but is an
observation of the highest ranking official of the VietNamese Communist Party. The observation does not pertain to economic matters. It covers several aspects of life: culture, politics, and religion. So, an imperative question is posed to those who still possess ethnic pride: Why did a people who always take pride in having a culture four thousand years old suddenly let their country become a garbage dump containing the worst features of humanity? What are the causes and who should be held responsible?
In almost fifteen years of being incarcerated, the refrains that I had to endure and to "study" was about the courage of the Vietnamese Communist Party: "If the cadres commit errors, the Party will punish...If the Party commit errors, the Party will rectify itself." I often retorted that the slogans had nothing to do with the courage; rather, they reflected a governing attitude that was full of contempt for the populace, regarding the populace as nothing more than a guinea pig to be used in deluded and nonsensical ideology.
I was also regularly forced to study that the policy of national solidarity (sic!) of the Vietnamese Communist Party was to make "the people believe in the Party and the Party believe in the people". I also replied that:
-"To make the people believe in the Party" is a matter of course and easy to understand because people only believe in what is believable. And the Party needs the people in it so it can survive, even if the belief is a fiction and man-made.
-But what is the meaning of the slogan "To make the Party believe in the people"? But what if the Party does not believe in the people, then how would the Party act? The practical answer to this question is that the whole country has become a colossal jail.
Since I am no longer incarcerated in a tiny cell for fifteen years as I once was, I don't have the "qualifications" to move up in courses of study concerning political indoctrination. However, I hope that the Vietnamese Communist Party no longer has the courage as it did in the past so it would not continue experimenting its ideology and practicing its policy of "Great Solidarity", so that the people can live by themselves without inviting any suspicion from the party.
In spite of the big changes as seen from a certain angle, I know for certain that there is an unchanging fact. That is, "the Vietnamese Communist Party regards itself as the benefactor of the people and thus has the exclusive right to decide the fate of the people" (but being a benefactor or a criminal, it's up to the people and history to decide). This self-regard of the Vietnamese Communist Party has set it apart from other notorious totalitarian regimes in human history.
This self-regard is the cause of one of several phenomena that the conservative elements within the Party have labeled as "capitalist garbage." One phenomenon is corruption which is brought about and nurtured by the mandarin, haughty, favor-granting attitude of the Party.
A crime has occurred. Ordinarily, there would be a criminal and his victim. But in corruption, at first glance,there appears no victim.The bribe giver and his taker both derive certain definite benefits.
Therefore the victim is the public who have no special privileges to enable them obtain the direct benefits from the corruption. That means the lowest strata of the society have nothing to offer, and hence receive nothing. That's why they are the victims. The peculiar feature of the victims of corruption in Vietnam is the attitude of public officials that they grant and confer favors to the "subjects" under their administration.
Corruption is not only about the mutual agreement involving companies and fat cats. It also sucks the marrow out of the populace, those who have to sweat and slave in order to have money to pay taxes.
Corruption is the root cause of other social ills because it is organized and enjoys protection. It erodes all traditional moral values. To protect and promote a nation's culture on the back of corruption is to use a fig leave to stem the spread of social ills.
I am saying that corruption is the back yard of power. It is the poverty-stricken folks whose voice is muffled by threats and intimidation. It is they who are oppressed by the most totalitarian brute force, but they are also the ones who suffer in silence the most. They bear witness to the seamy, unseemly side of corruption and power; they are the direct victims of corruption and power which have trammelled on their human dignity.
Perhaps I should speak about a heart-rending episode so we can understand a little bit about the nature of corruption in a regime which has brazenly boasted that there is no exploitation of humans by humans in the land it rules. This episode took place in the year-end flood of last year.
In the village of Hương Thọ, District of Hương Trà, Thừa Thiên Province, there is a poor family that ekes out a living by means of providing a ferry service with their little houseboat. When the flood came, the family was the only one in this foothill locality which had a boat. They used it to rescue 80 people from drowning. After the floodwater receded, several aid organizations arrived at the scene.
All families in the affected village received aid, except the houseboat family. Reason: because this poor itinerant family was no part of the village on account of having no fixed address and being not counted among the inhabitants of the village. The villagers were
grateful to the family and petitioned the local authorities to include the family members as village inhabitants. The local authorities ruled that the family members did not qualify for inclusion simply because they did not 400,000 đồng (Vietnamese currency, less than $20 in U.S. dollars. A person can live on a dollar a day in Vietnam) for bribery. When the monks from my temple arrived in the village to render assistance to the flood victims, the grateful villagers voluntarily told the monks the complete story about the poor houseboat family. The monks came up with money but they told everybody in the village not to tell the local authorities where the family came from, otherwise there might be problems for everyone concerned.
The thing I want to talk about is not really the corruption per se, but the dignity of the poor boat family and their admirable quiet resignation to the injustice. Despite living in poverty, they maintained their dignity. They rendered aid to the flood victims, but they did not solicit financial assistance from the people whose lives they saved. But the villagers were grateful and tried to find ways to help them. However, the villagers themselves were poor and adversely affected by the flood and could only help them via from the monks.
Throughout this land of ours, there are many cases like that of the boat family. They illustrate what life is like in the back yard of power, in the darkness of society. But the affected people do not speak up. Is it because they cannot or they would not? Both. You know clearly what I am speaking about is just my way of "sneak talking past the authorities". I don't know what tomorrow will hold for me if what I am speaking now does not please the Vietnamese Communist Party and the government.
The situation in Vietnam is such that our people have to put up with so much suffering and humiliation. With regard to the intellectual class, for whom our people traditionally hold in high esteem, their biggest humiliation is they cannot speak for the people in the lower strata
of society in order to articulate the anger and the humiliation endured by the poor.
The fact is that in Vietnam nowadays, those who can speak up are already bought out; those who want to speak up are already imprisoned.
But I do know one thing, and it was recorded in our history: True intellectuals in Vietnam are never cowardly.
Respectfully yours,
Tuệ Sỹ
Quảng Hương Monastery,
Sài Gòn, VIetnam"
I came across the above article in one of Vietnamese language forums. Unfortunately the date on which the article was written was not shown. I have an impression that, based on the information gleaned from the article and from the web, Tuệ Sỹ is still in Vietnam and under house arrest, and did not avail himself of the opportunity to seek political asylum, as lesser men would do, when he was invited to speak in the Netherlands after his release from jail. If my inference is correct, that would make him all the more admirable in my eyes because the article is a brave and clear condemnation of the Vietnamese Communist rulers and a quiet but urgent call for the Vietnamese intellectuals to fulfill their traditional duty to speak up against tyranny and to spearhead a movement to overthrow it.
Here we have a monk admitted into the monastery at the tender age of seven; well versed in languages (Chinese, Pali, and Sanskrit), required of a serious student of Buddhism, in addition to the sine qua non European languages (English, French, and German) expected of a modern Vietnamese intellectual; university lecturer; knowledgable of western philosophy, especially of Foucault and Heidegger---a flamboyant, risk-taking, Nietzsche-influenced Frenchman and a staid German whose interests are about the nature and structure of power and domination, and being, respectively; wrote lyrical poetry; progressively advanced in the Buddhist hierarchy to the current position Venerable (Thượng Tọa) and held a leadership position in a Buddhist organization in Vietnam which has been opposed to the Vietnamese Communist Party leaders for the way they have oppressed religions and their manner of governance in Vietnam. For this he and his fellow Buddhist scholar, Thích Trí Siêu (Lê Mạnh Thát) were sentenced to death, but later commuted and released under international outrage and pressure. According to the Wikipedia, Tuệ Sỹ has been under house arrest since 2003.
Man has built-in fears which help him stay alive and pass on his genes. Among the fears, the biggest must be fear of death for a normal, functioning sane person. He would do everything within his powers to postpone death. To be in a position where another human has a power to extinguish his life would be the most distressing situation a man would find himself. But that was Tuệ Sỹ precisely found himself in 1984. Yet Tuệ Sỹ has done nothing to disgrace himself, not when he was sentenced to capital punishment for "plotting to overthrow the government", or since he was released from prison and confined to house arrest. He has continued speaking up. The scathing indictment of the sole power structure in Vietnam: the Vietnamese Communist Party, contained in the above article "Intellectuals Must Speak" speaks volumes about this Buddhist scholar. Perhaps it is fitting for a man who has read extensively about Foucault and Heidegger, about power and being.
It is Tuệ Sỹ's talent as a lyrical poet which has endeared himself to the Vietnamese educated folks. For a list of his poems, please see Những bài thơ của nhà thơ Tuệ Sỹ - Vườn thơ ở tkaraoke.com in Google Search. Almost all of his poems are good and touching. They invariably leave the reader intoxicated and transformed and thirsty for more. For instance, you wouldn't expect the following would be written by a Buddhist monk.
Giấc Mơ
Ta tìm em trong giấc chiêm bao
Nỗi buồn thu nhỏ hàng cây cao
Lửa cháy quanh trời ta vẫn lạnh
Bóng tối vương đầy đôi mắt sâu
Yêu em dâng cả ráng chiều thu
Em đốt tình yêu bằng hận thù
Cháy đỏ mùa đông ta vẫn lạnh
Giấc mơ không kín dãy song tù
Tuệ Sỹ
A Dream
I looked for thee in a dream.
Sorrow in the fall of mine was small,
But the trees stood tall.
Despite the raging fire all around me,
I still felt cold deep inside.
My eyes were steeped in darkness.
In a late afternoon I lovingly offered thee this autumn of mine
Thou destroyed love with a burning hatred
It burned throughout the winter and I still felt cold
My dream couldn't cover up the prison cell's bars
Translated by Wissai
May 17, 2013
The affectionate second personal pronoun "em" in Vietnamese in the above poem could be taken to mean a person of either gender or the land of Vietnam. Such is the beauty of poetry where it is open to ambiguity and suggestiveness. The reader must bring himself to a work of art if he is to truly enjoy it.
Apparently Tuệ Sỹ has kept his monastic vows. There have been no scandals in his personal life. He looked ascetic and gaunt with fierce intelligence in his eyes which are set in a big head with beautiful ears. He is also an accomplished piano player. From the 2003 audio interview conducted by a Vietnamese Youth organization in Australia and is currently available on the web, his voice was soft and he had a plain, unpretentious, unhurried way of speaking even when he talked about painful, unpleasant encounters with the police and security personnel of the Vietnamese Communist regime who set out to make his life and the life of freedom fighters like him miserable. He is evidently understanding of the follies of lesser men. He may evince annoyance at those who are mired in darkness but none of the contempt.
Phạm Công Thiện (henceforth PCT) (1941-2011)
On the other hand, PCT, an alleged enfant terrible of the Vietnamese Letters during 1960's, had the arrogance of a gifted man and the annoyance and contempt for men of lesser abilities, despite his being an ordained Buddhist monk at one time. Despite having no formal high school education, PCT made a name for himself in 1965 with the publication of "Ý thức mới trong văn nghệ và triết học". I read it in the summer of 1968 after I finished my first year in college at the Faculty of Letters in Saigon. I was very impressed with the young author's knowledge and urgent, passionate voice. I journeyed to "Hố Thẳm của tư tưởng " (1967) in the same summer and I was put off by the author's undue arrogance and display of intemperance. He made it clear that he considered himself a genius, especially when it came to understanding Zen Buddhism. From my recollection, he dismissed everybody else's views, including those of D.T. Suzuki. He questioned other writers' knowledge of the German language. I soon got busy with my studies and subsequent interests and didn't read anymore of his works until recently. But I kept a thought in my mind that I would revisit PCT someday. I have lived in Houston on and off since 1984. I didn't know that PCT lived there until he departed from this world in 2011, otherwise I would have made a point to seek him out. His death occasioned a flurry of articles on the web extolling his genius. From there I learned he also wrote poetry, a poem of which was once set to music by Lê Uyên Phương under the name "Tôi đứng trên đồi mây trổ bông"
Mười năm qua gió thổi đồi tây
Tôi long đong theo bóng chim gầy
Một sớm em về ru giấc ngủ
Bông trời bay trắng cả rừng cây
Gió thổi đồi tây hay đồi đông
Hiu hắt quê hương bến cỏ hồng
Trong mơ em vẫn còn bên cửa
Tôi đứng trên đồi mây trổ bông
Gió thổi đồi thu qua đồi thông
Mưa hạ ly hương nước ngược dòng
Tôi đau trong tiếng gà xơ xác
Một sớm bông hồng nở cửa đông.
From "Serpent's Day of Birth" (Ngày Sinh Của rắn)
For over ten years winds blew across the western hills
I struggled to follow a scrawny bird's flying shadow
One early morning you came back with a lullaby
Over the forest trees white clouds hung low
Now across eastern and western hills the winds blow
Over the homeland's parched meadowlands down below
In my dreams you still stand at the door
While I stand upon a hill amidst the blooming clouds
The winds blew across the hills of pine in the fall
I left the country in the summer rain, going against the flow
I was pained by the rooster's plaintive crow
A rose was blooming in early morn at the eastern door
Wissai/NKBa'
2011
The following two quotes would be sufficient to testify to PCT's self-conception and probably his character as well (more about his character later):
"Ngay đến Heraclite, Parmenide và Empédocle, bây giờ tao còn xem thường, tao coi ba tên ấy như là ba tên thủ phạm của nền văn minh hiện đại, chưa nói đến Socrate, đó là một tên ngu dại nhất mà ta đã gặp trong đời sống tâm linh của ta". Ông coi những nghệ sĩ như Goethe, Dante như những thằng hề ngu xuẩn. Và đối với Sartre, Beauvoir: "Nếu họ muốn xin gặp tao, tao sẽ không cho gặp mà còn chửi vào mặt họ". Về thiền tông: "Tao đã gửi thiền tông vào một phong bì tối khẩn đề địa chỉ của bất cứ ngôi chùa nào trên thế giới". Về dạy học và các văn sĩ cùng thời: "thời gian tao học ở Hoa Kỳ, tao đã bỏ học vì tao thấy những trường đại học mà tao học như Yale, Columbia chỉ toàn là nơi sản xuất những thằng ngu xuẩn, ngay đến giáo sư của tao chỉ là những thằng ngu xuẩn nhất đời, tao có thể dạy họ hơn là họ dạy tao...Bây giờ nếu có Phật Thích Ca hay Chúa Giê Su hiện ra đứng giảng trước mặt tao, tao cũng không nghe theo nữa. Tao là học trò của tao và chỉ có tao làm thầy cho tao. Tao không muốn làm thầy ai hết và cũng không để ai làm thầy tao. Còn các văn sĩ ở Sài Gòn, đọc các bài thơ của các anh, tôi thấy ngay sự nghèo nàn của tâm hồn anh, sự quờ quạng lúng túng, sự lặp đi lặp lại vô ý thức hay có ý thức: trí thức "mười lăm xu", ái quốc nhân đạo "ba mươi lăm xu", triết lý tôn giáo "bốn mươi lăm xu" ( Hố Thẳm của tư tưởng, chương 5. Cited in Việt Wikipedia)
"I even have no respect for Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles. I consider those three the three criminals of contemporary civilization, not counting Socrates, the most stupid guy I have ever met in my spiritual life." He (PCT) regarded artists like Goethe and Dante as stupid clowns. With respect to Sartre and Beauvoir: "if they want to meet me, I wouldn't agree to meeting them. I would even curse them out". Regarding Zen Buddhism: "I enclosed Zen Buddhism in an express mail addressing to a Buddhist temple anywhere in the world". About teaching and contemporary writers: "The time I studied in the U.S., I dropped out of school because universities like Yale and Columbia where I studied only produced stupid graduates. Even my professors were the most stupid dudes. I could teach them more than they could teach me... Now if Buddha or Jesus Christ appears, I would not even listen. I am my own student and only I can be my teacher. I don't want to be anybody's teacher or anybody's student. About the writers in Saigon, I have read your poems, and I saw the poverty of your souls, the awkward fumblings, the mindless repetitions, or the mindful repetitions: the intellectuals worth 'fifteen cents', the compassionate patriots 'thirty cents', the metaphysics 'forty five cents' (Hố Thẳm của tư tưởng [The Abyss of Thought], Chapter 5)"
"Lời người dịch
Có ba quyển sách ảnh hưởng sâu đậm đến cuộc đời tôi, đó là quyển Milarepa do W. Y. Evans-Wentz xuất bản, viết về đời sống của Bồ tát Tây Tạng Milarepa, quyển thứ hai là quyển nhật ký của Nijinski, một nghệ sĩ múa người Nga, quyển thứ ba là quyển Ecce Homo của Nietzsche, tức là quyển này đây.
Nhiều lúc điên gàn vớ vẩn, tôi tưởng tượng rằng tôi bị mù mắt, bị bại liệt cả thân thể một ngày nào đó thơ mộng trong kiếp này hoặc kiếp sau, trong một căn nhà đổ nát, tôi nằm dài trên nệm đất, trời nắng dữ dội, mắt tôi không thấy gì cả, nhưng lỗ tai tôi còn nghe được tiếng thở của trái đất thì có một người nào đó sẽ độ lượng chịu cực đọc cho tôi nghe năm mười trang trong quyển Milarepa hoặc quyển Ecce Homo của Nietzsche. Chắc lúc ấy mắt tôi sẽ bừng sáng lại được, và tôi vùng lên đứng dậy, không còn bại liệt nữa. Tôi sẽ chạy đâm đầu vào núi cấm để chờ ngày núi nổ banh ra làm hai thì tôi sẽ khoan thai bước ra hiện nguyên tính! Lúc ấy cỏ xanh sẽ nhảy múa dưới chân tôi, chân tôi sẽ lướt trên cỏ như ma đi hỏng chân. Nhưng điều chắc chắn là tôi sẽ không là ma, mà là một cái gì rất hiền lành, rất dễ dạy, rất chậm chạp, vô danh, miệng cứ cười một nụ cười nhè nhẹ như không khí.
Tôi thường mang tiếng là giỏi sinh ngữ, thực sự thì tôi khinh bỉ những kẻ nào biết nhiều thứ tiếng. Tôi vẫn nghĩ rằng chữ Việt là chữ khó đọc nhất, vì chữ Việt không có văn phạm và ngữ pháp, không có ngày nào tôi không dở Tự điển Việt Nam của Hội Khai Trí Tiến Đức và quyển Việt Nam tân tự điển của Thanh Nghị để học từng chữ A, từng chữ B, tôi chịu khó học lại từng dấu hỏi, dấu ngã để nhìn lại những nét mặt quen thuộc của bà con làng xóm mà từ bao nhiêu năm lang bạt kỳ hồ tôi đã bỏ quên một cách ngu dại. Đối với tôi, tiếng Việt còn giữ lại một niềm bí ẩn nào đó mà cả đời tôi cũng không thể nào khoét sâu vào được. Có lẽ khi sắp chết thì niềm bí ẩn kia sẽ hiện nguyên hình…
Còn tiếng ngoại quốc? Tôi coi những thứ tiếng ngoại quốc như những trò chơi nhảm nhí. Hồi 13-14 tuổi, tôi đã học tiếng Nga, tiếng Ý, tiếng Tây Ban Nha, tiếng Đức, tiếng Hoà Lan, tiếng Ba Lan, vân vân. Đến năm 18-19 tuổi, tôi lại học thêm tiếng Phạn, tiếng Pali, tiếng Hy Lạp, tiếng Tây Tạng, vân vân. Bây giờ có lẽ tôi đã quên hết mọi thứ tiếng, tôi chỉ nhớ một tiếng A của chữ Phạn, chỉ nội có tiếng A này có lẽ tôi phải đầu thai đến một trăm kiếp nữa thì mới hiểu nổi hết tất cả ý nghĩ kỳ lạ của tiếng A trong chữ Phạn!
Sở dĩ tôi say mê ba quyển sách kể trên (Milarepa, Nijinsky và Nietzsche) là vì tôi coi ba quyển sách này như là ba quyển văn phạm vỡ lòng để đi vào tiếng A của chữ Phạn! Tại sao thế? Xin cho tôi giữ lại một chút kín đáo về đời sống tâm linh mình.
Bây giờ tôi xin nhường lời lại cho Nietzsche.
Và đây là người mà chúng ta mong đợi, Ecce Homo!
Phạm Công Thiện
Ngày 5 tháng 11, 1969"
("Translator's Note
There were three books that left a deep impact on my life:" Milarepa" by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, about the Tibetan bodhisattva, "The Diary of Nijinski", a Russian dancer, and "Ecce Homo"by Nietzsche, the book you have in your hands.
There were times I was attacked by random madness. I imagined that I was blind and paralyzed all over the body on a certain dreamy day in this life or next. I would lie on the earthen floor in a dilapidated house. I couldn't see but I could still hear the breathing of the earth and the voice of a kind-hearted person who would read for me the few pages from "Milarepa" or "Ecce Homo". Probably my eyes would then be able to see and I would be able to stand up, no longer paralyzed. I would run towards the forbidden mountain and butt my head against it until it splits into two so that I would nonchalantly emerge with my original essence! At that time the green grass would dance at my feet and my feet would glide over the grass as if I were a ghost. But one thing for sure, I would not be a ghost, but something very harmless, very docile, very slow, with no name but with a mouth spreading into a smile as light as air.
I have a reputation as being gifted with languages, but I despise those knowing a lot of languages. I always think the Vietnamese language is the most difficult to read because it has no grammar nor rules. There is not a single day that passes by without my consulting the Vietnamese Dictionary by The Asoociation of Mind and Morals Advancement and the Modern Vietnamese Dictionary by Thanh Nghị in order to learn each word beginning with a letter A, and then with a letter B, and to relearn the spelling to reacquaint myself with my old neighbors that I stupidly neglected during my years of wandering. To me, Vietnamese retains a certain mystery that I cannot penetrate during my lifetime. Maybe just before I die, the mystery will unveil its essence...
About the foreign languages? I consider them as frivolous games. When I was 13-14 years of age, I already studied Russian, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Polish, etc...When I was 18-18 years old, I moved on to Sanskirt, Pali, Greek, Tibetan, etc...Now perhaps I forgot all of them. I only remember the letter A of the Sanskrit language. Perhaps I need to have one hundred reincarnations before I can master all the mysterious meanings of the letter A of Sanskirt!
The reason why I love the three above-mentioned books (Milarepa, Nijinski, and Nietzsche) is that I consider them the three basic grammar books to the letter A of Sanskrit. Why is it so? Please allow me to maintain a little bit of privacy of my spiritual life.
Now I let Nietzsche speak.
And here's the man we are waiting for. Ecce Homo.
Phạm Công Thiện
5th day of November, 1969")
What can we make of the man who was arrogant and narcissist and self-conscious, who talked gibberish and yet was capable of writing beautiful poetry? PCT was a self-taught man who lectured at colleges, not only in Vietnam, but also in France and the U.S., and who had a friendship with Henry Miller, a wild, anarchistic spirit who made money largely on the basis of various semi-autobiographical "novels" that was considered "obscene" and banned in the U.S. for many years, though several establishment writers and critics were of the opinion that his first book, "Tropic of Cancer" had some literary merits and was worth reading. We are known by the company we keep and the way we treat our spouse and children in addition to the manner we express our thoughts on top of the contents of our thoughts and the impact of our thoughts on our contemporaries and succeeding generations. Based on those criteria, PCT did not do too well.
Being at one time an ordained monk apparently was not as serious to P CT as it was to Tuệ Sỹ. I do not know whether or not PCT's decision to seek carnal pleasures came about after he renounced his monastic vows. At any rate, he wrote in his books about the sexual romps he had with European women. He smoked cigarettes, even in his later years. His photos on the Net revealed an intelligent but smug and arrogant face, totally the opposite of those of Tuệ Sỹ.
In 1970 he left Vietnam for good and never came back. In France, he met, courted, and legally married Ms. Lê KhắcThanh Hoài who came from a distinguished family and whose father was a physician and university dean. He had five children with her during a ten-year period. She divorced him later and did a great job raising her kids on her own. She wrote about her life with him in a book that the reader can read for free here:
http://rongmotamhon.net/
According to a close relative of Ms. Ms. Lê KhắcThanh Hoài, who happens to be a friend of mine, Henry Miller broke off relationship with PCT when he felt he was being unfairly "used", but I suppose Henry Miller himself during his lean years before WW II in Paris constantly hit on his friends for financial assistance, so when he became well-off and famous, lost and "artistic" souls felt no qualms in asking him for help.
Unlike Nietzsche who has been influential to all kinds of men of letters and thinkers and is likely to stand the test of time (Encyclopedia Britannica of Philosophy said that" Nietzsche once wrote that some men are born posthumously, and this is certainly true in his case. The history of 20th-century philosophy, theology, and psychology are unintelligible without him. The German philosophers Max Scheler, Karl Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger laboured in his debt, for example, as did the French philosophers Albert Camus, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Existentialism and deconstructionism, a movement in philosophy and literary criticism, owe much to him. The theologians Paul Tillich and Lev Shestov acknowledged their debt as did the “God is dead” theologian Thomas J.J. Altizer; Martin Buber, Judaism’s greatest 20th-century thinker, counted Nietzsche among the three most important influences in his life and translated the first part of Zarathustra into Polish. The psychologists Alfred Adler and Carl Jung were deeply influenced, as was Sigmund Freud, who said of Nietzsche that he had a more penetrating understanding of himself than any man who ever lived or was ever likely to live. Novelists like Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, André Malraux, André Gide, and John Gardner were inspired by him and wrote about him, as did the poets and playwrights George Bernard Shaw, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, and William Butler Yeats, among others. Nietzsche’s great influence is due not only to his originality but also to the fact that he was one of the German language’s most brilliant prose writers.), PCT is only known by the Vietnamese and maybe by the Japanese, and only by folks of strange sensibilities like himself. Despite his arrogance and self-declared genius in languages, as far as I know, PCT strangely did not set forth his thoughts in languages that might help him reach a wider audience. Please correct me if I am wrong, I have a feeling that PCT was not a systematic thinker. I don't know what he stands for and what his views are, despite being a philosopher (as so declared in his website which included meager information about his life and his works, but none about his ideas or original contributions about the human thought) and a university lecturer of philosophy. All well-known modern Western thinkers and philosophers set forth their views. They have followers and detractors, but they make impact and leave legacy. Besides inspiring a Japanese doing a doctorate thesis about him, what impact PCT has had on the Vietnamese and the world? He was also oddly politically inactive in the face of the VCP's destruction of Vietnam although he did write a strange piece in defense of Tuệ Sỹ and Lê Minh Thát when they were condemned to death by the communist authorities in Vietnam in for "plotting to overthrow the government". However, in that piece, he also included gratuitous excessive information about himself in the interest of self-glorification.
".....Lê Mạnh Thát và Tuệ Sỹ đã quên mình mà hết lòng thành thì tất nhiên nhị vị cảm được tất cả những đổ vỡ bi đát của quê hương và kiếp người: Hai người đã được hết tất cả tính mệnh của Việt Nam thì tất nhiên nhìn thấy được những gì vẫn giữ lại Việt tính, và họ đã lên đường trở thành những Ðạo sư dẫn đường cho cả dân tộc. Lúc Hà Nội kết án tử hình Tuệ Sỹ và Lê mạnh Thát hay bất cứ kẻ nào khác vô danh đã tranh đấu cho quyền làm người Việt Nam thì chính Hà Nội đã kết án tử hình toàn thể dân tộc.
Khi mà toàn thể dân tộc Việt nam bị một chế độ tàn bạo kết án tử hình thì đó cũng là lúc chế độ ấy đang tự hủy diệt trong lòng địa chấn linh diệu của Ðại mệnh Việt Nam
Phạm Công Thiện
California ngày 18.10.1988
Chú Thích Cần Biết:
Về những tác phẩm khảo luận nghiên cứu của Lê Mạnh Thát và những tác phẩm văn thơ của Tuệ Sỹ, tôi sẽ đề cập cặn kẽ vào dịp thuận tiện khác,
Bài này được viết ra với đôi điều nhấn mạnh cần thiết về đôi ba nét sống tri thức và tâm linh của Tuệ Sỹ và Lê Mạnh Thát để phổ biến cho cộng đồng trí thức quốc tế: Tôi lên tiếng một cách lễ độ với tư cách là nguyên Giáo sư Triết học Tây Phương Viện Ðại Học Toulouse, Pháp Quốc, nguyên Giáo sư Phật Giáo Viện College of Buddhist Studies, Los Angeles, Hoa Kỳ, nguyên Giám Ðốc Soạn Thảo Tất cả Chương Trình Giảng dạy cho tất cả Phân Khoa Viện Ðại Học Vạn Hạnh từ năm 1966-1968, nguyên khoa trưởng Phân khoa Văn Học và Khoa Học Nhân Văn của Viện Ðại Học Vạn Hạnh từ năm 1968-1970, sáng lập viên và nguyên chủ trương biên tập tạp chí Tư Tưởng của Viện Ðại Học Vạn Hạnh, 1966-1970. Ngoài ra đối với những hội Văn Bút Quốc tế, với tư cách là nhà văn và tác giả vài chục quyển sách đã xuất bản tại Việt Nam và hải ngoại từ 1957-1988."
(....Lê Mạnh Thát and Tuệ Sỹ forgot about their own welfare and were utterly selfless in their struggle because they felt the collapse of their fatherland and the bankruptcy of the human soul. The two monks took upon themselves to save Vietnam. That meant they recognized what the Vietnamese essence was and they became the spiritual leaders for their people. When the Hanoi regime condemned to death Lê Mạnh Thát and Tuệ Sỹ or whoever else because simply these individuals fought the right to exist as Vietnamese, the regime also put to death the entire Vietnamese people.
When the entire Vietnamese people were condemned to death, the regime also placed itself in the path of self-destruction within the miraculous axis of the the Great Fate of Vietnam.
Phạm Công Thiện
California, 18 of November, 1988
Necessary Note:
I will speak at length on a different occasion the scholarly researches done by Lê Mạnh Thát, and the poetical works of Tuệ Sỹ.
This article was written in order to bring to the attention of international intellectual circles. I am speaking up with gravitas as a former professor of Western Philosophy at University of Toulouse, France; former professor of Buddhism at College of Buddhist Studies, Los Angeles, U.SA.; former Director of Curriculums for all courses at Vạn Hanh University, Saigon, Vietnam during 1966-1968, former Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Vạn Hanh University, Saigon, Vietnam during 1968-1970; founder and editor of the Journal Thoughts published by Vạn Hanh University during 1966-1970.
With regard to PEN International, I am speaking up as a writer and author of over twenty books published in Vietnam and elsewhere during 1957-1988"
I think PCT's contribution to the Vietnamese culture lies in his poetry which shows true poetic sensibilities expressed in an original language, and not at all in the area of philosophy or even in translated works. I also think on the international scene, PCT has remained an unknown for a long time, and is likely to be so in the foreseeable future.
Henry Miller ( 1891-1980)
To speak of Henry Miller (henceforth HM) was to recall fondly my tumultuous, event-filled summer days of 1967. I just freshly came back to Vietnam from one-year sojourn in the United States. I was going through both sexual and romantic stirrings in addition to experiencing anxieties and heady expectations of starting college in a few months. Despite my family's discouragement, I decided to enroll at Faculty of Letters, majoring in English. I had a foolish desire to be as good at English as I could be. I was falling in love with a girl and with the English language. I would listen to the American Forces Radio if I was not busy reading American fiction. I came across Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" during a browsing of used books at a bookstall in Saigon.
I read the book over the period of two days. I was enthralled with HM's musings on just about everything under the sun and his frank, almost pornographic, but very funny descriptions of his sexual escapades. From HM I learned a lot of dirty words as well as big words. HM had a big vocabulary and occasionally he would just suddenly throw one appropriate polysyllabic word in just to jolt the reader.
During that summer, I journeyed other books of his and was lucky to find "Tropic of Capricorn", "Sexus", "Plexus", and "Nexus". They were more or less the same: repetitious, rambling discourses on religion, philosophy, arts, and writers and artists with occasional lyrical passages.
Later I learned that during his stay in Paris before World War Two, HM and his lover, Anais Nin, when they were having financial difficulties, were at one time commissioned to write straight pornography for an underground publisher in Paris. If my recollection was correct, the rate was one dollar a page. I have read a collection of HM and Nin's pieces in a paperback form. They were not good and failed to titillate me.
HM had a knack to make friends and form lifelong friendships with writers and artists (he painted watercolors and enjoyed playing ping-pong in the nude. If my memory does not fail me, I believe Playboy magazine did an interview with him). I was not surprised that he had a friendship with PCT. I understood that they had a correspondence. I don't know if the correspondence was ever published. I have a feeling that HM and PCT were kindred spirits although PCT came across far more arrogant and unhinged. More importantly, HM was at heart an artist and did leave an international legacy and did make an impact on some of his noted contemporaries and younger writers. He was a trend setter. He redefined what "novel" could be, where elements of autobiography and imagination could co-exist and become indistinguishable. My approach to writing short stories has been influenced by HM and lately by Scott Wolven. No less than a writer of fame and success, Norman Mailer, wrote glowingly and in awe of HM, in "Genius and Lust". On the contrary, as noted before, despite his offensive self-declared genius and talents, PCT was only a legend in his own mind and the minds of a handful of admirers who are not big names in arts or philosophy.
I have not read HM in years. All I now remember in association with HM are three things: first, he helped me obtain a sexual liberation of sorts; second, an amusing episode in "Tropic of Capricorn" where HM, as an adolescent, had sex with his hirsute piano teacher by the railroad track in one hot summer evening in New York; and third, this beautiful, lyrical passage from "Tropic of Cancer":
"Twilight hour. Indian blue, water of glass, trees glistening and liquescent. The rails fall away into the canal at Jaurès. The long caterpillar with lacquered sides dips like a roller coaster. It it not Paris. It is not Coney Island. It is a crepuscular melange of all the cities of Europe and Central America. The railroad yards below me, the tracks black, webby, not ordered by the engineer but cataclysmic in design, like those gaunt fissures in the polar ice which the camera registers in degrees of black."
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
The summer of 1967 also marked my lifelong fascination with Friedrich Nietzsche (henceforth FN). It all began with an encounter with a quote in which he wrote "It's hard to live with men because silence is difficult". The quote resonated deeply with me because I was born to talk. Loquaciousness is my second nature, but ironically I do long for silence. Anyway the quote prompted me to start investigating FN.
I started, of course, with Thus Spake Zarathustra. Even as raw as I was back then, I recognized it was a book of poetry written in prose. I was struck by the beauty of the language, even in English translation. I went to Khai Trí bookstore in Saigon that very weekend to purchase a primer on the German language. I am embarrassed to report that 46 years later I still cannot read any Nietzsche book in the original. That is why I have always been fascinated to see my own brother-in-law have no problem to navigate via reading in no fewer than 10 languages, among which is German. His brain must be wired differently than mine. Ditto for PCT's brain. You may recall that PCT claimed that he knew a staggering number of foreign languages. I would love to see how PCT expressed himself just in English in order to determine if the man was truly a legend or a fraud. If any reader has any reference to something in which PCT wrote in English or French or even Spanish, kindly let me know. I would appreciate that very much.
Anyway, after "TSZ", I moved on other books of FN, but had a problem to finish them, except "Twilight of the Idols" and "Ecce Homo". The beauty of reading FN's books is that you can open any page in random and still find a gem of thought which is applicable in real life, expressed in striking, powerful manner. I have read FN in this manner in addition to reading about him. I read FN for solace and strength. I fancied that I have much FN within me or rather, he crystallized for me thoughts and ideas which I could not quite articulate as beautifully as he did. If you want to read just one book of FN, I urge you to read "Ecce Homo" which was already translated into Vietnamese by PCT. I have not read this translation (I don't need to), but I have read the English translation by Walter Kaufman, an authority on FN and a native German speaker, at least six times.
Not to be exposed to FN is to miss somebody who could transform your life, who could help you embrace life, who could assist you in seeing more clearly, in thinking a bit more deeply. It would be tedious and embarrassing for me to summarize some FN's earth-shaking views. I strongly recommend that you go to the Net and find those out for yourself.
Not to read FN is like spending all your life relying on Fox News for what's happening in this world or like reading just the Bible for spiritual guidance and for learning how the world was formed or like eating just rice and bean day in and day out for sustenance.
To read FN is to know the real McCoy and to realize that he was far more authentic and lovable and original than PCT although he himself was quite boastful.
Though FN was not married (he was very smitten with Lou Salome', a formidable Russian intellectual woman) and was quite lonely, he did have several male friends and a fervent fan by the name of Peter Gast (who persuaded FN to adopt the title "Twilight of the Idols". I think it was FN who added the beautiful extra notation, "How to philosophize with a hammer" after the title) who was useful to him during his moments of sadness when he realized his books were falling on deaf ears. Yet he was convinced of his greatness and the beauty of his language (he was also a poet and a piano player, like Tuệ Sỹ). He once wrote that he would be famous after his death and that only he and the poet Heine were the master stylists of the German language. Both boastful statements proved to be right. PCT was famous in his late youth and early adulthood, but I doubt if his star will shine in the same firmament of artists and thinkers, as FN is doing and to the lesser extent, HM and Tuệ Sỹ. FN was no coward. Like Tuệ Sỹ, he cared about the country in which he was born and grew up. He volunteered as an artillery man in the Franco-Prussian War and was discharged after sustaining a wound. He wrote that the idea about the will to power and affirmation of life and strength, as opposed to an embrace of Christian slave mentality and Jewish notion of "resentment", came to him when he saw a parade of German troops readying for the front line in a town.
FN died of madness brought on tertiary syphilis after being a mental invalid for over ten years during which he could not read or write anymore. However, it was said that he once poignantly remarked during his long illness after he lost consciousness of who and how great he was, that "yes, I once wrote books".
When I have difficult moments to survive in this treacherous, lies-filled world, I opened a storehouse in my mind where certain sayings and statements and a brief poem of FN help me regain my footing and equilibrium:
"If you look into the abyss long enough, it will look back at you."
"When we figure out the why, we will come up with the how to live."
"The Jews love life. They will sacrifice everything, including truths, in order to live. Most, if not everything, they said about God and His special relationship with them were absolute lies and tales of fiction."
"What does not kill me, will make me stronger."
"To be weak is to invite attack"
"Don't die before your time. Die a timely death."
"At the bridge I stood
lately in the brown night.
From afar came a song:
as a golden drop it welled
over the quivering surface.
Gondolas, lights, and music---
drunken it swam out into the twilight.
My soul, a stringed instrument,
sang to itself, invisibly touched,
a secret gondola song,
quivering with iridescent happiness.
---Did anyone listen to it?
Conclusion:
All the four writers and artists briefly "examined" above are men of talents. Three were unhinged and skated on the thin ice of braggadocio and madness and were attracted to the Abyss. All three appeared to love life with a gusto. They were all dead.
The one who actually went mad was the greatest of all. His impact has been far-reaching. Even common folks have heard of him, but few have bothered to sit down and read his books. If they do, I really doubt if they look at the world the same again, especially in terms of morality and religion.
The one who was the most crazy and the most boastful was the least known and perhaps the least artistic. I have a feeling that he could be an autistic savant.
His former associate and fellow monk has survived a long incarceration period (over 15 years) in the Vietnamese Communist hell hole. Yet despite threats and intimidation, he has continued fighting against the Vietnamese Communists. He looked gaunt and frail in the photos. He is still going on at the age of seventy, the age PCT perished despite living in freedom and material comforts in developed societies since 1970. Perhaps Tuệ Sỹ has quiet strength and didn't indulge in vices like smoking and sexual escapades with white women like his former associate PCT did. His widow once disclosed that PCT had a lot of women friends on account of his "talents."
Wissai/NKBa'
May 19, 2013
Sent from my iPad
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