Remembering the beloved Dean of the Faculty of the past

In 1960, I was in my senior year of high school.
One day, in the dormitory of my bamboo secondary school in the province, the wife of a Literature teacher, who lived in the same house, brought home a new book for her husband. She was a bookseller. Seeing the new book, I excitedly asked the teacher: "Uncle, what book is this? Let me see it." I held the book in my hand: History of Russian Literature in the 19th Century, Volume I, authored by Hoang Xuan Nhi. Uncle Ba explained: "Mr. Hoang Xuan Nhi is from Ha Tinh with me, a relative of Mr. Hoang Xuan Han, now a Professor at the University of General Science in Hanoi, with a Bachelor of Literature in Germany. This is the first Russian literature book in our country." A few days later, my uncle lent me the book, and I devoured it. For the first time, I learned about the concept of Russian Literature with the names and authors: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol,... and I remember to this day the Pushkin poem translated by the author:
I love my country, a strange love
But my reason can never resist
Mysterious legends from ancient times
The serenity of proud confidence.
Then by chance I was admitted to the Faculty of Literature a year later (1961).
On a rainy day at school, I saw Mr. Nhi for the first time at the Great Lecture Hall at 19 Le Thanh Tong when the Director (Principal) Nguyen Nhu Kontum introduced the deans. He stood up, turned around and smiled in return. We also stood up. Tall, with white hair, rosy skin, bright eyes, a gentle smile, he wore a white three-pocket short-sleeved shirt and blue work pants rolled up at one hem. Very simple but elegant. That year, he was 47 years old and had just been appointed as the Head of the Faculty of Social Sciences (Literature + History) of the School, whose predecessors were Mr. Dang Thai Mai, Mr. Tran Duc Thao and Mr. Tran Van Giau. His image followed me all my life as the symbol of a Professor and Dean. That image also suggested to me a scale of values ​​that I was fortunate to follow and strive for in my professional career. But it would be another 35 years...
At the end of the entrance ceremony, the teacher led a group of new students to visit the library (now Le Van Thiem Hall) with a very strange statement: "Comrades, follow me". Since growing up and studying in high school, I have never seen any teacher call students "comrade". But the teacher called us that all his life.
The university lecture halls had many strange things for us. The strangest thing was the enthusiastic and hard-working learning atmosphere. Although we wore brown pants and cloth shirts, and many of us went barefoot, we students were just as enthusiastic and determined. Apart from Mr. Nhi, Mr. Bach Nang Thi, Mr. Hoang Nhu Mai, Mr. Le Dinh Ky, Mr. Dinh Gia Khanh, and Mr. Do Duc Hieu, who were all in their forties, the teachers in the department were all young and friendly to the students.
Through the teachers, we learned that Mr. Nhi was from the poor hometown of Ha Tinh. He studied hard since childhood. After graduating from high school, he received a scholarship to study in France and then Germany, and received a bachelor's degree in literature. He was very good at French and German. He translated Chinh Phu Ngam Khuc into French and was praised and awarded. When the resistance war against France broke out, he should have continued his doctoral studies but he returned to the country. He chose to work in the South to fight the resistance. He worked in culture and education near the Southern Regional Party Committee during the difficult years and then became a key cadre and Director of the Southern Department of Education before going to the regrouping. One time when I came to class, I saw him wearing a strange badge, not a medal or a badge. When I asked, I learned that it was the "Citadel of the Fatherland" badge given to those who had achieved success during the nine-year resistance war in the South. He was very proud of it. In the Literature Department, there was another person with that badge, Mr. Nguyen Ham Duong, a former soldier of the unnumbered train carrying weapons from Thailand to Zone 9 at the same time.
Mr. Nhi did not teach us right away. It was not until the third and fourth years that he taught us two subjects. However, before that, in his position as Dean, he used his prestige to regularly invite many famous scholars to the department to lecture to students: Dang Thai Mai, Cao Xuan Huy, Vu Ngoc Phan, Hoai Thanh, Huy Can, Xuan Dieu, Che Lan Vien, etc. Thanks to that, we learned a lot of knowledge and practice. As students, we did not dare to approach him but only met him in the office when we had to ask for permission or hung around to watch him play billiards with Mr. Phan Trac Canh, his professional assistant (later the owner of the famous old bookstore at No. 5 Bat Dan Street, Hanoi) in the department hallway. He often smiled and waved to us.
The Faculty of Literature at that time was located in Lang village in a peaceful and spacious campus (including the land of two schools: Foreign Trade University and Foreign Affairs University today) with a very comfortable living, studying and working space, even though it was still very poor. During the two years of study, Mr. Nhi taught us two textbooks and topics: Soviet Russian Literature and Aesthetic Criticism. He gave Russian literature of the 18th and 19th centuries to a group of young teachers: Nguyen Kim Dinh, Nguyen Truong Lich, Truong Quang Che, Bui Xuan An.
In his first class, we were excited to study with the Head of the Department Professor. As for him, he was calm and gentle. He still wore the traditional outfit like the previous year: a three-pocket shirt and blue worker's pants. He held a small pipe and tapped it lightly on the metal cigarette box in his hand. He looked at us kindly and said softly enough to be heard: "Let's use the first class to confide in you comrades." He did not start with academics but with the patriotism of intellectuals. He said that comrades who grew up in an independent country did not see all the suffering of people who lost their country. He said: One New Year's Eve in Paris before World War II, a group of international students organized a party, each person told a story about their homeland, then they asked everyone to introduce the national flag and sing the national anthem. When it was his turn, he was confused and miserable. What would he introduce when the country was lost? Swallowing back his tears, he told about the flag raised at the village festival and sang a short folk song from Nghe - Tinh. The students cheered but the teacher cried. Our class fell silent.
He advised us a few things: Try to study for the people, for the country and for yourself. Therefore, you must improve your ability to self-study and improve your foreign language skills. Without these two things, you cannot develop. He told us that he had memorized the Larousse dictionary to read books and translate, and on winter nights he had to dip his feet in a basin of cold water to stay awake and study (my class at that time had a pioneer student who memorized the Russian-Vietnamese Dictionary of Nguyen Nang An - that student was the talented poet Anh Ngoc later). Teacher Nhi had self-studied Russian for half a year to read books to write the History of Russian Literature and translate the Marxist Aesthetics. He had strongly inspired our group of students at that time.
To be honest, he, like Mr. Le Dinh Ky, was not an eloquent speaker, but his lectures, with their soft, slow speaking style, were very “quality” in their in-depth analysis and the information he provided. He analyzed for us very deeply about Gorky with his stories The Mother, The Falcon, The Heart of Danko,… the historical tragedies of Solokhov’s characters in Quiet Flows the Don, Uncultivated Land, The Fate of Man,… things that were truly new and memorable. When teaching Russian literature, thanks to his profound knowledge of Western literature, he always let us listen to comparative analyses with French, English, German, and Spanish literature. Through his words, we learned that Shakespeare’s poetic plays in English literature were recreated in French and German thanks to the talent of Charles Hugo (son of Victor Hugo) and the German poet Sleghen.
When teaching about the Critique of Modern Aesthetics, he did not forget to lead us from ancient Greek aesthetics through the Renaissance to modern times, and even the Russian aesthetics of Sernyshepxki. Once he asked us: “Does anyone know the origin of the statement: All theories are gray, but the tree of life is forever green?”. I thought it was a philosopher. One of my friends replied: “That saying is from Goethe.” He said it was correct, but people did not translate it accurately. Then he explained: “That is what the devil Mephisto said to the doctor in Goethe’s poem Faustus when praising the beauty of a woman’s body. The original text is not “the tree of eternal life” but rather “the golden tree of life is…”. Learning requires practice, the teacher made us write an essay on the aesthetic assessment of the work: “The Tale of the Hills and the Steppe” by Aitmatov through two short stories: “The First Teacher” and “The Young Maple Tree Covered in a Red Scarf”, a few seminars, each of us presented our own ideas and then the teacher gave us a score.
From an academic point of view, he was always orthodox, not sharing much aesthetic with the Young Hegelian school and the liberalism of Garodi, Lucas, etc. He was very strict and principled. Once, in class, an older guy (who later became an officer of the organization department) was asked by the teacher to leave the class and not allowed to continue studying the subject because he was laughing in class while the teacher was lecturing on an important theoretical issue. The teacher gave us quite difficult exams and gave us quite strict grades.
My student life ended in the chaos of war (1965), and I was allowed to stay at the school as a teaching staff, under the teacher's "command" but in a different major: Linguistics. The school had to leave Hanoi to evacuate to the mountains of Viet Bac, in Dai Tu district, Thai Nguyen province. We, young and old, followed the teacher into a new life. When we arrived at the camp, he quickly integrated into wartime life, leaving behind in Hanoi his familiar Simson motorbike that he had used for many years. He joined us in digging tunnels, building houses out of bamboo and leaves, and reading books with oil lamps. He was still slow, leisurely and cheerful. One day, when he went to receive rice to eat, there was a heavy rain and a flood, he put his backpack of rice on the back of a buffalo and asked the students to hold on tight so the buffalo could swim across the stream. This became an event when K8 students wrote "Evacuation Romance" for him, giving him the title of a chapter: "Hoang, the head teacher, rides a buffalo across the stream".
Our group of teachers, including Mr. Ham Duong, Mr. Thuat and I, lived in the same house near Mr. Nhi in the valley, so I had the opportunity to be close to his family. He was also active in growing crops and raising animals. He said: "We are used to it. During the nine years in the swamp, it was much harder, but we still managed to survive." We often exchanged products with him (vegetables, eggs, squash, and sometimes chickens). He guided us to raise ducks for eggs using fresh cassava (we had to boil them before cutting them up for the ducks to eat). He also fished to improve our meals because he was familiar with the canals of the South. Despite the shortage, he still advised and reminded us to diligently read books and study on our own, and he still diligently studied books and wrote, including writing the play Kieu, which the K8 student art troupe performed in many places, even in... Hanoi.
However, Mr. Nhi was not only a Professor, he was also the Head of the Department, and had to take care of many things. In peacetime as well as in wartime, his colleagues respected him very much and wanted him to focus on his professional work, so they helped him with many things. I remember the Deputy Heads of the Department: Truong Van Vinh, Hoang Huu Yen, Ton Gia Ngan, Nguyen Van Tu, Do Duc Hieu, and the assistants: Phan Trac Canh, Nguyen Xuan Hoa, Bui Khanh The, Nguyen Ngoc Son, etc., who took turns wholeheartedly taking care of his work, causing him to sometimes forget his work and pay little attention to details. I remember, in the summer of 1972, the war was fierce, American bombs were constantly flying, and the school and department had to move to Hiep Hoa, Ha Bac once again. One day, I brought my salary to him. After receiving it, he asked: "So, comrade, do you know where our department is now? We want to visit our colleagues." I was a bit surprised, but I understood right away and told him the information. The next day, at 4am, the teacher rode his bicycle all the way to Ha Bac to visit his colleagues and inspect the department. Another thing happened. When I was in Dai Tu, one day I went to his house to exchange rice for noodles. He told me: "Young comrades should strictly maintain discipline in Party activities. I attend Party cell meetings regularly but rarely see you." I explained: "Sir, I am not a Party member." He calmly said: "Oh, then you have to try harder. Let me introduce you." I quickly replied: "No, sir. You work in another Party cell and I am in the language department." The teacher said again: "Why not? I am a Party member and the leader here, so why not? I know all the brothers." I silently thanked the teacher, but I did not dare to say anything more for fear of offending him.
Teacher Nhi was a gentle, honest but charismatic person. There were funny anecdotes about him that I only understood later, such as the story of being invited to a party, after eating, he still took what was left and divided it among himself and his colleagues with the explanation: "They gave it to me, so it's mine." Another time on a business trip, stopping for a drink, he stood outside the shop and didn't go in, saying to his colleagues: "I have a jug of water here, comrades, just come in and drink and contribute money to pay!" Another time, seeing that his house had a gourd trellis full of fruit, Teacher Duong sent me to "contact". Teacher Nhi led me to the trellis to pick a fruit, then he told me to choose another one. I chose and pointed, he continued to cut and said: "I'll give you the previous one, but you have to pay for this one." Later, when I had the opportunity to live in Europe, I understood that he lived very Western, everything was transparent, without diplomacy, pretentiousness, and without pretentiousness, not a "stingy" teacher as some people thought.
In the year he turned seventy (1984), our faculty celebrated his birthday at the Lo Duc Dormitory cafeteria. During the most difficult time, we only had bananas, candy powder and tea. He was happy and we were happy too. Mr. Ma Giang Lan respectfully addressed the teacher:
Have a cup of fun remembering today,
Cheers to the day you are eighty.
But... he stopped at the age of 78.
Seeing off the teacher at the main building on Le Thanh Tong Street, I remember the image of the revolutionary Hoang Quoc Viet, who was very weak and had two people supporting him, but still tried to visit the teacher. Then Professor Tran Dai Nghia, equally weak, came to say goodbye to his friend Ba Le from that time, returning home to join the resistance.
A quarter of a century has passed since you left, but the Department of Literature remembers you, the teacher and respected Head of the Department who was humble but unprecedented for an entire generation.

                                                              In Summer 2014