Professor Tran Van Giau, Professor Dao Duy Anh, and Professor Tran Duc Thao – three towering figures of modern Vietnamese historiography and thought, and also the founding members of the Faculty of History and Culture. Each professor left behind a unique academic legacy, a distinct teaching style, and indelible memories for generations of students.
In those writings, Professor Tran Duc Thao is remembered with deep respect and affection: a man of profound learning yet simplicity, serious yet approachable, always leaving a unique impression on those who met and studied with him. Over time, these memories have not only belonged to an individual but have become a proud part of the history and culture department's collective memory.
We are pleased to present the article "Recollections of Professor Tran Duc Thao" by Professor Tran Quoc Vuong - a valuable piece of writing about a respected teacher, and also a tribute to a generation of erudite, dedicated, and morally upright intellectuals who devoted their hearts and souls to the cause of education, research, and training generations of students.
In the 70-year history of tradition, the stories of our professors are not just chapters of the past, but have become a precious part of the heritage, identity, and pride of the Faculty of History and Culture. This also serves as a foundation and source of inspiration for today's generations to continue preserving and nurturing these valuable traditions and carrying on the legacy with new contributions, so that the flame of knowledge and love for the profession may be passed on to future generations.
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REMEMBRANCES ON PROFESSOR TRAN DUC THAO
Professor Tran Quoc Vuong
In: Tran Quoc Vuong, 2001, The History Department and I, Hanoi National University Publishing House, pp. 91-104
In the autumn of the year of the Snake 2001, the University of Education solemnly celebrated its 50th anniversary (October 1951 - October 2001).
Professor Tran Duc Thao
I received an invitation to attend, but for some reason I couldn't. However, I still received a gift from the History Department of Hanoi Pedagogical University: a small book titled "Faces and Scientific Achievements" (Hanoi, 2001). Opening it, from page 21 onwards, I saw the faces of my teachers, arranged in what order?: Tran Van Giau, Dao Duy Anh, Tran Duc Thao, Pham Huy Thong... (but Professor Dang Thai Mai and Cao Xuan Huy were absent). And then, in alphabetical order, I also saw the faces of Dinh Xuan Lam, Phan Huy Le, Ha Van Tan, and Tran Quoc Vuong alongside many other brilliant figures from the History Department of Hanoi Pedagogical University.
Yes, as mentioned above, my teachers were all leading professors at the University of Education at one time. And we are very honored to have had a period of time as lecturers at the University of Education (from 1956, as written in the book "Faces and Scientific Achievements").
I have written about teachers Giàu, Đào, Huy, Thông...
Today, at the urging of the Steering Committee for the 45th Anniversary Celebration of the former University of Hanoi (now the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi), and at the request of my friends, I dedicate the following lines to record a few things about another great teacher of mine: Professor Tran Duc Thao.
Why am I writing so slowly about Professor Thao, even though during his lifetime, his house was near the Kim Lien apartment complex with mine, his room was on the second floor of building B6, only a short distance from mine, and I visited and chatted with him almost every month? Because I was afraid! Professor Thao was a rare philosopher in Vietnam.
Unlike Professor Dao - who also lived in the same B6 Kim Lien apartment, near Professor Thao, and whom I met almost every week until the end of my life, chatting about history and life. I wasn't afraid of meeting the professors again after they became involved in the "Humanities - Literature" affair.
I was afraid to meet Professor Thao because my philosophical understanding was far inferior to his, and conversations often didn't go well. He was lonely, and so was I, but we also had a reputation for being "well-connected"!
I could be in the same day, the same afternoon, conversing with the late Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, and just a moment later, sitting on the grass, drinking draft beer, chatting with my one-eyed friend who works as a rickshaw driver! And that friend doesn't even know who I am. Just a "beer buddy," that's enough. My teacher, Mr. Thao, was different. He found it difficult to talk to the Prime Minister, just as it was difficult to talk to the simple urban workers around him. Lonely, and increasingly so towards the end of his life. That was his defining characteristic, his very nature. My friend, a PhD in Art Studies, said: Loneliness is a psychological state that makes it easier to contemplate philosophy. I wonder if that's true?
Once, Mr. Dao told me: "Mr. Vuong, I don't dare go to Mr. Thao's house anymore. He's gone crazy! Sometimes he says one thing, sometimes something else!" (I was startled). Mr. Thong had a similar observation. And although we lived and worked together in Paris and then in Hanoi for so many years, my teachers hardly ever met each other for the last few decades of their lives... I still visited and inquired about all of them, and I was a very adaptable person; whenever one teacher called another "that guy" (this was a painful truth), I would cleverly change the subject.
I (born at the end of 1934) heard of Master of Philosophy Tran Duc Thao, Eleve de l'Escole Normale Superieure (Paris), since I was only 9 or 10 years old. Is that true? Absolutely! At that time, to avoid the American bombs raining down on Vietnam in the war against the Japanese militarists, my family, as well as the Dong Khanh Girls' School of my siblings and the Do Huu Vi College (later Nguyen Trai) of my brothers, were evacuated to the small but picturesque town of Hung Yen - Pho Hien, with its crescent-shaped lake.
I was the youngest child in a large family with over twenty children and grandchildren. I often followed along, learned from and echoed my older siblings, and eavesdropped on adult conversations. I heard my father and his friends talk about Tran Duc Thao with the same admiration they had for Nguyen Manh Tuong, a 22-year-old bi-docteue (two PhDs in Literature and Law). Little did I know that just ten years later, I would have the honor of being a student of these great scholars. I remember, around 1952-1953, my class studied French Literary History with Professor Tuong. We studied in the thatched house of a well-off farmer in Thanh Hoa province. Ignoring that fact, Professor Tuong, still dressed in his formal attire (suit), his chest adorned with international badges (he had just attended the World Peace Conference in Moscow), walked into the classroom with the students sitting on the compacted earth floor. He spoke to us in a very serious tone, without a hint of jest:
- In this lecture hall of the Faculty of Literature... (I looked up at the thatched roof covered with bamboo and didn't dare to laugh), thanks to Uncle Ho and this great resistance war, you all are fortunate to have met me. (Yes, most of us were children of farmers from Thanh Hoa and Nghe An provinces, with muddy hands and feet; most of us didn't know what Hanoi was like. In 1945-1947, the Hang Co train station was too big for me. My eldest brother took me along Carreau Boulevard (Boulebvard Carreau, now Ly Thuong Kiet Street), and at the beginning of the street, he pointed to the towering "dom" (rooftop) and told me: "There, that's the Université Indochinoise! Our Uncle (we called our parents Uncle and Aunt) studied college here..." Good heavens, even in my wildest dreams, I couldn't have set foot inside this magnificent building. In early elementary school, I was very lazy and very bad at studying. I only liked to lie and sit in my mother's lap and "touch her breasts." My mother spoiled me too much; the slightest thing and I'd find an excuse to skip school. My grandfather just shook his head, "A child's bad behavior is the mother's fault..." And I only hoped that someday I could become a... "A village teacher" (or village schoolmaster) like my uncle Tuyen is fine. His wife fell seriously ill when she was only forty and passed away the same year I was working as Professor Dao's "apprentice assistant"!
Teacher Tuong then said:
- You all should "profit" (take advantage of) this rare opportunity, "profit" me, study as much as possible. (It's so unfortunate, since 1950, the Ministry of Education has issued a directive to abolish English and French subjects in high schools, so Mr. Duong Thieu Tong - the English teacher - before leaving us and the resistance, recited to us a mournful Tang Dynasty-style poem:)
English is no good at all.
TO DO, TO EAT also revolves around
(The teacher "imitated" a poem from the early 20th century:
What's the point of Chinese characters?
The mandarins and scholars were also lying curled up...
When we were studying with teachers Giàu, Huy, Tường... in Thanh Hoa province, teacher Thảo had just returned from Paris and was working in Viet Bac.
I only heard – as if it were a legend – about the debate between Professor Thao and Jean Sartre, the founder of French Existentialism (Existentialism – which at the time we probably translated as Existentialism or Survivalism).
After returning to Hanoi on October 10, 1954, following the liberation of the capital, I had the opportunity to meet Professor Thao again. He had been appointed by the State as the Deputy Director of the Faculty of Literature at the University of Education (the Director was Professor Dang Thai Mai).
In the actual Grand mphithéâtre (which I now find quite small) at 19 Le Thanh Tong Street, then called "Vietnam University" (the name Université Indochinoise was removed), Professor Thao launched the "emulation campaign." I remember he didn't use any political jargon like we were used to hearing or understanding, but instead spoke in some profound way about the "philosophical meaning of the patriotic emulation movement." To be honest, we students listened "like ducks listening to thunder" because we were only familiar with slogans like:
Emulation is patriotism.
Patriotism requires competition...
According to the schedule, Professor Thao lectured us on the History of Thought once or twice a week. It was always in the main lecture hall or lecture hall A. He never brought a book, not even a piece of paper that could be called a lesson plan. He would calmly walk into the classroom, alone with his body and mind – his soul. He never bothered to ask the students where he had left off in the previous lecture. With his hands in his pockets, he would walk and speak (almost never sitting down) as if speaking to himself. He never asked the students if they understood what he was saying or if they had any questions.
No, absolutely not! We, the student affairs officers, had to assign people like Pham Hoang Gia, Nguyen Dinh Chu... to record the professor's lectures, then revise them a little and make them into mimeographed copies to use as study materials for the whole school. Finally, we had a volume called the "History of Thought" printed using a mimeograph machine. (Professor Dang Thai Mai did the same. He only had the first part of the Book of Poetry:
Quan quan thu cuu
At Ha Chi Chau
Graceful and refined lady
A gentleman seeks a good match!
He taught us for... THREE whole months! According to conventional pedagogical principles, that's considered "burning through the lesson plan." But great teachers don't care about such "minor" details, even though he graduated from Hanoi Teacher Training College or Paris Higher Teacher Training College!
I remember Professor Thao's first lecture was about the origin of power. He said, "Power is born from the finger and the act of pointing, a symbol of 'giving orders'."
The classroom became increasingly noisy, then increasingly quiet, because we ignorant students understood almost nothing of what the professor was teaching. We relied on Mr. Pham Hoang Gia (who later became Professor Thao's assistant, a late Associate Professor and Doctor of Psychology) and Mr. Nguyen Dinh Chu (now a Professor of Literature) to take notes for us to read later. I never missed a single lecture just because I was considered a Youth Union official.
Professor Dao will have successors such as the great professors Phan Huy Le, Ha Van Tan...
Professor Giàu will have a brilliant successor like Professor Đinh Xuân Lâm.
Teacher Thao absolutely has no successor, just as he has no children to carry on the family lineage.
Professor Thao was teaching us in our second year when he got married. He was 40 years old at the time (he was born around 1917). None of us were informed of the good news (the wedding took place at his residence at 16 Hang Chuoi Street, and I heard there were about twenty or twenty people in attendance). The next morning, we still went to class, waiting for him. After a while, Dao Van Nham, the political assistant of the Faculty of Literature at the Teacher Training University (probably seeing our class was noisy and disorderly), came down and said:
- Professor Tran Duc Thao got married last night. According to regulations, he is allowed a week off. Class dismissed...
As we were all getting ready to leave, Mr. Thao (we called him "Mr." at the time) arrived. He looked bewildered, as if he didn't understand what had happened. On behalf of my fellow students, I went forward to congratulate him on getting married and said: "Mr. Nham told us to leave because you've been granted a week off." Mr. Thao waved his hand dismissively:
That's impossible. Go to class!
For us, it was a "very strange event" at the time. While listening to the lecture, we kept observing the Professor – as always, walking and speaking steadily – and let me add – Professor Thao almost never gave students a break in between classes. A great philosopher, our great teacher, how could he not be considered eccentric at that time? He lived very differently from others, and dressed rather sloppily.
My mother passed away (February 1957). Teacher Huy, the Party leader, and the school all came to offer their condolences. Teacher Pham Huy Thong even sent a card expressing his "deepest condolences." But Teacher Thao did not. Absolutely not, and after the funeral, when he met me, he didn't say a single word of comfort... And so, according to common sense, "if you're angry at a teacher, you'll be angry for life." He transcended all common sense. And his loneliness was perfectly understandable.
His wife was an overseas Vietnamese intellectual, an expert in preschool education – and she literally left him – to marry another prominent overseas Vietnamese intellectual. I lived near the teacher's house, and occasionally I would see the two of them together, peacefully. They understood and sympathized with him, helped him, but "living" with him was... really difficult! When I visited the teacher, his house was incredibly messy and, to be honest,... filthy.
"Sit down here!" He pointed to a dusty stool (a stark contrast to Mr. Dao's house next door, where his wife was always busily sweeping, tidying up, and arranging all the books and belongings).
I started smoking cigarettes in my teenage years (imitating my father/uncle) and I still can't quit, even though every pack of cigarettes, domestic or imported, has the phrase "Smoking is harmful to health" printed on the edge.
Mr. Thao never smoked. I asked his permission to smoke because I wanted to chat with him for a while. He said, "Go ahead!" I frantically searched the room for an ashtray. There wasn't one! I timidly asked, and he handed me a cast-iron pot lid and said, "Put your ashes in here!"
That's absolutely amazing, isn't it, esteemed Professor-Lecturer-Student?
After the "Humanities - Literature" affair (1956-1958), Professor Thao left the university and was apparently transferred to the Central Party's Truth Publishing House, which was then headed by historian Minh Tranh. For the first few months, Professor Thao seemed to receive no work. But month after month, he was still given the salary of a top-tier professor, which in the "subsidized economy" era was a large sum of money (around 150 VND, while the price of rice was only 0.4 VND/kg). He refused to accept it, with a very "Marxist" argument:
- Salaries are meant to pay workers. I don't do any work. Therefore, I have no right to receive a salary!
Mr. Minh Tranh, with whom I later became very close, came up with a "plan" that I considered very clever: creating "contracts" with Professor Thao for him to proofread translated classic works by K. Max and F. Engels. And in this way, Professor Thao's "income" remained equivalent to a university professor's salary.
Professor Thao was very fluent in German, as fluent in French and Vietnamese. He was a Vietnamese who understood the philosophical ideas of Hegel, Marx, Engels, and others better than anyone else. That work suited him perfectly and was very useful for us students (from 1963-1964, according to a decision of the State Science Committee, we had to study with Soviet academicians in a postgraduate course on Marxist-Leninist philosophy).
When Professor Thao taught us Philosophy and the History of Thought, his overly erudite and rambling teaching style only covered topics from ancient Greek and Roman thought to Hegelian thought, which later led to him being accused of never teaching us Marxist-Leninist thought. Actually, I remember once Professor Thao told us students:
Hegel was the pinnacle of idealism. Marx was the pinnacle of materialism. Marx was a follower of Hegel's left-wing ideology. Just one step from one pinnacle leads directly to the next!
(This way of thinking by Professor Thao has also been criticized by so-called Marxist philosophers.)
When he returned to Hanoi in the autumn of 1954, there was already a Literature-History-Geography department and magazines of the same name headed by Professor Tran Huy Lieu. Professor Thao had written several articles published in those magazines about Tran Hung Dao's "Proclamation to the Soldiers," about the estates and manors of the Tran dynasty, and about the class nature of the characters in The Tale of Kieu...
While Professor Dao Duy Anh taught us that the feudal system reached its peak during the reigns of Le Thanh Tong and Hong Duc (1471-1497), Professor Thao wrote that the Tran dynasty was the highest point of the feudal system, etc.
Well, each teacher has their own opinion, and we insignificant insects can only listen and read; we don't have any opinions of our own.
But strangely enough, around the end of 1955 or the beginning of 1956, when I visited Professor Dao, who was then living in a villa at 16 Hang Chuoi Street, he told me:
Mr. Thao is the real philosopher and historian. It seems I'm just a collector of historical materials!
I admire Professor Dao like an idol, yet he speaks to me in such a humble way. What does that mean? To this day, I still don't fully understand.
I believe Professor Dao admires Professor Thao for his philosophical thinking and his ability to broadly generalize the philosophical ideas of ancient and modern history.
Just as Mr. Dao had previously admired Mr. Giau's philosophical and historical thinking.
At the end of 1956, when the State decided (signed by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong) to merge the two universities of science education (headed by Professor Le Van Thiem as Director) and literature education (headed by Professor Dang Thai Mai and Professor Tran Duc Thao as Director and Vice-Director) and establish the University of General Studies (headed by Professor Nguy Nhu Kom Tum as Director), the leading figures all stepped down to become heads of departments and faculties. One department was responsible for teaching at both the University of Education (headed by Professor Pham Huy Thong (History) and Professor Nguyen Thuc Hoa (Mathematics) as Director and Vice-Director) and the University of General Studies. Professor Le Van Thiem became Head of the Department of Mathematics and Physics, and Professor Dang Thai Mai became Head of the Department of Literature.
Specifically in the History Department, Professor Tran Duc Thao was the Head of Department. He was our first Head of Department, and to this day, Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Quang Ngoc is the Head of Department at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century.
Professor Dao Duy Anh is the Head of the Department of Ancient Vietnamese History.
Professor Tran Van Giau is the Head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Vietnamese History.
Professor Pham Huy Thong is the Head of the Department of World History.
Professor Tran Duc Thao also served as Head of the Department of Ideological History.
We had just graduated and were offered apprenticeship positions as assistants to the Heads of Departments. Phan Huy Lê and I were assistants to Professor Đào. Đinh Xuân Lâm and Nguyễn Đức Sự were assistants to Professor Giàu. Phạm Hoàng Gia was an assistant to Professor Thảo. As for Lê Văn Sáu, Tôn Thất Chiêm Tế, Phạm Gia Hải... they were in the Department of World History.
The faculties were officially divided in the 1958-1959 academic year. The World History department followed Professor Thong to the University of Education. Vietnamese History followed Professor Giau to the University of General Studies. The senior professors went their separate ways. Professors Mai and Huy went to the Institute of Literature, Professor Dao to the Institute of History, and Professor Tuong to the Institute of Educational Sciences.
And what about Mr. Thao? As mentioned above, he went to the Truth Publishing House. Like water flowing and flowers drifting away.
We were left stranded and became teaching staff.
Then, 25 years later, we all became Professors and Associate Professors. As Ha Van Tan – who recently received the Ho Chi Minh Prize (while our professors were all posthumously awarded the title) – said, our research and teaching achievements are just a "fingernail" of the achievements of our predecessors.
We grew up in the History Department thanks to the guidance of our professors and, also, thanks to our own learning.
Hanoi, late Autumn 2001 (Year of the Snake)
Author:Faculty of History and Culture
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