Professor Do Duc Hieu - A dreamy and creative teacher

I know Professor Do Duc Hieu has some part.a little late, until the early 70s of the last century, but was fortunate to be close to, study, work, share confidences, and thanks to that, understand more or less about him. It is not difficult to imagine him from the first time we met, and even the last minute we had to leave him forever. At the Faculty of Literature - Hanoi University of Science, he was a person "full of personality". Almost all generations of his colleagues and students can easily imagine a Do Duc Hieu like this: thin, pale, sometimes feeling "lacking vitality", when sitting close to someone to talk to, he only "whispers", gently, but when lecturing, his voice resonates like the waves of the sea on a windy day (sitting at the back of the class can still hear every sound clearly). Professor Do Duc Hieu's working capacity is truly extraordinary. It is hard for anyone to imagine that a person who had two-thirds of his stomach removed in his youth, with a body no different from a reed, still rode his bicycle regularly, rain or shine, without missing a beat, from 26 Hang Bai Street to Me Tri dormitory, the headquarters of the two faculties of Literature and History in the 70s, when he was the vice-dean of the Faculty of Literature; at night, he would "hunch his back" over the pages of books (due to poor eyesight, he had to wear glasses with a diopter of over 5), to produce thousands of dreamy and creative pages for many generations of students. In the last years of his life, due to illness, in between the pains, I know that Professor Do Duc Hieu still read and worked, although it seemed that his health was no longer allowing him to be clear-headed enough to write down his creative ideas.

Indeed, if there were novariationIn life, according to his original choice, Do Duc Hieu should have become a lawyer, or if it were a little different, he would have been a civil servant.practice law. Passing the Baccalaureate in 1943, he entered the law department, in the same generation as writer Nguyen Dinh Thi, who studied philosophy at that time. Much later, both of them would eventually choose the path of literature, one side, Do Duc Hieu, chose teaching and research; and the other side, Nguyen Dinh Thi, chose writing. Both were similar in not going all the way with their initial choice. The resistance war broke out, responding to the Party's call, both of them left the French School to go to the war zone. With Nguyen Dinh Thi, it seemed that a bit of his initial "professional blood" still followed him until the early days of participating in the resistance war against the French. He wrote quite a few philosophical research works published in a number of newspapers and magazines at that time; as for Do Duc Hieu, it seemed that his initial choice was to become a lawyer, or at least a civil servant.involvedwith the law, but in the end, he left no trace. He resembled the 17th-century French comedian Molière, to whom he devoted so much of his work in his textbooks.History of French literature, also gave up his original choice of career.barrister,to embark on the path of art. For Do Duc Hieu, the only trace of his original career is revealed in part through the way he presents or speaks about an issue that he considers to be important; or when he has to express his opinion to refute an issue that he is not satisfied with. At that time, his arguments were extremely sharp. Perhaps, all that remains is just that. As for literature, it seems to have been a "fateful choice" for him. Exactly, from right after 1945, that is, right afterleaveLecture hall of Law, 19 Le Thanh Tong, until the last days of his life, he was only "concerned" with one predetermined path - literature - as a teacher.knock on child's headat Phu Tho High School; then Luong Ngoc Quyen School, Thai Nguyen, at one time a professor at the Faculty of Literature - Hanoi University of Science; and sometimes in the work of a professorWestern learningin the true sense, teaching French in Nanjing, China; and at another time, he was a civil servant of the Ministry of Education and Training's Library Department, organizing the compilation of general education textbooks. Despite his "traveling" in so many different fields, all of his work was still "fated" to literature. Perhaps that is why later on, we will see a Do Duc Hieu who is always "wide-ranging" in his literary career. It is very difficult to classify him into just one field.narrowsomething. For example, if you assume that you are an expertrankedabout Western literature. That is true but not enough. Because, besides his sharp writings about this field of literature, we also encounter many of his subtle and profound writings about Vietnamese literature; many people even think that he must be an expert on Vietnamese literature. That being said, there was a period, from 1955 to 1958, when he participated in writing textbooks at the Department of Textbooks, Ministry of Education and Training, and was also a member of the Le Quy Don group, the great Western and Vietnamese scholars of the time, including Vu Dinh Lien, Huynh Ly, Le Tri Vien translatedThe miserable,in a Vietnamese language imbued with Hugo's spirit, but also very Vietnamese. Furthermore, reading Do Duc Hieu's writings, at times, one recognizes in them the knowledge of aacademic, because, from the way he poses the problem, explains the problem to interpreting documents and analyzing texts, he is no different from a professor.Frenchactually; sometimes, he writes pages of literatureclear, crisplike a “schoolboy”. And it is difficult to “determine” which quality is superior to which (?). The teacher, his closest colleague and the one who understood him the most for many years, People’s Teacher Le Hong Sam, in a short article after his death, made a very accurate comment that in him “there are many qualitiesHugolian, most clearly the contrasts: Western-educated man and scholar, timidity and courage, old age and youthful thinking…”. It is true that one must understand him very well to draw such a subtle comment. And that is not all, I think, what is more important, needs to be clarifiedhuman qualitiesandjobHis was like this: thanks to the contradictions, he was also a constant dreamer.Dreamyandcreativeare two unified aspects in his entire career. Illuminating the entire career of Do Duc Hieu, we will understand that more clearly.

It can be affirmed that Do Duc Hieu started coming to literature withdottedandexperiencefrom national literature, Vietnamese literature. In his last years, in a conversation with critic Trung Duc, he wrote: after having “traveled” to “the far West”, wandering along the Truong Giang River, the Tien Duong River, sitting by the West Lake, Suzhou, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai (during the time he went to Nanjing University to teach French). Sometimes I wandered along the banks of the Seine, in the Luxembourg garden, sat on a bench under the statue of George Sand, sometimes looked at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Panthéon (when I went to Paris VII University to study the method of writing French literary history)…”, he returned to himself, to what was familiar in the garden of national literature, to write about his favorite things about Vietnamese literature. In fact, he had been passionate and attached to Vietnamese literature since childhood. Passionate about French literature, but Do Duc Hieu did not start his career with this literature. Perhaps, that is completely understandable: he was not really trained.regular. Initially, he was a law student. Although his career of teaching and researching French literature lasted for nearly fifty years (his important achievements were also in this field of literature), it was not until 1958, when he left the Library Department to return to the Faculty of Philology - University, that his knowledge of French literature, as he said, was "self-taught". Meanwhile, his knowledge of Vietnamese literature, he had accumulated for a long time. Born into an intellectual family, loving the teaching profession, he was greatly encouraged and motivated by his father. From the bottom of his heart, he recalled, I "sing"Three years guarding the garrison…”Miss To Thi, Thieu Phu Nam Xuong, Whose eyebrows are reflected in the new moon, The old powder and autumn fragrance are even more sorrowful…”.Meritorious Teacher Dang Thi Hanh, another colleague who was also very close to and understood her "senior", recounted the first time I met and attended a lecture by Professor Do Duc Hieu at Luong Ngoc Quyen School, Thai Nguyen, as follows: "When I first came to school, I had the opportunity to attend a literature class taught by Mr. Do Duc Hieu. Later, I would be in the same department with him for many years, but as the years passed, from the first meeting until several decades later, when he passed away, in terms of appearance and personality, I saw that he had hardly changed at all. When he was about 75 years old, a student from the General School met him again, after many years, and declared: "The teacher is still as young as before, because he has been old since long ago". We can talk about him by borrowing a poem by To Huu describing a famous heroic girl (he "has age or not has age"). Entering the class with my colleagues, sitting at the last table, I saw a tall and thin man, his eyes often looking up to the sky, looking full of inspired. But when he began to lecture in that shrill voice (especially when he got excited) – surprisingly, that voice and that look were not funny – the whole class fell silent….” (The girl looked at the rain,Women Publishing House, 2008).

As an "academic", Do Duc Hieu always respects readers when bringing them knowledge and insights.at laall ports(within everyone's reach). For him, everything written on paper must be clear, lucid, and easy to understand. That is the perseverance, training, and anxiety of more than fifty years of writing as a teacher. Another colleague who was also very close to and understood him for many years, collaborating with him on many projects, People's Teacher Le Hong Sam, once told a small story that "Once, in front of a confusing article, while many people "blamed out" without hesitation, he (Do Duc Hieu - TH) was gentle and hesitant: what is he saying, I read it four times and still don't understand". That was Do Duc Hieu's "polite" response to the "obscure, show-off" style of literary research.flarereaders. Do Duc Hieu never used his position of “superior”, “seniority” or “big tree” to cover up the younger trees below. In the field of translation, Do Duc Hieu left behind many translations of writers who are often called “classique” (usually taught in schools). People's Teacher Le Hong Sam wrote: “The great contributions in the field of translation – as well as the field of criticism – of such a teacher who loves his job, in my opinion, are primarily for the purpose of training. Not counting famous stories for children, the works he translated are from some typical authors in the history of French literature:Tartuffe, The Miser, The Miserby Molière (17th century),Paul and Virginieby Bernadin de Saint – Pierre (18th century), dramaMarion Delormeand novelsLes Miserables(general translation) by V. Hugo (19th century)…In the seriesSelection of French literature worksbilingual, co-edited by him and me, he edited and translated most of volume II (17th century). He translated the last pages of his life on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Balzac's birth, which werePrefaceset"Life's joke".

During nearly half a century of teaching, working closely with many generations of students, Professor Do Duc Hieu left behind thousands of pages of writing, including textbooks, theoretical research, translations, and an example of dedicated work for the cause of education. In the last ten years of his life (from about 1992 to 2002), when he knew his health was not good, he devoted himself to writing three works on innovating the way of reading literature. Knowing that his time was very short, Do Duc Hieu had to seize it todreamyandcreative. The last three booksInnovation in literary criticism(1993),Innovation in reading and commentary(1999),Modern poetics(2000), published when the 20th century had just ended. Ten years after his death, the most dreamy and creative articles of Professor Do Duc Hieu in the three works above were compiled and introduced by his student - teacher Tran Hinh - under the nameModern poetics – Some theoretical and applied issues(Education Publishing House, 2012, 700 pages). Researcher Lai Nguyen An made the following subtle comments about him: "His writings bear the mark ofshiver, both determined and surprised of a researcher who wants to think about something new".

Accepting a frugal life until the end of his life, Professor Do Duc Hieu never stopped thinking: life means knowing how to dream and be creative. In his professional work, especially in research and teaching, his greatest fear was not being able to "modernize" himself. Then there was the fear of turning himself into acopyof others, or else "turn others" (the student generation) intocopymineCreative DreamingDon't let people make that mistake. That was the advice of a teacher I will never forget.

Is generationposteritymuch lowerseniorNot daring to subjectively assume that I understand everything about him - a man with a profound soul and immense knowledge, I can only write a few random lines as above about Professor, Meritorious Teacher Do Duc Hieu.Read what he wrote to understand him..

Late Fall 2013