Imaginary interview with Hồ Xuân Hương
by Charactorium · Hồ Xuân Hương (1772 — 1822) · Literature · Culture · 6 min read
One evening in the late 18th century, on the shores of West Lake, the water pavilion her first husband built for her floats in the mist. An oil lamp, an inkstone still damp, and a woman laughing under her breath at the mandarins. We found her there, bent over a poem in chữ Nôm, ready to answer — but never to be silent.
—Why did you write in the people's language, in chữ Nôm, rather than in classical Chinese like the literati of your rank?
Classical Chinese, you see, is the language of edicts, of stelae, and of men who believe themselves eternal because they carve their names in stone. I wanted to write the language spoken at the Hanoi market, the one that flows when you laugh or curse. Chữ Nôm embraces our Vietnamese breath; its characters are cut from Chinese but reshaped for our mouths. A poem should be spoken aloud by the water's edge, not deciphered in a dusty study. So I took my brush and my India ink, and I set down on paper a language that the great literati despised, certain that a woman and a demotic script could never produce real poetry. They were wrong twice.
Classical Chinese is the language of men who believe themselves eternal because they carve their names in stone.
—Your style is said to be 'elegantly ambiguous.' How do you slip a second meaning under an image of a landscape?
There is a way of describing a mountain pass, a cleft in the rock, a fan that opens and closes, a ripe fruit — and letting the reader see in it what his own mind puts there. This is what is called thanh thanh tục tục: proper on the surface, naughty underneath. I never say anything obscene, mind you; I describe nature with the greatest innocence. If a mandarin blushes reading my landscape, it is his mind that is troubled, not my verse. That is my revenge as a woman: I pretend to paint a cave or a loom, and it is they who stumble. Ambiguity is the weapon of those who are not allowed to speak plainly.
If a mandarin blushes reading my landscape, it is his mind that is troubled, not my verse.
—You mingled with the great literati of your time. What did those exchanges mean to you?
One always imagines the poetess alone at her lamp, but poetry in Tonkin is played in a circle, like a chess game with many hands. I crossed paths with Nguyễn Du, whose verses everyone already whispered, Phạm Đình Hổ, Phan Huy Huân — men who knew that a poem is answered by another poem. We tossed verses at each other like a ball, we teased, we admired in veiled words. In those gatherings, for a moment it was forgotten that I was a woman and twice a concubine; only the ear and the joust remained. That equality was rare. The rest of the time, it had to be won verse by verse, against people convinced that a skirt could not rhyme correctly.
—Tell us about this water pavilion where you are writing tonight. How did it come to you?
It was Tổng Cóc, my first husband, who had it built on stilts by the lake, away from the main house. Officially, so that a concubine would stop stirring the jealousies of the legal wife and the household. Unofficially — I prefer to believe — so that a woman who writes might finally have a corner where the ink dries in peace. The thủy tạ, this water pavilion, is the finest gift I ever received, though no one quite knew what they were giving me: four planks over the water, but worth more than a wife's title. At night, the lake laps under the floor, the moon shatters into pieces on the surface, and the verses rise on their own. They set me apart; I made it my workshop.
They set me apart; I made it my workshop.
—You mention this first marriage. How did one experience the status of concubine, of lẽ, in your society?
To be lẽ is to be second in everything: second at table, second blanket, the one kept in the shadow while the vợ cả, the principal wife, reigns in broad daylight. They lend you a husband, they do not give you one. I knew that place twice, and believe me, I did not choose it out of a taste for humility. A woman of letters without a large dowry is not married as a legal wife — she is placed in a lower rank, like a beautiful but somewhat cumbersome piece of furniture. So I made it a subject: the concubine's solitude, the waiting, the humiliating sharing — all of it went into my verses. Since I was assigned the second rank, I decided to write about it first.
Since I was assigned the second rank, I decided to write about it first.
—Your second marriage, to the mandarin governor of Vĩnh Tường, was quite brief. What do you keep from it?
Phạm Viết Ngạn governed Vĩnh Tường, a man of letters who had passed the exams before attaining his mandarin post. Our union lasted only twenty-seven months — count them, barely two years and three moons — before death took him from me. I keep from it a son, Phạm Viết Thiệu, and the cruel feeling that no sooner had I tasted a little consideration as a governor's wife than it was taken away. Twenty-seven months: too little for happiness, enough for mourning. Once again a concubine, once again second, and this time a widow on top of it. Fate has a sense of humor, but it is a humor that makes only itself laugh. As for me, I answer fate as I answer the mandarins: with verses it cannot censor.
—Your pen name is said to come from the house where you grew up. Tell us about that place.
The house of my childhood was called Cổ Nguyệt Đường, the Pavilion of the Ancient Moon, also planted on the shore of West Lake, in what was then the most flourishing quarter of Tonkin. A name like that, you understand, one does not let it sleep on a pediment. I took it to sign my verses, so that the house and the woman ended up bearing the same face. There is cunning in that choice: 'the ancient moon' is a gentle image, almost faded, yet the moon knows how to return each month, whole, to illuminate what one would prefer to keep in the dark. Growing up by that water, among literati and boats, taught me that landscape and poem are the same thing seen twice.
—The Tonkin of your youth was shaken by turmoil. How did that turbulent era weigh on a poetess?
Those were times of tottering dynasties, collapsing lords, unsafe roads — the late 18th century spared no one, and power changed hands like one changes sandals. A woman, in that din, has no voice in council; she is not asked her opinion on battles. But a scholar named Tốn Phong once wrote of my young person — I was then called Phi Mai — that my spring beauty surpassed the entire capital. A poet's flattery, no doubt. Yet, in a kingdom that burned its own granaries, for a man to take the time to praise a young girl and her brush says enough that poetry outlived princes. Thrones fall; verses, on the other hand, are still recited the next day.
Thrones fall; verses, on the other hand, are still recited the next day.
—If you could imagine being read a century from now, what title would you like to be awarded?
That is a question that smacks of vanity, and I plunge into it with pleasure. Queen, sovereign of chữ Nôm — why not? I spent my life proving that a script deemed vulgar and a woman deemed out of place could, together, make a crown. If a poet of future times wanted to crown me lady sovereign of poetry in the people's language, I would not spit on it, I confess. But let it not be for my manners: let me be crowned for audacity, for ambiguity held at the tip of the brush, for having said aloud, under innocent landscapes, what other women had to keep silent. A title is only worth what it dares to reward. Crown insolence, not embroidery.
A script deemed vulgar and a woman deemed out of place could, together, make a crown.
—You are not unaware that women's lives are rarely recorded. Do you fear disappearing from memory?
Look at our annals: they record the births of princes, the grades at examinations, the decrees of lords — never the day a woman wrote her finest verse. My life sleeps in no official register; no stele exists to say where I was born or exactly when. That frightens me less than one might think. A forgotten mandarin is a dead name on a list; a poetess, as long as a verse remains in a mouth, breathes. Perhaps one day they will debate even my father — was he a scholar from Quỳnh Đôi or another? — without agreeing. Let them debate. I prefer to survive by my ambiguities than by a birth certificate. Archives keep the powerful; poems keep the living.
Archives keep the powerful; poems keep the living.
—What would you say to those who, for lack of documents, might one day doubt that you ever existed?
Let them doubt! It is almost a tribute: one doubts only beings too great to fit on a page. I have no biography carved in marble, no tomb one can visit without risking that West Lake has already swallowed it. But let them take a single one of my poems in chữ Nôm, let them listen to that voice that laughs at bonzes and mandarins, that manner of mine of painting a cave to say something else entirely — and tell me if a ghost could have written that. A woman rarely invents such insolence; temperament is not forged. My proof of existence is not in a register: it is in the edge of the verse. There, I am more alive than many duly recorded living people.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Hồ Xuân Hương's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.