Imaginary interview with Nguyễn Du
by Charactorium · Nguyễn Du (1766 — 1820) · Literature · Culture · 5 min read
Late autumn 1819, in the ancestral domain of Tiên Điền, in Hà Tĩnh. The old poet receives us under a bamboo awning, an inkstone still moist beside him. His voice is low, often suspended, like that of a man who has spent his life listening to the wind.
—How was the desire to write Truyện Kiều born in you?
It was not born in me; it found me. It was in Hangzhou, at Hupao Temple, during those long years of travel across the Qing empire. I was seeking shade and some tea, and I laid my hand on a prose novel, the Kim Vân Kiều Truyện by a Chinese scholar. I read the story of a young girl sold to save her father, tossed about for fifteen years by a merciless fate, and I felt that this woman spoke my own language even before I wrote it. That very evening, I decided to revive her in nôm verse, in the language of my people. A Buddhist temple, a forgotten book on a shelf: that is the narrow door through which the works of a lifetime sometimes enter.
This woman spoke my own language even before I wrote it.
—Why did you choose to write this masterpiece in chữ Nôm rather than classical Chinese?
All my life as a scholar, I ground ink on my nghiên mực to compose in chữ Hán, the language of examinations and mandarins. It is a beautiful armor, but cold. Chữ Nôm, on the other hand, embraces the sounds of our rice paddies, the laments of our mothers, the songs hummed on the rivers. If I wanted Kiều's pain to touch the market woman as much as the official at his desk, I needed this script, one that records our spoken language. I have been reproached for debasing poetry by entrusting it to the vulgar tongue. I believe, on the contrary, that I raised it to the people. A poem that only three scholars can read is but a well-decorated tomb.
A poem that only three scholars can read is but a well-decorated tomb.
—You yourself named a decade of your life 'ten years of wind and dust.' What does that expression cover?
Mười năm gió bụi, yes. From 1787 to 1797, I had neither fixed home, nor office, nor certainty of the morrow. My family was broken, the Tây Sơn were sweeping everything away, and I walked the roads like a man of the giang hồ, those wanderers of rivers and roads who belong to no house. I knew true hunger, the kind that leaves you penniless between the southern and northern shores. But I will not lie to you by cursing it entirely: it is the dust of those roads that settled into my verses. One does not write the misery of others if one has never shivered oneself under an unknown awning.
It is the dust of those roads that settled into my verses.
—What remains in your poetry from those homeless years?
Everything, perhaps. During the wandering, I gathered poems in Chinese that I called the Thanh Hiên thi tập, the Collection of Thanh Hiên. They are my raw years: the travels, the cold nights, lost friends, that feeling of being a leaf detached from the tree. I think that is where I understood what I would later repeat in Truyện Kiều: that talent and destiny often wage war, and that the man of worth is not the one life spares, but the one who keeps his heart upright under the blows. Without those ten years of wind, I would have written only a beautiful story. Instead, I wanted to write a wound that everyone would recognize as their own.
Talent and destiny often wage war.
—It is said that you received a dual training, that of the scholar and that of the soldier. How did that come about?
From childhood, I was seated before the classics in chữ Hán, the bút lông in hand, copying the masters until the characters inhabited me. That for the pen. But during the wandering, my companion Nguyễn Đại Lang, whom I called Cai Gia, a former soldier of Sino-Vietnamese origin, taught me the handling of the eighteen types of weapons and the old treatises on strategy. That for the sword. People imagine the poet bent over his inkstone, never a sword at his side; yet I commanded troops at Thái Nguyên before everything collapsed. The two disciplines, I assure you, are not so far apart: both require choosing the right gesture, at the right moment, without trembling.
People imagine the poet bent over his inkstone, never a sword at his side.
—What would you say to someone who imagines you only as a man of the study, far from arms and tumults?
That they mistake the era. One did not cross those years with only a brush and a poem as baggage. I bore arms, I inherited through the tập ấm a command that my father's office entitled me to, and I saw up close how a kingdom unravels. It is precisely because I held the sword that I can speak of the world's pain without adorning it. The scholar who has known only his nghiên mực writes landscapes; he who has known fear writes men. I boast of no bravery — I learned above all that true courage is to keep the soul intact when everything around it corrupts.
The scholar who has known only his ink writes landscapes; he who has known fear writes men.
—Do you remember the circumstances of your imprisonment in 1796?
As if it were yesterday. In 1796, I wanted to secretly reach the South to join Lord Nguyễn Ánh, who alone seemed to me able to restore what the Tây Sơn had overturned. I was intercepted before I crossed the country, and Commander Nguyễn Thận had me thrown into prison in Nghệ An for three months. A cell teaches a man much: it takes everything from him except his thought. There I composed the poems of My trung mạn hứng, my “Impressions in Prison.” They were not verses of complaint, but of resolve: one can imprison the body, but one does not imprison a man's loyalty to what he believes is right.
One can imprison the body, but one does not imprison a man's loyalty to what he believes is right.
—How does one continue to write when deprived of freedom?
One writes precisely because one is deprived of freedom. In that cell in Nghệ An, I had neither my inkstone nor my scholar's comforts, but I had the memory of words and time, that immense time that captivity gives. The poem then becomes the only room where one can still walk. I learned there what I later found in Kiều's fate: that adversity, when one refuses to drown in it, can be turned into light. The three months passed, I was released, but the verses remained. That is perhaps the only revenge allowed to the weak: to transform one's prison into a poem that others will read standing up.
The poem becomes the only room where one can still walk.
—How could you serve the Nguyễn dynasty, when the Tây Sơn had ravaged your family?
You touch my deepest wound. In 1791, the Tây Sơn executed my brother Nguyễn Quýnh for his revolt and burned our estate at Tiên Điền; the village of my ancestors was nothing but ashes. When Gia Long finally unified the country, he called me to his service, and I accepted the post of tri huyện of Phù Dung in 1803. Some saw it as a betrayal of my years of wandering and hiding. I saw it as the only path for a scholar to still be of use in a world that had burned everything. A man rarely chooses his era; he only chooses whether to cross it standing or lying down.
A man rarely chooses his era; he only chooses whether to cross it standing or lying down.
—This mandarin costume you now wear, do you wear it with pride or with unease?
With both, and perhaps that is what makes me a poet. This áo quan, whose color and embroidery declare my rank at the court of Phú Xuân, I put on each morning for district affairs. But beneath the official silk, I remain the man of the ten years of dust, the one who saw his own blood executed and his house in flames. The office feeds my body; it has never consoled my heart. I believe my whole work in Truyện Kiều was to express this contradiction: that one can serve, obey, hold one's rank, and yet keep within a loyalty that no emperor can buy. The garment changes; the soul, if one watches over it, does not change.
The office feeds my body; it has never consoled my heart.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Nguyễn Du'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.