Introduction
Nguyên Hồng (1918-1982) was a Vietnamese writer, originally from Nam Định and associated with Hải Phòng from 1934, when he was only 16 years old. He is known as a writer of the urban poor, with truthful pages about their lives.
Literary career
Over nearly 50 years of writing, Nguyên Hồng produced many valuable literary works that made important contributions to modern Vietnamese literature. His notable works include: Bỉ vỏ, Những ngày thơ ấu, Bảy Hựu, Những mầm sống, Địa ngục, Lò lửa, Cửa biển, Sóng ngầm, Cơn bão đã đến, Thời kỳ đen tối, Khi đứa con ra đời, Núi rừng Yên Thế. His writing represents a meeting between critical realism and the revolutionary literary current of the first half of the 20th century. Humanism is the dominant idea in most of his works.
Ties to Hải Phòng and Yên Thế
Bỉ vỏ and Bảy Hựu were written for the land and people of the port city. On the "Văn hóa" hill in ấp Cầu Đen, Yên Thế, where he moved his wife and children in 1947, he completed the four volumes of Cửa biển with more than two thousand pages, also about Hải Phòng. This is the largest multi-volume novel to appear in Vietnamese literary life in the 1960s and 1970s. There he also began the three-volume historical novel Núi rừng Yên Thế, intending thousands of pages about the homeland of the national hero Hoàng Hoa Thám. Volume 1, Thù nhà nợ nước, was printed when he suddenly passed away; volume 2 remained unfinished.
Life and character
Nguyên Hồng lived simply among the peasants on the "Văn hóa" hill, writing while working, cutting forest logs and carrying water from the stream. He dressed plainly, often wearing clogs, a brown shirt and a long beard. He had seven children, three sons and four daughters, all born and raised on this hill; all graduated from university but none followed his profession. His wife copied many of his manuscripts, including the Cửa biển collection. The family carefully preserved the small table by the window, the bamboo bed and the bicycle he often used.
Recognition
Nguyên Hồng was posthumously awarded the Hồ Chí Minh Prize for Literature and Arts in the first round (1996). Nguyên Hồng Primary School in Quang Tiến commune was partly built with royalties from his Cửa biển. His grave was placed at a windy spot facing núi Án, at the foot of the Cầu Đen stream, as he had wished.