Introduction
Nguyên Hồng (1918-1982) was a Vietnamese writer, originally from Nam Định and attached to Hải Phòng from 1934 when he was just 16 years old. He is known as the writer of the urban poor, with truthful pages about their lives.
Literary career
In nearly 50 years of holding the pen, Nguyên Hồng wrote many valuable literary works, making important contributions to modern Vietnamese literature. His typical 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. Nguyên Hồng's writing is a meeting between critical realism and the revolutionary literary current of the first half of the 20th century. Humanism is the leading thought in almost all of his works.
Attachment to Hải Phòng and Yên Thế
Bỉ vỏ and Bảy Hựu were written by him 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 to live from 1947, he completed four volumes of Cửa biển with more than two thousand pages of writing, also about Hải Phòng. This is the largest-scale novel among the multi-volume novels that appeared in our country's literary life in the 60s and 70s of the 20th century. Here he also began the three-volume historical novel Núi rừng Yên Thế, with the intention of thousands of pages of books about the homeland of the national hero Hoàng Hoa Thám. Volume 1 Thù nhà nợ nước had just been printed when he suddenly passed away, volume 2 remained unfinished.
Life and personality
Nguyên Hồng lived simply beside the peasants on the "Văn hóa" hill, both writing and working, chopping forest stumps and bundling firewood, carrying water from the stream up. He dressed simply, often wearing wooden clogs, wearing brown clothes and growing a long beard. He had seven children, three boys and four girls, all born and raised on this hill and all graduated from university but none followed their father's profession. His wife was the one who copied many of his manuscripts, including the story collection Cửa biển. His family respectfully keeps the small table by the window, the bamboo bed and the bicycle that the writer often used.
Honors
Nguyên Hồng was honored by the State with the posthumous Hồ Chí Minh Prize for literature and arts in the first round (1996). Nguyên Hồng Primary School in Quang Tiến commune was built partly from his royalties from the Cửa biển volume. The writer's grave area is placed at the position at the head receiving the wind facing Án mountain, its foot touching the water of Cầu Đen stream, exactly as his wish when he was alive.