Xuân Diệu

Ngô Xuân Diệu (February 2, 1916 – December 18, 1985), more commonly known by the pen name Xuân Diệu, was a prominent Vietnamese poet. A colossal figure in modern Vietnamese literature, he wrote about 450 poems (largely in posthumous manuscripts) especially love poems, several short stories, and many notes, essays, and literary criticisms.

Yêu là chết ở trong lòng một ít.

To love is to die a little in the heart.

Quotes

• To be a poet is to be lulled by the wind,
  To follow the moon in dreams, and drift with the clouds.
  • As quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, p. 86, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil L. Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), ISBN 978-0520916586, p. 161

• At break of day I feel as if I'm clasping a bouquet of smiling flowers
  But the wind of time does not cease blowing
  And the hours wilt like falling petals.
  • As quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, p. 86

• Love is just a little bit of death in the heart,
  For how often can one love in certainty that love will be returned?
  Giving so much love, and receiving so little of it;
  Because people are fickle, or indifferent? Who knows?
  During moments together as in hours apart,
  I'm mindful that the moon fades, flowers wither, souls pass away...
  They wander lost in the somber darkness of sorrow,
  Those fools who follow the footprints of love.
  Because life is an endless desert,
  And love is an entangling web.
  Love is just a little bit of death in the heart.
  • "Love" [Yêu] (1935), as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, pp. 86–87, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 162
  • Variant translation by Huỳnh Sanh Thông:
    • To love is to die a little in the heart,
      for when you love can you be sure you're loved?
      You give so much, so little you get back—
      the other lets you down or looks away.
      Together or apart, it's still the same.
      The moon turns pale, blooms fade, the soul's bereaved...
      They'll lose their way amidst dark sorrowland,
      those passionate fools who go in search of love.
      And life will be a desert bare of joy,
      and love will tie the knot that binds to grief.
      To love is to die a little in the heart.

• But alas, I'm going to die!
  I'm a chap who...clings to life with the fingernails of both hands.
  One who drinks of love till it overflows his lips,
  But alas, I'm going to die...
  The other night I sat alone in agony,
  Listening to the hours pass, wracked with sorrow...
  I have arrived to face the cold border of nihility.
  • "Nothingness" [Hư vô], as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, p. 87, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 162

• I am a bird from mountains you don't know.
  My throat feels itchy—so I start to chirp
  when sings the morning wind among the leaves,
  when dreams the moon at midnight in the blue.
  Perched on a branch, the bird longs for its brook—
  it will break into song and not know why.
  Its ditties cannot make the fruits grow ripe;
  its carols cannot help the flowers bloom.
  It's profitless to sing, and yet the bird
  will burst its throat and heart to sing its best.
  • "Foreword to a book of poems", in An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems, trans. Huỳnh Sanh Thông (Yale University Press, 1996), ISBN 978-0300064100