Rooted in the valleys and hillsides of the Trường Sơn Mountain Range, Tuệ Sỹ’s collection, Dreaming the Mountain, is a modern love letter to Vietnam’s nature and culture. Throughout the collection, which spans work from before 1975 to 2006, the natural world ravaged by war and growing itself anew is revealed gently, through images informed by a modern eye but that call back to a simpler time.
The book is translated by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins. In their introduction, they explain the four distinct periods in Tuệ Sỹ’s life that are punctuated by the poetry in the collection. The pre-1975 poems cover his time as a recently graduated monk and professor in Saigon. The 1975-1977 poems reflect his 2-year stint of solitude in Nha Trang at the Institute of Buddhism. In 1975, Nha Trang fell to the revolutionary army, and after returning to Saigon, Tuệ Sỹ was sent to a reeducation camp because of his Buddhist background; poems detailing this time span from 1978 to 1984. After 20 years of no poetry, Tuệ Sỹ’s release and return to Saigon encompass the final two sections of the collection: two long poems, one written from 2000-2001 and the other in 2006.
Of note in this particular collection are the translations themselves. The book is bilingual, with the Vietnamese words in green text on the right, and the English in black on the left. The original poems often rhyme, but this feature is almost always omitted in translation, rather word choice and images are preserved.
In the last two lines of “Let me copy the rest of that poem,” written during his time in a reeducation camp, Tuệ Sỹ writes, “Moss covers walls, all the way to the sky / And so I copy the rest of that poem / To kill a love, the dream of a life.” Here we see a stark example of the subtle attention to images that defines Tuệ Sỹ’s poetry. He is bringing nature (through moss) and culture (through poems) to a place of damp, concrete darkness.
Tuệ Sỹ frequently calls on the Trường Sơn as a binding feature for much of his work. The mountain range comes to represent many things, among them freedom, nature itself, and a foil to the bustling city with which he also remains familiar.
In “From Deep in the Forest,” Tuệ Sỹ recounts a kind of love affair between the forest and the city, “The deep forest still dreams of city streets / A love as distant as cigarette smoke in summer.” A few poems later, in “Dried tree,” Tuệ Sỹ recalls that same longing, “I bow down, a full smile on my lips / And dream, like the city missing the deep forest.” In personifying these two opposing spaces, Tuệ Sỹ is able to weave an image of Vietnam that pays particular attention to both its natural landscapes and its more developed areas. As much of Tuệ Sỹ’s life was spent among these two contrasting locations, there is a special care given to each. There is equal attention paid to both the natural world and the modern, developed Vietnam throughout the collection—the two landscapes influence and admire one another as they share the land of Vietnam.
Further than just a beautiful depiction of Vietnam, however, Dreaming the Mountain is a reflection of Tuệ Sỹ’s mental flux over the course of his life. In the book’s introduction, Chung and Collins quote Tuệ Sỹ’s definition of bodhicitta as the “burning aspirations of a sentient being who finds himself living under grim circumstances and hellish persecution.” That notion of a burning aspiration informs much of the collection, especially the poems from 1975 onward, against the grim circumstances of war and its aftermath. Still maintaining the thematic throughline of the natural world, in “Street at noon” , Tuệ Sỹ questions, “If there is no loyal dust in life / Where, for the lover of dust, is his native land?” The longing tonality and choice of dust, an ever-changing substance at the whim of its surroundings, paint a lyrical image of Tuệ Sỹ’s experiences reconciling with a war-ravaged landscape.
After Tuệ Sỹ’s survival of reeducation camps and prison, the tonality and style of the poems shift slightly, but his exaltation of nature remains present and binding. In “Meditation Room” (2000-2001), Tuệ Sỹ composes a work made up of 32 numbered stanzas. Stanza 10 reflects his outlook on the world, still rooted in nature: “In a corner of my heart, I keep a mango / In pointless sorrow I take it out and eat.” The bright image of a mango shining in contrast with a corner diverges from the more unstable understanding of nature as seen in poems like “Street at noon” with the depiction of the dust. Here, Tuệ Sỹ has made his peace with nature, holding it with respect, keeping it in a corner of his heart. The notion of “pointless sorrow” also points to a shifted mindset. Instead of willing sorrow away, it is recognized and understood, while the mango, an image of nature, offers nourishment for the vessel of that feeling. Tuệ Sỹ represents a kind of respect for one’s place in nature, revealing that emotions like sorrow can pass through without needing to be anything more than what they are.
Dreaming the Mountain is a feat of translation and modern poetics. It spans a large swath of history that can be felt in the tonal and thematic shifts over the course of the book: urbanization and desolation are in constant conversation with the natural scenes and hopeful images, the former becoming stronger as Tuệ Sỹ ages and reconciles with his experiences in prison. With powerful images that have been maintained in the English versions, the collection venerates Vietnam, from its beautiful Trường Sơn mountain range to the souls that populate its soil.
Dreaming the Mountain
by Tuệ Sỹ
Translated by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins
Milkweed Editions
Melina Kritikopoulos is a poet, audio producer, and undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. A Bay Area native, Mel calls on her mixed-race ancestry and queer identities to explore of legacy, life and the absurdity of being a young adult through her poetry and prose.
