Doan Thi Diem
(1705–1748), Vietnamese poet. A brilliant exponent of the Vietnamese nom (demotic script) verses, Doan Thi Diem was born in 1705 in the village of Gia Pham in Hai Hung Province, northern Vietnam, into a family of teachers. When she was twenty-five years old, her father died, and, as she was unmarried, she went to live with her brother, who held a doctor's degree. It was under his tutelage that Doan Thi Diem continued her education and writing career. Tragedy struck a few years later when her brother died. She then had to shoulder the responsibility of providing for her mother and her brother's family by engaging in two professions unprecedented for a Vietnamese woman: she practiced medicine and taught. She excelled in both while also pursuing her writing. She published collections of poems, but she was most famous for her translation into nom of a long poem, Chinh Phu Ngam (Lament of the Soldier's Wife). The original version of this poem was written in classical Chinese by a Vietnamese scholar, Dang Tran Con (1710–1745), a contemporary of Doan Thi Diem. Her translation equaled its Chinese version in grace and elegance but surpassed it in sensitivity, as it was able to communicate to its audience in their own tongue the pain, distress, and anguish of a wife whose husband has gone to war. Doan Thi Diem died of a severe cold, contracted while accompanying her husband, an official, to his new post in the province of Nghe An, south of Hanoi.
Further Reading
Dang Thai Mai. (1992) Giang van Chinh Phu Ngam: cua Doan Thi Diem. (Literary Explication: Lament of the Soldier's Wife, by Doan Thi Diem). Hanoi, Vietnam: Truong Dai Hoc Su Pham.
Dang Tran Con and Doan Thi Diem. (1959) Lament of the Soldier's Wife. Trans. by Rewi Allen. Hanoi, Vietnam: Foreign Languages Publishing House.
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