Weaving Golden Threads: Doan Phu Tu is addicted to books in the middle of a 'melting hot' summer

Reading forgets space and time

When writing Three Minutes of Truth , mentioning Doan Phu Tu, writer Phung Quan still kept the impression of his literary friend when he once visited An Duong beach outside the Red River dike to visit his friend: "That year, the poet was over 70 years old. The summer sun was scorching hot and suffocating. I was truly horrified to see him with white hair, shirtless, calmly sitting reading a book on a worm-eaten wooden bench, letting sweat run down his face, his back, dripping from his beard onto the pages of Ibsen's A Doll's House [Henrik Ibsen]".

Portrait of poet Doan Phu Tu

PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHER TRAN CHINH NGHIA

Reading until forgetting the heat like Doan, it is really like Mrs. Tung Long's childhood when every time the family dried books to prevent termites, "on the days of drying books, I just kept reading newspapers and books, and sometimes I was so absorbed that I sat in the sun without knowing", excerpt from the memoir Writing is my eternal joy...

If Doan was so absorbed in books that he forgot the weather, Nguyen Hong, when he was young, also read books and forgot the time. After redeeming a chest of books as collateral because he lacked money for lodging, Nguyen Hong immediately started reading, devouring them day and night: "I had not finished reading one book before moving on to another, had not finished one article before moving on to another. I read all afternoon. The later it got, in front of the lamp half covering the side of my mother's bed, one hand resting on my forehead, I read silently," the memoir The Path of Writing revealed. There were times when Nguyen Hong even read books to forget... hunger. To make his growling stomach less empty, the 17-year-old boy drank tap water instead of rice, and "I considered reading books as eating".

Professor Cao Xuan Huy left a beautiful memory with his students when he "dessert" his lunch with pages of books. In the article "A mirror: "Learning without getting bored, teaching without getting tired" , Associate Professor Tran Nghia still remembers many afternoons when he went to Mr. Huy's house to contact work, "I saw him with his head resting on a very hard wooden pillow, behind a pair of reading glasses and a thick book". That person, that scene, brought Tran Nghia to Cao Ba Quat's poem that was very appropriate to the scene and situation: "Cung thu song nhan van nien dang" (Reading all the books, the eyes are like a lamp burning ten thousand miles).

It is not uncommon for students to secretly read comic books, martial arts novels, etc. during class. When To Huu was a student, Nguyen Kim Thanh was like that, except that he loved to read and had a clearer purpose than his peers. "Whenever we had time, we would go to the bookstore and bury ourselves in reading. We felt that the things in the books opened up a new horizon [...] I sat at the back of the class, so the teacher kept lecturing on the podium, while I just put the book under the table and read engrossedly, not listening to what the teacher said, my mind was absorbed in thinking about the very good sentences in the books of Marx, Lenin, or revolutionary literature", the memoir Remembering a Time recorded.

No matter how many books, it is never enough.

Space is not important to readers if they are passionate, as in the case of Doan Phu Tu and Cao Xuan Huy mentioned above. And here is the children's writer Thy Ngoc.

Hector Malot's work "The Homeless" (1931 edition) was read by Thy Ngoc until the cover was torn.

PHOTO: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FRANCE

Thy Ngoc recounted in her memoir Promise with Tomorrow that, as a child, "during the day, I often sat reading books and newspapers where there was a small, low bamboo bed on the porch, the way down to the kitchen." And what book was that? Well, it was a thick copy of Vo Gia Dinh , with a worn-out cover that I read over and over again until I knew it by heart. Later, I read the books of Tan Dan at 93 Hang Bong, and the "Hoa Mai books" of Cong Luc Publishing House. My affinity with children's literature also developed from there.

Talking about book lovers without mentioning Vuong Hong Sen would be a big omission. Talking about this antique collector, scholar Nguyen Hien Le said that in the 1980s, Vuong Hong Sen's house had 9 or 10 shelves full of rare books. But a book lover like Vuong is not satisfied, "yet now he still carries his three-wheeled vehicle from Gia Dinh to Saigon by Lambretta twice a week, going to the old book market on Ca Hap Street (formerly Bui Quang Chieu Street), corner of Calmette Street, to find and buy rare books despite the high prices", My Writing Life recorded .

As a person who loves, cherishes and preserves books, the author of More Than Half a Life of Failure has a clear opinion on borrowing books: "Good books often have people coming to borrow them. Not giving them away is a sign of bad intentions, but when I gave them away and took the book home, I was either left with missing pages, or worse, with all the pages, but still had a new disease: getting worms", wrote the 1994 Giap Tuat Journal . However, for those who loved and knew how to use books, Mr. Vuong had no difficulty in lending them, "knowing what kind of books I liked, he took the trouble to bring them for me to read", Nguyen Hien Le recalled about his close friend. (to be continued)

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/det-nhung-soi-vang-doan-phu-tu-say-sach-giua-he-nong-chay-mo-18525042422561709.htm