Poetry · A way to begin
The Tale of Kieu
Truyện Kiều
Nguyễn Du · 1820
Synopsis
Thúy Kiều, beautiful and gifted, swears fidelity to a young man of her own station, then sells herself into marriage to save her father from an accusation that ruins the family. What she believed to be a marriage leads her to a brothel; fifteen years of trials follow, servitude, flights, a convent, a second forced marriage, in which she passes from hand to hand without ever losing what she is. Throughout, the poem asks whether heaven should bear down so hard on talent and beauty.
Context
The poem runs to three thousand two hundred and fifty-four lines in lục bát, the metre of songs, and is written in nôm, the vernacular script, when scholars composed in Chinese. Its author started from a seventeenth-century Chinese novel, discovered according to tradition during his embassy of 1813, and made something quite different of it. Its original title is Đoạn trường tân thanh, the new cry of a broken heart; it first circulated in manuscript copies, the finest of which are illustrated page by page, and was printed only after its author's death.
Who it is for
A long poem in couplets, to be read in a verse or prose translation depending on the edition. Each passage stands on its own.
Prizes and reception
The Vietnamese national text, quoted by politicians, learned by heart from generation to generation, and translated into some twenty languages.