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Book News: Ancient P ms Find Printed Page
Bridget Kinsella -- 10/30/00
Copper Canyon hopes to preserve history with the p try of an 18th-century
Vietnamese concubine


Outside, a modern cover;
inside, ancient Nom.
It's not every day that a p t gets to save a language, although some might argue that is precisely the point of p try. For the American p t John Balaban, the publication this month of his translation of an 18th-century Vietnamese p t's work in Spring Essence: The P try of Ho Xuan Huong (Copper Canyon), is simply the latest accomplishment in a mission to rescue Vietnamese culture that he began as a conscientious objector to the war.
In 1971, armed with a backpack, a tape recorder and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Balaban went door to door asking Vietnamese people to recite p try. He then published it in the collection Ca Dao Vietnam (Mosaic Press), now out of print. Time and again during his mission people spoke of the p t Ho Xuan Huong, a concubine who, 200 years ago, not only dared to write p try in the male-dominated Confucian society, but dared to write it in Nom. Nom, Balaban quickly learned, is an ancient, nearly extinct language that represented Vietnamese speech, rather than the Mandarin of more formal writing. Modern Vietnamese is written in roman letters, whereas Nom is an ideogramic script, similar to Chinese. Only a few dozen people still know Nom, which is often mistaken for Chinese even by the Vietnamese, and the publication of Spring Essence marks the first time it has ever been printed with post-Gutenberg technology.

"She jumped from woodcut publication to digitization," Balaban told PW. Ngo Thanh Nhan, a computational linguist at New York University, brought ancient Nom to the printed page by way of computer. The p ms in Spring Essence appear in Nom, Vietnamese and English.

Oh, and there's this other aspect about Xuan Huong's work that makes people take notice--she wrote about sex. Yet, this concubine (which means a second wife, and not a prostitute, as many Westerners believe) didn't simply come out and write directly about sex; instead, she playfully disguised her subject using the craft of language. In the English translation it is easier to see the double entendres that are part of Xuan Huong's style. Not so in Nom and modern Vietnamese, Balaban explained. In those languages, the tones of words play off one another, creating second and third meanings, often sexual in nature. "To the Vietnamese, this is hilarious," said Balaban. "In one p m, she might be talking about a nun saying her beads. On the surface, it's absolutely pious p try about Buddhist nunnery and the kind of sacrifice and dedication required, and the other meaning is saying she's really up to something else."

Paul Yamazaki, buyer at City Lights, a San Francisco bookstore known for selling lots of p try and literature in translation, told PW that even without the salacious subject matter and extraordinary back story, the p ms of Ho Xuan Huong (whose name means spring essence in English), would be considered significant. "They are just exquisite p ms with attention to gesture and detail. I think it is a major introduction to English-language readers," he said. "Balaban is the premier translator of Vietnamese p try. He has gotten people interested in Vietnamese culture from this time." Yamazaki predicted that Spring Essence would have a long life at City Lights.

City Lights went through its initial order of 10 copies after only two weeks. "To sell five copies is good," said Yamazaki.

At Copper Canyon, which published two of Balaban's own collections of p ms, managing editor Michael Wiegers said there was never any doubt about publishing this book, although it took a trip to Vietnam with Balaban in January of 1999 to impress upon him the true significance of Xuan Huong's p try. "I wanted to find out if she is as popular as John makes her out to be, and indeed she is," he told PW. The two men followed many of the routes the p t scholar took as one of the few women of her day to travel. Wiegers has many stories about meeting people who knew Xuan Huong's work, but he said he got a particular kick out of an encounter with some young "moto" men. "Here were these street toughs who give people rides on motorcycles for a living--and they knew her p try," he explained.

Spring Essence is the first title in a new Copper Canyon imprint for p try in translation called Kage An, Japanese for working in the shadow of the original p t. "We're living in a global economy, and more and more we want to get to the point where we are not talking about translations, but talking about a press that publishes, say, Vietnamese p try, or Indian p try," said Thatcher Bailey, executive director at Copper Canyon. "We want to get to the point where it is not an exotic thing but part of a heritage that we can all have access to."

To help booksellers, the press sent out an unprecedented several hundred galleys for Spring Essence; it has already sold about half of its 5,500 first printing. "That's great for a regular book of p try by an American author," said Wiegers. "The fact that this is a translation of an 18th-century Vietnamese concubine is an even greater thing."

So far the media have responded favorably to the book, which has been featured in P ts and Writers and Double Take and is the subject of an story on National Public Radio timed with an event at the Smithsonian Institute on November 9. "This is one of the most important books that I've ever worked on," said publicist Mary Bisbee-Beek, who has worked with independent presses for 20 years.

The book might get another boost from President Clinton's anticipated and historic trip to Vietnam later in November. "It ties into the complicated and rich history between our two countries," said Bailey about Spring Essence.

"The more responses I get to the book, the more my own enthusiasm is confirmed," said Balaban. The Atlanta Constitution claimed he has discovered another Sappho. "I think she is as startling as that," he said. "The idea that some woman would be writing this stuff 200 years ago is just shocking to some Americans, as it was to me."

Copper Canyon, which receives its funding from large donors like Lila Wallace and the Lannan Foundation, didn't want Spring Essence to have an overtly academic look. "This is a book that can be, and we hope will be, used in the classroom," said Wiegers." But I wanted it to be a more contemporary revisiting of her work. So I told this to the designer, and he came back with this and I thought it worked." Wiegers explained that the round shape that obscures the woman's face on the coverreflects the shape representing the sun on many Vietnamese buildings. It also is a reminder of the Confucian, male-dominated world that Xuan Huong shocked and entertained in her lifetime.

Some--including PW's reviewer (Forecasts, Sept. 25)--say the book's bold cover adds to the shock value, and not necessarily in a favorable way. "I realize that anything that reveals the bare human form is dangerous," said Wiegers. "And that anything where the woman's head is obscured and separated from her body is particularly dangerous to be working with. But I thought it was a very beautiful cover and that metaphorically it worked really well. Her identity has been questioned throughout history and she was disregarded by the ruling order and still she and her p try survived."

Balaban said that, if anything, he was more worried about Vietnamese reaction to the cover. "I never dreamed that Americans would be put off by that," he explained. "It's just so curious, because in her lifetime she stood up and refused to succumb to Puritan propriety, and she encountered it 200 years later in America."