Trần Dương Tường is a Vietnamese intellectual, art critic, and poet. My wife, Vals, and I met him and his wife Trinh (who'd just retired as a curator the National Museum of Vietnamese History) at their home in Hà Nội in 2004 and we found him to be a most extraordinary individual, a man of great intelligence, thoughtfulness, and humanity. During the war against the French occupation, he was a Việt Minh soldier. He told us how, after he and his fellow soldiers had overrun a French outpost, he found a trove of French literature, and he took as many of the books with him as he could carry. This was the beginning of his lifelong love and appreciation of literature.
He was, of course, opposed to the American War in Việt Nam and he was a member of the Vietnamese War Crimes Commission investigating American crimes against the people of Việt Nam. When he came to the States in 1995, he wrote about some of his experiences in our country. I find them very moving and beautiful, especially the one that he wrote on his visit to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC. (What I find remarkable is that he wrote them in English, which I believe was self-taught.) So I share them with those of you who appreciate fine poetry . . .
By the way, as Vals and I departed, I left him a copy of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carry, a fictionalized account of his experiences in the Vietnam War–an extraordinary work that was nominated for a Pulitzer and won the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger. I've long wondered what Dương Tường thought of it.