At Asymptote the very notions of equality and social justice are embedded within our advocacy for a more inclusive world literature. Past projects like 2014’s ”Say Ayotzinapa,” responding to the kidnapping of 43 Mexican students, and an entire Special Feature, in our Spring 2017 edition, spotlighting authors from countries targeted by Trump’s #MuslimBan, speak fully to this. The current devastating moment surely calls for collective action again, and so, in this new column at the blog, published henceforth every Saturday, we will be gathering new work—poetry, fiction, essays, and translations thereof—responding to the war, now in its third week. May these pieces offer hope and strength in turbulent times even as they express outrage on behalf of and support for Ukrainians.
For our inaugural column, editor-at-large Thuy Dinh translates into English for the first time an iconic Vietnamese poem, originally written in December of 1956. Through this work, South Vietnamese poet Thanh Tâm Tuyền expresses solidarity with Hungarian revolutionaries who struggled against Soviet forces. Though published decades prior, the visceral imagery of these lines still evoke empathy for those ardently resisting the invasion of their homeland.
Let Me Cry with Your Eyes My Love Affair with Budapest
Let me cry with your eyes
My love affair with Budapest
My heart and yours each of us a heart
They fill the streets with artillery tanks.
Let me harness the anger in your breasts
As they fire steel into lipstick-shaped muzzles
At each crossroad my face becomes a barricade.
Let me howl from your throat
As the bright morning takes wing
They knock us down like bricks
Drunk in their kill-lust
The way we thirst for the future.
Let me seethe with your cheeks
While they seal off border routes
Our joined fingers flutter like breath
My body waits.
Let me trade my sleep for your
Stress-riven, bullet-grazed forehead
It’s never night for night never comes
They attack in the morning it lasts forever.
Let me die in your skin
Threaded into the tanks’ endless tracks
I will live by your breath
O the ones in your stead
Let me cry with your eyes
My love affair with Budapest.
Thanh Tâm Tuyền
December 1956
Translated from the Vietnamese by Thuy Dinh
Interested in submitting your own work to this column? Send it to the “We Stand with Ukraine” section of our Submittable portal here—fees will be waived for this particular category. We look forward to reading your responses.
Translator’s Note: “Những Cuộc Tình Duyên Budapest” is in the plural non-possessive in Thanh Tâm Tuyền’s version—an ambiguous phrase since it could mean, “Budapest Love Affairs,” Love Affairs in Budapest,” or “Love Affairs with Budapest.” For thematic unity, I have chosen to render the phrase in the singular possessive in English, “My Love Affair with Budapest.”
Additionally, while the poem’s English title is rendered as one continuous line, the Vietnamese title was originally published as two parallel, capitalized lines, possibly approximating the Hungarian script:
HÃY CHO ANH KHÓC BẰNG MẮT EM
NHỮNG CUỘC TÌNH DUYÊN BUDAPEST
My English translation is divided into six stanzas and two closing lines serving as the poem’s refrain, while Thanh Tâm Tuyền’s version, first published in January 1957, shows one continuous block with two closing lines.
HÃY CHO ANH KHÓC BẰNG MẮT EM
NHỮNG CUỘC TÌNH DUYÊN BUDAPEST
Hãy cho anh khóc bằng mắt em
Những cuộc tình duyên Budapest
Anh một trái tim em một trái tim
Chúng kéo đầy đường chiến xa đại bác.
Hãy cho anh giận bằng ngực em
Như chúng bắn lửa thép vào
Môi son họng súng
Mỗi ngã tư mặt anh là hàng rào.
Hãy cho anh la bằng cổ em
Trời mai bay rực rỡ
Chúng nó say giết người như gạch ngói
Như lòng chúng ta thèm khát tương lai.
Hãy cho anh run bằng má em
Khi chúng đóng mọi đường biên giới
Lùa những ngón tay vào nhau
Thân thể anh chờ đợi.
Hãy cho anh ngủ bằng trán em
Đau dấu đạn
Đêm không bao giờ không bao giờ đêm
Chúng tấn công hoài những buổi sáng.
Hãy cho anh chết bằng da em
Trong dây xích chiến xa tội nghiệp
Anh sẽ sống bằng hơi thở em
Hỡi những người kế tiếp.
Hãy cho anh khóc bằng mắt em
Những cuộc tình duyên Budapest
Thanh Tâm Tuyền
December 1956
Thanh Tâm Tuyền (1936-2006), real name Dư Văn Tâm, was an iconic South Vietnamese poet, critic, novelist, and playwright. Born in Vinh, North Vietnam, he immigrated to Saigon in 1954—shortly before the separation of North and South Vietnam. The year 1956 was a watershed for twenty-year-old Thanh Tâm Tuyền. In October 1956, with the writer Mai Thảo, he became the co-founder of the groundbreaking literary journal Sáng Tạo [Innovation]. During the same month, Thanh Tâm Tuyền launched his debut poetry collection, Tôi không còn cô độc (I’m No Longer Lonely), immediately establishing his reputation as a vanguard who boldly synthesized elements of French surrealism, Beat syntax, blues, and jazz into Vietnamese poetry. In December 1956, Thanh Tâm Tuyền wrote “Let Me Cry with Your Eyes My Love Affair with Budapest,” a passionate homage to the fallen revolutionaries of The Hungarian Uprising (23 October – 10 November 1956)—a major resistance movement against the Soviet-controlled government of Hungary. The Uprising was tragically crushed by Soviet troops, resulting in 3200 deaths and causing 200,000 Hungarians to seek political asylum abroad. Originally published in Sáng Tạo’s January 1957 issue, Thanh Tâm Tuyền’s poem has become a timeless anthem for artists, revolutionaries, and dissidents. A veteran officer of the South Vietnamese Army, Thanh Tâm Tuyền was imprisoned for seven years by the vanquishing North after the end of the Vietnam War. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1990 and resettled in Minnesota, where he lived until his death, of lung cancer, in March 2006.
Thuy Dinh is the coeditor of Da Màu and editor-at-large at Asymptote Journal. Her works have appeared in Asymptote, NPR Books, NBCThink, Prairie Schooner, Rain Taxi Review of Books, and Manoa, among others. She tweets @ThuyTBDinh.
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Discover Ukrainian literature at the Asymptote Blog:
- Translation Tuesday: Excerpts from “Galileo” by Yevhen Pluzhnyk
- Soft Power: Gabriella Page-Fort on Editing Oksana Zabuzhko’s Your Ad Could Go Here
- Translation Tuesday: “Hedgehog” by Anastasia Afanas’eva