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Known by the pen name Hồng Hà, she was born in 1705 (the year of the wooden rooster) in the village of Hiến Phạm, Văn Giang sub-prefecture, Hưng Yên province in northern Vietnam.She is ranked first among the four most eminent female poets of Vietnam alongside Madame Huyện Thanh Quan, Hồ Xuân Hương, and Sương Nguyệt Ánh, and she elevates the pride of being a Vietnamese woman.
Once, during a visit by a Chinese delegation from the Qing dynasty to Vietnam with Hàng Địch Lộc and Nhiệm Lan Chi, the royal court of our country recently recruited her to disguise herself as a beautiful vendor. Accustomed to showing arrogance and contempt towards the Vietnamese, the Chinese ambassador began to tease her by addressing the following upper verse:
Nam phương nhất thốn thổ, bất tri kỷ nhân canh.
Phương Nam có một tấc đất mà không biết bao nhiêu người cày.
The South has only one inch of land, but I do not know how many people have cultivated it.
Understanding the insinuation well, Đoàn Thị Điểm replied with astonishing quickness:
Bắc quốc đại trượng phu, giai do thứ đồ xuất
Nứớc Tàu phương Bắc có lắm bậc đại phu nhưng cũng đều bởi đường ấy mà ra.
The North has many great doctors, but all came out of the same opening.
For the two parallel sentences above, if explained in the strict sense, they are merely compliments. However, if interpreted figuratively, the vulgarity is at its peak with an obscene image (with prostitutes and people coming out of that hole), which made the ambassador blush with shame and leave immediately without daring to tease other girls from the South again.
For the two parallel sentences above, if they are explained in the strict sense, they are only compliments. However, if they are interpreted figuratively, the vulgarity is at its peak with an obscene image (with prostitutes and people coming out of this hole), which makes the ambassador blush with shame and leave immediately without daring to tease other girls from the South again.
According to the genealogy, her family belonged to the Lê family, but it was only with her father Đoàn Doãn Nghi (1678-1729) that the family name was changed to Đoàn. Her father passed the exams and served as a mandarin for a time under the Later Lê dynasty. After divorcing his first wife, who had a son named Đoàn Doãn Sĩ, he remarried and had two children: the eldest, Đoàn Doãn Luân, and the second, Đoàn Thị Điểm. When the latter was young, she was famous not only for her intelligence but also for her beauty and character. She was very diligent and studious, possessed an extraordinary literary talent, and was unmatched in needlework. That is why, at the age of 16, she was adopted by Minister Lê Anh Tuấn with the aim of later sending her to the Trịnh Court, but she refused this idea, taking the excuse of not wanting to submit to the constraints imposed by the Court.
Later, when she learned that her father was ill, she asked her adoptive father to allow her to return to her hometown to take care of her elderly father. Thanks to this return, she received educational care from her father and brother. Despite the success of the latter two in becoming mandarins, they preferred to return to teaching in the village of Lạc Viên in the An Dương district of Kiến An province, which today belongs to Hải Phòng. She had the opportunity to study classical models and occult sciences with her brother. During moments of relaxation, she often enjoyed literary competitions with her brother through masterpieces of couplets with skillful use of words, but also the ability to respond appropriately. This leaves us speechless with admiration as the Vietnamese descendants of today when rereading these couplets.At the age of 6, she had the opportunity to learn « Historical Records » by the Chinese historian Sima Qian. One day, Đoàn Doãn Luân did not hesitate to challenge her by relying on this work and addressing her with the upper verse as follows:
Bạch xà đương đạo, Quý bạt kiếm nhi trảm chi.
Rắn trắng giữa đường, ông Quý tuốt gươm mà chém.
The white snake on the road, Mr. Quý drew his sword and struck. (Quý here is meant to refer to Han Gaozu Liu Bang).
Without hesitation, she responded with astonishing ease, also relying on Sima Qian’s Historical Records with the following lower verse:
Hoàng long phụ chu, Vũ ngưỡng Thiên nhi thán viết.
Rồng vàng đội thuyền, Ông Vũ ngửa mặt lên Trời mà than. Vũ đây là tên của Đại Vũ vua nhà Hạ.
The golden dragon lifts the boat, Mr. Vũ looks up to Heaven and sighs.
The dragon lifting the boat, Yu turns his face to Heaven and laments. Yu here is the name of Emperor Da Yu of the Xia dynasty.
One day, while she was putting on makeup and looking in the mirror, her brother Đoàn Doãn Luân passed by to go to the pond and wash his feet. Sitting on the plank stretched over the pond, he launched the upper verse as follows:
Chiếu kính họa my, nhất điểm phiên thành lưỡng điểm.
Soi gương kẽ lông mày, một nét hoá ra hai nét
Looking in the mirror at the eyebrows, one stroke turns into two.
Looking in the mirror, one finds the features of the face doubling.
She soon replied as usual with the following lower verse:
Lâm tri ngọan nguyệt, chích luân chuyển tác song luân.
Tới ao ngắm trăng, một vầng hoá ra hai vầng.
At the pond watching the moon, one circle turns into two circles.
Contemplating the moon by the pond, one sees the moon disk become double.
In these two verses, the words Điểm (stroke) and Luân (circle) are each repeated twice.
It is also a clever way to designate her as well as her brother to remind that each of them thus becomes two in this distich.
She excels in this type of prose but to this day leaves the public with some sentences difficult to find the appropriate reply to. This is the case with the upper verse « Da trắng vỗ bì bạch (The white skin ‘taps’ the white skin). » It is a visual image, easy to imagine, sexual but very refined.
According to rumor, she was taking a bath when Trang Quỳnh suddenly appeared and asked her to open the bathroom door to be together. She challenged him to find the truly difficult sentence in order to satisfy her request. Bì refers to the skin but the word bạch means « white. » Thus bì bạch is white skin. But in demotic writing (nôm), these are two words relating both to the image of the sound (vỗ), the skin (da), and the color (trắng). The phrase « Da Trắng Vỗ Bì Bạch » intentionally implies that one must « tap » the whitest part of the body revealed at the moment of the shower. It is the most intimate part. Unable to find the appropriate reply, Trạng Quỳnh was forced to flee.
Over the past 300 years, no one has found an appropriate sentence that takes into account a certain number of criteria: content, structure, category, number of words used, etc. The order of placement of words (nouns, adjectives, or verbs) must be respected as well as the consideration of the rules of opposition of the tonal registers bằng and trắc. Some have already said that it is indeed an inappropriate (or dead) sentence. Apart from her talent for ingeniously using words in couplets, she also composed, in Chinese characters, a book of tales entitled « New Collection of Marvelous Legends (Truyền kỳ tân phả) » printed in the year 1811, comprising a total of 5 collections full of flavor: Vân các thần nữ (The Goddess of the Palace of Clouds), Hải Khẩu linh từ (The Pagoda of the Sea Port), An ấp liệt nữ (The Heroine of the Peaceful Hamlet), Yến Anh Đối Thoại (Dialogue between the Swallow and the Oriole), and Mai Huyễn (The Mysterious Apricot Tree).
She also translated the original poem Chinh Phụ Ngâm Khúc (or the Lament of the Warrior’s Wife) written in Chinese by the scholar Đặng Trần Côn into 412 verses written in demotic characters (chữ nôm) in the poetic form of Song Thất Lục Bát (quatrain of two-seven-six-eight). It must be acknowledged that this poem allows the reader to enter into the confidence of a woman separated from her husband, burdened with caring for her elderly mother and educating her husband’s young children with her inconsolable heart, while her husband Nguyễn Kiều has been sent as an ambassador to China for three years, like a soldier sent to the frontier. With the extraordinary talent of Đoàn Thị Điểm, the Chinese poem by Đặng Trần Côn that she translated becomes a masterpiece compared to other translations and makes the reader forget the « pale » and « cold » model found in the original poem.
It is she who allows the reader to grasp the sincere and vibrant emotions of her soul, the solitude and sadness of a woman separated from her husband. According to researcher Trần Cửu Chấn, member of the Paris Academy of Letters and Arts, Phan Huy Ich‘s translation seems like a school exercise compared to the extremely remarkable work of Đoàn Thị Điểm, as she succeeded in feeling the state of mind and having empathy for the warrior’s wife. It is with the masterpiece Chinh Phụ Ngâm, which she translated into demotic characters, that her name stands at the pinnacle of the country’s literature. As for her love life, she was very unlucky. She had to replace her deceased brother to help her sister-in-law raise her grandchildren and support her elderly mother.
Due to the difficult family situation, she had to move with her mother, sister-in-law, and grandchildren to Chương Dương village located on the banks of the Nhị Hà River near Hanoi. At the beginning of her settlement, she had to practice as a traditional healer. She then founded a school with the aim of training new talents to serve the country. Her noble career attracted many students. During the teaching period, there were many people trying to ask her for marriage, but it was only in the year 1743 that she accepted to marry Nguyễn Kiều, a very educated and talented person (licensed at the age of 18 and state doctor at the age of 21). In August of the year 1748, when she followed her husband to go to Nghệ An province, Đoàn Thị Điểm fell ill and died on September 11 of the year of the Fire Cat. She was only 43 years old. Her tomb is still located in Phú Thượng ward, Tây Hồ district, Hanoi