Relationship between Humanism and Nationalism in Ho Chi Minh’s Prison Diary in a Third-World Context

To understand the relationship between humanism and nationalism in Ho Chi Minh (HCM)’s Prison Diary (PD) in the light of Postcolonialism, this study focused on analyzing selected poems to find out in what ways humanism and nationalism are equally important in HCM’s PD, in what ways they seem conflicting and exclusionary, in what ways the relationship shapes what might be called the “postcolonial aesthetic” of PD, and in what ways its use of alternative modes, gestures, motifs or protocols from traditional or modern poetry are a function of the dynamics between the concrete specificity of Vietnamese nationalism and humanism. Five in nine poems discussed in the paper are short ones with four lines and seven words in each line. The others consist of two or three short stanzas; still, they all are written in Chinese characters in accordance with Tang poetry tradition using simple vocabulary. In terms of content, the poems deal with a range of topics which are in keeping with the conventions of the Tang poetry like human beings, animal, nature, situations, things, time, and experiences and situations in different Chinese prisons. In addition, stories about social life become a source of aspirations in the prison poems. The discussion shows that the poems in PD connect nationalism to humanism in the context of Postcolonialism as explained by Said (2004), and specifically in the context of third-world literature as agued by Jameson (1986), making PD unique and distinctive. Read as “national allegory,” following Jameson’s argument, HCM’s poetry embodies the humanism and nationalism of the Vietnamese people in the midst of their struggle for national independence.