NATIONALISM IN HO CHI MINH’S PRISON DIARY IN A THIRD-WORLD CONTEXT

To have a general idea about the significance of nationalism in Prison Diary (PD) in the light of Postcolonialism, this paper aims to analyze how nationalism is constitutive of Ho Chi Minh (HCM)’s PD. According to Snyder, nationalism is the strongest of political emotions (Snyder 1968: 447); moreover, it is “the most successful political ideology in human history in that it has caused the political map of the world to be redrawn” (Tope1998: 15). To find out how nationalism is embodied in HCM’s poetry, eight poems in PD are chosen for analysis. The study shows that HCM’s nationalism is embedded in two aspects of PD’s poetics: aesthetics and politics. On the one hand, in terms of aesthetics, nationalism is constituted by deploying poetic elements as much as by using humanist values in the poems. On the other hand, in terms of politics, nationalism is clearly integral in the anti-colonial emphasis of the themes of revolutionary heroism and patriotism. Both aspects intersect to constitute PD’s nationalism.