Professor Nguyen Ngoc Bich passed away
Quang Van quang.van at yale.edu
Thu Mar 3 09:31:31 PST 2016
Dear VSG,
Just in case you haven' heard:
Shawn McHale mchale at gwu.edu
Thu Mar 3 10:16:14 PST 2016
Oh, that is sad news! I had just seen him about three weeks ago, as he and
I were outside "consultants" on a project to write the history of "Little
Saigon" in Arlington. At the time, he seemed in good health.
Some members of this may remember that Nguyễn Ngọc Bích was involved in a
wide range of ventures, including translating poetry and involvement in
publishing. He was involved in the republication in the US, in 2014, of Trí
Vũ's important work on Trần Đức Thảo.
Shawn McHale
Tai, Hue-Tam Ho hhtai at fas.harvard.edu
Thu Mar 3 10:34:20 PST 2016
This is truly sad news.
I first knew Bich when I arrived in the US as a Brandeis freshman fifty years ago. Bich was then working on his dissertation on Japan at Columbia. There were so few Vietnamese students in the US then that Bich would come up from NYC to take part in the occasional gatherings of Boston-area students. I do not believe we ever were more than ten. Bich was like a big brother to me, but of course, he was also an accomplished poet and translator. I still make use of the volume of poetry he translated and edited, One Thousand Years of Vietnamese Poetry.
He leaves a very valuable legacy.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Kenneth T. Young Professor
of Sino-Vietnamese History
John Phan jdp49 at cornell.edu
Thu Mar 3 10:56:14 PST 2016
What sudden and tragic news.
Professor Bich introduced me to the world of Ho Xuan Huong in 2002, and
coached me on my first academic presentation in that same year. A talented
literary scholar, and a family friend. We feel his loss.
John
Guillemot Francois francois.guillemot at ens-lyon.fr
Thu Mar 3 12:12:47 PST 2016
Dear Quang Van, dear all,
Yes this very sad news, as Shawn says professor Nguyen Ngoc Bich seems
always full of energy and good health. It is as if we had lost a good
friend.
Sympathy to his family.
F
François Guillemot
Historien, Ingénieur de Recherche au CNRS
françois.guillemot at ens-lyon.fr
Thompson, C. M. thompsonc2 at southernct.edu
Thu Mar 3 15:30:12 PST 2016
Dear Anh Quang,
This is really sad and startling news! Thank you for letting the members of VSG know about this.
regards
Michele
Michele Thompson
Professor of Southeast Asian History
Dept. of History
Southern Connecticut State Univ.
Nhan Ngo nhan at temple.edu
Thu Mar 3 16:00:06 PST 2016
Dear Anh Quang,
This is a sad news indeed. I performed with Nguyễn Ngọc Bích at the Asia Society
on ca dao, and had several conferences and private exchanges with him… esp. after
the release of Spring Essence.
Thanks, Anh Quang for the news.
Nhàn
The Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture & Society
Thaveeporn Vasavakul Thaveeporn at mail.kvsinter.com
Thu Mar 3 21:39:19 PST 2016
Thank you for the message. This is sad news. I still remember talking to him often in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was working on the RVN's education system. He was kind and helpful.
Thaveeporn Vasavakul, Ph.D
GoSFI - Governance Support Facility Initiatives
www.gosfi.org
Dan Duffy vietnamlit at gmail.com
Fri Mar 4 06:44:07 PST 2016
The last time I saw Bich was in a living room at Bethesda where he had
turned out with friends to support a reading by Nguyen Chi Thien. Bich was
one of many around the world who had mobilized to publish and translate
Thien's manuscript of poems from prison immediately after British consular
officials carried them out of Ha Noi.
One of of Thien's funny stories from jail was about beaten one day I think
at Hoa Lo by an official who presented him with one of the books, perhaps
the first of the Vietnamese editions that Bich arranged around DC. "Did you
really write this?"
So Bich had done his part to keep our friend alive and draw world attention
to his fate and so to the life of dissent and expression within Viet Nam.
Bich I think did all kinds of things along that line that I would not have
done.
It's a free country. That last time we saw each other we were in clamorous
agreement how no one who reads the print record of the Republic of Viet Nam
can miss that it too had a free press.
The last time I saw Neil Jamieson I made some unkind remark about the
public relations effort of RVN and I think Bich here for that freedom, far
outpaced by Don Luce's for the people of the countryside oppressed by war.
Neil visibly disagreed with me but the conversation shifted and I didn't
get another chance to follow up with him.
Bich was an adult and responsible man whose works you may enjoy for
yourself and profit from in any collection outside of Viet Nam of
Vietnamese books in English or Vietnamese.
Eric Henry henryhme at bellsouth.net
Fri Mar 4 07:02:33 PST 2016
Dear Group,
This is to add to the regrets of all at the passing of Professor Nguyễn Ngọc Bích. He was active in many different areas—my reminiscences, like those of others, can only be fragmentary. I first met him around 1981, when I was a discussant in a regional AAS panel in which he presented a paper on, I think, some aspect of Sino-Vietnamese phonology. He was always a firm friend and supporter of the songwriter Phạm Duy, and did what he could to help his career, sometimes inviting him to his university to give lecture demonstrations. I corresponded with him on that topic and met him and his wife once, in 2004 or 2005, at a semi-private Phạm Duy concert in Little Saigon. His Thousand Years of Vietnamese Poetry, written in collaboration with Burton Raffel and W.S. Merwin is notably rich and stylistically lively, a key text for anyone looking for English renderings of Vietnamese poems.
Mournfully submitted,
Eric Henry
Eric Henry, PhD, senior lecturer (retired)
Asian Studies Department, UNC–Chapel Hill
home address:
106 Jones St., Chapel Hill, NC 27514-5944
tel. (919) 360 6895
Marc Gilbert, Ph.D. mgilbert at hpu.edu
Fri Mar 4 15:51:50 PST 2016
I also use the volume of poetry he translated and edited, One Thousand Years of Vietnamese Poetry. I remember him well from a program at George Mason University.
Marc Jason Gilbert