Born: 1772, Vietnam
Died: 1822
Country most active: Vietnam
Also known as: 胡春香
Hồ Xuân Hương was a Vietnamese poet born at the end of the Lê dynasty (1428 to 1789). She wrote poetry using chữ nôm (Southern Script), which adapts Chinese characters to write demotic Vietnamese. She is considered one of Vietnam’s greatest classical poets.
Like many details of her life, her parentage is uncertain, though she may have been the daughter of an educated tutor, Ho Phi Dien. She grew up during the Tây Sơn rebellion and a 30-year civil war that led to Nguyễn Ánh seizing power as Emperor Gia Long and starting the Nguyễn dynasty.
She became famous locally and earned a reputation for creating poems that were subtle and witty. She is believed to have been married twice, as her poems refer to two different husbands, both local officials: Vinh Tuong and Tong Coc. She was Tong Coc’s second-rank wife, a role that she was clearly unhappy with (“like the maid/but without the pay”), but he died just six months after the wedding.
She lived the rest of her life in a small house in Hanoi. She had visitors, often fellow poets, and made a living as a teacher. She was apparently able to travel because she composed poems about several places in northern Vietnam.
A single woman in a Confucian society, her works indicate that she was independent-minded and resisted social norms, especially through her socio-political commentaries and her use of candid sexual humor and expressions. Her poems are usually irreverent, full of double entendres and demonstrate a high level of learning. By composing most of her works in Nôm, she helped raise the status of Vietnamese as a literary language, though some of her work was written in classical Chinese.
Some Vietnamese cities have streets named after Hồ Xuân Hương, including Hanoi and Hồ Chí Minh.