Princess Le Ngoc Han

In a small room of the palace, someone was grinding ink very softly. A girl tilted her head, dipped her brush into the inkstone, and began to write. Her strokes were soft as water and lovely as a painting. She was Princess Lê Ngọc Hân, who would write some of the sweetest Vietnamese verses of her age.

She was born in 1770 in Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. Her father was Emperor Lê Hiển Tông. Growing up in the palace, she learned to write, to play music and to paint. She also read precious books that few people were allowed to read.

And she was a very good student. Old accounts say she was gifted in four arts. She could play an instrument. She could play chess. She could write poetry. She could paint. Together they show a skillful, refined girl who also knew a great many books by heart.

But what people remember most about her is poetry.

In her day, poems were usually written in Chinese characters. Ngọc Hân especially loved the speech of her own people. Her special gift was writing poetry in Nôm. Nôm is the script her ancestors devised to put down the Vietnamese they spoke every day. Poetry in Vietnamese, for Vietnamese listeners, close and easy for anyone to understand: that was what she did best of all.

Poems of her people, in the words of her people.

A princess who lived among silks chose to write in the very speech that people used at the market and in the fields. So her verses were warm and gentle, and listeners grew fond of them at once.

In 1786, when she was just 16, she married a gifted general named Nguyễn Huệ. That hero later took the throne as Emperor Quang Trung. They admired each other, he as a famous hero, she as a talented girl who wrote poems. A strong man met a gentle woman, and theirs became a lovely match that people spoke of for a long time.

In 1789 she was given the title Bắc Cung Hoàng hậu, Empress of the Northern Palace. From a princess of the Lê family she became an empress, standing beside the emperor. Yet however high her place, Ngọc Hân remained a girl who loved words. She still bent her head over the page, and she still poured her heart into every line of verse.

From that heart came a famous poem in Vietnamese, called Ai tư vãn. It is a long poem written in Nôm, full of the deep feeling she held for her husband, Emperor Quang Trung. Every line and word is soft and heartfelt, as if every word came from deep inside her.

Read aloud, each line sounds like a quiet murmur, gentle as the grinding of ink in that small room long ago. Her gifted Vietnamese verses, and Ai tư vãn above all, are remembered as a precious jewel of the country's classical literature.

A young girl grew up in the palace at Thăng Long and loved the speech of her people so much that she gave her whole spirit to it. After all these years, her verses still speak to us, as sweet and warm as at the start.