Love books like Bui Giang

Poet Bui Giang (1926-1998), from Quang Nam. For more than four decades, he lived a vagabond life, barefoot and carrying a cloth bag, but passionate about art. Now people remember him as a poet, translator, critic, painter... In every field, he left behind a huge treasure, but the most notable is still poetry.

He was known as "The Man Who Writes Books at a Lightning Speed" and his love of books was unmatched. Having devoted his whole life to reading, Bui Giang was often "hypnotized" by books.

That's why Buu Y was so impressed when he visited Bui Giang's residence that he wrote a whole book about Bui Giang, in which he wrote: "A dominant image hit the eye: books and books! Books everywhere; on two large wooden bookshelves, books were piled up on the bed, and especially the upper and lower layers were tilted on all sides on the wooden floor...".

He has many books because he has a "strange habit": when he sees a good book, even though he already has one, he still buys more; especially he has two chests "very sturdy, made of metal and both are tightly packed with many locks crossed together. Without asking, we know that these are two chests containing Bui Giang's works...".

The literary and artistic community also passed down a story that at the time there was still an old book market on Dang Thi Nhu Street in Saigon, where he often wandered, looking at books and drinking coffee. One day, around 1980, while sitting and drinking coffee, daydreaming, looking across the street, the poet's eyes suddenly lit up because there was a book in Greek, which the stall owner had put under the bookshelf, replacing... bricks. The "crazy" and dirt-poor poet frantically took out his last coins to own a discarded work. Ironically, he didn't have enough money, so he had to beg the book owner to sell it. After receiving the book, he sat there reading as if hypnotized, unaware of what was happening around him.

Because he loved books, Bui Giang read a lot, all kinds of books from East and West, ancient and modern. Therefore, he had an extraordinary knowledge, especially about poetry and philosophy. Needless to say, he liked martial arts books, because they suited his "character" of living and speaking in the style of a gangster and martial artist. Because of his sloppy and strange clothes, one time Bui Giang went into a large bookstore, stared at his own work displayed in the glass case, and was suddenly chased out by the bookseller, who could not believe that he was the author of that solemnly displayed book.

Bui Giang's life went through many sorrows, but the story of his self-study from his love of books makes us think of the "laziness to read books" disease of many Vietnamese people today.