Thiếu Sơn (1908–1978),ếuSơ birth name: Lê Sĩ Quý, was a Vietnamese writer, journalist, literary critic and revolutionary.
As a literary critics, he was known for his magnum opus Phê bình và cảo luận (Criticism and rough dissertation) (1933). He was considered the pioneer of literary criticism using the Vietnamese alphabet, and also pioneer of personality reviews of notable writers.
During the Indochina War and Vietnam War, he worked as a leftist activist who supported the resistance effort of Democratic Republic of Vietnam against the invasion of France and United States.
Childhood and pre-1945 activities
Thiếu Sơn was born as Lê Sĩ Quý in 1908 in Hải Dương, French Indochina. Other documents claimed his birthplace was Hanoi. Due to distance in time and a spatial turbulence childhood, even Lê Sĩ Quý and his relatives failed to remember his exact birthday and birthplace.
Lê Sĩ Quý was a son government officer worked as a verbal translator for the Palace of Resident-Superior of Tonkin, specialized in the Mountainous Area. Lê Sĩ Quý's father was not a faithful husband, he abandoned Quý's birth mother and married two more times. Due to work demands, Quý's family frequently relocated across mountainous provinces in northern Vietnam, disrupting his education many times. Moreover, Quý's health in his childhood had always been poor, and his father's income as a petty government officer was mediocre. Therefore, despite being a bright student, he only managed to finish upper primary school in 1927 and failed to finish highschool education. Nonetheless, Quý passed the 1929 bureaucrat examination with flying colors and began worked at Gia Định Post Office in 1930.
Lê Sĩ Quý began his active literary activities in the 1930s, during the blooming of literary movement in Southern Vietnam, with the penname Thiếu Sơn (少山), meaning "Mountain of Youth" or "Young Mountain". The penname "Thiếu Sơn" expressed his favour for a stability and eternal "like a mountain" but also for the vividity and vigor "of the youth". From the very beginning, Thiếu Sơn's literary reviews was highly praised by the literary experts and appeared on many popular newspaper at that time, including the famous Phụ nữ tân văn (婦女新聞, Newspaper of Women) who published his reviews about its own editor. In 1933, Thiếu Sơn published his magnum opus, Phê bình và cảo luận (Criticism and rough dissertation), a collection of his early review essays. The collection received critical acclaim from the readers and established Thiếu Sơn as not only the pioneer of modern literary critics in Vietnam but also the pioneer of personality reviews of notable writers. Encouraged by the early successes, Thiếu Sơn proceeded his career in literature critics and continued to produce valuable reviews, later compiled in an equally acclaimed collection Câu chuyện văn học (The story of literature, 1943).
A notable review of Thiếu Sơn, "Two opinions in literature" (1935), unintentionally sparked a heated debate between the "two opinions" Art for art's sake and Art for life's sake in Vietnam during the late 1930s. Thiếu Sơn nominally supported the "Art for art's sake", but he himself had no enthusiasm in the debate and quickly diverted his attention to other issues.
Beside literarure, Thiếu Sơn also wrote reviews about social life and human personality like the work Đời sống tinh thần (The Spiritual Life, 1945) which received the Alexandre de Rhodes Rewards. He also wrote some novels and short stories, including Người bạn gái (The girlfriend, 1941) but was poorly received.
Revolutionary and patriotic activities during the First Indochina War
In the wake of 1940 Cochinchina uprising, French authorities retaliated with brutal suppression. All government officers were forced to take the oath of loyalty. Thiếu Sơn refused to do so and submitted a letter of resignation, but was instead relocated to Saigon Post Office. The event deepened his patriotic and anti-colonialism sentiments. The successful 1945 August Revolution further encouraged Thiếu Sơn to take part in revolutionary and patriotic activities. He cooperated for Justice, a newspaper of French Socialist Party who supported Vietnam's independence, and joined the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) on 15 December 1945, worked as Secretary for Vietnamese SFIO members. He pressed for the proper execution of the Temporal Agreement of 14 Sep 1946. Thiếu Sơn wrote another letter of resignation to protest the Oath of Allegiance Ceremony enforced by the pro-France Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina in December 1946, and the third one on 19 December 1946 when First Indochina War broke out, openly refused to be a collaborator of French government.