UNESCO’s Great Council will grant Vietnamese revered poet Nguyen Du (1766-1820) the honorary title “Great Man of Culture” in November this year.
Statue of Poet Nguyen Du at Ha Tinh Province’s Nghi Xuan District
According to Director of Ha Tinh Province’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, UNESCO held a meeting in Paris in April to approve a resolution for the recognition of Vietnamese poet Nguyen Du and 90 other poets nationwide.
The list was selected from 159 candidates submitted by 55 countries around the world.
The activities will be held in Vietnam and other UNESCO member countries in 2014 and 2015.
Nguyen Du, was recognised by the World Peace Council as one of the world’s cultural celebrities in 1965. He was equally outstanding in composing poems in Han (ancient Chinese characters) and Nom (Vietnamese characters adapted from ancient Chinese), with his poetry recognised for its profound humanitarian values.
His most notable poetic work is “Truyen Kieu” or “The Tale of Kieu” in the Nom language, was the first Vietnamese novel featuring over 3,200 lines written in Vietnamese 6/8 verse.
The masterpiece has been translated into different languages including French, Russian, English, Chinese, Hungarian and most recently Korean.
