Politburo member and Secretary of the Party Central Committee (PCC) Dinh The Huynh made the remark at a symposium in Hanoi on September 6 to mark the 70th anniversary of the collection’s pen (1942-2013).
Politburo member Huynh, who is also Head of the PCC Commission for Communication and Education, stressed that ‘Prison Diary’ is a valuable historical document portraying the great communist and poet Ho Chi Minh.
He asked writers, researchers and critics nationwide to adapt the collection into other forms such as online publications, cinematic works, calligraphy, fine arts and music in order to bring its treasured value to life and encourage the ‘Study and Follow President Ho’s Moral Example’.
More than 30 speeches read at the symposium reaffirmed the artistic value, humanism and vitality of the collection – an epic of the inner world of President Ho Chi Minh, an outstanding soldier who devoted his entire life to the national cause of independence and freedom.
The collection is comprised of 133 poems written in Han script during 12 months between August 25, 1942 and September 19, 1943 when President Ho was wrongfuly imprisoned in neighbouring China’s Guangxi province.
Since it was first translated into Vietnamese and published in 1960, the collection has been widely spread among Vietnamese people and has been taught to students at schools nationwide. It has also been translated into many foreign languages, including English, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, French, Romanian and Korean.