Images of Uncle Ho

 

I met a tiger up in the hills. He looked at me:
I looked at him. We went our separate ways.
But on the open road, where I thought I was safe

It was human beings who captured me.

Ho Chi Minh. Prison Diaries. 1942-1943 (Translated by Timothy Allen)

Captured by Chinese Nationalists 

Ho Chi Minh wrote prison diaries in verse

To show and hide his thoughts

Clarity is the enemy 

In the eyes of the law

 

But metaphor hints at meanings

That serve myth and vision

Capturing legends

And the foundations of a nation

In the image of Uncle Ho 

I visited the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi today. The museum is the message (to rephrase Marshall McLuhan's famous line). Propaganda is like body odour: we don't notice our own but the smell of others can be quite confronting. The spirit of HCM is immortalised in the museum; the body is chemically preserved in the next building over. I didn't bother with the hours-long queue to see the physical remains. The less popular spiritual remains were, to my mind, much more interesting and, as it turned out, inspiring.