Gordon Fitch wrote:
>> Well, now, certainly. Neither Pol Pot or Mao were very good
>> at composing top-of-the-line Latin poetry.
Carrol Cox:
> (It is mere stupidity or malice to bracket Mao & Pol Pot, but let
> that pass.)
>
> Mao of course wrote Chinese rather than Latin -- and he happened
> to write quite good poetry in Chinese. So did Ho in Vietnamese
> incidentally.
I can't fairly compare Mao with Virgil, for whereas I've read Virgil in his supernal Latin, I can't read Mao in Chinese -- I had to settle for a translation, and I wasn't greatly impressed. But maybe he had bad translators and is really very good. Someday, then, Mao's political career may be a footnote to his literary reputation. Discovering a cache of Andy Warhol Mao paintings, 40th-century archaeologists will declare that Americans of the infamous 20th century at least loved poetry, and wave their antennae with appreciative sympathy.
It was my impression that Ho wrote his poetry in Chinese; he hung out with the Chinese for a time in a variety of roles, and was a guest of their prisons, I believe, when he composed the poems I've read.