Bao Ninh – The Outstanding Short Story Writer of Post-War Literature

We can mention the deep, haunting tone in Reed Grass , the sad, numbing and angry tone in The Season of Starfruit in the South ... by Nguyen Minh Chau.

Most of the short stories written after 1975 have a "tragic tone and tragic nature". The sad story of the Truong Son doctor returning after the war in Nguoi o wharf song Chau (Suong Nguyet Minh) or the heart of a mother who travels to find her child in Thoi Gian by Cao Duy Thao... are expressed in a sad tone. The situations and details in the short stories are consistent with the question posed by the author: After the war, will people still have to face any more pain? And can time become a pain reliever to help the old mother who once gave her most beloved child to the Fatherland, but after many years still aches with a painful sadness. The tragic tone in these short stories is a product of history. It rarely appears in war literature even though people have to witness so much pain and loss every day because they have a great purpose: To rise above everything to liberate the Fatherland, to liberate the nation. Only after the war, that tragic tone became a popular tone. It was born from a deep awareness, deeply understanding something more painful than specific pain and creating different tones. It is the diversity in perspective and expression that has created a rich, diverse picture of reality, reflecting the true nature of life and people.

An indispensable feature of the innovation in post-war literature about war is the innovation in artistic thinking about war. That is the appearance of diversity in the way of generalizing the reality of war and the polyphony of evaluating that reality in its impact on the fate of the country, the nation and each individual. This makes the appearance of literature about war much richer, capable of meeting the needs and attracting today's readers who have new and increasingly complex demands.

Changing artistic thinking and writing inertia is not only a manifesto but has been expressed through works. Writing about human life states

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During and after the war, the authors have touched the depths of spiritual life and human life. These are the works: Two women in the village (Nguyen Quang Thieu) , Formerly the most beautiful woman in the village (Ta Duy Anh) , The survivor of the laughing forest (Vo Thi Hao) , They have become men (Pham Ngoc Tien) , Reed grass, The woman on the express train (Nguyen Minh Chau) ...

It can be said that, with a profound view of war, today's writers have contributed to creating a vibrant atmosphere in the literary world. Some young authors have written about war such as: Nguyen The Hung, Bui Thi Nhu Lan, Tran Thanh Ha... However, it must be admitted that literature about war still seems to be a challenge for young writers. It is easy to see that the prominent faces writing about war are mostly gun-wielding writers who have made remarkable contributions to the war and to artistic creation.

1. 3. Bao Ninh - An excellent short story writer of post-war literature about war

1.3.1. Biography

Bao Ninh's real name is Hoang Au Phuong, born on October 18, 1952 in Dien Chau district, Nghe An province. His hometown is Bao Ninh commune, Quang Ninh district, Quang Binh province. Bao Ninh joined the army in 1969. He fought in the B3 Tay Nguyen front, in Battalion 5, Regiment 24, Division 10. In 1975, he was discharged from the army. From 1976 to 1981, he studied at university in Hanoi, then worked at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. From 1984 to 1986, Bao Ninh studied at the 2nd course of Nguyen Du Writing School. Worked at the Van Nghe Tre newspaper . Member of the Vietnam Writers Association since 1997.

1.3.2. Creative career

The war has been over for nearly 40 years, but the wounds in the souls of many soldiers still bleed. For Bao Ninh, the same is true. The wounds of battle are not only deeply engraved in every page of The Sorrow of War and a series of short stories, but also haunt and toss in the novel he is about to complete.

Leaving the army with a faded soldier's uniform, Bao Ninh made a living with jobs that were not very fun. It was not until his father, linguistics professor Hoang Tue, took him to the house of his close friend Hoang Ngoc Hien (Nguyen Du writing school) that Bao Ninh's life turned a new page. In his spiritual baggage, war was a "monolithic sadness", a deep nostalgia, an indelible memory. Writing about war in the post-war period, for Bao Ninh and other military writers, was a desire, a happiness and passion, or also a literary debt that had to be paid to life. As writer Chu Lai said, "Now, after 35 years, we can put the past behind, but that does not mean forgetting the past. Because if we forget the past, we will be guilty towards those who sacrificed, towards heroic Vietnamese mothers."

Bao Ninh debuted with his first short story, The Seven Dwarfs Camp, published in the Army Literature magazine in 1987. Shortly after, Bao Ninh's first novel, The Sorrow of War, appeared, but due to the tastes of readers at that time, the publisher named it The Fate of Love . In 1991, the work won first prize at the Writers' Association Award along with two other works, The Land of Many People and Many Ghosts by Nguyen Khac Truong and The Wharf without a Husband by Duong Huong, then Bao Ninh's name really attracted the attention of many readers, critics and writers. Talking about that initial success, the writer revealed: "In fact, that was the mark of Vietnamese literature during the renovation period, so a new author like me was still noticed and the book The Sorrow of War received an award during that special period, a period when literature had profound and genuine changes."

The Sorrow of War is a work without a clear plot or details, but is only a series of fragmented memories of the character Kien - a soldier of the 27th Independent Battalion operating in the B3 area who survived - about the bloody war and about his love for his classmate at Buoi School named Phuong. The narrative and autobiographical nature helped Bao Ninh boldly express his artistic concept as well as a new perspective on soldiers in war.

paintings after the "retreat" of time. As a witness who stepped out of the war, Bao Ninh did not see the war through medals, heroic victory songs like some works written during the war (such as Living forever with the Capital by Nguyen Huy Tuong, Footprints of soldiers by Nguyen Minh Chau...). In The Sorrow of War , soldiers are seen through the naked truth of pain, loss, and terrifying obsession with the cruelty of war, while war appears with all its cruelty and horror... It is not only heroic and tragic but also tragic. All the most fierce and painful things of war are expressed by Bao Ninh in the work. The Sorrow of War is the brainchild of a "ward writer" who was a "private in the war" struggling to write a book presenting his feelings and memories of his comrades, friends, relatives, and love during the endless months of war. The soldier of the past, the writer of today, is in a state of “confusion and confusion”, deeply aware of the price that he and his comrades had to pay for the war, for the glory and victory of today. But facing the indifference and apathy of people today, he feels disappointed and heartbroken. He has chosen the path of writing to repay the spiritual debt to the past, to his comrades.

No one knows exactly how many times Bao Ninh's novel has been reprinted in the past two decades, but certainly Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War has been reprinted many times both domestically and internationally. Up to now, this is the novel by a Vietnamese writer that has been printed the most abroad. According to the latest information, The Sorrow of War has been translated and introduced in 18 countries around the world. The work will be exclusively published in Vietnamese by Tre Publishing House from May 2011 under a franchise agreement between the Publishing House and the writer. In 1994, the book was translated into English by Frank Palmos and Phan Thanh Hao and was widely praised and warmly received under the name The Sorrow of War . The Independent , one of the prestigious newspapers in the UK, commented on the novel

by Bao Ninh: “Beyond the imagination of the Americans, The Sorrow of War emerged from the Vietnam War and stood on par with the great war novel of the century, All Quiet on the Western Front by Eerrich Maria Romack – a book about the loss of youth, beauty, a painful love story. A beautiful work of labor”.

In the name of the past, the sorrow and in the name of those who have fallen, Kien dialogues with the post-war era that does not fully understand the war, does not fully understand the pain of the soldiers. This is a novel with a structure of "novel within a novel", "novel similar to stream of consciousness" with the guidance of many quite special ideas and principles. Therefore, Bao Ninh has presented a spiritual dish that is contrary to familiar tastes, giving readers a multi-dimensional view, causing a wave of widespread criticism. " The fate of love is not only about war but also about today. The soldiers who ended the war gloriously are qualified to speak out against the negative things of today... Let readers know that war has many paths, each path aims to bring happiness to everyone and always has to pay a very high price" (Cao Tien Le).

Bao Ninh has brought glory to the country's literature with the 2011 Asia Prize - Nikkei Asia Prizes. This is an annual award of the Japan Economic Newspaper for Asian individuals and groups with outstanding contributions in three fields: economics, technology and culture. The award ceremony took place on May 25, 2011 in Tokyo, Japan. The awarding committee assessed writer Bao Ninh as having made great contributions to the field of literature with the novel The Sorrow of War . This novel was translated and introduced in Japan consecutively in 1997 and 1999 and is considered one of the classic works of world literature about war.

If memories of war become the haunting obsession of characters in Bao Ninh's novels, then for him, The Sorrow of War also becomes the haunting obsession of his entire writing career, at least up to the present time.

After The Sorrow of War , the author wrote almost exclusively short stories. Through the short story system, Bao Ninh proved his talent in this “small-scale narrative genre”. He is a “charming” writer and makes an “impression” on readers. In the book Bao Ninh's short stories published by the People's Police Publishing House in 2004 and the book Bao Ninh - Rambling in a traffic jam - The best and newest short stories published by the Writers' Association Publishing House in 2005, there are 28 short stories, of which 22 are about war and soldiers, including the stories: Ba le mot, Ben ve cuoc troi, Bi bien duong nuoc, Bi bien duoc lan nuoc, Cu xa, Giang, The last dry season, Calling children, Hanoi at zero hour, The last fire point, Huistion, La Mac - xay - e, Ngan nam may trang, Wash hands and put down swords, Challenge, Love letter, Violin sound of the invaders, Strange encounter, Letter from Quy Suu, Ngo sao vo danh, Weather of memories, Camp "Bay chu chuong", Carving marks on the boat's side . The remaining six short stories are about other topics in the present life after the war. Although not directly written about the war, these works are all consequences arising from the war.

In 22 short stories about war and soldiers, only three are told in the present: La Mac - xay - e, Ngan nam may trang, Ky ngo con le are stories that mix the past and the present. In those 22 short stories, there are 15 stories with soldiers as the main characters, including: Camp "Seven dwarfs", Ba le mot, Letter from Quy Suu, Ngo sao vo danh, Wash hands and hang up sword, Carve mark on boat side, On the side of attack, Huu khuyen, Hanoi at no hour, Cu xua, Giang, Last dry season, Last fire point, Challenge, Love letter. Through the above statistics, we see that writing about war and soldiers is still Bao Ninh's "favorite topic".

In early 2009, Literature Publishing House released a new collection of short stories with the special name " The old story ends, okay?" consisting of 14 short stories, of which 7 were already known to many readers: Stranded, Betrayal, Calling the child, Challenging, Old, Giang, Right leaning. The remaining 7 new short stories are: Banned book, The flick, Suspicion, Evidence, The old story ends, okay?, New Year's Eve, Turning back, only The flick is not a work about war. This collection of short stories is a collection of stories "with nothing"

too extraordinary” but are the big questions that arise when soldiers return to normal life after the war. Coming out of the war and returning to normal life, they are pushed into the flow of the times, bewildered and unfamiliar with the reality of peacetime. They seem to be “stranded” in the strict transition hinge of the times. Those are the never-ending stories of two generations, the generation of yesterday and the generation of today.

In addition to the famous novel The Sorrow of War ( The Fate of Love) and short story collections, Bao Ninh also wrote a number of articles in the Van Nghe Tre newspaper discussing the innovation of literature. In the second part of the article Literature Innovation Comes from the War , Bao Ninh criticized some childish concepts when handling Nguyen Ngoc Tu's Endless Field and explained the readers' enjoyment of literature. At the same time, he praised the innovation of the war theme of Thai Ba Loi (short story) and Le Luu (novel). The author wrote: "I think that they, for example, writer Thai Ba Loi of Hai Nguoi Tre Trung Doan , writer Le Luu of Thoi Xa Vang , have a clear and strong will to innovate, at the same time, are as brave and courageous as the brave farmer who dares to choose the right path but full of bitterness and loneliness of Secretary Kim Ngoc. I wonder what the country's economy and people's lives would be like today if it weren't for those veteran farmers who fought against the US? [63.3]. Bao Ninh is one of the writers who contributed to the innovation of literature on the subject of war: "If there were no will and works that shone with the spirit of innovation from the early 1980s by writers, most of whom were veterans, what kind of literary thinking would writers and readers have today?" [63.3]. Also in the Van Nghe Tre newspaper, in the article "Speaking well and writing badly" , Bao Ninh put forward a new concept about the writing of the post-war generation of writers. He affirmed that innovation is an intrinsic need of literature: "Each era is different, but in general, they all call and urge us to be different, to quickly innovate, to boldly innovate, to abandon the old ways in thinking and in writing" [62.2].

It can be said that Bao Ninh belongs to a special type of writer in contemporary Vietnamese literature, writers who have gone through war as

soldier. In Vietnam, most of the major achievements of literature about war belong to this type of author. Bao Ninh in particular and some writers about war in general have affirmed a path of artistic exploration: Looking straight at the reality of war through personal experience and perspective, recreating the painful dimension and the unreduced brutality of war, speaking out to warn about the dangers of war left behind in the post-war period. At the same time, restoring the image of people with endurance and heroic strength that truly created strength for the resistance, regenerating the aspirations that nurtured an entire nation during the war.

1.3.3. War memories in Bao Ninh's short stories

The war has been over for nearly forty years. However, the memories of the nation's resistance war against the US to save the country, the memories of the heroic people in a heroic era are still fresh and intact every time we face each page of the literary works of this period. With Bao Ninh, the story of war will certainly not fade in the writer's memory.

Most of Bao Ninh's works are about war, about the life and fighting years of soldiers, about the enemy on the other side of the front line, and about the difficulties in life in the northern rear when the country was divided... Perhaps, Bao Ninh is not the only one who mentioned the issue of war in the post-war period. However, what made Bao Ninh's face is the way he expressed the painful losses caused by war to the country and people of Vietnam. Bao Ninh did not hesitate to mention the negative and hidden aspects of war, about people in war. Those things are the most profound thoughts of "a person who has tasted the salty taste of war tears with thousands of people". In particular, the issues of the post-war period (life, people, morality, the relationship between yesterday's generation and today's generation...) are raised in a constant and urgent manner.

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