Escape Into Love, Seek Physical Pleasure

Sobering up is a time when Vu's body is worn out, a time when his personality is ruined and then " Waves of sadness come from nowhere".

Studying Say Tho and May, we see that reality and dreams are always the torment, the thoughts, the sadness, the longing of the poet. It is the source of the source in Vu's poetry. The wonderful thing is that the poet expressed it in an artistic, truthful and unique way with a rich knowledge of East - West, Ancient - Modern. Reading the poems Say Di Em, Chen Ruo Doi Duong, Quen, Tuy Hau Cuong Ngam, Bai Song Cuong, we see that Vu Hoang Chuong wrote with spontaneous inspiration, with a rhythm of ecstasy in pleasure. Therefore, people think that his poetry makes people forget, immerse themselves in the melodious sounds of ordinary intoxication to arouse, awaken worldly, carnal desires:

The light is gentle

Soft back, smooth body, graceful legs

Intoxicated soul sent to the arm

Maybe you are interested!

(Get drunk, baby) Let go of this tangled hair, come closer, closer to these crazy lips.

(Forget)

But when coming to drunken poetry, readers can enjoy the feeling of lightness, dizziness of the alcohol fumes, the feeling of ecstasy, the pleasure of floating high above the clouds of cigarette smoke. The rhythm of the long verses is like the sweet and melodious sound of the monochord resounding in the quiet, lonely nights, haunting the reader's heart. If the poetic inspiration had not come from his own feeling of being drunk, of being in smoke, then surely Vu Hoang Chuong could not have come up with such beautiful poetic ideas and rhythms. Is it possible that Vu Hoang Chuong's poetic inspiration was built, elevated and escaped from the very intoxicating, mundane pleasures to reach a new level? So why can it be considered depraved? It was Hoai Thanh,

Hoai Chan affirmed: “ The drunkenness of Vu Hoang Chuong is a kind of drunkenness with moderation, drunkenness that is not necessarily depraved, although the path from drunkenness to depravity is not long. But depravity or drunkenness both carry with them a sense of boredom. We have already encountered that sense of boredom in ancient poetry. Only here

It has its own bitter , spiteful and tragic taste”  42, p.353 

The tragedy mentioned here is perhaps the feeling of alienation, the pain of loss in love as we have learned in chapter 1. Perhaps reading New Poetry in general and Vu Hoang Chuong's poetry in particular, if we do not feel the poet's soul "flowing out of the tip of the pen" and do not see the poets "spreading their pain on the fragile piece of paper" , then perhaps that is a big shortcoming. Because the pain of life, the deadlock of New Poetry is a reflection of the deadlock of the old society, is the image, the lament about the fate of the poets that Vu Hoang Chuong mentioned in Tuy Hau Cuong Ngam, Bai Song Cuong .

From the feelings of ordinary intoxications such as being drunk on wine, on opium, or dancing, Vu Hoang Chuong raised intoxication to poetic inspiration. The philosopher Hegel once said, " Beauty lies in tragedy." Vu Hoang Chuong did that, raising intoxication to an art form. From ancient times to the present, there have been many poets who have written about intoxication, but perhaps only Vu Hoang Chuong has taken the intoxication itself and pushed it up to become a source of inspiration.

2.2. Escape into love, seek physical pleasure

The New Poetry movement in general has a way to escape reality, which is love. Xuan Dieu himself once exclaimed, " The voices of brothers are everywhere in literature, the air is heavy with men and women who do not know how to breathe."

then suffocate"  16 , p.84 .

Vu Hoang Chuong comes to love with unique and individual features. Love for Vu Hoang Chuong is only considered as a means to escape to find a perfect and ideal world, not considered as a separate "world " like the love of Xuan Dieu. Because of suffering too great a loss in love

His love poems, if not tearful like " June Twelve" or "U Tinh", are also vague one-way love like in "Tinh Si" or like an indifferent breeze passing by like in " Temporarily Stopping by the Boat ".

We know that in the past, Nguyen Du described love in a profound, subtle, and discreet Eastern style: " flickering between waking and falling asleep " or " wobbly, like being awake and drunk alone ". But now, love in New Poetry carries a passionate, sincere, subtle, and sophisticated Western style:

I want to hold on to the drifting clouds and the swirling wind. I want to be drunk on butterfly wings and love.

I want to capture in one kiss many things, And mountains, and rivers, and trees, and bright grass,

Let the fragrance make you dizzy, let the light fill you up, let the colors and sounds of the fresh season fill you up .

( Hurry - Xuan Dieu)

But in Vu Hoang Chuong, such an ontological love is very rare and is only:

Flickering between reality or dream, or is it love that is wavering?

( Love without knowing)

It is " flickering ", " hesitant "... that are the vibrations in the feeling where it is not exactly " the real dock ", or " the source of dreams " but rather a dreamy and real, a certain integration of dreams and reality. That certain harmony in the mood has led to love with all its nuances. From the pure " hesitant ", " hesitant " of early love, secret love ( Gentle ) to : "holding back the sadness when parting". But it seems that love has been viewed with a common, purely physical eye, not innocent and dreamy like Huy Can (White Shirt) , or passionate, choked, shy like Xuan Dieu (Early Spring).

In "Drunken Poetry " and "Clouds" , the poet rarely returns to the mundane world, to his being in the form of " you " and " me " because the poet is above, more sublime than love. Moreover, the poet is influenced by rationalism, so he considers love as a pleasure to forget the mundane world, to escape from life and forget the dirt in the lower world. Therefore, many times the poet is so absorbed in his meticulous descriptions that his poetry is often considered decadent and depraved:

Her shoulders were heavy, she tried to hold on to my waist tightly.

Trembling streams ran through the ivory flesh, trembling from fear or ecstasy.

(Wedding night)

In Xuan Dieu's New Poetry, there are also verses written about love through physical sensations, verses describing love as a search for sensations: " January is delicious like a pair of close lips ", " drinking your soul ", " pouring affection ", " passionately caressing "..., and there are also verses written about love through physical contact:

Let our heads be close, let our breasts be close, Let our long hairs blend together

(Distance)

Xuan Dieu came to love to discover its true meaning and through that present his philosophy of life. Being a person with a thirst for life, Xuan Dieu breathed into poetry the excitement and enthusiasm of the West and stirred up new poetry with his philosophy of enjoyment:

Hurry up, hurry up, my dear, our young love is getting old.

(Urge).

And Xuan Dieu calls on us to live a meaningful life, to live passionately, to enjoy the present moment. Influenced by this philosophy, Vu Hoang Chuong calls for:

Let go of this tangled hair, come closer, closer, those crazy lips

or: Get drunk, baby! Get drunk, baby! Get drunk so the lights are slow,

For the tilted, crazy flesh Wine, more wine and forget, forget everything

But we know that yeast and smoke are just means in the adventure to find the dream world and the poet failed. When it comes to love, the poet also falls into the same situation. In "Toi Tan Hon" and "Tong Phong Hoa Chuc" - the time when the happiness of love reaches its peak - the poet cannot find for himself a true pleasure of love, but the lyrical character falls into a state of distraction, the souls of the two subjects are not in harmony but only listen, looking for the return of the distant universe:

Chest to chest, lips to lips

She and I looked at each other, smiled without saying anything, hugged each other's shoulders and listened to the distant sounds.

(Wedding night)

Until " The fairy's lute stops calling/ The sound of the flute quietly fades away ", life on earth no longer has any meaning, only boredom, frustration and the bitterness of a person who wants to escape reality but does not want to deny the pleasures of everyday life:

That's it! Let it go, my excitement! Falling from the moon to earth I'm about to drink the mud and the truth

Tomorrow will trample and trample the broken dream

In contrast to Vu Hoang Chuong, Xuan Dieu always seeks the mystical realm right here on earth. Surpassing all the feelings that people consider " physical ", Xuan Dieu wants to reach the ideal of love, which is the wonderful harmony between spirit and body. That is a generalization with philosophical thoughts about love that both Vu Hoang Chuong and Han Mac Tu have not been able to reach. Therefore, Xuan Dieu has never stopped at instinctive pleasure, but after each poem, he always captures the whole idea of love and adds a new level of meaning:

Hey listen to me, this fragrant music, Intoxicating like the wine on our wedding night, Like the fragrance penetrating the marrow, The divine melody penetrating the soul.

( Magic )

Vu Hoang Chuong did not find in that moment the " divine melody that penetrates the soul " - the vibration at maximum frequency like Xuan Dieu but only the indifference of a paralyzed feeling. It seems that the poet considers love as belonging to the body alone, just as intoxication and dreams are belonging to the soul alone, so the soul and body are not in harmony. With such a mental state, the enjoyment is not yet complete and the liberation of the soul has not yet come. That proves that the pleasure of the body is not the highest thing in real life, nor is it the destination in the journey of escape, but it is an involuntary escape or an experience in the search for liberation. Vu Hoang Chuong wanted to rely on love to escape, but that love was mixed with flesh and had no place to cling to, so he went out into life.

Unlike Vu Hoang Chuong and also unlike Xuan Dieu, Nguyen Binh does not passionately praise hedonistic love and physical pleasures. Love in his poetry is always attached to real life. The Lyrical Self

Love in poetry and the Self in life are always unified. Therefore, when Nguyen Binh seeks love, he is not in a state of separation but is always in harmony with life. In love, Nguyen Binh is conscious of not letting the desires in love of couples get caught up in the cycle of depravity. He always strives for a small, simple, everyday happiness with " a small house to go back and forth together ", a warm family, a simple, modest and poetic happiness. And he always strives for the perfect happiness that everyone always desires, which is marriage. Perhaps in New Poetry, Nguyen Binh is the only poet who can express that. Because, romanticism in general and New Poetry in particular consider love as a hide-and-seek in which each individual is a separate world. In the chase, the poet is always in a higher position than the object, always creating an invisible distance so that he can never catch it. So New Poetry considers love as one thing and marriage as another. Let's listen to Xuan Dieu talk about love:

Life is as desolate as a journey, but love is like a roadside inn. The thatched roof shelters from the cold of a foggy night. The cool water jar waits for the sunny day.

Since it is an “ inn” , how can there be loyalty and faithfulness? In his poetry, Xuan Dieu expressed a very new concept of love: do not consider loyalty as the ideal of love. For him, the happiness that love brings to people is not loyalty but the wonderful harmony of two individuals in terms of emotions and feelings. Thus, love will forever be a flower and never bear fruit. That is the general philosophy of romanticism.

But Vu Hoang Chuong is an exception. He considers love as a loyal glue, so he wholeheartedly worships his first love. For Vu Hoang Chuong, human life and poetry belong to first love. So when love breaks down, he sadly cries: "The remaining bit of innocence has just broken down". Perhaps the breakup of

His first love made him have a very harsh view of love. Love - a creation, a miraculous gift of nature to life - was looked at with contempt by him. Vu loved without believing, loved without the vibration of the heart, without the soaring of the soul. When in love, Vu always separated the soul and the body. That was the tragedy that made Vu Hoang Chuong never able to escape the vicious circle full of contradictions. If the contradictions could not be resolved, the mood of sadness, boredom and deadlock was inevitable. It can be said that " Drunk Poetry" in the part " Missed Love" is full of contradictions, disappointments, and confessions of failure in love.

Love fails, too painful, the poet immerses himself in the river of yeast, burying the truth. Moreover, being drunk with Vu Hoang Chuong has become a lifetime, being drunk blurs the bitterness but makes Vu infatuated, bringing the poet into a dreamy feeling. So Vu Hoang Chuong has not forgotten love. And so the love of this world has now turned into a dreamy, illusory love " flickering between the real shore or the dream source "; a love of Liao Trai , Giac Ho ; a love without suffering or happiness but only " the love of a thousand lifetimes with lingering waves" lingering in the fairyland.

Vu Hoang Chuong longed to nurture the dream of becoming a fairy to forget everything. But in the fairyland, he still could not forget his first love. However, there was no longer a feeling of longing and regret, but only bitterness. Therefore, the poet saw his lover as a fox spirit:

Who is it? Is it the spirit of Grass and Trees?

- The deserted tomb and the abandoned tower, bewildered and scared - I came back here at night

Come back here with the rain

Halfway through the story, Foxy, the page of the book is half-opened. The sound of footsteps is sparkling.