190
Today, King Deo Van Long has completely passed away politically ” ( A little history and a resume ); “Hey, do you remember an innovation demonstration, people displayed an iron tube as big as a gutter pipe, and introduced that by putting raw pork paste in it, closing one end and dipping it in boiling water, it would become pork paste. That introduction emphasized the fact that boiling it with that tube would save a lot of banana leaves and the effort of tying the string. Oh my god, it turns out to be rusty pork paste ?” ( Silk pork paste ); “From the foot of Pha Din, into Dien Bien, from Tuan Giao, Highway 42 is more dangerous, the scenery is gloomy ” ( The Road to the Northwest ).
The flexibility of words in essays is also confirmed through a large array of synonyms. The flow of human thoughts and emotions often does not occur in a linear order but returns again and again, appearing simultaneously in a process of contemplation and torment. To avoid repetition, writers must maximize their vocabulary, creating richness and diversity for the means of expression. In "Thuong nho muoi thap" , Vu Bang identifies himself as "a lost man", "a traveler with many spring thoughts", "a person suffering from the disease of wandering", "a lovesick guest", "a guest far from home", "a man suffering from wandering", "a wandering husband", "a guest far from home", "a guest missing his homeland", "a guest longing for his homeland", "a guest longing for his homeland", "a sad person in the land", "a traveler", and calls his wife named Quy in his hometown "a loving wife", "a friend of the mat and blanket", "a small wife who loves her husband", "a devoted wife", "a good wife". In the essay collection Hanoi, we are good at fighting the Americans , Nguyen Tuan talked about the pilots we shot down using many new and strange words, revealing the cowardly and brutal nature of the enemy: "flying heroes", "American evil birds", "heavenly robbers", "cloud bandits", "bandits whose planes broke the rudders",...
In his essays , whenever he needs to describe an object or phenomenon, the writer often uses metaphors and comparative words. Thach Lam calls Com Vong: "a unique gift of the country, an offering from the vast green rice fields" ( A gift of young rice: Com ), while Nguyen Tuan pays more attention to "the Com Vong carrying pole with an unusual pole, one end straight and the other curved like the tip of a Binh Dinh opera shoe" and the green color "emitting an endless joy... the color of the wish for happiness" ( Com ).
Maybe you are interested!
-
Essay genre in Vietnamese Literature from 1930 to 1975 - 2 -
Essay genre in Vietnamese Literature from 1930 to 1975 - 19 -
Funeral genre in Vietnamese medieval literature - 40 -
Genre in Vietnamese medieval literature in the second half of the 19th century - 1 -
Phan Khoi and the modernization of Vietnamese literature in the first half of the 20th century - 2
191
The sunrise scene on the sea was sketched by Nguyen Tuan with brush strokes.
so pure, radiant:
“After the storm, the horizon and the sea were as clean as a glass wiped of all clouds and dust. The sun rose gradually, then rose completely. Round and benevolent like a full natural egg. The egg was deep and majestic, pink and placed on a silver tray. The diameter of the tray was as wide as the horizon, the color of pearly pink sea water. Just like a tray of offerings coming out of the dawn to celebrate the longevity of all fishermen on the East Sea forever” ( Co To ).
The new moon of January appears under Vu Bang's pen with strokes.
beautiful romantic and magical:
“At the end of January, there are nights without rain, the sky is bright and sparkling like jade, only at about ten o'clock at night does the moon rise high overhead. The young moon of January is like a young, tender girl, it seems to be more beautiful than other months of the year: bright but not as splendid as the bright moon of autumn, beautiful but not as withered as the moon of January. The beauty of the moon of January is the beauty of a shy virgin, lifting the flower curtain on a high floor to look down to see who is her soul mate…” ( January, dreaming of the sweet, cold young moon ).
3.6.3. Poetic language
Poetry in literary composition is expressed in both content and artistic form: “Tending towards emotional expression, conciseness, and rhythmic language are the basic characteristics of poetry. Also on this basis, the concept of poetry appears to refer to literary compositions (in verse or prose) rich in emotion, concise content, and language rich in imagery and rhythm” [49; 211].
In essays , a genre of prose of the narrative-lyrical type, poetry exists as a typological characteristic, permeating all aspects of the work, especially the way language is used. The richness and diversity of the image system is achieved first of all thanks to the writer's sharp and subtle observation ability, thanks to the ability to discover and retain in memory expressive details.
192
manifested from the colorful reality of life. Not everyone has that ability, it is an innate talent. But that is only a necessary condition. For life experiences to be able to sublimate into vivid images and symbols, there must be many other factors such as the ability to associate, imagine, the ability to promote the artistic effectiveness of rhetorical devices, the writer's attitude and heart towards life. What is special is that images in essays often carry two layers of meaning at the same time: symbolic meaning (conceptual) and expressive meaning, so it has the ability to persuade and attract both the intellect and soul of the reader.
On the other hand, good poetry always needs to have meaning for people to ponder, emotion for people to feel and rhythm for people to recite. Therefore, rhythm is also an important formal sign of poetry. Rhythm is created mainly from the way of pausing, rhyming and arranging sounds and tones. But rhythm is not simply a technical or technical meaning, it also originates from the depth of the soul and the sincere and passionate emotional life of the artist towards life.
Many good passages can be cited to illustrate the richness and beauty of images and the richness and magical flexibility of rhythm in Vietnamese essays from 1930 to 1975. In the essay Leaving School ( Golden Star ) , Che Lan Vien described the deserted schoolyard with poetic and evocative images:
“The sunlight gradually becomes more serious, then the south wind returns, stirring up dust and mist, disturbing the green thoughts. Every early morning, the xoan flowers shine brightly with the sun. The red mattress and green blanket, the gentle day leans back to noon, a few cicadas chirp in the silence (…). Oh! Outside, the sun is thousands of feet high, the thin blue sky opens in the middle of loneliness. The trees in the yard part their leaves to let the wind blow a fresh source. The sound of sparrows falls into thousands of sun spots! In just a moment, it will be recess, the students will walk across the worn gravel, and the school yard will be covered with memories once again.”
In the essay The Ferryman of the Da River (Nguyen Tuan), the passage describing the "violence" of the Da River is as beautiful as a waterfall of sound, the words inspired by a talented pen:
193
“The sound of the waterfall sounded like a complaint, then like a plea, then like a provocation, a growling and mocking voice. Then it roared like the sound of a thousand wild buffaloes raging in the midst of a bamboo forest on fire, tearing apart the forest of fire, the forest of fire roaring together with the herd of buffaloes whose skin was burning. We reached the waterfall. Turning the bend of the river, we saw the foam and waves whiten the rocky horizon. The rocks here have been lying in ambush in the river for thousands of years, it seems that every time a boat appears in this noisy and desolate stretch, every time a boat enters the bend of the river, some rocks jump up to grab the boat (…). The white surface of the river makes new rocks and boulders appear, making it seem as if they stand, sit, or lie down, depending on the preferences of the big and small rocks.”
And here is the life-and-death naval battle between the fierce, resourceful, and experienced Lai Chau ferryman and the ferocious river:
“The boatman held the oar with both hands to keep it from being thrown up by the waves of the battlefield that were rushing straight at him. The water roared loudly around him, rushing in and breaking the oar handle and the air shaft on his arm. The waves were like soldiers desperately coming close to the boat’s armpits, kicking and kneeing the boat’s stomach and side. At times they lifted the boat up. The water clung to the boat like a wrestler grabbing the boatman’s waist, trying to flip him over in the midst of the water battle, the sound of gongs and gongs scraping the ground (…). In an instant, the river’s surface lit up like a sea of fireflies rushing down and lighting the waves on fire…”.
The writer is intoxicated with extreme excitement before the vibrant, majestic beauty of nature and the dangerous, arduous, yet glorious working life of man. Realistic inspiration, humanistic inspiration, love for the homeland and country, national pride, romantic belief in the future have all blended together to create truly unique essays . In which, there are almost all rhetorical devices: personification, comparison, contrast, hyperbole, repetition, harmony, and sound combination; full of sounds, colors, lines and abundant knowledge of different branches of science and art; not only painting, music, poetry but also culture, cinema, sculpture, military, and magic; not only wordplay but also sentence play , paragraph play and genre play . The writer
194
no different from a skilled magician using magic to control a group of unruly letters to obey his orders. Nguyen Khai called it the moment of “achieving the spirit” of the profession: “No matter what profession you do, having reached its spirit means having broken all constraints, being completely free because there is nothing between you and your goal. Writing is like playing around, but literature is still like clouds and waves, no longer genre, no longer words, no longer both yourself and others. Everything has become one, provocative, sparkling, magical” [119; 131].
In the long essay "Thuong nho muoi thap" (Remembering the Twelve) by Vu Bang, there are also many pages that reach the level of "divine writing". These are extremely smooth lyrical short passages, filled with humanistic emotions before the poetic beauty of natural scenery and the purity of the human soul:
“Every noon, boys and girls go bathing together, the water trough is built from the top down. Muong girls and Kinh boys splash around in the puddles at the foot of the mountain, looking from afar like the ancient Greek fairies described in Pierre Louys’s “ The Song of Bilitis ”: the water is blue, the mountains are purple, the flowers on the mountainside are red as lotus petals, but the girls strip naked and are white as lotus shoots, their hair hanging down their backs, black as ink (…). The Kinh boy lost in the middle of those fairies, at first feels shy, but after getting used to it, feels addicted to bathing in the stream, does not hesitate to joke around and splash water on the girls surrounding him like in a lantern festival in the upper world (…). Bathing like that is not bathing this vulgar body but also bathing his eyes, bathing his troubled soul” ( April, dreaming of bathing in the Muong stream ).
To express his longing and longing for his homeland and family, Vu Bang used many words that directly describe emotions such as remember, love, affection, sadness, and joy. In just 8 pages of the opening Autobiography, the word remember appears 42 times, an average of more than 5 times per page. In addition, groups of words that indicate the intensity of emotions such as How sad, Missing too much, Missing so much , Missing so much like this, Missing without knowing when is missing, Missing without knowing how much, etc... keep coming back, creating a poignant lyrical refrain:
“People miss home, miss the door, miss the loving faces, miss
the roads walked back last year, remembering the friend we shared the blanket with, holding hands
195
Walking on the deserted road, the scent of xoan flowers is more fragrant than areca flowers and grapefruit flowers. People remember the cool breeze and the golden well; people remember the silver carp and water spinach; people remember the silver moon and the golden cup.
I miss everything about Hanoi, I miss everything about North Vietnam, I miss the rice fields of young girls, I miss the sound of a mother singing to her child on a summer afternoon; I miss the fallen dracontomelon flowers at the beginning of Hang Trong Street, I miss the almond fruit in Hai Hau falling on the banks of the canal, I miss the fragrant Linh Duong lotus filling the sky, I miss the Hung Yen longan, Vu Ban lychee; the Viet Tri anh vu fish, Lang custard-apples, Van Phuoc grapefruit, Bo Ha oranges, Sa Pa peaches, I miss them all... I don't know how long I miss it, I miss it so much!" ( Self-talk ).
The enumeration technique can easily make the writing tone monotonous and bland. But here it is different. Because not everything is being displayed before the eyes, but only a flashback, a lingering afterimage drifting back from a faded memory, imbued with the regret and sorrow of a life away from home.
The essay The Road We Walk by Nguyen Trung Thanh also attracts and convinces readers with a beautiful melody, a harmony between the tragic epic and the pure, romantic poetry. The poetry exudes from the depth, sensitivity of the intellect and the sincerity, passion of the emotions. It seems that it is not the humming, gentle, and melodiousness of the words, but the passionate, profound tone raised from the deepest place in the human heart:
“Our nation was born and raised on a land where the flames of war have never cooled down for thousands of years. From the distant darkness of history, the image of our ancestors, the image of the Vietnamese people throughout hundreds of successive generations, has always been the image of a person holding a weapon standing up in a long and fierce battle to win and preserve his right to live. I wonder if there is any other place on earth where human rights are protected with so much blood? If we were to illustrate the history of our nation, would there be any page or line that does not have to draw a sword of self-defense and be highlighted with blood? Blood is soaked in the furrows where we sow seeds, blood is soaked in the yard where our children played when they were young, blood is soaked in
196
The roads where my mother wiped away her tears the day she saw me off, the blood stained the banks of the pond where my younger brother sat washing clothes on the small, bumpy bridge... Oh, our nation was born and grew up in the midst of blood and fire. From the blood and fire of four thousand years, we stood up and raised our voices. From the blood and fire that burned through space and time, it seemed that there could only be a howl of hatred, our nation could only sob out a tearful, heart-rending cry... But strangely enough, that voice was a lyrical song, calm, clear, graceful and passionate like a date, as stirring as the first meeting. A nation that has fought for four thousand years, but whose singing is still so gentle and graceful, how fierce and calm that nation is!
The fierce war reality in the South during the years of resistance against the US appeared through Nguyen Thi's pen not only with death and sorrow but also with vitality and full of love. After four thousand years of unrest, every inch of the homeland still reverberates with the sweat, tears and blood of our ancestors. Now, all have transformed into the endless green of the trees and fruits, into the gentle flow of the river, into the sweet lyrics and melodies:
“Just like the green color that is all over the country, the green water here also evokes something familiar… It is as if there is a singing voice resounding in the space with the smell of ripe fruit, a boat has just docked with the sound of children cheering, and behind me, the sound of pounding the banyan tree has just stopped when a voice suddenly rises… The singing voice is imbued with something like the heart of the nation is speaking to us, like for generations we have confided to ourselves and we speak to ourselves about loyalty, because of love and longing (…).
Greetings to the homeland canal that carries within it that vitality and has given me that vitality. I feel as if when I was a child I had just jumped into the canal to bathe, my ears heard the gentle voice of a child in the familiar gardens, and somewhere echoed the voice of love… the voice full of trust and pride of the vast space” ( Homeland Canal ).
Obviously, the beauty of language in the essay is crystallized from the talent, passion and endless creativity of the artist. It is both a requirement of the genre's characteristics.
197
The medium is an important factor contributing to the formation of unique essay styles . The appeal of essay works , in the end, not only comes from the passionate, passionate narrative-lyrical flow but is also expressed through a beautiful writing style, imbued with cultural colors.
* * *
Thus, in most basic aspects of ideological content and artistic form (from theme, inspiration, character, to structure, tone and language), Vietnamese essays from 1930 to 1975 have some outstanding characteristics. In addition to the decisive influence of the intermediate form, these characteristics are also subject to the regulations of the social context and the psychology of reception in each specific historical period. It is necessary to remember that if separated, these are not special features, only found in essays . At different levels of intensity, the essay quality can also be present in the creation of other genres of artistic prose.