Nguyen Duy's Poetics

Nguyen Duy, with his courage and experience, could not remain silent in the face of the paradoxical problems of real life. Nguyen Duy seriously looked at those problems through a multi-faceted tone. There was anxiety and worry, but sometimes humor and intelligence. The humor naturally emerged from the author's thoughts: " The country people looked at you with the eyes of leaves/ happy eyes, sad intestines/ How can I glue the holes of fate/ How can you escape the market mechanism/ The beauty pageant is still very bumpy/ Losing is pitiful, winning is also pitiful " ( Miss in our garden ) . At the climax, the humorous tone has a very deep and penetrating irony and satire: " Yes - there was a time of greatness/ Majestic, painful, majestic, bloody and bloody " ( Looking from afar... Fatherland! ).

It is a humorous reflection on the remaining and lost things of people in the market economy. Laughing at the contradictions between reality and desire, between ability and reality. It is both a way to express tragedy and a way to overcome tragedy. Laughing to wish people to achieve more things, to be more mature in society.

The division of the expressions of tone as above is only relative, because in Nguyen Duy's poetry there are many times when there is a combination of one tone with another, even all three tones at the same time. However, in each work, there is still a main tone that plays a leading role. In large part, the division into three main tones above is reasonable when studying the tone in Nguyen Duy's poetry.

4.3. Language

“Language holds a particularly important position in poetry. It is both the authentic, rich voice of real life, the soaring voice of magical imagination, and the emotional voice of an emotional heart. The depth of thought, the sensitivity and subtlety of creativity, the vibrating states of the soul…, all can only reach the reader through the role of language” [25; p. 361]. The poet is the one who contributes to enriching the precious linguistic treasure of the Vietnamese language. The issue of language in poetry depends on the linguistic strengths as well as the artistic style of each artist.

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Therefore, to study the unique features of the author's style, we must study the language that the author uses in creating literary works. Studying the poetic language of Nguyen Duy, the author of the thesis finds many unique features in three aspects: folk language; language of speech and diverse and flexible semantic transformations.

4.3.1. Folk language

In lyrical works, poetic language has its own rhythm, it reflects life through the sublimation of emotions in the artist's heart. The poet's inner feelings are expressed not only through the meaning of words but also through the sound and rhythm of those words. That artistic wall is always open to the writer's linguistic activities. Through language, the writer clearly reflects all the problems of human life, giving readers an objective view of all aspects of life. In Nguyen Duy's poetry, the author has delicately filtered the languages of life; the skillful and creative use of words in Nguyen Duy's style has demonstrated the diversity of modern poetic language.

Folk culture is an endless source for artists to freely create. Nguyen Duy is one of the poets who successfully applied folk culture to create unique features in the artistic style of poetry. The author uses many structures and images that we often see in folk songs: "the stork flies lazily", "the stork's wings fly lazily", "the peach bodice", "Uncle Cuoi at the banyan tree", "the palm fan of Bom"... The appeal lies in the harmony between the soul of folk songs and the ideas and feelings of new life. With familiar folk materials combined with familiar, simple language, the author has created a picture of a rustic, familiar countryside:

" The stork flies lazily

According to the folk song, fly to the battlefield .

( Folk song )

Not only using poetic structures and poetic images in folk songs, the author also exploits linguistic materials in idioms and folk proverbs, because they are the daily speech of the people. Idioms are units with a stable structure.

tight, figurative meaning, built on the basis of comparison, metaphor, metonymy and free use in speech equivalent to words. Therefore, Nguyen Duy's poetry is about modern life but is easy to remember, easy to understand, close to the people's speech:

or:

" ... Be carefree with me

carefree to each other no need for many words carefree to mortgage human life

empty handed, still a little bit think the sky is the limit ... ”

( Carefree )

“The soft, wet grass is green.

Overreaching ruins the game ...

( Green )

Originally simple, rustic but concise and succinct, the familiar idioms and proverbs of the people have entered Nguyen Duy's poetry in a flexible and graceful way. The hard, hard-working, and poor life of the countryside is expressed through many talented and haunting verses:

Or:

" Bare back silvered by sun and rain

The belly is flat and wrinkled as if nothing had happened .

( Back to the village )

" The fragile rice husk boat floats and sinks

Folk songs are also drifting clouds .

( Awakening potential )

Reading Nguyen Duy's poems, one can see that in some poems, the author does not use idioms or proverbs, but one can still hear their echoes. Readers will recognize the shadow of the proverb " The wet place is where mother lies, the dry place is where I lie " in the sentence: " Looking at the distant homeland of my mother/ My heart - the wet place where mother lies on a rainy night " ( Sitting sadly, remembering my mother in the past ). In the poem "Returning to the village ", the author wrote: " Without teeth... father still smiles/ People are still precious, why bother with silver and gold ". It can be seen that the verse " People are still precious, why bother with silver and gold " bears the shadow of the proverbs " As long as people are still valuable, there are things ".

“ People live in piles of gold ”. The skillful use of idioms and proverbs, the learning of familiar ways of thinking and speaking in people's daily speech has made Nguyen Duy's poetry concise, condensed, sweet, delicate, folk lyrical, and modern.

Nguyen Duy is also very talented in using the folk "teasing" way of speaking. That way of speaking has permeated the author's blood, so Nguyen Duy can "play" or joke with both gods and himself. Chu Van Son commented: "... Duy's teasing style is very real. Many ways of speaking that seem to be only used in sidewalk shops, sometimes drinking, sometimes flirting, in Duy's hands, are immediately transformed and transformed. People see that the great direction of modern poetry is to get closer to the structure of ordinary speech, to stick to the words and sounds that are born every hour and every minute on the complicated stream of life. Duy's poetry is very sensitive to the hot breath of language..." [85; p. 415]. In Nguyen Duy, poetic language always has a skillful blend between the beautiful, ingenious and the rustic, simple: " I bury my nose in the manuscript and breathe on it/ Give artificial respiration to the breathless words.../ I long for the song of worms and crickets/ No editing, no censorship.../ I wish for the flight of birds/ No passport, no borders/ Old dog keeps bones, old cat turns into fox/ I grow old, I become a child " ( Kim Moc Thuy Hoa Tho ).

After 1975, life was colorful and diverse. Therefore, the author used many words to describe the diverse and complex nature of life. The poetic language skillfully combines the beautiful and talented with the rustic and simple, familiar with the daily speech of the masses. Reading Nguyen Duy's poems, readers encounter familiar phrases such as: "extremely missing and craving", "super love", "rolling and rolling in love", "itchy job", "drunk", "drinking", "slowly", "rice in the dust, beer in the wind", "life is like that, why bother telling it", "living means letting loose", "morning in front of the porch"...

“ Being apart, I miss you so much, I miss you so much. Who is coming back to Hanoi? I send you a few words from the time when our ancestors played.

I'm here, eating street food and drinking beer .

( Dusty rice )

Or:

" Early morning, hit the ground in front of the door

standing still, blowing smoke up to the sky

( Tobacco )

That language in Nguyen Duy's poetry conveys to readers the poet's sorrow and fear before the rapid changes of society. The poetic language delves into the inner struggles with the tragedy of each individual's life. It is the surprise when: " By chance you were born, a drop of heaven falling/ without signing a contract to be human/ Love also coincidentally fell from the sky/ without an outline, no script, no weather forecast... " ( A drop of heaven ) .

Through many life experiences from childhood to the post-war years, the renovation period, Nguyen Duy has always been a person who understands the language life of the people. The poet has been attached to the people all his life, whether old or young, male or female, whether in the countryside or the city, in the lowlands or the highlands... all appear in Nguyen Duy's poetry with deep respect. Chu Van Son was completely right when he said that Nguyen Duy "is a commoner poet, finding such dusty words that sparkle with folklore, like a miner finding red stones in a tunnel. Not everyone can see rubies in the dust. Not everyone who pans for sand can find gold" [85; p. 416].

4.3.2. The language of “ tone of speech ”

In the strong development of poetry with many trends, Nguyen Duy constantly tries and makes efforts in artistic creation to find his own path. In terms of language, it is the absorption of many qualities of folk song language, lively speaking style rich in images and rich in humor in folk speech. The language in his poetry is not elaborate, sophisticated but simple, sometimes mixed with a bit of everyday dust but still not crude. The poet also adds a layer of everyday dusty language to create new, illogical grammatical connections to describe the spiritual state of life.

After 1975, along with the return of real life, everyday materials appeared more and more in Vietnamese poetry. Changes in thinking

Artistic thinking and poetic language contributed to creating a new look for Vietnamese poetry. The post-war poetic language broke out of the old framework, associated with new sources of inspiration such as: "Inspiration for de-sacredness", "inspiration for philosophy". Readers encounter many "confessional" and "mocking" tones in poetry, but not indifferently, unintentionally, but very painfully and anxiously:

" Oh poetry, I tell you this poem

Let me go plant and plow to raise you .

( Subsidized poetry )

Poet Nguyen Duy once shared: “Writing dreamy poetry is a type of poetry written in ancient times, a time when people were so deprived that they thought of a cup of good wine, a delicious meal; in this mundane world, where hardships are too great, people think of a magical world. Poetry now exists in reality, just as poetry is increasingly closer to everyday language, prose language, not separating everyday language from poetic language into two different worlds. That is a thing of the past.” In the reality of the country after 1975, people still have too many issues to pay attention to, worry about, and worry about. To accurately describe the reality of life, Nguyen Duy, like many other poets, spoke in the language of everyday life. His poetic language is aimed at the masses of working people. Therefore, readers perceive a dusty, simple language, close to everyday life. The later the time, the more “dusty the language”, closer to the breath of life.

Firstly, it can be seen that the poet was very creative and skillful in using colloquial language and vocabulary layers in poetry to create verses with a close and familiar tone. Under the talented hands of the artist, the colloquial language or vocabulary layers that were originally crude or crude became soft, flexible and delicate. This brought about a strangeness in the poetic language, where there was no longer any flowery beauty but only the anxiety and worries of real life in poetry. Writer Nguyen Quang Sang said: "Nguyen Duy's poetry is imbued with national character and fluent in folk language. The simple poetic words are close to colloquial language" [45; p. 125]. The author used

skillful use of colloquial language in poetry through passive voice, making the style of the poem more unique and special. The following poems are typical examples :

" The old man is so much like my father that he goes to work in the fields with a jug of rice in his belt. "

during the plowing season, no day is missed, visitors come to visit - looking for the owner in the field .

( The Old Man of Hau River ) " When will the old days come back?

Love like the old people to please us, the time before AIDS

Have you loved rolling around and falling in love yet ?

( Being loved like a folk song )

In addition, the poet uses a series of words: old, old, old, old, old, old, straight, huge, old, meaningless, hell, oh my god, so wonderful... as well as specialized terms of economic, political, scientific fields such as: Minerals, continental shelf, great forest, potential, lazy skin, feeling, lethargic eyes, crystalline lens, overeating, poisoning, infected blood, AIDS... The words are like words, but when they are put into poetry, they have their own emotions and tones, creating familiarity, simplicity, and simplicity like the way people feel and think in life: " Crawling through the Forbidden City/ watching boys and girls pick up snacks like crazy/ blood pudding from Hang But to Hang Phen/ vermicelli from To Tich, pho up to Hang Dong/ porridge from Cho Duoi to Hang Bong/ Nhat Tan, the vast Underworld, dog meat/ shrimp cakes, West Lake, rice on the sidewalk. ( Dust rice song ) .

Nguyen Duy's poems also contain provocative questions to question the author himself and others. Often, punctuation marks, ellipses, and question marks break the form of the verse, creating the feeling of the sentence:

“ Now I write a poem for you, do you think I'm useless?

What does uselessness take away from life and what does it give back to life?

Do you think I'm a bird that eats and scratches its beak? Do you think I'm a counterfeiter?

... I just thought... but never mind! ”

( Awakening potential )

The poem is full of questions, confidences, explanations, complaints, and reasoning. Therefore, it easily impresses the reader.

During the process of writing, we see a large amount of dialects appearing in Nguyen Duy's poetry. Dialects are words used in daily speech and activities of people in different regions of our country. This contributes to expressing the poet's viewpoint, unruly personality, and "street" quality. Nguyen Duy once said: "Some people say that poets are the creators of language. In my opinion, that is a lie. Poets are only the ones who filter, discover, improve, and popularize in the language of the working masses" [45; p. 125]:

“ Being apart makes me miss you so much. Who is going back to Hanoi, please send me a few words .”

( Dusty rice )

Or:

" Through " thinking bored, life means to let loose

…Houses are covered with coconut leaves and sugarcane leaves

No need to worry about hats and shirts, but you have to drink regularly .

( The Old Man of Hau River )

In addition to his skillful use of colloquialisms and dialects, Nguyen Duy is also very talented and subtle in using reduplicative words in his poems. Nguyen Phan Canh believes that: "Reduplicative words are the most valuable asset of artistic language" [13; 82]. Indeed, in Nguyen Duy's poems, the author has relied on the onomatopoeic and figurative characteristics of reduplicative words to increase the expressive value of the poems. A survey of the thirty poems in the collection Moonlight shows that the poet used 165 reduplicative words. On average, there are more than 5 reduplicative words/poem. In addition, the author also uses reduplicative words in a very unique and creative way:

" Busy dreaming of superheroes

Nguyen Duy's Poetics - 18

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