On the Concept of National Identity and the Creative Journey of Nguyen Duy, Dong Duc Bon

Duc Bon with six-eight poetry: "Bon's feelings for six-eight poetry, on the surface, are similar to the feelings of a farmer for a buffalo."

Nguyen Dang Diep also highly appreciated Dong Duc Bon's six-eight poetry: "From the six-eight of folk songs, Nguyen Du created a breakthrough: "When Nguyen Du wrote Kieu, the country turned into literature" (Che Lan Vien). This national poetry form appeared in a talented way through "a mass of great love - a mass of childish love" (Tan Da) and then divided into two directions in New Poetry: The rusticity in Nguyen Binh's six-eight and the classical conciseness in Huy Can's poetry. Currently, besides the "superior" of Bui Giang, six-eight lives in the soul of Nguyen Duy, then Dong Duc Bon... Being able to create six-eight turns out to be a difficult task... It is a genre that everyone is familiar with, everyone knows the name, if there is no new thing, the poet will immediately be kicked out of the show. Fortunately, Dong Duc Bon has survived". Clearly, Dong Duc Bon is considered one of the most prominent names in the Vietnamese six-eight poetry scene. At the end of the article, the author also emphasized that Dong Duc Bon eventually returned to folk songs, to life, although bitter but still sweet. The folk quality in Dong Duc Bon's poetry is still the bridge connecting him with the current generation of readers. No matter what, Dong Duc Bon's creative tendency is still to return to the source.

In the first part of the article Rustic love poems , Doan Huong mentioned the folk song quality in Dong Duc Bon's six-eight poetry. The article analyzed quite thoroughly the rustic quality in Dong Duc Bon's poetry - the main source of inspiration for the poet. Reading Dong Duc Bon's six-eight poetry, Doan Huong felt "like a person who lost his homeland and returned to his homeland". Reading Dong Duc Bon's poetry helps us find our homeland, return to our homeland in our minds.

With a natural tone mixed with a bit of wildness in the song " Where to make bricks ", Pham Tien Duat affirmed: "Dong Duc Bon alone made a brick"

The long march. He rushed straight into the battlefield of six-eight verse and in a short time Dong Duc Bon became the young king of this genre.

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Writer Tran Huy Quang in the article Dong Duc Bon - Crumpled and polished evaluates the rustic quality in Dong Duc Bon's poetry from the perspective of the verses: "Dong Duc Bon's poetry, each verse is like the words of hard-working female farmers, low-cut bodices, rolled-up skirts, and shoulder poles."

In "Tua bao de to vien" (The Storm to Live as a Human ), Anh Quan sees the rich folk musicality in six-eight poetry in general and Dong Duc Bon's poetry in particular: "In fact, in poetry, six-eight is the most musical form of poetry, and this is even more evident in Dong Duc Bon's poetry. Any of his poems are like folk songs, old-fashioned folk songs."

Bang Son in the poem Dong Duc Bon - Country Poet made a profound assessment of the rustic soul in Dong Duc Bon's poetry, considering him "An outstanding poet in the six-eight meter, perhaps the Vietnamese soul distilled over thousands of years to condense into the poet's soul, making us infatuated with the verses as if coming from folk songs, as if from poetry going into folk songs, always sweet and remaining".

In Some Random Thoughts on Dong Duc Bon's Poetry , Nguyen Thanh Toan also commented: "The strength of Dong Duc Bon's poetry is the rural poetic form, rural language, rural inspiration... Especially the rural sentiment and ideology."

In addition, some articles by Nguyen Anh Ngan, Nguyen Thanh Phong, Nguyen Viet Ha, Van Chinh... also had quite profound and accurate assessments of Dong Duc Bon's poetry.

Through articles and research on Dong Duc Bon, it can be seen that he is considered an excellent poet of the contemporary Vietnamese six-eight poetry genre. Dong Duc Bon's six-eight poetry once again affirms the superiority of the six-eight poetry form of Vietnamese poetry. However, there are also many opinions that Dong Duc Bon's six-eight poetry is still thorny, rustic, and somewhat naive. Looking at

In general, Dong Duc Bon deserves to be considered a successor to the folk flow in Vietnamese poetry and has made significant contributions to the poetry scene.

In short, through the history of studying and researching the poetry of Nguyen Duy and Dong Duc Bon, we see that in some articles about the poetry of the two authors, the issue of national identity in the poetry of each writer has been more or less mentioned. However, through the survey, it can be seen that these articles only mention some aspects or some folk elements in the poetry of each individual author, not directly mentioned, not systematically and comprehensively examined the issue. Therefore, we chose the topic: National identity in the poetry of Nguyen Duy and Dong Duc Bon to deeply study in a comprehensive and systematic way the national identity in the poetry of these two outstanding writers, thereby contributing to identifying and affirming a successful direction of exploration and innovation of contemporary Vietnamese poetry.

3. Research methods

To carry out the topic, the author uses the following main research methods:

- Analytical method

- Synthetic method

- Comparison and contrast method

- Statistical and classification methods

4. Scope of research

The thesis focuses on studying national identity in the works of two authors Nguyen Duy and Dong Duc Bon. The scope of the survey is the main poetry collections of Nguyen Duy and all of Dong Duc Bon's poetry.

* Nguyen Duy

- White Sand (Poetry, 1973)

- Moonlight (Poetry, 1984)

- Mother and I (Poetry, 1987)

- Long Road (Poetry, 1989)

- Gift (Poetry, 1990)

- About (Poetry, 1994)

- Six and Eight (Poetry, 1994)

- Dust (Poetry, 1997)

* Dong Duc Bon

- The White Horse and the Bitter Fruit Forest (1992)

- Herding buffaloes and lighting a fire (Poetry, 1993)

- Back to My Mother (2000)

- Finally There Is Still a River (2000)

- Temple Bells Ringing in the Rain (2002)

- The Yellow-billed Bird and the Poisonous Grass (2006)

In addition, to facilitate comparison, we also expanded our survey of poetry by a number of other authors.

5. Contribution of the thesis

- From the survey and analysis of the poems of the two authors, the thesis identifies and summarizes the unique features of the writers in terms of inheriting and promoting traditional values in modernizing poetry; affirming the efforts to innovate poetry of the two authors.

- The thesis also examines and identifies one of the effective creative exploration trends of contemporary Vietnamese poetry.

- To a certain extent, the thesis contributes to summarizing and evaluating the process of movement and innovation of contemporary Vietnamese poetry and the movement of six-eight poetry in modern Vietnamese poetry.

6. Structure of the thesis

In addition to the Introduction, Conclusion, and References, the main content of the thesis includes 3 chapters:

- Chapter 1: On the concept of national identity and the creative journey of Nguyen Duy and Dong Duc Bon

- Chapter 2: National identity in Nguyen Duy and Dong Duc Bon's poetry from the perspective of inspirational content

- Chapter 3: National identity in Nguyen Duy and Dong Duc Bon's poetry from the perspective of artistic expression

CONTENT SECTION

Chapter 1: ON THE CONCEPT OF NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE CREATIVE JOURNEY OF NGUYEN DUY, DONG DUC BON

1.1 On the concept of national identity

Nowadays, when the world exchange is being promoted more than ever, the issue of national culture becomes the top concern, the focus of attention of social sciences and humanities. In order to solve the task of the topic, we first see the need to clarify the concept of national identity.

According to the Dictionary of Literature (New Edition) [39] : “National identity and national character are almost equivalent terms, indicating certain cultural ethnographic attributes. “National character (or identity) of literature” - is only the characteristics that a national literature has due to its close connection with the cultural and historical life of that nation”. The Dictionary of Literary Terms [38] also defines national character as a concept belonging to the ideological and aesthetic category indicating the close connection between literature and nation, expressed through the totality of relatively stable unique characteristics common to the works of a nation, formed in the process of historical development, distinguishing it from the literature of other nations. That is to say, the literature and culture of a nation have a close, inseparable relationship. And it is impossible to understand literature properly without understanding its cultural aspect.

Cultural tradition is one of the forms of existence of contemporary society. It “Records the mark of its own past history, but also persists extremely persistently in the present and always has the ambition to establish new traditions” [27]. Indeed, cultural tradition is not only limited to maintaining or passing on previous cultural achievements, but also integrates new traditions into the historical process by adapting them.

This new with the old traditions. Therefore, cultural traditions have a great role and influence on social life and people. Especially for artistic creation, cultural traditions hold an important position. It plays the role of the basis, the foundation of all creations, it determines all the feelings and descriptions of writers about the subject.

In short: “Studying cultural traditions also means studying national character and national identity. Because the national character of literature is not only a category of social and artistic ideology but also a cultural category, the crystallization of national culture in literary and artistic creation” [3, pp. 6-7]. Prime Minister Pham Van Dong also emphasized: “The national issue is a cultural issue, do not look for national issues elsewhere” [22, p. 155]. Later, researcher Ho Si Vinh also continued to affirm: “Talking about culture is talking about nation. Culture is the face of the nation. A nation that loses its cultural tradition (…) will lose everything” [54, p. 6].

The concept of “nation” in modern Vietnamese has two main meanings: 1) “nation – nation”, that is, a human social community, created by the process of forming a community character in terms of territory, economic relations, literary language, and some cultural and personality characteristics; 2) ethnic communities – tribes, clans, ethnicities… within and constituting a nation – nation. Literature and art are one of the spiritual activities of the national community in the historical process, closely linked to the historical life of the nation. It is a part of the history of the nation. Nationality has a stable presence if viewed in the correlation between nations. Reading a Vietnamese poem and a Chinese poem, one can still distinguish one poem from the other. Vietnamese poems still have something Vietnamese in the poetic ideas, in the melody… Those things allow researchers to draw out the national character in poetry. But saying that national character has a stable presence does not mean that national character is fixed and unchangeable. The article "National character in literature"

“Current studies”, quoted from the book “Understanding national identity in President Ho Chi Minh’s poetry” [36] explains: “A nation is a community of people formed in the historical process. Nations do not always exist, they are born in a certain period of historical evolution and when a nation is formed, the nation continues to evolve. Therefore, national identities are always evolving, national character does not remain the same from one period to another […] A nation has traditions, national traditions are the identity, the characteristics, the lifestyle of a nation that is promoted to a very high level, has a very great effect in a historical period and from then on becomes a lesson, an example for future generations to continue to follow. For example, the tradition of solidarity against foreign invaders during the Tran Dynasty, the tradition of perseverance in enduring hardship, working hard to fight the enemy of the Lam Son army and people against the Ming army. Thus, the traditions of a nation have their historical origins…” [3, p. 11-12].

Regarding literature, unlike some other art forms, national literature is associated with its material, the national language; literature is an important component of the national linguistic culture. The history of formation, existence and development of national literatures are all associated (to different degrees) with the process of formation, survival and development of society - nation. On this basis, the author of the Dictionary of Literature presents the manifestations of national identity in literature: National identity of literature is expressed in the national language (native language), that is, the specific material that distinguishes this linguistic culture from other linguistic cultures . (In parts or stages of literature written in the common language of the region or in a certain internationalized language, the national character in the linguistic material will be indirectly revealed, combined with other factors). Writing in the mother tongue (native language) is the part of literature that most clearly reveals the cultural potential (especially the historical memories of the nation that are deeply imprinted in the native language) and the artistic ability of the national language, preserving, developing and enriching it. National identity is quite clearly revealed in the content of life.

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