(The Young Woman and the Road) , with Phan Huyen Thu, it is a realm of hidden, painful compassion: "The kiss fills the chest with compassion" (Hesitation) . In the previous period, poets writing about love often talked about lips and hands, but in expressing sexuality, they were always "your lips", "your hands" and there was no "mine" present: "In the echo, you are like a drop of dew remaining/Under your burning lips" (Pham Thi Ngoc Lien) , "The arms are full of love for the moon/Please kiss only the full moon mark of my love" (Le Thi May), in Vi Thuy Linh's and Phan Huyen Thu's poems, lips, eyes, hands, ... "mine" appear directly and also include tongue, flesh, legs, thighs, ... - physical points expressing the desire for pleasure of the female being. Linh's poem opens: "a field of wet silk flesh" with "flocks of lips", "flustered, hurried, passionate, painful", then "legs opening a deep path", "smooth thighs", "waist waiting to be caressed" ... - All of them speak for themselves! And when a part of them lies still, it signals the death of the couple's happiness: "When the tongue lies obediently in the mouth/teeth sleep behind the lips/smile dies" ( The Dream of the Tongue - Phan Huyen Thu).
Along with the direct display of the physical self as an entity that does not need to be hidden is the burning desire for love associated with sex, always present in the poetry of Vi Thuy Linh and Phan Huyen Thu. Traditional poets express love subtly and gently: " Hiding a bunch of flowers in a handkerchief " (Phan Thi Thanh Nhan) is as shy as it is now - Vi Thuy Linh and Phan Huyen Thu are bold, strong, thirsty - burning - burning. The mindset of looking for a lover is always present: Winter Light Chorus, Traces, ... The desire to have burning energy, the initiative comes from the girl: "The whole month of April I was restless like a forest of ants/like a bee/I stimulated you with real imagination..." (Born on April 4 - Vi Thuy Linh ), "I always want to hold you tight to love you until I'm exhausted (as if tomorrow the earth will explode)" (And we start another life - Vi Thuy Linh ), ... The story of adultery is a sensitive issue in modern Vietnamese poetry that is rarely mentioned, contemporary Vietnamese female poetry is even rarer, yet Nguyen Ngoc Tu - a famous writer of stories and novels wrote so frankly and so well! In the poem Nhan Tinh , the story of adultery has not discussed right - wrong according to moral concepts and legal regulations, let's look at the character
How did “You” have an affair? “Every now and then, their husbands would drop by/ Touch the mole at the end of their backs to get to know each other again/ Holding each other in a never-ending distance/ Missing each other so much that their words were tongue-tied/ Add another stick of firewood to the cold stove” ( Nhan tinh - Nguyen Ngoc Tu). The object that “you” longed for was “their husbands” and also just “dropped by”, just that one line of poetry evoked a sky of associations about the fate of a lonely woman, waiting wearily for someone to “drop by”. It had been so long since they had met, getting to know each other again in a way that was both strange and heartbreaking for her: “touching the mole at the end of her back” . Getting to know each other again through the body deeply embedded in it a thousand painful loves of a woman’s fate. Even when “holding each other” still “couldn’t let go of the distance”, wanting to say the words “missing each other” why was it “tongue-tied”? It turns out that "she" is both passionate and sober, the body speaks its own voice, and then reason seems to stand outside, contemplating those passionate moments of intercourse. In contemporary Vietnamese female poetry, no poet has had such a strange split personality.
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On the positive side, innovative young female poetry has contributed to expressing a more multifaceted and profound view of humanity by displaying the ego demanding equality, the desire for freedom, and liberation in love and sex through appropriate artistic forms, aiming for humanistic beauty. However, besides the successes, there are still many limited and extreme cases when "sensual feelings have surpassed words", the way of expressing images and poetic language becomes crude, naked, and vulgar.
2.3.2.3. The unconscious, spiritual self
The unconscious and spirituality are the depths of the soul, likened to the submerged part of the "iceberg" of the human mind. The unconscious is the main issue in Psychoanalysis, which was studied and founded by Sigmund Freud in 1880. Focusing on the unconscious and spiritual world is an effort to perceive humans more comprehensively. Poetry in the past mentioned the unconscious and spirituality, but not much. Some verses with spiritual shadows by Nguyen Du "Seeing the cold wind, it's good that you're back", "The shadow of a person walking at night", ... Those verses only touched but did not go deep to explore the "blurred area of the soul". In the late 1930s and early 1940s, New Poetry with the ego "losing breadth, searching for depth" , the concept of the ego in some poets
There have been changes. The Xuan Thu Nha Tap group conceived of poetry as: “something transcendent, beyond convention, above philosophy, it vibrates us with the rhythm of the universe, innocent, it harmonizes us in beauty and embraces us in truth” [ 173 ]. The Da Dai group in the Symbolist Manifesto also emphasized: “Poetry is no longer theory, and it no longer has to nourish itself with clear poetic themes... Poetry only needs to grasp the starting melody of a mysterious song. Then, following strange entanglement laws, the images will compete to push each other in a vague dance” [174 ]. Poets influenced by the surrealist symbolist school advocated exploring the unconscious, the subconscious, emphasizing its role in the process of poetic creation. However, their aesthetic views were not convincingly proven by their writing. Thirty years of war did not allow poets to deeply explore and experience the world that cannot be explained by conventional logic deep in the human soul. After 1975, especially after the 1986 renovation, along with the rise of the individual ego, freedom and democracy in literature and life, poets had the conditions and opportunities to continue to explore and experience the spiritual and unconscious human being. Hoang Hung affirmed: "Classicism is reason... The present is spirituality" , Thanh Thao said: "Modern poetry forces my subconscious and unconscious to work, forces us to dive into our own dreams" [159].
Continuing the journey of discovering and experiencing the “deep whistle of the soul” , young contemporary female poets mention and express the spiritual, intuitive, and unconscious self in poetry more and more clearly. That is the appearance of a series of image combinations to create a suitable space-time for the unconscious whistle, the spiritual element to appear: “night”, “empty room”, “dream”, “sleep”, “death”, “soul”, … in The Cross, The Houses (Vi Thuy Linh), Dream, Dream of the Tongue, Empty Chest (Phan Huyen Thu). This is the door leading to thoughts, imagination, and discovery of the unconscious spiritual world of humans - a way for poets to expand the dimension of life (the fourth dimension of space: nothingness, metaphysics), look deeply into the hidden, deep parts of the soul, enrich and enrich.
richer than the human soul. Spirituality is where young poets can easily see their own ego. In the poem Obituary, Phan Huyen Thu wrote with the feeling of a person announcing his death in love: "I want to myself/put a photo in a frame/Close it in the air/Find a place to hang it in honor? As if I have passed away" , she wrote with a cold, empty heart and apathetic chest of modern people: "I sigh/Cold winter, empty chest/Sadness far away, longing far away/Leaving the body and flying up to the ceiling/Looking at the body curled up/Crying in the corner of the bed" ( Empty chest - Phan Huyen Thu) - the poet uses the phenomenon of "soul leaving the body" to dialogue with herself (between soul and body), to contemplate and question herself. There was a time when the lyrical self immersed itself in "rowing a boat to retrieve corpses from the river" ( Hue - Phan Huyen Thu), seeing itself dead, lovers, enemies, friends, all gathered to see it off, then the character "I" lying in the coffin smiled emotionally: "only one person I have secretly loved all my life is of course nowhere to be seen" ( The Dream - Phan Huyen Thu).
Thus, the spiritual unconscious self is a unique type of lyrical self in contemporary Vietnamese female poetry. This is a powerful “tool” for authors to deeply explore and express the “deep, boundless depths” of the human mind, while contributing to enriching and making more attractive the content of contemporary Vietnamese poetry.
2.3.2.4. Philosophical, dialogical and critical ego
When talking about the types of lyrical egos in contemporary Vietnamese women's poetry, we cannot help but mention the philosophical ego, the thoughtful and contemplative ego with a dialogical and critical attitude. Young female poets today think about themselves, delve deep into their own being before the chaos of life, expressing their ego directly not only with the desire for love, happiness, loneliness before the chaos of life but also expressing a thoughtful and contemplative view of life, people and themselves.
The philosophical ego with a dialogical and critical attitude appears more and more in the writings of contemporary female poets: Vi Thuy Linh, Phan Huyen Thu, Ly Hoang Ly, Phan Thi Vang Anh, Nguyen Thi Thuy Hanh, Thanh Xuan, Chieu Anh Nguyen, ... This ego expresses democratic consciousness and spirit.
increasingly bold, clear and open in poetry. Dialogue, debate, philosophize about things that seem to be the truth, to finally arrive at the essence of truth, for people, for people.
The philosophical ego with the spirit of dialogue is not a new issue in literature. In any literary period of our nation, we can encounter works with this characteristic. Philosophy is an explanation to lead to philosophical generalizations of thoughts, life and people. To write philosophical works requires the artist to think, use reason and logic to analyze, search for and discover the nature of the problem, of the object. Dialogue is a conversation, exchange, discussion about a point of view, thought, a certain problem of life, of people. In literary creation, through their works, writers and poets can use language, images, symbols, ... to debate and dialogue with a certain object (an individual, a group of people, the whole society, ... or even to dialogue and question themselves). Criticism is using new reasoning, perspectives, and viewpoints to debate and review old issues in life, thereby giving a new assessment, a more comprehensive, profound, and humane view. The essence of dialogue and criticism in literature is the writer's frank and intense questioning and examination of the bad, evil, and negative things that happen every day in life and in the hidden corners of each person. Its foundation is the return of the individual ego - the introverted tendency in literature, causing poetry to increasingly appear in cases of self-dialogue, self-admiration, portraiture, and self-searching.
The philosophical ego has appeared in literature and become the writing style of some authors (Che Lan Vien, Thanh Thao, Viet Phuong, ...) but the spirit of dialogue and criticism only appeared in a broad writing trend in literature when the spirit of democracy was promoted in life and literary writing, which can be traced from the 1986 renovation to the present.
Modern Vietnamese poetry before 1986 was extroverted. The lyrical self in poetry was oriented towards the community and the nation, so the objects of philosophy and dialogue were also the major issues of the community in historical inspiration.
nation. The dialogue in literature at that time was mostly a dialogue with life, with the world, and philosophy was also based on community experience: Writers, poets and soldiers used literature and poetry to encourage fighting spirit. That was the dialogue: "I
- "We" (those who stayed and those who went downstream) recall many memories of affection and gratitude during the arduous years of resistance, recall the revolutionary ideal and the path to national liberation in To Huu's Viet Bac ; or dialogue with the times, with progressive humanity in Song of Spring 61 ; dialogue between "we" and the enemy to affirm the justice of the war of national liberation, building socialism ( Summer News 1972 - Che Lan Vien).
Poetry after the 1986 renovation in the context of social change has made changes to meet the historical requirements of the times. Post-war poetry with the return of the individual ego, no longer the common self singing in the choir of resistance poetry, poetry has returned to its true meaning and intact life when entering all walks of life, carving many feelings of human fate. Poetry of poets after the renovation, especially young poetry today, including young contemporary female poets, has delved into many dark and bright aspects, emerging and hidden issues, both universal and individual phenomena of social life, or within each person, to dialogue, debate, and philosophize according to each poet's personal experience. Never before has the ontological ego in poetry been talked about and explored so much. Young female poets following the reformist trend have delved deep into their being to dialogue and converse with themselves, it is a dialogue between body and soul, between me yesterday and me today, ...
Along with dialogue and criticism is philosophy. These three elements form an aesthetic quality of the lyrical ego in contemporary Vietnamese female poetry. Philosophical questions, influenced by existential consciousness, exist as a haunting proposition: “Where do we come from? Why do we come? Where will we go?” ( She - Cat Du); “I am looking for myself/Lost in the vast sky” ( Lost in the sky - Bui Kim Anh); “What are you doing? Looking in the mirror/Looking in the mirror for what?/Looking for you/You?” ( Oh, what a surprise ), ... The object that the philosophical, critical, dialogic ego in contemporary Vietnamese female poetry following the reformist trend aims at is not only life, but also
Not only are the concepts of poetry, poetry writing, and the reading public, but they are also traditional concepts that have been deeply rooted in Vietnamese life, at a deeper level - that is philosophy, criticism, and dialogue with oneself about the advantages, disadvantages, aspirations, and even one's own helplessness before poetry and in life.
* Philosophy, dialogue, and criticism on ethical and aesthetic standards for Vietnamese women today
According to Confucius, women must silently sacrifice, endure to the point of being patient with the "three obediences, four virtues". Even the four criteria for evaluating the qualities of women in wartime: "heroic, indomitable, loyal, and courageous" have been deeply ingrained in the minds of every Vietnamese person. Vietnamese women have long been constrained by "exemplary and good standards" - having to sacrifice everything for their husbands, children, and families. These concepts, thoughts, and criteria for evaluating women are all extroverted, emphasizing women's sense of responsibility to the ethnic community, to their clan, family, especially to their husbands and children. Because of those thoughts and viewpoints, women in the past lived and sacrificed themselves according to the mottos taught by their predecessors: "blessings and virtues are from the mother", "bad children are from the mother", "bad grandchildren are from the grandmother", ... They took the common good as personal happiness, so that men and themselves - consciously and unconsciously - hid, even forgot their legitimate instinctive needs: the need for love, sex; the need for beauty, the need to pursue ambitions, dreams, and self-affirmation, ... The inherent patriarchal ideology and the long-standing subordination of women made them have a dependent, secondary mentality; underestimating their own role and position before men - before life, society, not to mention great things like the world. Women's poetry in the past clearly expressed the psychology and ideology of traditional women. It is the awareness of one's humble and small position compared to men: "You are the sun, I am just a grain of salt/ ... an accidental grain of dust on a shirt", "We only have pots, pans, fire/We have love and lullabies/You men have so many great things/Beyond the small window, the narrow room every day/You think of the train
"submarine, missile, airplane" ( Funny poems about the weaker sex - Xuan Quynh), is the inferiority complex of being small and weak, self-identifying as "dust particles", "wild flowers", "weeds", "raindrops", "grains of sand", ... filled in the previous pages of female poetry. Poet Xuan Quynh also spoke up many times about her own fate with many inferiority complexes and self-consciousness: "Your hand, fingers are not long and slender/Old calluses, blue veins of hard work" ( Your hand - Xuan Quynh), "The road is endless, the space is like the sea/I wait for you, let me hold your hand" ( Your hand
- Xuan Quynh). In the poetry of traditional female poets, the husband, lover, lover - the character "Anh" - representing "the stronger sex" is always considered the support, the pillar, the light, the universe. In their eyes, men are exalted, even deified: "Everything is ephemeral - only you are real in this life/You alone are with me like the outside world" ( Late Happiness - Nguyen Thi Hong Ngát), and therefore women can sacrifice everything: "I didn't bring anything with me/I left everything to you" ( I didn't bring anything with me - Xuan Quynh), ...
The poetry of contemporary female poets with a reformist orientation today does not agree and of course they do not accept that. The consciousness of deconstructing standards, even “de-mythologizing” - a spirit of postmodernism that has become the artistic ideology of reformist female poetry, along with a dialogical mindset has created conditions for the lyrical self to strongly, soberly and sharply criticize. Through poetry - contemporary female poets react clearly, even fiercely to the ideal truths that were the “golden rule” of the past. They either completely deny the truth or add new content to the truth. The ego in young female poetry doubts the philosophies and conclusions of our ancestors: "One forbearance is nine good deeds", "destroy resentment with kindness" ... The most sacred feelings become the object of ridicule and irony: "Homeland is not mother/Homeland is just fragrance" ( Pragmatic Nihilism - Phan Huyen Thu), or, love in today's modern society is no longer shy, passionate, infatuated, romantic as before: "Hiding a bunch of flowers in a handkerchief/The girl hesitates to go to the neighbor's house... The girl is like a bunch of flowers quietly/Thanks to the fragrance that speaks for love" ( Still Fragrance - Phan Thi Thanh Nhan), but it has become pragmatic, easy-going, and fleeting according to the new standards of the digital age: