Poetics of Vietnamese short stories in the post-war period 1975

We encounter the way of thinking, the way of evaluating sacrifice and loss associated with the traditional consciousness of the Vietnamese people. The image of the soldiers in the K regiment who sacrificed for the independence of the Fatherland, for the freedom and happiness of the people, all are deeply imprinted in Quy's subconscious, they deserve to be admired and respected. Only by understanding this can we explain Quy's emotion before the sacrifice of young people in the recent resistance war. On the way to work, when passing a pagoda, encountering the statue of a thousand hands and a thousand eyes , Quy thought of the collective of soldiers in the K regiment, "I stood in a daze in front of the statue for a long time... immediately I thought of the K regiment, and he was in a very far away place, both of them merged together in the image of a man with a thousand eyes and a thousand hands" [82, 273] . Quy loved Hoa dearly, so when Hoa passed away, a part of Quy's life was gone. “Like a bird that has lost its friend… only now do I understand that, of all losses, the loss of a human being is irreplaceable, impossible to regain” [82, 283] . The character Quy impresses readers not only with the deep emotional relationship between her and the talented regimental commander, but also with the tolerance of a woman who seems difficult to explain, difficult to understand her motives for action. In the midst of the days when bombs and bullets were destroying lives, and wounded soldiers were piling up on the front lines every day, Quy suddenly realized “I understood myself all this time. I saw in a minute all the deep parts as a special gift of our women’s souls: that is the instinct to take care of human life - we ourselves carried and gave birth to them” [82]. With this detail, Nguyen Minh Chau touched the deepest area, where there are both sacred and noble things, the human spirit.

In the form of a dream, the short storyMai (Thanh Que) reveals the changes in the mood of the father character after many days of unsuccessfully searching for his son's grave. Then one morning when he was about to get up,

A wave of drowsiness came over him, his eyes ached, and he lay down, then a strange dream came. In the dream, he met his daughter in a poplar forest, and strangely enough, that dream coincided with the clue of the process of finding the grave. And he found that finding his daughter's grave was something mysterious, just like in the dream. Was it the daughter's spirit that told the father, or was it the light emitted from the inner world as a spiritual message? He was not superstitious at all, but today, he suddenly felt "his heart was agitated, his ears were burning, and around his house, which had been quiet for a long time, a flock of strange birds suddenly came and sang" [170, 273]. Describing the moment of change in the father's soul from spiritual life is a way to enter the depths of the human soul.

In the short story The Flowers of the Mangroves (Duong Thu Huong), the combination of the two elements of reality and fantasy also contributes to illuminating the depth of human consciousness. The current life with an indifferent and heartless husband brings Ngan frustration and suffering. On the contrary, the image and sacrifice of Nghiem (Ngan's past lover) brings her support. Although those feelings are just like a thunder echoing from the far end of the sky, when the storm has long passed, it still makes "that thirty-five-year-old woman think about her life thoroughly for the first time. It is also the first time she finds a separate source of light for her path" [170, 157]. The illumination from the figure of the (deceased) soldier has the effect of balancing and purifying Ngan's soul. It is like a thin ray of light in the distant unconscious, but gradually it becomes clearer, larger and overwhelms her soul.

Thus, in Vietnamese short stories after 1975, the aspect of human spiritual life was explored with a depth that the previous period had not reached. It contributed to enriching the artistic concept of human beings and creating important changes in the method of expression.

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character. In general, “the deep exploration into the spiritual realm, opening up the rich, endless mysteries of human beings, comes from a non-simple, linear concept of human beings, from the desire to explore human beings at many levels of value, at different behavioral coordinates, at many dimensions” [62, 288].

Summary

Looking at the literary life since 1975, it can be said that the historical and social circumstances have changed, leading to changes in aesthetic perception and in the concept of people. The artistic concept of people is the core of the spirit, the aspect of primary importance in determining the level, talent, and contribution of writers to literature and life. This issue is related to the entire creative process of writers, to the content and form elements of the work. It also marks a significant change in the system of thinking in their creations. The process of literary history also shows that literary innovation is often associated with the innovation of artistic concepts of people. Understanding the artistic concept of people means understanding the perspective, the depth of discovery, explanation, and the level of mastery of people of writers. According to Tran Dinh Su: "As long as there is no innovation in the artistic concept of human beings, the reproduction of different life phenomena only has the meaning of expanding quantity on the same depth" [181, 198].

Vietnamese short stories from 1975 to 1985 have a fairly comprehensive view of people and life after the war. Along with the gradually changing pace of life in post-war society, people always know how to move to cope with life and pursue happiness. In the new life, they know how to look further to make a living, survive and develop; have ideals, ambitions, know how to join hands with everyone in the cause of the community and the country; preserve national traditions and culture. However, in a dark side of post-war society

During the war, writers also paid close attention to a group of degenerate, pragmatic people and warned them to adjust and return to their true nature. From there, they opened up rich, endlessly mysterious areas of humanity, with a more multifaceted perspective on humans at many levels of value, creating the premise for contemporary literature (after 1985) to exploit and explore humans at different coordinates and dimensions in their inherently complex nature.

Chapter 3

TIME AND SPACE, TOE AND LANGUAGE IN VIETNAMESE SHORT STORIES FROM 1975 TO 1985

3.1. Time and space of art

3.1.1. Art time

Artistic time is a characteristic category of literature, “time is the object, the subject, the descriptive tool, the consciousness and feeling of the movement and change of the world in the diverse forms of time throughout the entire literature” [183, 63], is the form of artistic image. Artistic time is one of the important categories of poetics, because it shows the essence of the artist's artistic creation. Time reveals the creative consciousness of art, so the writer can choose the starting and ending points, can tell quickly or slowly, tell forward or reverse, can choose the point of view from the past, present, future, can choose the length of a moment or many generations, many lives. In literary creation, artistic time is measured by many different dimensions and appears in different forms, creating rhythm in the work. It is associated with the internal organization of artistic images and serves as a reference system to reflect reality, expressing the author's thinking. The category of artistic time is associated with each literary genre, aiming to provide the basis for analyzing the internal structure of literary images.

In literature, every element has its own time and can express time, paying special attention to the two basic layers of time: narrative time and narrated time. Modern short stories vividly and richly express different forms of artistic time, notably closed time, moving according to given data until the end; or open time according to the progress of events, giving rise to new possibilities.

The past, present and future time planes are interwoven throughout the works, creating a unique artistic picture of time closely linked to the character system.

3.1.1.1. The winding, zigzag time is a form that does not develop in a forward direction or interweaves the present and the past. In the literary period of 1945-1975, the artistic time in the works was often associated with the moments of fighting, associated with the common aspirations of the whole country. But after 1975, the types of time expressed in the works became more complex, sometimes calculated by sudden moments. The writer let his characters self-perceive the past and struggle with reality. Therefore, time sometimes changed according to the character's stream of consciousness. It has a diverse and extremely complex micro-level, associated with human thoughts. Therefore, the analysis of psychology and characters must be placed in the flow of time, in the possibilities of choice and adaptation, the paradoxes of existence, in the differences between people of yesterday and people of today. Nguyen Van Long believes that: "putting characters in different time dimensions, interweaving the present and the past to highlight this art in the spiritual life and fate of each different person" [118, 218].

The time in the short stories 1975 - 1985 is the time associated with everyday life, each individual, time is divided into small pieces associated with memories and reminiscences. The past time is used a lot in works written about war, it appears densely from the first page to the last page. "Twelve years ago I graduated from the tenth grade, refused to go to school anymore and put on my backpack and went to Truong Son... In the last days of that year... The years that followed, until the day the war ended..." [26, 173]. In the soldiers' perception, the past time is the memories of war, a broken period of time that is very difficult to mend with the present.

present. Therefore, past and present time are two opposing quantities that cannot be balanced, cannot be continuous, because they contain two different nuances. Past time is associated with war, bullets, death, but also many beautiful memories of comradeship and love. Present time is a long period of stagnation, stagnation, passing along with the torment, helplessness and despair of people. It is a suffocating period of time that people want to break away from to recall the past or fantasize about the future.

Similarly, Living with Two-Way Time by Vu Tu Nam is like a sincere self-criticism of the character before the flow of the times. The writer places the character in the present, looking back at the past after having experienced two resistance wars. Only a few days back to his homeland, but Mr. An has "lived in two directions of time for decades. Time has questioned him, molded him, judged and pushed him" [170, 866]. "If in his youth when he joined the revolution, his heart was always cheerful, thinking that everything was simple and easy, then when life returned to normal circumstances, he was faced with many new relationships that forced him to choose" [170, 103]. Before the flow of life and time, he had to stop to ponder "they go forward in time, the elders go back to the past, and I am standing in the middle? Or in which direction?" [170, 850]. The issue of time in this short story helps the writer delve deeper into the complex psychological developments of the character.

In There is a night like that (Pham Thi Minh Thu), the clear past, the scent of lilies and the tone of a voice that is both mocking and affectionate are like a fresh breeze blowing into Mien's tired soul. In this short story, the bright light of yesterday continues to shine on today's daily life, as if to support people in their present life. Many other short stories also have a journey back to the past as if to find a source of spiritual strength to continue.

Journey to the future such as: Silent childhood (Duy Khan), Wind from the sand

(Xuan Thieu).

In addition, we can mention the short stories that have successfully used different time dimensions such as: The Flowers of the Banyan Tree (Duong Thu Huong), The Person Who Does Not Go with the Train (Nguyen Quang Than)... In these short stories, the interweaving of the present and the past shows the separation in people's spiritual life. Amidst the chaos of everyday life after the war, people still reserve a part of their thoughts for the past. In The Flowers of the Banyan Tree , many times the present fades away to let the past become an obsession in the character Ngan. Her past with a lover who sacrificed. He had long brown eyes, when he smiled it was like the sun was always following her, especially his last words before leaving "in this long fight, we should sacrifice more reasonably, we are old. You are still young, you must stay to fight the enemy until victory... The lessons of history... that is the shimmering light that supports her life. She will educate her children, her little students, the next generations to know how to be deeply moved in common life, with the sources that give them life” [170, 153-157]. The past is like an awakening of Ngan’s soul, helping her make better choices in her present life, because it is too stuffy and bland.

3.1.1.2. Psychological time is a technique that helps writers delve deeper into the inner world, into the extremely complex psychological developments of people. The short story Time by Cao Duy Thao is gentle but profound. The story is about a mother over 60 years old, traveling everywhere to find her son who was suspected of surrendering to the enemy. It has been nearly ten years, the truth has not been found, but she always believes that her son did not betray the Fatherland. The last time she went to the battlefield where he went missing, she found her son's memento.

Poetics of Vietnamese short stories in the post-war period 1975 – 1985 - 10

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