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The Epic Achievements of Huu Thinh

Taking lyrical thoughts and emotions as a basis is increasingly applied by poets in their creativity.

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The Epic Achievements of Huu Thinh


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).: “ ...I am faithful to my desire on the path of searching for the true depths within myself…” ).

In general, in each specific work, depending on the prominence of the event or the source of emotions, each author chooses a type of structure or combines many different types of structures within a work, thereby bringing the highest artistic effect. Later, authors paid more attention to using many types of structures, many tones, many methods of expression in a consistent whole, creating a massive and grand scale for the epic poem, on the other hand, this is also its characteristic. Thanks to the diversity of structural forms, the epic poem has developed more outstandingly compared to many types of structures of other ordinary poetic works.

1.2. Huu Thinh with the epic genre

1.2.1. The journey of Huu Thinh's poetry creation

Poetry of Huu Thinh during the years of resistance against America and the post-war period

Huu Thinh's poetry closely follows the reality of life and faithfully reflects the great events of the country, reflecting the brave fighting spirit.

He sacrificed himself for the cause of national liberation. He, like many other poets, was always deeply aware of the position and role of his generation:

No books, we make books, We write poems to record our lives.

( Road to the city )

Through the eyes of a direct combatant on the front line, Huu Thinh describes the war from the perspective of the trenches, the verses emerging from real life, from the war that is both silent and fierce, intense and extremely hot. The poetry written about the war includes the poetry collection Song in the Forest (the earliest written in 1968, the latest in 1982) , the long poem The Endurance of the Land completed on the occasion of Tet At Mao (1975), the long poem Road to the City written from August 1977 and completed in April 1978. The main inspiration is the inspiration of the country, the people, and the fight against the US to save the country.

Huu Thinh's poetry always expresses life in a natural way, always blending reality and romance through the image of soldiers on the battlefield "The malarial person sings for the malarial person" . Those years made the poet exclaim "The Truong Son years, friends are so pure" . Those are the hardships that have become memories. Those are the homeland scenes from thatched roofs to bamboo beds, clotheslines... That is the love of homeland, village, love between the army and the people, that is the image of the mother, the wife, the sister... all appear very familiar and also extremely emotional.

Characterized by a sincere and thoughtful soul, Huu Thinh's war poetry skillfully combines a political tone with a lyrical tone. This brings readers unique features, both familiar and strange. It seems that Huu Thinh is speaking for the deepest things in his heart. These are the factors that contribute to Huu Thinh's success.

Huu Thinh's poetry in the renovation period

Entering a new stage of development of the country, Huu Thinh’s poetry brings readers a new source of inspiration and creative style. After nearly fifteen years of searching for the next path of development for his poetry, he simultaneously published two poetry collections “Epic of the Sea” and “Winter Letters” and followed by the poetry collection “Negotiating with Time” which marked and affirmed Huu Thinh’s poetry in contemporary Vietnamese poetry.

The works of Huu Thinh during this period expressed the way of looking at and evaluating life with the contemplations of a person struggling with a life full of difficult challenges in Huu Thinh's lyrical self.

The poetry of Huu Thinh in this period reflects daily life, returning to ordinary life, the perception of life, the meaning of life, the personal fate in the human world, sometimes having to rely on traditional values. With a series of poems: Listening to the cuckoo's call, Happiness, Confession, The quiet pedestrian, Years on the shoulder... expressed the poet's ego, always worrying, thinking, questioning about human affairs and about himself. Huu Thinh often raises many questions, many hypotheses to question himself, ponder and often leave them open for readers to ponder.

In the works of the previous period, Huu Thinh also mentioned the theme of love, but those were only vague images, interspersed without complete poetic verses on this theme. During this period, Huu Thinh had his own poetic verses, complete love poems that also brought vibrations deep in the poet's soul: Poetry written at the sea,...

1.2.2. Huu Thinh's concept of poetry

Speaking of "Huu Thinh's poetic concept" is referring to social factors transformed into artistic thinking to become literary concepts.

If Bang Viet believes that poetry creation is a process of going from the external world

to the inner self, from objective life to subjective life, is the collision with sharp reality that affects the soul and ultimately intellectual thinking. Then Huu Thinh has more specific ideas:

We write poems to record our lives.

When reading his poems, people immediately realize the viewpoint of a soldier who writes poetry to record his own fighting life as well as that of his nation. He believes that “war is a sudden social phenomenon. History flows more rapidly there. Reflecting that war is both a responsibility and a passion for each of us. War is an introductory exam and also a place of long-term challenge for each person. Self-attachment to the fight, living fully in the challenge of sacrifice is the first gesture of an honest writer. The poetry of the anti-American generation is the lively and confident voice of those involved. People encounter many names, but all names find sympathy from readers because they are guaranteed by the position of the writer. Poetry here is guaranteed by blood”. No diary can be more concise and yet more truthful than the lines of poetry written by a soldier who was directly participating in combat with a gun and writing down the moments that happened in his life at that special time:

Only bring enough rice for ten days, save for guns, and bring medicine.

Still carrying each other

Bring many accidents along the way

( Road to the city )

The poem is so realistic that it clearly proves Huu Thinh's poetic concept. The poet " records his life" , records the images, colors, and diverse sounds of life. It is also because readers can easily see that his poetry is a mirror that accurately reflects real life. That is why Huu Thinh plays the role of a painter who records the pictures of life.

but not in color but in words.

Poetry should be the fire that warms your soul.

The resistance war against America was extremely fierce but also extremely glorious. The true values ​​of the nation and of each individual were put to the test, strictly and accurately. As someone who directly held a gun, Huu Thinh had the opportunity to understand that more than anyone else. At the same time, he realized the source of the soldiers' spiritual strength that sometimes even they themselves could not have imagined. One of the sources that nurtured the soul and created the strength of the revolutionary army at that time was poetry. Huu Thinh soon realized:

We warmed ourselves on those verses, and so many rainy seasons passed.

(The way to the city)

During the war, circumstances sometimes forced them to choose between bullets and books, and they chose bullets. But that did not mean that soldiers gave up on books and poetry, “ Without books, we make books .” Unable to carry books with them, they made their own books by:

We walked and hummed along the road. Poetry kept coming and the afternoon rain quickly stopped.

( The Road to the City ) Poetry helped them forget the hardships and difficulties of war.

Soldiers were well aware of the power of poetry in their fight and that of their comrades. Bombs and death were certainly terrible. Hardship and deprivation were no less terrible. Strong literature and poetry supported soldiers, and they looked forward to and waited for poetry and literature every day:

Poetry come contribute some firewood

Let me recognize you, let my teammates recognize me

( Road to the city )

The power of poetry is like the heat of fire that brings warmth to each soldier going through the rainy and windy marching path . “We warm ourselves on those verses. Just like that, we go through many rainy seasons” . The fire of poetry that soldiers use to warm their souls is the fire that has been maintained for many generations. It is the preparation of previous generations of poets that has created a common asset that young poetry is fortunate to inherit. The success of each poet, first of all, must come from the subjective efforts of that poet himself. But on the other hand, the generation that follows the poets always inherits from previous generations. That does not create “repetition” but creates richness, diversity for poetry and the courage of each poet.

Poetry is distilled life experience

Huu Thinh rarely loudly declares poetry. For him, simply being a poet means writing! The most profound concept of poetry will be drawn from both successes and failures. Because Huu Thinh believes that the condition for creating good verses is experience , the decisive factor is the ability to translate life experiences into poetry. He once shared: “I see that people who have not experienced life find it difficult to write well. Poetry will be very bland if the writer does not experience ups and downs, challenges, and hardships in life. In my opinion, the personal experience of a writer is especially important. One must have experiences from one's own fate, live to the bottom of the events of one's life in order to hope to have something unique, to write something unique. A poet cannot rely on anyone other than himself, nor can he rely on the experience of the crowd to write” [66].

Besides, Huu Thinh also devoted himself to introducing to readers the literary criticism essay - Reason of hope . This can be considered the poet's brainchild, it is the evaluation and assessment of literature. Moreover, it also contains valuable opinions about the poetry profession... We are very pleased with some of his views in this essay, such as the articles: Contribution

some more thoughts about poetry, these are the poet's views on poetry. The poet explained and defined what poetry is... and then came to the conclusion: each poem is a definition of poetry. Or the article Poetry is the shelter of the soul expresses the poet's very private joy when his spiritual children are trusted and loved by readers.

1.2.3 Achievements of Huu Thinh's epic poem

Long poems are one of the key genres of Huu Thinh. Poet Huu Thinh owns three sets of Long poems: Strength of the land - 1975, Road to the city - 1979, Long poems of the sea - 1994. It seems that only with this long genre can the poetic voice convey many worldly and philosophical issues but not fall into Huu Thinh's philosophy. With his talent, experience and wisdom, he has written excellent long poems. Although to achieve such success is not easy. The poet himself confided about his experience in writing long poems: "Long poems are a long genre. The most difficult thing is how to write thousands of verses so that readers do not get bored. Of course, it is very difficult to demand that every verse is good. Therefore, the writer of long poems must be smart, must know how to structure the work well. The art of writing long poems is like the art of planting shade on the road. When people walk a certain distance and seem tired, you must plant a shade tree there for them to rest and relax. That means the poet must arrange good verses in his work in a way that the reader always finds interesting and attractive" [66].

Huu Thinh's first epic poem was The Endurance of the Earth. The author confided, " I wrote this epic poem after the New Year's Eve of the Year of the Cat 1975, at a tank battalion, the heroic 273rd Tank Brigade. At that time, the battalion was in position to attack and liberate Kon Tum town in the 1975 Central Highlands campaign. I wrote it all through New Year's Eve, the whole day of the first day, and finished it after midnight that night. I copied it in my notebook and it was not until the end of the war.

(April 30, 1975) just opened it up to review and sent to the 1975-1976 poetry contest of the Vietnam Writers Association's Literary Weekly. Fortunately, The Endurance of the Earth and The Night Ferry at the Border were honored to be awarded the A prize of this contest" [66]. Through the above explanation, we see that The Endurance of the Earth was written very quickly. With 5 chapters (no title in each chapter), a total of 530 verses, the longest chapter 2 (251 verses) was written in just one day, one night, and another half night to finish (Of course, later, before publishing the book, he revised and wrote more), but it can also be said that the poetry was already distilled in him like a dam storing water and just waiting to be tapped to flow out. The epic poem The Endurance of the Earth remains in the reader's mind because of the author's own confidences, thoughts, and profound experiences. Huu Thinh wrote about life, the struggle, his homeland, his mother... with a very unique, simple material, close to everyday life.

The epic poem Road to the City was born, truly affirming the author's position and talent in his writing career. After 1975, the General Department of Politics invited anti-American writers to attend a writing training course in Da Lat to focus on composing works conceived during the war. And the epic poem Road to the City was born in 1979 - a work that he spent a lot of time and effort on, as he himself shared : "When writing "Road to the City", I read epic poems by authors such as Nguyen Dinh Thi, Thu Bon, Thanh Thao to reflect on the writing style and structure. I reopened my war diaries to have more materials, to evoke true inspirations about the war. I spent a whole collection of 22 poems written during the war to "insert" into the epic poem. There were poems that I could only "pick" one sentence from that matched the inspiration of the epic poem. For example, the sentence: "Oh river, if we have to go/ Lower yourself so I can carry water"... in "The Road to the City" is taken from another separate poem and inserted." "If some traditional epic poems usually have a plot, the Road to the City will not have a plot.

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