Tradition and innovation in Nguyen Duy's poetry

Cowardice and even death are seen directly, truly and exploited more than anything else. The more clearly the pain is portrayed, the more the heroic and honest image is built. War is a part of the expression of the country.

- in the most painful, but also the most heroic part. The theme of war in Nguyen Duy's poetry is one of the great themes, mainly built from the direct view of the war and the post-war view. Regardless of which view is built, the author always brings readers new and emotional receptions.

First of all, the theme of war is expressed by a direct view of the war. It must be affirmed that the first direct view, Nguyen Duy cannot say anything other than two words: fierce. If Bao Ninh in The Sorrow of War has the obsession of rain and blood, then Nguyen Duy has the obsession of sand, then the white obsession of death. The two poems Obsession of Sand and White Dream were written about war, but were born after the war, as an affirmation of the obsession - the obsessions engraved deeply and persistently in memory. The white sand of Quang Tri - just unintentionally and cruelly swallows the drops of fresh blood, the blood of people who sacrificed for the Fatherland. The sand is still white as if there had not been " Red bombs and bullets of a Quang Tri summer ". Along with the image of sand is the image of a mother " carrying a bald melon " exhausted, gradually withering with time and the pain of losing her child. A paradox that is hard to accept, but must be admitted in the reality of war: " children die young and become martyrs - mothers live old and become ghosts in the world ". Coming to "White Dream ", everything is covered in a hopeless and deadly white: white forest, white cicadas, white reed flowers, white teeth and white bones. The obsession overflows into the dream - a dream with a cold and lonely color... all contribute to expressing the pain of war:

Con Tien white shirt crosses the bridge

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my friend lies under the white Dong Ha

It is the death seen after the war, the death that remains in the feeling, cold and creepy, while the death witnessed during the war evokes a surprise, like a truncated cry, unable to be uttered:

…..Malignant fever with ripening of the skin

The next afternoon my friend passed away Swinging in a hammock with no one around Hanging in the air an unfinished word

“ The hammock without people ” will be an image that haunts the reader’s memory. How many hopes for the love of the innocent and passionate young man were buried with life. Death came quickly and unexpectedly, as if the young man had not yet had time to stop smiling dreamily when thinking of his lover in his hometown. Death had come, even though so many thoughts had not yet been expressed. Sorrow was evoked by death, but more than that, by the young and vibrant youth that was buried. Writing about death is to see the heroic heroism of sacrifices . The cruelty of war is most clearly expressed in death - the physical death of those who fell and the spiritual death of those who survived. The cruelty of war also erodes the youthful beauty of young men and women:

…A few three years, four five years

My sister, seven or eight springs in the old forest, has a high fever and pale skin.

The time when girls go through the forest

The contrast between “mysterious eyes”, “bewildered” and “fair skin” evokes a heart-wrenching regret. War spreads pain hastily, unexpectedly, and gradually eats away at youth, leaving people with only one purpose in life: to live to sacrifice.

Then the image of the sons: "here are the sons - carrying the tender youth to the forest", the youth is like being able to be touched, the youth is easy to touch.

being hurt, can it resist the nostalgia for green or the lack of material and spiritual values? The poem is full of green but also full of nostalgia. The green and the nostalgia blend together so passionately, so painfully. We all understand that the " young and tender" will eventually be "swallowed" by war.

There are not many images of bombs and bullets, but the intensity is just that much.

This:

Smoke filled the Truong Son range, steel fell to the ground, earth fell to the sky, earth crumbled, rocks crumbled.

the abyss fills the low hill

(Sunny)

Nguyen Duy goes into the fierceness of war through death and through his inner life.

human heart. Nothing is more real than human thoughts in war. The soldiers in Nguyen Duy's poems are not forced to hold back their emotions, they are free to express their emotions, from love, nostalgia to dreams, desires and even terrifying obsessions. From the real feelings of people, we see the war appear with all its bright and dark aspects. In war, people avoid talking much about sadness and loss, Nguyen Duy also does not talk much, but does not hide it because it is the inevitable result of the impact of reality on people's hearts:

Drops of memory keep falling

Tears of longing drip with the words of a foreign land. Tears of joy gulp and flow.

After the rain, a drop of sadness falls.

The hasty “drop of joy” has no aftertaste, but leaves behind the epilogue “drop of sadness” – just “one drop” but it wets the whole poem. The sadness is so great.

meaning, the sadness of a person far from home, sadness between the scene and the people, sadness because tomorrow will not be the end of sadness?

That is the sorrow of war of young men and women, bringing all their youth and enthusiasm for victory and the cause of the nation. Young men and women: one is to sacrifice - two is to become people " half a life in Viet Bac, half a life in Truong Son", "half a life in the sun and rain, feet do not rest but have not yet reached home". The burning desire of a person in the war is to return to a peaceful home. But here, Nguyen Duy has expressed the fierce truth of the war: the desire becomes hopeless. The fierceness of war is not only in the rain of bombs and bullets but in the endless prolongation, it drags human life into the war:

Wife and children are still far away

Father is old with a thousand mountains, mother is old with a hundred rivers. Here the wind also goes around.

Winding along the winding mountain slopes in the forest.

The path of the wind is like the journey of a person who has to overcome the twists and turns of the great forest, like a person who has to go through the hardships of war. When he reaches the forest, will the wind still have its original form? However, reading Nguyen Duy's poems, we do not see any sorrowful lamentation, the person silently, silently overcomes and within him burns the desire for peace. That is the strong vitality that creates victory, whether tomorrow he is still in the war or not. People have devoted their last grains of strength, only then can we see the necessity of sacrifice and see the fierceness of the war. War leaves its mark on people's hearts and on the land, everywhere there is pain, there is blood. The land is inanimate but seems to know how to bleed, to writhe in pain "bombs dig red soil, bright red" - this heart-wrenching red color becomes a pink well to pour out a quiet stream of green water. Two images

reality but has become a symbol for the land and people of Vietnam: in pain, people become more beautiful because of human tolerance and "no matter how painful, there is sweetness inside " - that is the hidden vitality, the vitality that no force can destroy or subdue.

Along with the fierceness of the war is the heart of a young man - bearing the shadow of the poet's own youth - with faith and love for life.

The war that Nguyen Duy exploited brought passionate and profound love, it did not have much of the violence of sound, destruction and chaos, that is because Nguyen Duy started from the perspective of nature, phenomenon, sometimes only had additional supporting nature, and the last thing that was affirmed was the thing that belonged to nature - the good values of the homeland and the Vietnamese people. The young man faced all the threats and realities of war. However, the desire to conquer vitality and soul helped them affirm their belief - belief in victory and belief in a peaceful life. In war, the moments of silence were rare and precious moments, more than ever, people began to think about life. Nguyen Duy "captured" these priceless moments. It can be said that: the silence best expressed the chaos of war, thoughts about life most deeply expressed what was lost. See how the “soldiers” enjoy the moonlight - like a boy falling asleep in the yard - carefree and peaceful:

The moon filled the sky

The curved branches let the moondrops fall, stop covering the roof of the temple.

Tonight sleep with the moonlight

Deep within the innocence is the desire to return home to lie under the moon like when he was a child. This moment of escape from reality makes the war seem to calm down, people's hearts seem to be filled with more vitality, sending all their thoughts to the moon. The precious moment turns the soldier into a child, a moment of many secret wishes - only thinking but unable to put into words. The normality of nature (the moon, the stars) becomes a miracle, turning the void of "bombs falling and tearing a hole in an area" into "a green mat", "blooming mustard flowers and eggplants". In the silence, the vitality of youth is overflowing through thoughts of sacrifice and dedication: young people suddenly "age" because of the thought of escaping from privacy, both carrying anxiety, understanding and pride in the people who made the victory.

Peaceful moments are magical moments, sometimes it seems like people are in a time of peace, without any “war”. The world of the soul opens up intact, pure and peaceful as if people have never had to fight. The soul of the warrior here is a soul in harmony, taking advantage of every moment with nature to accumulate thoughts, wishes and memories, sometimes revealing humorous views:

The wind rustles telling stories at night

The crescent moon looks down at the forest, rustling behind the leaves.

See the moon hanging in a hammock halfway up a tree branch

Coincidentally, that's the same as this.

The moon and this hammock reflect each other

The innocent moonlight becomes two images closely associated with the soldier: comrades - battlefield and homeland - love. The moon is beautiful and intimate, making people want to blend into the moon, immerse themselves in the moon.

Nguyen Duy is close to the war because his poems do not express indirectly or distance themselves from any human emotion during wartime. Especially the nostalgia of soldiers. Sometimes the nostalgia flows like a flood that nothing can stop:

Missing you while going up the pass, hearing you is like the wind playing with the forest leaves.

Miss you while crossing the river

Listening to you is the wave swaying my feet. Missing you when I'm leaning against the wall of the cellar.

Hear me whisper the earth shakes

Love accompanies soldiers on the way to battle, in every victory love is also the divine motivation for people to quickly reach the finish line, and it is wrong to want to "imprison" love to focus on fighting, because if there are only gunshots, bomb craters, only blood and death, what will be left in the human soul? Nguyen Duy did not hesitate to express the constant and burning nostalgia of a young man, nostalgia is the expression of a desire to live, of the determination to win to the end and nostalgia is also the belief in a bright future.

The soul of a young man is sometimes quiet to listen to the silence of the people - the country. "Lullaby of comrades" is a lullaby without storks, without fellow rice farmers, but it brings a peaceful world from the sons to the sons. It can be said that this is one of the rare lullabies, because lullabies are the nature of women, but soldiers have sung lullabies to each other with words poured out from their hearts. Lullaby of comrades to see how many obvious things become meaningful:

Heart beats at the wrist

My heart lulls me to sleep

Lullabies are a tolerant heart, filled with love for comrades, love for people. I am also a human being in it, but awake to listen to the emotions that are vibrating in my chest, awake to understand sleep, awake to sing a loving lullaby. And the lullaby itself shows a Vietnamese heart - a kind heart. And above all the quiet moments of war and the quiet moments of people's hearts every time they think about people, about their homeland - country, the poet felt "the heart is calmer... hardships go away" . Perhaps understanding this very ordinary philosophy, in Nguyen Duy's poems about war, most of them are about precious silence. But perhaps, the remaining sound of the war is the most poignant and haunting epilogue. In the post-war poems, the pain seems deeper, the loss seems irreplaceable. The pain of post-war is not only the pain left by war but also the pain of alienation and loneliness of people during wartime in an era of peace. It seems that the war at this time has a relative distance from the era, a distance that contains a more thorough and sharp view, so even in peacetime, the pain that has been suppressed for so long suddenly rises up and the more the pain is described, the more truthfully the war is revealed.

The sound of geckos is not strange, but in today's peaceful times, peaceful times illuminated by anxiety, it seems like the echo of the soul of the country. The familiar sound of geckos in a moment suddenly seems like a key turned, opening the door to the past. How many old desires and longings seem to come back to life, the sound of geckos accidentally becomes a prophet answering the heart of "restless nights". It is a word of encouragement, also the aspiration of the soldier. Truong Son returns in a heartbreaking nostalgia with "deep mountains", with: tunnels, tanks, hammocks, with: malaria fever, yellow forests, mosquitoes, leeches, bombs, mines, deep ravines, slippery passes... But what moves people's hearts is the question "

Tradition and innovation in Nguyen Duy's poetry - 6

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