determined by the context of social life, by the mental and ideological states of the era in which the writers live. The writer's view of social reality is always a dynamic view along with the writer's mental movements.
Literature is ultimately a reflection of life, a “way of living with reality” because “the soul of literature is human life”. The problem is that life is refracted through the lens of the writer, the result of the process of accumulation, experience of life, the consequence of collisions in the writer’s spiritual and ideological life in a specific cultural and social context. Literature in the post-war years entered a new trajectory, with the formation of a new writing team alongside the generation of writers who had gone through the war - they wrote about the reality of yesterday and today from the perspective of the present. The view of contemporary social reality of today’s writers is expressed in the fact that realism is closely linked to analysis, explanation, and contemplation of life.
Realism is an important style for writers in the process of developing and expressing their ideas. However, it is necessary to see that the concept of realism in literature in the previous period and the current period is different. Previously, in revolutionary literature, realism was the basic principle and realism here could not deviate from the "magnetic field" as well as the directional influence. In the current period, encouraged by the democratic spirit in life and in literature, the need to speak frankly and truthfully, writers have turned to approaching life in its diversity and complexity.
After the war, many writers realized that they had to change their writing style. In other words, literary innovation was the writer's own need. The change in life status and the creative subject's sense of innovation led to breakthroughs in the approach and handling of realistic materials. In contemporary art, many new art forms appeared such as installation art, performance art, and physical theater with the use of different art materials from the traditional as a way to find the adaptability of art forms to the impact of social life and the media. Literature, specifically writers, also had a way to approach life from their own personal perspectives.
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Originating from the awareness of changing writing inertia and renewing literary thinking, short stories in the renovation period have had a rather prominent tendency, which is the tendency to re-perceive the past. After the war, the need to speak frankly and truthfully has become necessary and this is encouraged by the democratic spirit of life. In the creative sense of writers at this time, there was a consciousness of re-examining historical issues, or looking at reality from a new perspective. Many issues that were previously left open or avoided have now returned. It can be said that within just a decade of the early renovation period, works of many literary genres have continuously appeared, creating different voices and tones. First were the works of reportage about contemporary social life, then novels and the blossoming of short stories with a series of works that went into historical issues that were previously left open.
Unlike the previous period, reality was often approached from a one-sided perspective, revolutionary romantic inspiration and epic inspiration always dominated writers during the thirty years of war, the great issues of national destiny became the concern of most writers at that time. That reality did not allow writers to delve into personal fate, if anything, human happiness was always linked to the interests of the nation and the times. In the years after the war, short stories increasingly approached the reality of life. A new perspective on people was opened. Ideal characters became rarer. Most of the short stories that were well received by readers and received positive feedback from readers exploited topics that have not been mentioned or thoroughly recognized in literature for a long time: The School Drummer (Ma Van Khang), The Retired General (Nguyen Huy Thiep) , Two Women in the Village ( Nguyen Quang Thieu) , The Most Beautiful Sister in the Village (Ta Duy Anh) , The Village School Hero (Ta Nguyen Tho), The Remnants of the Laughing Forest (Vo Thi Hao) , They Have Become Men (Pham Ngoc Tien) , Reed Grass (Nguyen Minh Chau), A Letter to Mother Au Co, An Autobiography (Y Ban), etc. These are typical works of the trend of re-awareness of the past, expressing a new perspective on the reality of yesterday and today.
Realism according to the new artistic principles is also the way the writer resets the concept of reality: not only stopping at surface reality but also reality.
rationality, intuitive reality, illusion, the reality of “boundless imagination”. So how should writers use language and forms of expression to describe that diverse reality? Pham Thi Hoai is one of the writers who soon showed changes in artistic style through the exploitation of reality in depth, the reality of human life inside. Bao Ninh’s short stories are basically still traditional writing, but many of his works still attract readers because with life experiences, artistic experiences, the writer has the ability to recreate a haunting, tormenting reality in short stories ( Wild Wind, Carving the Boat’s Mark ).
The reality of war and soldiers, which was a main theme of literature in the past, has now returned with new approaches, not only for writers who have experienced war but also for young writers, the generation born and raised after the war. If in the past, war was often exploited on the surface level, now writers go into the inner life of the human soul. No war is without loss and pain. However, in the past, during the years when the country was still at war, writers rarely had the opportunity to mention these issues. Reading Thanh minh troi thanh sang (Ma Van Khang), Nguoi to lo cua rung cuoi (Vo Thi Hao), Ben tran gian (Luu Son Minh), Nui doi (Bui Thi Nhu Lan), ... it can be seen that the author's pen has touched the depths of spiritual life, the life of human essence. The writer character in the short storyMoonlight in the Small Yard (Ma Van Khang) once had the concept: "Literature is a story about life through digging into one's own being in the depths of the soul, not skimming off the foam floating on the surface of external objects". With the same concept, the character in Thanh minh troi trong sang sought liberation in the spiritual world to ease the pain and loss. The son in the short story saw in the incense smoke the spirit of his father who had sacrificed himself on the front line. Although both were writing about war, the reality in works written on this topic before and after 1975 was expressed differently. After 1975, short stories written about war gradually lost their epic tone and had new tones from the deep tone in Co lau (Nguyen Minh
Chau), They have become men (Pham Ngoc Tien) to the sorrowful voice in Xua xua chi dep nhat lang (Ta Duy Anh) , Nguoi lo ruoc cua rung cuoi (Vo Thi Hao) , Mot vuon xua hoang deserted (Do Chu),... Writing about war, authors often delve into exploring human fate from a post-war perspective, about the pain of people caused by war. The writers prove the fact that war has no exceptions and tragedy can come to anyone (whether it is soldiers facing the enemy on the front lines or wives and mothers in the rear). If with The Remnant of the Laughing Forest , Vo Thi Hao used the fate of women who came and went from the war to portray the losses that women had to bear, then with That Now I Understand (Y Ban), The Ghost (Ly Lan), the authors delved into the tragedy of women when the war ended, when their husbands were forever on the battlefield. A truth that is always mentioned in works written about war is the mental loss of women because of the irreplaceable loneliness when their men never returned.
Writing about the issues of the past, of history in the spirit of re-awareness of reality is a reality that has been raised by many writers, even by writers who lived and wrote both during and after the war (Nguyen Khai, Nguyen Minh Chau, Do Chu). There was a different perspective in Do Chu - the writer who is considered to "lean towards exploiting the beauty in life" in the story collection The Deserted Old Garden compared to previous short stories. Do Chu was not a writer who had a fiercely critical view from the beginning, but it can be considered that The Deserted Old Garden is a story collection that marks a change. Here, Do Chu has focused on the tragedy of the soldier after leaving the battlefield. With the character Hoang Tru ( The Deserted Old Garden ), in the end, war and the rigid mechanisms of a time are the reasons why his life became a "maze" - an abnormal person among his fellow human beings with memories of the battlefield always deeply imprinted in his mind. The writer did not hesitate to bring to the page the reality of that not-so-distant time, where the rigid concepts of a group of people had harmed many lives and many people. They had invisibly become victims of rigid behavior and the way of evaluating people.
One-sided people who follow componentism. There they can no longer be themselves and always have to live in fear of being watched, "everyone consciously withdraws into themselves", "to the point that when they are sick and tired and have a headache, they do not dare to lie down, they still have to pretend that they are very healthy, very energetic, every night in meetings and activities, they crane their necks to sing, raise their hands high to clap, sing like everyone else, clap like everyone else" ( The Labyrinth ).
Recreating reality with new perspectives and writing styles has become a creative reality and also a need for innovation for writers in the new context. In the spirit of re-awareness of reality, many writers have not hesitated to put on the page issues considered sensitive, and many of such works have become the focus of debates (surrounding the issue of truth and fiction, the boundary between historical truth and reality in literary works). Up to this point, many debates have not been completed (the most recent is the Workshop "Literary creation on historical themes organized by the Central Council of Literature and Art Theory"). In our opinion, we cannot demand that literary works illustrate history, but history can be considered a reason and writers can create works with reasoning in the spirit of expressing human issues with noble humanistic meanings.
The role of realism in the creative process of a writer cannot be denied, however, realism always has two sides. If the writer abuses it, or does not apply it skillfully, the work will inevitably recreate reality in a dry and unaesthetic way. Besides, to achieve artistic effectiveness as well as positive effects on the recipient, the writer must diversify and combine many narrative styles in the writing process and the reality in the work is a reality that has been distilled, pondered and recreated.
2.2.4.2. Legendary writing style
Observing the flow of short stories from the renovation period, it can be seen that one of the narrative forms used by many writers is the legendary writing style. It is not by chance that recently there have been many research works on the literary genre.
The study of fantasy in post-1975 prose in general and short stories in particular. This shows the reality of the existence of a narrative form in which the fantasy element plays a role as a narrative method, dominating the way of building characters and plots, the way of creating details and situations. The mythical style was present in literature before, however, after a period of almost absence, it was not until the years after the war, especially since the renovation period, that the fantasy element reappeared, enriching the approaches to reality. There are many paths leading to the reappearance of the mythical style. In addition to the continuation of the mythical capital (fairy tales, myths, ...) in folk literature and written literature, there is the reception and influence of world fantasy literature, from the writer's awareness of renewing the writing style. The legendary writing style is used in many short stories by writers Vo Thi Hao, Ngo Van Phu, Pham Hai Van, Nguyen Huy Thiep, Hoa Vang, Pham Thi Hoai, Ly Lan, Nguyen Thi Am, Y Ban, Ngo Tu Lap, Luu Son Minh,... With the use of artistic forms such as fairytale and myth; the writers have a suitable way to recreate reality to bring readers new realistic spaces. The magical technique used by the authors is sometimes based on the foundation of fairytales, legends, and myths in the past ( Truong Chi, The winds of Hua Tat - Nguyen Huy Thiep, The story of a beautiful day
– Hoa Vang, Giong – Le Minh Ha) and in which the reality of life does not always follow the logic of cause and effect; sometimes it is the use of magical situational details ( The Tailor – Pham Hai Van, The Soldier Tony D – Le Minh Khue, Nguyet Cam – Nguyen Thi Am) with the interweaving of virtual and real elements, using the motif of reincarnation. The “original” nature of legends and fairy tales is no longer there but has been refracted through the writer’s lens. The legendary style is used in creating the atmosphere, legendary space, magical elements, building the structure, characters of short stories, through language and symbolic systems, etc. The characters in many short stories by Vo Thi Hao have the sound of legends and fairy tales: The Pale Fairy, The Luggage of the Au Lac Woman, The Night of the Ghost Butterfly, etc. Many short stories have a structure that interweaves reality and fantasy. Rather than returning to the distant past, the legendary element here is seen as a tool to vividly and effectively recreate life.
living contemporary people. If Nguyen Huy Thiep borrowed the form of ancient stories ( Truong Chi, Nhung don gio Hua tat ) to build works with the breath of contemporary life, Luu Son Minh, Pham Hai Van, Vo Thi Hao and many other authors used the form of mythification to open up a "new space of perception" for readers. The continuity, association with blurred lines, the interweaving of fantasy and reality, the movement of the narrative flow that sometimes "does not follow the rules of thinking and reason" has stimulated the reader's ability to explore as the receiving subject.
The use of legendary writing style has appeared a lot in literature in recent decades due to the fact that although advances in science and technology have helped people to be able to explain many problems of life, not every field can find the ultimate mysteries. Therefore, discovering the hidden parts of people, in spiritual life is a problem for many writers. Here, it is not about following tastes, although with elusive categories like the spiritual world, people are always interested in learning, but it is in the inner consciousness of the creative subject, in the consciousness of "breaking away from the inertia of writing", expanding the boundaries of reality.
By using the legendary writing style, short story writers of this period showed innovations in narrative techniques: from realism that focuses on "reality" to the use of fantasy elements as a technique that relies on the polysemy of images to convey ideas and increase the range of perception for readers. Short story writers have taken advantage of this technique in exploring and expressing the multidimensional world of life. It is also necessary to add that the fantasy technique is not an exclusive narrative method of short stories, but in other genres of artistic prose, fantasy has also become a characteristic in narrative art such as the novels of Nguyen Khac Truong ( The Land of Many People and Many Ghosts ), Nguyen Viet Ha ( The Opportunity of God ), Chu Lai ( Begging the Past ), Bao Ninh ( The Sorrow of War ), Ta Duy Anh ( The Repentant Angel ), Chau Dien ( The Man of the River Me ), Nguyen Binh Phuong ( The Beginning of the Beginning, Memory Decay ), Ho Anh
Thai ( The human world rings the apocalypse bell, In the pink mist appears ), Dao Thang ( The sugarcane river )... The use of legendary writing style in the works of this period shows a break from the traditional narrative model with changes in the way of telling and narrating, giving readers new approaches. That shows an effort to erase the narrative distance, erase the limits of the normal and the different, and overcome the traditional view of reality.
2.2.4.3. Stream of consciousness narrative
With the consciousness of expressing the multidimensional world of reality and exploring the mysterious depths of humanity, writers are forced to innovate in their writing style, aiming to "break the form, find a new artistic voice that can contain new artistic content". During the war years, due to the requirement of reflecting and conveying reality, closely following life events, writers often tend to express the real world in relation to social life. There, characters are often reflected from the level of citizens, people with community consciousness. In the period of renovation, with the expansion of the levels of discovery, the change in the concept of reality, writers often perceive people in many forms: both conscious and unconscious people, individual people with complex human, psychological and personality characteristics. Previously, reality in works was often perceived through the sense of "grand narrative", but in recent decades, writers tend to exploit "small narratives". With that approach to life reality, a work developed by the movement of the axis of events in the plot has proven to be no longer reasonable; the stream of consciousness technique used by the authors allows the writer to delve into the inner life of the person, expressing the world of life in depth, expressing the inner world of the person: "from the external to the internal". Along with the shift in artistic perspective is the change in narrative voice. In short stories, the writer has created a blend of many streams of consciousness by flexibly using the narrative voice. In the world, stream of consciousness has at times become a "literary creative trend" and has had typical representatives such as Marcel Proust (with In Search of Lost Time ), James Joyce (with Ulysses ). In Vietnam, before the period