Che Lan Vien, who are you?
One of Vietnam’s leading poets of the 20th century. That opinion has long received the consensus of many people, there is nothing to discuss.
Over the first two decades of the 21st century, there have been many more domestic or living literary criticism researchers. Doctoral students abroad are interested in learning about and almost all praise Che Lan Vien’s poetry. So he has overcome the harshness of time and we can safely eliminate the three words “twentieth century”.
Che Lan Vien is one of Vietnam’s leading poets from the from past to present.
Who are you Che Lan Vien?
A prose writer with a unique style Many people have praised Che Lan Vien’s philosophical memoirs.
I think Che Lan Vien does not always intend to discuss philosophy, and not only literary genres such as essay and miscellaneous essays. writing… even to reportage articles made according to the orders of newspapers or when it is necessary to answer an interview on a current topic, that is, journalism work, one hundred percent of his expression, even when it is hot in the moment, is still cold. Silver’s thoughts make readers think of far-off things.
< p>Che’s prose style is based on two foundations: the genetic inheritance that has become a tradition and the constant energy to strive for better and better things. The foreground creates an environment that the background nourishes and enhances; Looking from another perspective, it can be said that it is the result of the process of reading, learning, contemplating, and practicing without stopping.
The philosophical quality in Che Lan Vien’s writing, which is pervasive in all genres, is the crystallization of Creative minds with a thirst for knowledge constantly enrich their knowledge, thereby finding their own path when they need to please the public – from big events to small things in everyday life “arguments in the family and in the US Congress, explosions on the street and explosions in the sun” (CLV 1988), thereby creating for himself a style that is difficult to confuse with anyone.
For Che Lan Vien reads and learns. “Read to see your weaknesses”. From the aggressive days on the battlefield to the lonely nights in foreign hospitals where “he was afraid of being alone at night” Che Lan Vien never stopped read books and meditate.< /p>
He once confided in me through a letter written in 1957 from that hospital: “… To avoid wasting time, Hoan still writes and studies… The more Pablo Neruda reads, the more like… If Neruda reflects the external struggle, then (Paul) Eluard reflects the internal struggle… Do Phu is humanistic, highly realistic… Hoan reads books but tries not to let Books obscure life. Hoan read and thought more (about what he just read). In reality, if you only rely on your eyes and ears to voir (see) without savoir (to know), then writing will be pink or black… Hoan does not like writers who write works like ants crawling up a pillar; Of course, Hoan also doesn’t like ants that don’t crawl and raise their leg and ask which leg it is… Hoan likes writers who always ask questions about life and art, always ask themselves and answer their questions to help others. and answer for others…“.
Who are you Che Lan Vien?
Is the writer a metaphysical symbolist…? Yes and no.
The metaphysical philosophical quality in Che Lan Vien’s prose is shown in some but not all articles in the collection Golden Stars (Tan Viet Publishing House 1942 ) and especially in the article Ant (Inter-Regional Creativity Magazine IV 1948).
The Golden Star volume that the author recorded as “Magazine literature 1937-1942” only has The eight articles are about 50 pages long, including some about beautiful memories of adolescence. It was almost New Year’s Eve when his father – “a very old man” – waited for his son to come out with him to celebrate the New Year’s blessing ceremony and his mother “sadly leaned down next to her” to wake her son up.
Afraid that her son would run away to the yard, she lit twenty-eight candles. “Once again, the mother was sweet: The basin for washing her face was here, then she rinsed it with salt to brighten her eyes. Mouthwash was also prepared for the other child. Then mom gave me some new clothes. The ironing line (is) is so straight that I hesitate and wonder how I will open it?”. After those memories, the 17-year-old boy wondered: “Someone try to explain to me why there are still falling stars in the middle of the sweet morning of spring… Countless sad thoughts flow down the stream of countless stars.”
Reading the letter he sent me in 1957, I thoughtfully wondered: What “ant” is that? Is that an ant? In the summer of 1948, when I had just come from the enemy zone behind Binh Tri Thien to Thanh Hoa and then took a job at the National Salvation newspaper, Che Lan Vien brought the magazine issue that had just finished being printed and opened the page with the article ” “Ant” told me to read it.
I read the article carefully but didn’t understand what he wanted to say and didn’t like it at all so I quietly gave him back the magazine. Is it the “ant raising its leg and asking” that the poet will mention ten years later in his letter to his friend?
Che Lan Vien was born into a family. The family is steeped in spiritual life like most Vietnamese families in the past, considering ancestor worship and worshiping the gods as a need and obligation in earthly life.
Adolescents Mr. Hoan lived in a devout Buddhist family, and every night his father sat in front of the altar and prayed to the Buddha Tathagata. Next, his mother, after finishing the day’s housework, went to the altar to knock on the wood and recite the sutras by heart. because she doesn’t know how to read. On occasion Tet traditional family His family again set up an altar to “offer stars to relieve the drought”. But throughout the five days, every day, more regularly, more majestically, more majestically, at dawn and before everyone goes to bed, the bell of a Catholic church somewhere nearby is loudly ringing, reminding the sheep to pray. pray to God and the Virgin Mother to forgive his sins.
When the boy grew up walking alone at night in Binh Dinh city, vaguely looking at the Cham Towers in the distance, he met her again. Eyes wide open on the ancient tower:
Dear lady…
Why don’t you look at the distant horizon
Remember how much I regretted our Cham country.
(CLV Ruins 1937)
That spiritual environment made the young man exclaim: “Shakya! Jesus! Kong Qiu! Lao Tzu! I all sincerely bow my head before their magical majesty” (ClV Vang Sao 1942).
On the other hand, in less than eight years after the success of “Dieu” “Death” in 1937 to the day before the August Revolution 1945, the most successful were the days when he left Quy Nhon to go to Saigon to work as a journalist or go to Hanoi to study more. The poet met and fell in love with the old schools of metaphysical symbolism (< em>dadaisme) and many other ismes appeared one after another as fashion to the French, but few people even bothered to remember them after a while.
However, both the three and four Eastern teachings as well as the Western surrealist and metaphysical symbolic doctrines still could not relieve the boy’s feelings:
“Since before When the revolution came, I went to the land of metaphysics. Quite a distance.”
However, that only stood out for a while.
Looking back at his entire prose career, Golden Stars The Ant, the philosophical prose he has published before and after is only about 60-70 pages, compared to nearly 3,000 pages. Prose in The Complete Works of Che Lan Vien[1]!
That was a heavy obstacle that made his life and career
Go fast but return slowly
How many hardships
(CLV 1961)
Che Lan Vien is not a person who takes his spiritual life too seriously, he always criticizes it. Superstitious customs hate those who use religion to do bad things. His thoughts were expressed through poems in the form of sketches of poetic ideas from the bottom of his heart.
On December 21, 1985, the Writers’ Association held a ceremony to send poet Xuan Dieu back to heaven. extremely. Touched by Ha Xuan Truong’s lament next to Xuan Dieu’s coffin: “…Your hair that loves to wash with the wind, your forehead that loves to collide with the sky of hundreds of thousands of countryside, why do you stop now? A large tree lies down in the empty sky. Oh Dieu! Do you still hear it, brother, do you see it?” Che Lan Vien also exclaimed, but only she said to herself:
Dieu goes first, then we continue
Dieu is in the poem, right? Where is the coffin
(CLV 1985)
Writer Vu Thi Thuong, Che Lan Vien’s life partner, had the opportunity to tell the story through a letter to the writer. Here are two stories: “The first story: in 1979, my uncle passed away and we came to pay our respects. When the monk started to knock on the bell and chant the sutras, everyone sat down and respectfully clasped their hands and bowed their heads. I was about to sit down as well, but he grabbed my hand to stop me. I stood like that for more than half an hour, my legs were tired, and I remembered later. I still feel like I was “too lefty” at that time. But he loves my uncle very much, no wonder! The second story: in the late 1980s, every time I came home from Hanoi for meetings, I was often fed up with telling stories about superstitious worship and promiscuity, but in those years it was nothing compared to the stories “selling gods in the name of spirituality.” “holy” now!”.
They kill religion but create gods
Or kill gods and create religion
From time to time, they change gods
Like people change money
He often changes lovers and ties…
(CLV 1988)
During the last days preparing to go away, he confided:
< p>I pack up my body like a person about to return to his old hometown
I don’t need anything else
This much enough
This much love, this much anger
This much flower, this much storm
Go in peace…
Namo Amitabha God Amen!
(CLV 1988)
But that is poetry, not philosophical prose!
Who are you, Che Lan Vien?
As an active journalist who has spent nearly all his writing life with the “humble yet noble old profession and is my main profession in the past. anti-Frenchperiod” (CLV 1988). He is the teacher who guided the writer of this article into journalism, “the ungrateful profession that we are very loyal to” and working as a journalist every day is “as hard as raising children.” He cried and disturbed him and asked for food“.
He taught me shortly after peace was restored in half of the country to be passionate about journalism but to know how to harmonize interactions. between journalism and literature; I should enthusiastically go on field trips to far away places and not lock myself in Hanoi no matter how attractive Hanoi is.
At that time, I was in my “twenties” and raised a lot of people. He had so many literary fantasies that at one point he thought about breaking up with the newspaper guy and returning to her. The writer he shared with his friend through a letter was written in the form of a confession to himself: “… Hoan is as afraid of journalism as a flood. All creative work is flooded, but if it is a level of water that soaks the feet of the rice plant to keep us engaged in great tasks that help us stay close to the common movement of joy, sadness, and suffering, then it is not harmful but beneficial to the literary profession…< /em>” (CLV 1957).
Many years later, responding to a letter from a reader of Van Nghe newspaper, the author of “Light and Silt” through the pen name Chang Van summarized: “Article different from the essay. The way journalists work is also different from writers. But a journalist can also be a writer; moreover, a writer should also be a journalist” (CLV 1962).
Towards the end of his life, when his health deteriorated and he realized that he had little time left, Che Lan Vien tried to overwork and wrote many political articles. In-depth research essay on Han Mac Tu Bich Khe To Huu Doan Gioi… was busy giving interviews to the press but still did not forget his friend and student from forty years ago.
When I Reaching the milestone of “getting old” at the age of sixty and he only had two more years to go before it was “rare in the past”, he personally chose to edit from A to Z the collection “People and Land” (Thuan Hoa Publishing House). 1998) celebrates Phan Quang’s 40th year as a writer. After writing a few introductions to the book, he sent them to me with a private letter showing me his weaknesses. He quotes Babel: “I kill adjectives like bedbugs!”.
God! I’m sixty years old, I travel a lot and read everything, read everything at any time, but I’ve never heard the sound of Babel. Who is Babel? It turned out that he was a once famous writer in Russia and Ukraine. Before this person was born, by the time I grew up, due to internal conflicts in the Soviet Union, he had already been executed![2] Since then, Babel has hardly been mentioned in Soviet literature except in a few Western countries!< /p>
Che Lan Vien once summarized the relationship between journalism and poetry: “In the past, when I wrote poetry, I inhaled the incense of the treetops. Now when I work as a journalist, I have to taste the roots under the ground. And thanks to the dry journalism career during the anti-French period, during the anti-American period, I was able to write poetry even more than that and quite abundantly“.
Che Lan Vien Who are you?
One of the cultural messengers of contemporary Vietnam after several wars when the enemy found all kinds of ways to defame the human regime. people and spiritual life in our country. Che Lan Vien has been sent as an “envoy” many times to attend important international conferences.
An envoy is the person who carries the bell to punch the country, the emissary can also just sit in Vietnam but you International friends who come here and want to deeply understand this country still try to meet them, even if just to chat for a few hours. Xuan Thuy Nguyen Khac Vien Nguyen Dinh Thi Che Lan Vien Hoang Tung Tran Bach Dang Huu Ngoc… who else can you tell me about?
Once I received a short letter with hastily handwritten letters. Che’s note informed me that he was going to attend an international conference in India but had not yet made a speech, had not written a speech, had not borrowed clothes, but would stop by the house to visit me for a while. He told him not to tell anyone that he was in Hanoi so that his friends wouldn’t blame him for not coming to visit him. Wait until he returns from the meeting so they can talk freely. The reason he came to visit was to give me a new book and to “find out a little information” about our country’s official stance on some sensitive current issues to feel more secure when talking. with friends from all over the world – at that time I worked in the field of foreign information.
At the memorial service for him held in Hanoi at the same time as the ceremony to send him off to infinity in Thanh Hoa. In Ho Chi Minh City, after the eulogy of writer Nguyen Dinh Thi, poet To Huu read the short poem he had just written. Veteran revolutionary Nguyen Minh Vy (Ton That Minh Vy) continued to say a few farewell words.
< p>He called Che Lan Vien “Mr. Hoan”, a student studying French with “teacher Vy” in Quy Nhon back in the day when the teacher had just gotten out of prison and the student was in high school. Teacher Vy, Uncle Hoan and a few other famous poets, all older than the author of “Ruins”, founded “Thai Duong Van Doan” to publish masterpieces.
Nguyen Minh Vy said: In one When he and Che Lan Vien and a number of famous intellectuals of our country went abroad, the delegation was led by cultural minister Hoang Minh Giam and deputy director of the Central Propaganda Department Vy, but when he met philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, the bright star of 20th century France, everyone left “Uncle Hoan” alone to converse with the famous cultural figure throughout the West.
Jean Paul Sartre was once enthusiastic. Support and fight for our people’s fight against America to save the country. Once when he met our delegation visiting France, he hugged and kissed our Vietnamese friends and asked: “Why don’t you call me comrade?”
And yet, after April 1975, when Vietnam United must face countless difficulties in the post-war period in the context of a strict blockade by the US. The erudite philosopher must have been influenced by anti-Vietnam propaganda and seem to doubt the path our country is taking. Still pessimistic about the global situation. He had a sentence that caused international controversy: “Hell is other people” (L’enfer c’est les autres).
In that context, the National Conference International writers meeting in 1964 in the capital of the country Bulgarian Rose discussed the topic “Literature of despair or hope” Che Lan Vien, on behalf of our Writers’ Union, gave a speech at the The session ended at the Conference.
Going to the forum, he immediately entered the topic without greeting:
“Literature of despair or hope?
Putting such a question up for discussion means we have already seen the answer. For millions of years, humanity has survived thanks to hope and not despair. European mythology tells the story of a phoenix that was burned to ashes and then rose again from those ashes. In Vietnam, the miracle was not performed with a surreal bird but with a very ordinary animal, a chicken (…)
And he continued reading through the French translation of the full text of the article. familiar folk songs of the hometown of Quang Tri from the poignant opening line: “January, February, March, April, miserable months/ Going for a loan” to the light-hearted ending: “ Don’t complain about anyone else’s difficult fate/ As long as your skin and hair grow and buds sprout.
“ Dear friends, the song I heard when I was a child is a poem of not despair, but That hope to the end has helped us a lot during difficult times. In each of our own lives, in the lives of peoples, in the lives of this entire planet, how can there not be eggs with that fate? We throw these rotten eggs away. We can use the other fruits that are still good when we boil them…”
Here we see Che Lan Vien’s talent as a messenger: “…The other fruits are incubated and hatched. But it didn’t hatch into a chicken, but into a phoenix. Strange! That is the case in Bulgaria where we are meeting. Five hundred years under the Turkish yoke, that country revived again. That is neighboring Cambodia and our peninsular brothers…
Hell is not someone else
Hell Prison is Bomb.”
Who are you, Che Lan Vien?
Are you a human being? love for friendship, especially with the class of poets who are younger than him in age. He has enough talent to share with friends about his experience in writing poetry, writing, and journalism, which comes from a profound knowledge base due to regularly working hard to listen, learn, and update things related to culture as mentioned. The above, combined with the ability to present attractive arguments that few can compare, all originate from a pure mind.
Che’s poem “The One Who Changed My Life The One Who Changed My Poetry” includes 14 verses. Each poem has four verses, which he presented live via the Voice of Vietnam to radio listeners nationwide. The final draft – not a rough draft – of those 76 verses was copied and revised by the author and put in brackets. Filling a stack of lined paper intended for students, exactly 80 pages thick!
In early 1967, before leaving for the battlefield, two poets Bui Minh Quoc and Tran Phuong Tra visited Che Lan Vienna. He spent the whole morning chatting with the two of you. What worries him the most right now is that the book of poems “Flowers on weekdays, birds that warn of storms” is being printed and there is no book to give to his friends before they leave.
Poet Tran Phuong Tra (Tran Nguyen Van) recounted: The day he put his backpack on his shoulder and was about to depart, he received that book of poems along with the author’s handwriting: “Dear to Tran Nguyen Van. The book doesn’t have a cover yet. It’s hard to imagine the cover. Wishing Van a safe and healthy journey and write more…”. It turned out that Che Lan Vien had gone to the printing house to ask for a few unbound books in advance to bring to the Central Unification Committee, saying it would be difficult to get them to the two young men in a timely manner before the day they left!
Who are you Che Lan Vien?
In everyday life when Che Lan Vien was still alive, there seemed to be people who I don’t like him very much, in my opinion, partly because he has “artist blood”. If he likes someone, he likes them a little too much. If he doesn’t like anyone, his words are one level too harsh. Every time we argue, the words he pours out are as sharp as a knife without any respect. Because of that, it is easy to offend the interlocutor. He is a sensitive person who is easily moved by everyday things, gets angry and sheds tears, and is essentially a kind-hearted person.
Che Lan Vien’s attitude towards Pham Duy is one of example. At the end of 1949, poets and musicians from the free zone of Inter-Region IV entered the Binh Tri Thien battlefield. Forty years later, at an intimate conversation where we met many old and new friends in Hue city, there were people who were originally “on this side” and some “on that side,” Che Lan Vien exclaimed:
“Things change, stars move. Bamboo leaves cover the face of the field (Han Mac Tu). There are no bamboo bushes left on the old Hue roads! Even if we fly to all four directions and the leaves fall, we return to our roots…
“If we return to our roots, we will not lose anything? Yes. A Pham Duy! We are so sorry. But how can we! You left us, but we didn’t leave you. In 1979, I (CLV) was in Brussels, Belgium. That night, 800 meters away from my place, Duy’s group (singers) performed and cursed at us. I only know how to text Duy (a few sentences)…
“Yes, it’s just the case of Mr. Pham Duy who doesn’t need roots. But it seems that most of the fallen leaves return to their roots and grow into roots. But we still wait for Mr. Duy. A person with talent like you cannot help but return to his roots!” (CLV 1987).
As we all know, musician Pham Duy eventually returned to his roots and lived the last days of his life at his roots to forever go away from his roots.
< strong>Who are you Che Lan Vien?
A very Vietnamese person! He has all the virtues and weaknesses, and the habits and lifestyle that are not so good among the majority of us Vietnamese people, he lives peacefully and frugally for himself and for the sake of resilient and kind people.
During the resistance war against the French, to get through the unusually cold winter of 1948 in the mountains of Thanh province, during the day he took a few newspapers and stuffed them between his trench coat and the shirt he wore, and at night he rested on the bed. The bamboo bed has a thick file of newspaper under the mat. When I stopped by to visit, he smiled wryly: “We work day and night without leaving the newspaper, holding a stack of newspapers in our arms at night, sleeping with newspapers in bed.”
In the time of fighting against America to save the country:
p>
Here we line up
First person
Next person < /p>
We follow each other
Buy meat
The sky in the capital is very blue < /em>
Our planes are chasing the enemy overhead
(CLV 1984)
Until the country is one strip Every citizen had to brace themselves to overcome the difficulties caused by the war, leaving his family to live a pure life. When I went on a business trip to the Central Highlands, people gave me a bottle of wild honey to bring back to the city to give to Mr. Che. Che was visibly happy, but when someone offered to give me a tael of gold, he firmly refused…
Che Lan Vien is such a person, a very human Vietnamese person with the richest connotations.
1. Not counting the simple but excellent articles that have not been included in this entire volume. Literature 2002- 2009.
2. Full name is Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (1894-1940), journalist, playwright, literary translator, historian of Jewish origin who wrote in Russian.
Phan Quang
Hanoi 2020
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