The Twentieth Century
[In the following essay, which is a revised version of an essay originally published in French in 1969, Durand and Huan outline the history of Vietnamese literature.]
It is no exaggeration to say that in the period 1900–1975 Vietnamese literature reached heights unequalled in all its history. This flowering was no doubt due to a combination of factors—political, economic and social; but the most important single cause was the introduction of quoc-ngu (the system of writing literary and colloquial Vietnamese in the Roman alphabet). It slowly but surely superseded the nôm system of transliteration in Chinese characters, which had always been cumbrous to use—indeed, it was not officially recognized by the majority of emperors. But if quoc-ngu ushered in a new era in Vietnamese literature, it is because politically the situation was opportune. The French had only recently established themselves in Vietnam (1862, for most historians, marks the end of Vietnamese independence and the beginning of the colonial period); and with the French occupation of the whole of Indochina Western civilization burst with shattering impact into a world long closed to it. The conflict between the two cultures, Chinese and French, was soon to come out into the open and have unforeseen repercussions on literature and politics. Vietnamese literature had acquired respectability in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the introduction of quoc-ngu was to prove a powerful rejuvenating force and trigger off a brilliant revival which has lasted to the present day.
Thus 1862 and the establishment of the French presence in Indochina mark the beginning of the modern period in Vietnamese literature. During the century that followed it made good, if sometimes erratic, progress. Poetry and the novel alternated as the dominant art form, depending on the political situation and various social upheavals; for the period in question covers two world wars, the fall of the Nguyen dynasty, the abdication of the emperor Bao-Dai, the August 1945 revolution, the first and second Indochina wars, and the 1954 Geneva agreements. Under the latter the country was split into two halves, North and South—a repetition of the situation in the eighteenth century, but in far more tragic circumstances—and it was not until 1975 that the two halves were reunited.
The development of Vietnamese literature and the changes in both form and content which it underwent during this hundred-odd years represent salient features in the transformation of Southeast Asia. With quoc-ngu as its medium, it made a great leap forward: not only were long-stagnant forms revitalized but new ones came into being under the stimulus of the West, such as journalism, the documentary, the realist novel, and literary criticism.
This hundred-odd years (1862–1975) may be subdivided into ten main periods on the strength of historical landmarks and certain seminal publications—by no means the only possible classification, but a convenient one for practical purposes. The beginning and end of the period are not mere random dates. The year 1862 marks the loss of the country's independence, the discrediting of the absolute rule of the Nguyen, and the retreat of the Vietnamese, as of most other Asian peoples, before Western materialism and mechanization. The year 1975 marks the reunification of the country and the withdrawal of all foreign forces.
SYNOPTIC TABLE OF MODERN VIETNAMESE LITERATURE
First period (1862–1906): introduction of quoc-ngu and decline of nôm. Three main trends, one romantic, one patriotic, and one consisting of quoc-ngu translations of Chinese and French classics.
Second period (1906–13): the Dong-kinh nghia-thuc movement; influence of French and Chinese literature.
Third period (1913–30): rapid development of journalism; spread of French culture through the medium of quoc-ngu; decline of traditional poetry; the periodicals Dong-duong tap-chi and Nam Phong; romanticism.
Fourth period (1930–35): lightning growth of journalism; emergence of the “New Poetry” and the Tu-luc van doan group; essays and documentaries; rapid development of the novel.
Fifth period (1935–39): the Popular Front in France; zenith of Tu-luc van doan; triumph of the New Poetry; birth of the realist novel, and flowering of various other types of prose fiction.
Sixth period (1939–45): decline of Tu-luc van doan; development of the realist novel; birth of Marxist literature; reversion to antiquity; the Han Thuyen, Xuan thu nha tap, Tri tan, and Thanh nghi groups.
Seventh period (1945–46): development of Marxist literature and emergence of “Socialist realism.”
Eighth period (1946–54): two trends, Socialist literature and “marking time” literature.
Ninth period (1954–62): the Geneva agreements and the partition of Vietnam; realism in the North, miscellaneous activity in the South.
Tenth period (1963–75): Second Indochina war: “resistance” literature in the North, various trends in the South.
FIRST PERIOD (1862–1906)
In 1862 the conquest of Indochina began. The French had complete mastery, and foiled all attempts at revolt organized by the Confucian literati. Most sensible intellectuals, both literati of the old school and early French-speakers, realized that the country's future depended on the spread of quoc-ngu: the road to independence lay in learning from the West, using French as the key to European technology. Cochin-China (present-day South Vietnam) having been occupied first, it was there that Vietnamese literature in quoc-ngu had its first successes. The two Vietnamese scholars who did most to encourage the spread of quoc-ngu were Paulus Cua (1834–1907) and Petrus Truong Vinh Ky (1837–1898). Both were Catholics, equipped with classical Chinese, Vietnamese, and French, and both had the same object in view: the spread of quoc-ngu and the gradual phasing-out of Chinese.
Paulus Cua was one of the founders of Vietnamese journalism, and in 1865 started the very first newspaper, Gia-dinh bao (Gia-dinh Province News). He wrote books of folklore and fairy tales, and also a large Vietnamese dictionary in two volumes, Dai-Nam quoc-am tu-vi (1895–96), with definitions in Vietnamese, which records for us the nôm characters of the period. In the fairy tales his style is simple, free-flowing and distinctly colloquial, full of the vivid imagery of the Southern dialect.
Truong Vinh Ky's multifarious works cover all literary fields; he can be called the first real architect of quoc-ngu writing. With a command of both French and Vietnamese, he wrote some hundreds of books in a style similar to Paulus Cua's, but on the whole rather more lucid and methodical. Thanks to him quoc-ngu attained respectability, and he exerted his influence to have it adopted in primary schools.
Thus the quoc-ngu movement, as a result of the efforts of these two writers, was first launched in the South. Meanwhile in the field of poetry, both in the South and the North, three distinct schools were discernible: (a) the Confucian patriots such as Nguyen Dinh Chieu, Bui Huu-Nghia, Nguyen Van-Giai, Nguyen Khuyen, and Tran Te-Xuong, who refused to acknowledge French rule and wrote sorrowful elegiac poems lamenting the loss of independence; (b) the moderate collaborationists such as Ton Tho-Tuong and Hoang Cao-Khai, who accepted French domination as a temporary phenomenon and advocated collaboration, together with reform of the structure of Vietnamese society, in the hope of better days to come; and (c) the blasé romantic defeatists such as Chu Manh-Trinh and Duong Khue, who shunned action and sought escape in sybaritic pleasures.
To sum up, the prime feature of this period was the growing strength of quoc-ngu and its popularization by every possible means, both in the South and the North (fortunately Vietnamese is fairly standard, apart from a few hundred dialect words peculiar to the South, so that there was no obstacle to its rapid spread). It was a transitional period, and writers still tended to express themselves in verse rather than in prose. Despite the work of pioneers like Petrus Ky and Paulus Cua, the real development of quoc-ngu literature was still to come.
SECOND PERIOD (1906–13)
The year 1906 is important in Vietnamese history for the birth of a moderate political movement of reformist Confucians. Under the stimulus of recent events in the Far East, particularly Russia's defeat at the hands of the Japanese, intellectuals were contemplating mass campaigns in favor either of revolt against the French or of reform with French assistance. The moderate party, founded by scholar-patriots such as Luong Van-Can, Phan Boi-Chau, Phan Chu-Trinh, Tang Bat-Ho, and Nguyen Quyen, and known henceforth as the Dong-kinh nghia-thuc movement (literally “Dong-kinh unpaid teaching movement,” Dong-kinh being another name for the capital, Hanoi), aimed by agreement with the French Government to bring enlightenment and improved education to the common people by means of free classes, given in Vietnamese and reproduced in quoc-ngu script. The first classes were held in Hanoi, and the literati concerned, normally so squeamish about the mixing of the sexes, decided to admit women and girls. Nguyen Van-Vinh and Pham Duy-Ton undertook to seek the approval of the French authorities; and the latter, in the person of the Resident, could hardly withhold it, seeing that the Movement was calculated to reinforce their own efforts by organizing talks on cultural topics devoid of anti-French content. Accordingly, in May 1907, the French Government somewhat reluctantly gave its approval.
The classes had by then already been under way for some time at 4 Rue de la Soie, home of the Director, Luong Van-Can, and his young sister (who was running the women's section). In no time the Movement won the enthusiasm of the public, and there were audiences of four or five hundred at each of the evening lectures. All kinds of topics were covered, from the most humdrum, such as hairdressing (the old-style literati still wore their hair in a bun) or the abolition of the practice of blackening the teeth, to the most controversial, such as educational reform and the boycotting of the traditional literary examinations. The leaders of the Movement set up a translation committee to translate Chinese and French books, though the few volumes of translations from Chinese authors were later lost, leaving only some patriotic songs (at which the members of the Movement excelled).
Such a display of public enthusiasm worried the French authorities, and nine months after the start of the meetings, on the pretext that the Movement constituted a potential threat to public order, they stopped the classes and shut the group down.
Though short-lived, Dong-kinh nghia-thuc had sown the seeds of social awareness in the minds of the Vietnamese; its leaders' efforts had also stimulated the growing use of quoc-ngu, there giving a fillip to literature. The great Nam Phong translators such as Nguyen Huu Tien and Nguyen Don Phuc, famous for thus translations from the Chinese (see under third period, below), had worked for Dong-kinh nghia-thuc; and it was during their time with it that they used and enriched Vietnamese and created a style. Sons of the group's founders, such as Dao Trinh-Nhat and Hoang Tich Chu, later became well-known journalists. On the political front the group had trained the next generation of reformers and revolutionaries. Though it has been criticized for poor organization and its tendency to put poetry before politics, the fact remains that no other movement in so short a time exerted so great an influence on the Vietnamese people and their literature.
After the closure of Dong-kinh nghia-thuc, a series of political events brought the French administration to grips with the Vietnamese nationalists. Then came the Chinese revolution of 1911 led by Sun Yat-sen, a man well known to the founders of the movement. To counter the nationalists' attacks, and also to some extent to satisfy the popular thirst for learning, the French Government was compelled under pressure to open the University of Hanoi; and so, gradually and without much effort, French influence came to outweigh Chinese—not that the latter ceased to be a factor. Indeed, the Western concepts of democracy, revolution, and the proletariat were known to Vietnamese intellectuals through Chinese translations. But once French became widespread it was open to them to do without these and read Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot, and Voltaire in the original.
In China also at this time a new mass literature had grown up which included a multitude of translations from Western economists and political theorists. The greatest of the Chinese authors of the “New Culture,” and the best known in Vietnam, were K'ang Yu-wei (1858–1927) and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (1873–1929): their work opened the eyes of many a Vietnamese nationalist intellectual. They decried the monarchy, both in China and Vietnam, regarded Confucianism as the root cause of the country's decadence, and proclaimed the ideals of liberty and equality under a republic. The true dawn of modern Vietnamese literature, as we shall see in the next period, was about to break.
THIRD PERIOD (1913–1930)
The features of this phase were the explosive growth of journalism and the spread of French culture. Following the closure of Dong-kinh nghia-thuc, the French Government sought to weaken the grip of traditional Chinese culture by further stimulating the spread of quoc-ngu. In this way it hoped to achieve thought-control over the Vietnamese and gradually replace Chinese culture with French. Now the best way of popularizing quoc-ngu was by encouraging journalism—French-inspired and French-controlled; and it was this that formed the basis of the new Vietnamese literature. French influence was predominant, and remained so until 1954.
Accordingly in 1913, with the approval of the French Government, the first number of Dong-duong tap-chi appeared. Its founder was a Frenchman called Schneider and its editor Nguyen Van-Vinh, who had been a member of the Dong-kinh nghia-thuc movement; and it provided a forum for young French-educated writers like Nguyen Van-Vinh himself, Nguyen Van-To, and Pham Quynh, and Chinese-educated ones like Phan Ke Binh and Nguyen Do-Muc. Its officially approved aims were to popularize French culture and support the colonial government against Vietnamese revolutionary intrigues; but the editor, Nguyen Van-Vinh, managed to turn the situation to the advantage of Vietnamese scholarship. Side by side with compulsory articles required under the agreement with the French, he and his assistants published studies on literary, philosophical, and theological subjects, translations of Chinese and French texts on the history of thought, and anthologies of early Vietnamese poetry—all in quoc-ngu. From a purely Vietnamese point of view this was valuable work, and established a powerful trend in journalism. Dong-duong tap-chi lasted until late 1916, and brought out 187 numbers; but with the outbreak of the 1914–18 war the French administration in Indochina had new problems to face. It needed both to run a recruiting campaign to enlist Vietnamese in the war against Germany and also to woo them with the promise of worthwhile reforms once it was over. At the same time it repeated its prewar step by bringing out a new and higher-level Vietnamese-language journal under the title of Nam Phong (South Wind). Its founder was a Frenchman called Marty and its editor a Vietnamese, Pham Quynh, who had worked under Nguyen Van-Vinh on the “Selections from French literature translated into Vietnamese” feature of the earlier periodical. Nam Phong was better staffed than its predecessor, and also set out to be more highbrow. Its staff comprised both old-style liberal literati and young French-trained writers, including Nguyen Ba-Trac, Nguyen Huu Tien, Nguyen Trong-Thuat, Nguyen Don Phuc, Nguyen Ba-Hoc, Le Du, Lam Tan-Phac, Madame Tuong-Pho, Duong Ba-Trac, Duong Quang-Ham, Tran Trong-Kim, Nguyen Trieu-Luat, Nguyen Manh-Bong, Nguyen Tien-Lang, Thieu Son, Le Thang, Hoang Ngoc-Phach, Vu Dinh-Long, and Nguyen Can-Mong.
Nam Phong's stated aims were the same as its predecessor's, namely to uphold French interests and ensure the spread of French culture, but at a higher level. Set up to hymn France's greatness and beneficence, Nam Phong did more; and it fulfilled all the secret hopes of its Vietnamese staff. Its articles were of a high intellectual standard, excelling both in style and in content, and dealt with an agreeably wide variety of topics; and the journal gradually became the link between the old Chinese and the new European cultures. In this way each member of Pham Quynh's staff helped to lay the foundations of modern Vietnamese literature and to establish a sort of Vietnamese Academy, which functioned for over seventeen years; thanks to their united efforts Vietnamese attained the status of a literary language.
The only criticism that can be leveled against the group is that consciously or unconsciously it encouraged a romantic, effeminate, sentimental type of writing. Some have seen in this a deliberate attempt by the French authorities to lull the populace into oblivion—the “Mother Country” having her own problems in Europe at the time. To be fair, this was a relatively minor defect compared with the paper's great services to the Vietnamese language. The importance of Pham Quynh's influence has recently been recognized even by the South Vietnamese Government (normally so sensitive over matters of national pride), whose Ministry of Education, with United States help, has brought out a new edition of his works. In any case, as we have seen, there had always been a romantic streak in Vietnamese literature; and even at the time, despite the journalistic explosion and the rapid development of literature, poetry remained highly romantic and emotional—as did the first European-style works of fiction.
Poetry was represented at this time by the poetess Tuong Pho, amongst others, of whom the best known were Nguyen Khac-Hieu, Dong Ho, and Tran Tuan-Khai. Their work was still full of echoes and literary allusions from the Chinese classics, and consisted either of folk ballads or of forms borrowed from T'ang poetry. Thus Tuong Pho stirred a whole generation of readers with the emotional and deeply-felt lines in which she lamented the death of her beloved—the purest “sobbing” to be found in Vietnamese literature so far. But the greatest poet of the period, and perhaps indeed of the first half of the twentieth century, was undoubtedly Nguyen Khac-Hieu, better known as Tan Da. Educated on Confucian lines, he was well versed in Chinese poetry and also in the nuances of Vietnamese; a dilettante and a patriot in his day, a great drinker, open-handed and somewhat eccentric, embittered after being crossed in his first love, sybarite and hedonist—he had, in short, the qualities and defects of the true poet. Despite the success of the New Poetry, he dominated the Vietnamese poetic scene for twenty years (1920–1940); and he may be said to have been both the star performer in classical poetry and also the pioneer of the New Poetry of the succeeding period—thus providing the link between the two schools. His poems, very disparate in form, are always moving because of the beauty of the imagery and the rhythm and harmony of the versification; they have the typically Vietnamese timbre which results from a felicitous choice of assonance and tonality, together with an unusually daring use of words which suggests French influence. He was universally regarded in his day (except perhaps by the stern Pham Quynh, editor of Nam Phong) and even afterwards as the greatest and most characteristic of Vietnamese poets.
In addition to Tan Da, mention must be made of Dong Ho, one of South Vietnam's great contemporary poets. He worked for Nam Phong from 1923 to 1933, and is known for two of his poems, Linh Phuong and Phu Dong-Ho. To this day he still maintains the delightful habit of celebrating spring with charming verses each New Year. The poetess Tuong Pho, at present living in retirement on the South Vietnamese coast, is known (as mentioned above) for the depth of feeling in her poem Giot le thu (“Autumn Tears”), published in Nam Phong for July 1928 (no. 131).
The Vietnamese novel during this period was still in its infancy. As quoc-ngu became more widespread, the staffs of Dong-duong tap-chi and Nam Phong had started to translate old Chinese works of fiction familiar in the Far East, such as San kuo che yen yi, Hsi yü chi, and Chuei hu. These translations, thanks largely to the translators' skill, sold well; and consequently devotees of French literature like Nguyen Van-Vinh, editor of Dong-duong tap-chi, went on to translate French novels such as Manon Lescaut (1932), Les trois mousquetaires (1921), and Gil Blas. But the first two Vietnamese novels properly so called were Qua dua do (The Watermelon) by Nguyen Trong-Thuat and To Tam by Hoang Ngoc-Phach, both published in 1925. Neither was much more than a rough draft, particularly the latter, which showed the hybrid influence of contemporary Chinese novels and of La dame aux camélias. In the South, a prefect by the name of Ho Bieu-Chanh made himself a great reputation as a novelist, and his books were popular with Southern readers up to 1930. Their realism and moral purpose, and their crisp, vivid style laced with colloquialisms, make them an accurate reflection of the outspoken South Vietnamese character. Though clearly influenced by French writers such as Hector Malot and Victor Hugo, Ho Bieu-Chanh's individuality shows through in the construction of his books and in his characterization. His work has a unity and originality that distinguish him from the other popular Southern novelists of the time, such as Buu Dinh, author of Manh trang thu (Autumn Moon).
French influence was also to be seen in the short story, a literary form hitherto virtually unknown in Vietnam. Novelists such as Pham Duy-Ton, Nhuong Tong, and Nguyen Ba-Hoc wrote short stories with a moral, which greatly appealed to the reading public.
Plays on the Western model first made their appearance in 1915 with Nguyen Van-Vinh's Vietnamese translations of Molière, and on April 25, 1920, the Khai tri tien duc cultural association gave a highly successful performance in Hanoi of his Malade imaginaire in Vietnamese. The development of the drama took another step forward with Pham Quynh's translations of Corneille's Le Cid and Horace, which appeared in Nam Phong. There followed a plethora of tragedies and comedies by young playwrights, both Northern and Southern: the best known was Vu Dinh-Long, whose Chen thuoc doc (The Cup of Poison) was performed in Hanoi on October 22, 1921, in aid of charity. Another playwright was Vi Huyen-Dac, of Haiphong, who first made his name with three- or four-act plays such as Uyen uong (The Pair of Mandarin Ducks) (1927) and Hai toi tan hon (The Two Wedding Nights) (1929).
FOURTH PERIOD (1930–35)
Present-day literary historians all agree that these five years were politically eventful for Vietnam. Some regard the evolution of the literature from 1930 to the end of World War II as a single sweep; but we prefer to split it into two parts. Thus our fourth period seems to us the critical phase in the explosive growth of journalism and the hegemony of Tu luc van doan (Independent Literary Group). It also marks the triumph of the New Poetry.
The year 1930 was a key year in Vietnamese history, the year in which the nationalist political revolts all fizzled out and in which the Communist Party of Indochina—destined to play a crucial role after World War II—came into being. The year 1935 saw the birth of the Popular Front in France. Between these two dates Vietnamese literature took a great leap forward in almost every sphere. French influence was everywhere paramount; conservative Confucianism was in retreat, and middle-class youth took advantage of the fact to demand the abolition of bureaucratic feudalism and the introduction of a measure of freedom—albeit a freedom limited by the interests of the French administration and the need to solve the economic crisis currently afflicting the business community. During 1930–32 a young French-educated Vietnamese by the name of Hoang Tich Chu, writing in two papers, Dong Tay (East-West) and Ngo Bao (Midday News), pioneered a grammatical reform involving the adoption of French syntax. But the Tu luc [“Independent Literary”] group must take the credit for introducing a new concise literary style, modeled on the French classics and as far as possible divested of Chinese locutions and literary allusions. Indeed, this fine group brought new life to every sphere of Vietnamese life—literary, poetic, political, social, and aesthetic (the modern Vietnamese woman's dress is the result of the redesigning of the traditional costume by a member of the group, the artist and designer Nguyen Cat-Tuong). It used satire and cartoons like those in Le canard enchâiné to deride the old outdated habits and customs. No reader of the period could ever forget Ly Toet, personification of the ignorant Vietnamese peasant, invented about 1927 by one of the group, the poet Tu Mo, and portrayed in the group's organ Phong Hoa (Manners and Morals). So successful was it that the term “Ly Toet” passed into the language as an opprobrious epithet. Stimulated by the group, great debates took place between Phan Khoi, a liberal intellectual, and Hai Trieu, a Marxist journalist, on such subjects as Western versus Confucian logic and materialism versus religious belief (1933). There was also an “Ancient versus Modern” controversy, and many writers espoused the cause of feminism, calling for the abolition of the Confucian moral code and for free marriage. Phan Khoi's realistic and liberal approach won him well-deserved acclaim at this time. In 1935 an interesting debate started between the proponents of “art for art's sake,” led by Thieu Son, and the advocates of “art for life,” headed by Hai Trieu. It continued until the end of the fifth period (1939), with many writers and thinkers joining one or other of the two camps: Hoai Thanh, Le Trang-Kieu, and Luu Trong-Lu sided with Thieu Son, while Hai Thanh, Son Tra, and Bui Cong-Trung supported Hai Trieu.
In poetry Ho Trong-Hieu (alias Tu Mo) of the Tu-luc group achieved deserved success with his satirical folk poems attacking the customs of the time. It was 7- and 8-syllable verse in classical format, and appeared in Phong-hoa under the heading “Giong nuoc nguoc” (“Cross-currents”). But the great advance was made by the New Poetry under the acknowledged leadership of The Lu, also of the Tu-luc group; his new-style poems May van tho (New Rhymes) were enthusiastically received by the public. In both form and content they showed strong French influence, being emotional and overflowing with love and life; they also extolled the beauties of nature, and the poet's mission. But where they particularly broke new ground was in their use of a limpid style, freed of excessive chinoiserie, and of a more elastic and adaptable metrical pattern which gave the poet greater scope for self-expression; they also made use of all the resources of French prosody such as the caesura, enjambment, and alliteration. The Lu was the center of a group of young poets, among them Nguyen Nhuoc-Phap, Xuan Dieu, Huy Can, and Dong Ho.
Realism made its appearance with the birth of documentary feature writing. There was a flood of features on various aspects of society: the life of a rickshawman, the life of a tart, “Hanoi by night,” and so on; and three journalists with the same family name, Vu Bang, Vu Dinh-Chi (or Tam Lang), and Vu Trong-Phung, made a name for themselves at this kind of writing. It had the merit of bringing to public notice the worst running sores of society, such as the miserable existence led by rickshaw coolies, prostitution, extortion, usury, and venereal disease. Tam Lang's books included Toi keo xe (I Am a Rickshawman) (1932) and Dem Song Huong (Nights on the Perfume River); and Vu Trong-Phung published Cam bay nguoi (Man-trap) and Ky nghe lay Tay (Marrying Frenchmen as a Business) (1934). But despite the growing success of such realist fiction, it could never compete with the works of Tu-luc writers such as Khai Hung and Nhat Linh, whose books were a roaring success in both North and South. The group's organ Phong Hoa at times achieved a circulation of close to ten thousand.
As for the theater, a play by the realist novelist Vu Trong-Phung, Khong mot tieng vang (Not an Echo), was put on in Hanoi in 1931, and was a success. Vi Huyen-Dac, who had already made a name as an author, turned playwright with Co dau Yen (The Singer Yen) (1930) and Co doc Minh (Miss Minh, Director) (1931); but it was not until the fifth period that this painstaking writer achieved complete mastery of his new medium.
Between 1930 and 1935 Vietnamese society went through growing pains. Spasms of nationalist unrest were quickly quelled by the French authorities, but in sport a measure of freedom was allowed: 1930 was Tennis Year, and 1932 the year of the yo-yo craze. Religious societies also expanded: Buddhist societies were legalized in Cochin-China and Central Vietnam in 1932, and in North Vietnam in 1934. The latter was also the year in which Vietnamese women started to dance in the Western manner and go swimming in the sea in summer. Meanwhile from the sidelines a small group of scholarly writers, including Tran Trong-Kim, Le Du, Nguyen Van Ngoc, Bui Ky, Nguyen Van-To, and Dao Duy-Anh, watched their country's giddy gyrations and strove to safeguard its cultural heritage.
FIFTH PERIOD (1935–39)
In 1935, with the advent of the Popular Front in France, there were slight signs of emancipation in the colonial empire. In Vietnam freedom of the press was proclaimed and censorship abolished, and Socialist and Communist writers used the new freedoms to disseminate the doctrine of democracy and the proletariat. The period marks the zenith of the Tu-luc van-doan group and the triumph of the New Poetry. Journalism, freed from the shackles of censorship, made new strides: according to official French Administration statistics, in 1937 there were 110 daily papers and 159 magazines and periodicals; in 1938 there were 128 and 160; and in 1939, 128 and 176.
With the expansion of journalism, branches of the field such as commentating and feature writing, which had started in the fourth period assumed increased importance. In feature writing the “Big Three” (Vu Bang, Vu Dinh-Chi, and Vu Trong-Phung) were still active. Another extremely gifted and original writer was Nguyen Tuan, whose volume of essays and short stories Vang bong mot thoi (Aspects of an Epoch), begun in 1938, was published in 1940. It is individualistic, sophisticated, and outspoken, and also somewhat eccentric. Another good commentator was Phung Tat-Dac, better known as Lang Nhan, who brought a gently waggish cynicism to bear on such perennially thorny questions as the durability of human relationships, virginity in women, promiscuity, and East-West differences. His book Truoc den (Under the Lamp) was well received, even at a time when novels had reached a peak in number and variety; there were romantic novels, historical novels, folk tales, realist novels, Socialist novels, spy stories, novels introducing real characters under fictitious names, and so on.
The final triumph of the New Poetry is associated with the Tu-luc young poets' salon. It included Xuan Dieu, Huy Can, Luu Trong-Lu, Huy Thong, Che Lan-Vien, Doan Van-Cu, Nguyen Binh, Bang Ba-Lan, and Anh Tho, all young poets (some not actually members of the Tu-luc group) influenced to a greater or lesser extent by French poetry. The best known were Xuan Dieu, Huy Can, and Luu Trong-Lu. Huy Thong was perhaps the first to write verse playlets, such as Anh Nga and Kinh Kha, two miniature tragedies. The Catholic poet Han Mac-Tu, who suffered from an incurable disease, was the first to hymn the Christian faith, which he did with deep feeling and religious fervor. We must not forget that though this was the golden age of the New Poetry, the last great poet of the classical school, Tan Da, was still proudly struggling in poverty and alcoholism. The leaders of the Tu-luc group, who had previously tended to be hostile and unkind to him, now came to his rescue by commissioning him to translate Chinese Tang poetry for them; and the translations Tan Da has left us are so splendid as sometimes to surpass the beauty of the originals.
Realist novels and documentary feature-writing made great strides following the abolition of censorship. Journalists such as Trong Lang, Nguyen Dinh-Lap, Nguyen Hong, Ngo Tat-To, and Nguyen Cong Hoan made concerted efforts to combat the worst social evils, such as promiscuity, prostitution, the arrogant snobbery of the middle classes, the lickspittle bigotry of the old mandarins, the plight of the penurious peasantry, economically depressed and educationally backward, and pauperism among the working classes. Thanks to their writing, the attention of the town-dwelling public was drawn to the underprivileged—peasants, laborers, and miners. Freedom (or relative freedom) of the press made possible bitter and often well-deserved attacks on outdated colonialist attitudes and the opportunism of a minority of Vietnamese in high places. The realist school also began to intensify its campaign against the Tu-luc group; and despite their efforts to remain in the van, Tu-luc leaders such as Nhat Linh, Khai Hung, Hoang Dao, and Thach Lam began to realize that the heyday of their group was over. When articles in the French press commending André Gide's courageous stand in Retour de l'URSS (1939) were translated into Vietnamese in the group's weekly Ngay nay (Today), there was an outcry from the Communists. A sharp clash between the two groups ensued, with the staff of Tuong-lai (Future) attacking Tu-luc on the unfair grounds that it had corrupted youth and incited Vietnamese womanhood to depravity.
Thus the period 1935–39 was dominated by ideological conflict between the middle-class Fabian intellectuals of the Tu-luc group and the realist school of orthodox Communist writers. Vietnamese society was changing unnaturally fast, and in the space of a few years the Tu-luc group's grandiose reformist ideas were overtaken by events. By now the works of Western writers such as Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, Tolstoy, Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, André Gide, Pascal, Dostoyevsky, and Goethe were available to Vietnamese readers in translation, and undoubtedly the young writers of the time were greatly influenced by them.
It was the same in the theater. Vi Huyen-Dac, already well known as an author, wrote two new and decidedly realist plays, Kim tien (Money) and a comedy called Ong Ky Cop (Mr. Secretary Cop), which were staged respectively in February and October 1938. Another playwright, Doan Phu-Tu, wrote successful short plays in a sanguine, emotional vein which were put on in 1937, e.g., Nhung buc thu tinh (The Love Letters). He was influenced by French writers such as Alfred de Musset, Henri Duvernois, and Sacha Guitry. We should also mention Phan Khac-Khoan, who wrote historical plays in verse.
The closing year of this period, 1939, was clouded by the death in June of the great poet Tan Da. A few months later came the outbreak of World War II, and in October the death of the young writer Vu Trong-Phung. Vietnam was entering a critical period, from which after six years of war, famine, and hardship it was to emerge in a state of utter chaos.
SIXTH PERIOD (1940–45)
World War II, declared in September 1939, was to change the face of the world. France, defeated in Europe, was in no position to support Indochina, which was consequently cut off from the mother country. Japan was an ally of Germany, and on February 6 the Japanese navy occupied the island of Hainan. With France temporarily hors de combat, the Japanese established themselves throughout Indochina under agreements made with General Catroux, the French Governor-General. He was then replaced by Admiral Decoux. Under the agreements of June 20 and September 22, 1940, the Japanese were entitled to land troops and set up bases in the North Vietnamese highlands in order to intensify their attacks on Chang Kai-Chek's China. Admiral Decoux thus found himself faced simultaneously with a Japanese invasion and an upsurge of Vietnamese nationalism, hostile to both French and Japanese—a conjunction of factors which was to lead to the breakup of the old Federation of Indochina.
As long ago as 1933, Vietnamese communists such as Nguyen Van-Tao, Duong Bach-Mai, Nguyen Van-Nguyen, and Nguyen Thi-Luu had formed a united front with Trotskyists such as Ta Thu-Thau, Tran Van-Trach, Phan Van-Hum, and Huynh Van-Phuong and launched a joint French-language periodical, La lutte, which first appeared at the end of 1934. This alliance lasted until June 15, 1937, when the two groups split. From then on, the Stalinists and the Trotskyists both went underground, though remaining implacable ideological enemies.
Freedom of the press was abolished and censorship reimposed. The French and Japanese governments used the war as an excuse to control all periodicals and books published in Vietnamese. Thus the literary history of Vietnam was determined by the vagaries of the political situation, which in turn fluctuated according to the course of the war. Youth and the common people were wooed from all sides: the Japanese appealed to the idea of racial and psychological unity implicit in a “Greater Asia,” while the French administration sought to counter Japanese influence by tentatively encouraging local patriotism—which it hoped might merge with its own to produce a grand “Empire Youth” movement. A network of rural schools was set up on a provincial basis, and the Faculty of Science was opened. Meanwhile, underground, the political parties were not idle. The Communist party of Vietnam, reorganized by Nguyen Ai-Quoc in May 1941 and thereafter known as the Viet-Minh, was building up its strength in the North Vietnamese highlands. Nationalist parties such as the Dai-Viet, led by Nhat Linh, formerly head of the Tu-luc van-doan group, were hounded by the French security services, and Nhat Linh had to flee to China. His flight sounded the knell of the Tu-luc group, which had already lost much of its influence in the literary field. The daily spectacle of war and famine was no longer compatible with the Utopian atmosphere of Hoang Dao's or Thach Lam's novels. This was a war in which the Vietnamese themselves had as yet no say, and their frustration was clearly reflected in the literature and poetry of the time. Escapism through sex and opium found an exponent in the poet Vu Hoang-Chuong, whose lament for the ruin of his first love affair through the woman's fault struck a new note of heartfelt grief. His poems are a blend of classical and modern, and he dominated the period. Among columnists Nguyen Tuan remained famous for his pungent, sophisticated writing.
At the same time there were those who tried to combat defeatism, and various ad hoc groups arose in the literary and political fields. They tended, however, to come under pressure either from the French authorities or from the clandestine Communist party. The former hoped to use them as safety valves for incipient nationalism, while the latter, with National Independence as its rallying cry, aimed to win the support of all classes for a “holy war” against both French and Japanese imperialism—meanwhile temporarily soft-pedaling on its doctrine about the class struggle. Political considerations led the French Government to encourage a “back to the Classics” movement—a return to classical antiquity and a revival of the cultural values of former days, on the lines of the Vichy Government's activities in France. It also encouraged the study of Buddhism, Taoism, and Cao Daism, hoping in this way to divert Vietnamese nationalism into relatively innocuous mystical channels. Hence the setting-up of the Tri-tan group, named after its organ, Tri-tan: this journal advocated the taking of a fresh look at the classics, and eschewed politics on the grounds that “that is a matter for the authorities.” The group set out to publish studies in the classics and ancient history, adopting as its slogan the phrase from Confucius' Luen yu “A fresh look at the old to discover the new.” The first portion of this program was entirely successful, and the group's work on original sources, its historical essays and its research on folklore remain valid and constitute a mine of useful data. But as regards “discovering the new” the group was a failure. The journal first appeared in mid-1941: it was staffed by scholars with a good grounding in classical Sino-Vietnamese culture, headed by Nguyen Van-To, Lecturer at the École Francaişe d'Extrême-Orient at Hanoi, and his assistants included Hoang Thuc-Tram, Nguyen Tuong-Phuong, Trinh Nhu-Tau, Le Van Hoe, Duong Ba-Trac, Tran Van Giap, the lexicographer Dao Duy-Anh, and many other intellectuals. As might have been expected, the group soon fell into the usual pitfalls that beset scholars: protracted, pointless discussion about the use of a word or a Chinese character in an ancient text, and sterile, tortuous argument about an ill-chosen quotation or a supposedly apocryphal source. Circulation gradually fell away, and public enthusiasm for sinological research declined. Nguyen Van-To, whose old-fashioned bun hairstyle had been ridiculed by the Tu-luc group, found himself saddled with the nickname “Old first-and-second folio.”
In 1943 the war was raging in Southeast Asia: American and British heavy bombers were raiding Vietnam, the Japanese navy was beginning to suffer its first defeats in the Pacific, and all the signs pointed to a major change in the situation. It was against this background of tension and uncertainty that a group of progressive French-educated intellectuals started the weekly Thanh-nghi. They were mostly academics, particularly teachers of law such as Vu Dinh-Hoe, Phan Anh, Dinh Gia-Trinh, Do Duc-Duc, Duong Duc-Hien, and Vu Van-Hien, as well as the agricultural engineer Nghiem Xuan-Yem, the sinologist and polytechnicien Hoang Xuan Han, and the humanists Nguyen Van-To, Dang Thai-Mai, Tran Van Giap, Nguyen Thieu-Lau, and Nguyen Trong-Phan; also the doctor Vu Van-Can and the writers Nguyen Tuan and Do Duc-Thu. What this group did was to make available the basic law, sociology, and political theory needed to raise the educational level of the Vietnamese masses. The ordinary people of Vietnam were soon to be asked to decide their own political future, and the group's suggestion to them was a system of democracy on European lines. In addition to political tracts, Thanh-nghi published translations of many legal and sociological works and novels by French, English, American, Italian, and Chinese writers (e.g., Somerset Maugham, Pearl Buck, and Ts'ao Yu). But as time went on the leaders of the group became increasingly preoccupied with theory and out of touch with the mass of the people. Moreover in 1945, just before the Japanese takeover, and until the formation of Tran Trong-Kim's first cabinet, the group had already been infiltrated by the Communist Party. The defeat of Japan and the August 1945 revolution finally completed the breakup of the group, although most of its members met again after September 2, 1945, in the various ministries of Ho Chi-Minh's government.
In addition to Tri-tan and Thanh-nghi, a third group called Han Thuyen (from the imprint of its books) gained some influence. Literary historians are too ready to regard it as composed of Trotskyists. In fact, apart from its leader Truong Tuu, a Marxist with slight Trotskyist leanings, and a few militants such as Ho Huu-Tuong and Luong Duc-Thiep, its members were intellectuals of no particular political complexion, such as the sinologist Dang Thai-Mai, author of Van-hoc khai-luan (Debate about Literature), two doctors, Pham Ngoc-Khue and Tran-Huan, the writers and playwrights Nguyen Tuan, Vi Huyen-Dac, Chu Thien, Nguyen Dinh-Lap, Le Van-Sieu, Bui Huy-Phon, Nhu Mai, and Nguyen Duc-Quynh, and artists such as Nguyen Do-Cung.
In 1943 Truong Tuu (alias Nguyen Bach-Khoa) published under the Han Thuyen imprint a book called Nguyen Du va tru-yen Kieu (Research on Nguyen Du and the Story of Kieu), in which he applied dialectical materialism overdogmatically and mechanically; his object was to use the political circumstances of the time to popularize the elements of Marxism. On September 10, 1945, he published another book, Tuong-lai van-nghe Vietnam (The Cultural Future of Vietnam), regarded as reactionary by present-day Marxist critics. In addition to these books, and some leaflets on popular Marxism, the house of Han Thuyen published a great many books of all sorts: historical and psychological novels like Chu Thien's and Nguyen Duc-Quynh's, didactic novels like Do Phon's, literary criticism like that of Dang Thai-Mai, and Nguyen Dong-Chi's Viet-nam co-van hoc-su (History of Ancient Vietnamese Literature) (1941), Nguyen Dinh-Lap's documentaries, Le Van-Sieu's studies of industry, and so forth. The Han Thuyen group also ran two periodicals, Van moi (New Writing) and Van moi tuoi xanh (New Writing for the Young), which were less successful than was hoped. Dr. Pham Ngoc-Khue's books on popular medicine were well received, as were Le Van-Sieu's on industrial technology.
As for novels, the Tu-luc group was on the decline, and young realist novelists were springing up. Documentary features, short stories, and essays were always popular. At the same time the “back to the classics” movement produced a crop of historical novels and recollections of life in olden days—often flavored with a tinge of nostalgia. Such books came from the pens of Nguyen Trieu-Luat, Chu Thien, Phan Tran-Chuc, Ngo Van-Trien, and Ngo Tat-To. They were mostly published by the Tan-dan publishing house, and their sales were helped by the ever-increasing popularity of the quoc-ngu script. Translations of philosophical and medical works also went well.
The literary critics of the day, in addition to Truong Tuu, were Thieu Son and particularly Thuong Sy, whose scholarly reviews appeared regularly for five years running in the daily newspaper Tin-moi.
As regards poetry, apart from well-known names such as Vu Hoang-Chuong, Han Mac-Tu, Quach Tan, and Bang Ba-Lan, a number of young men and women formed a group which they called Xuan thu nha tap; the best-known members were Nguyen Xuan-Sanh, Bich Khe, Pham Van-Hanh, and Doan Phu-Tu. Their poetry, obscure and incomprehensible, showed the influence of French symbolist poets such as Mallarmé and Paul Valéry. The group's aims were couched in high-flown but meaningless terms, such as “Supreme intellect,” “Eternal art,” “Continuous music,” and “Attempt to discover oneself through the rhythms and harmonies of literature, art, and especially poetry.” In addition to this short-lived group there was a clandestine school of revolutionary poets whose best-known member was To Huu.
In the theater, Vi Huyen-Dac wrote Le chi vien (The Lychee Garden) in 1943, Jésus-Christ in 1942, and Bach-hac dinh (The House of the White Cranes) in 1944.
SEVENTH PERIOD (AUGUST 19, 1945–DECEMBER 19, 1946)
This sixteen-month period was among the most eventful in Vietnam's history. The first day saw the Viet-Minh's successful August revolution. Five days later, on August 24, Emperor Bao-Dai abdicated, and on September 2 the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed. But on the 25th the advance party of the French expeditionary force began occupying towns in South Vietnam; and on December 19, 1946, the first Indochina war broke out.
During the relative lull of these sixteen months the provisional government of the Vietnamese Republic set up the Cultural Association for the Defence of the Realm (Van-hoa cuu quoc), which in September 1945 organized the first National Cultural Conference. Starting with its second number, the Association's official organ Tien-phong (Vanguard) published the text of the basic principles of Vietnamese culture; and a militant called Nguyen Dinh-Thi wrote a leaflet, Mot nen van-hoa moi (A New Culture), designed to popularize the theory underlying these principles, which was to serve as the framework for the new “national, democratic, realist” culture of the country. Supporters of the régime continually sought to influence literature in the direction of patriotism and nationalism. There were many translations of Russian and Chinese works on political theory and Marxist economics. With the coming to power of the Communist Party, the party's poet, To Huu, with his revolutionary verve, was regarded as the country's leading poet; and after him came those prewar poets such as Xuan Dieu, Che Lan-Vien, and Te Hanh who had rallied to the Communist government and the new doctrines. Among prose writers men such as Hoai Thanh, Nguyen Tuan, Nguyen Hong, To Hoai, Nam Cao, and Manh Phu-Tu continued to produce documentaries and features with a flavor of Socialist realism. No novels worth mentioning appeared. Only one play was produced, Nguyen Huy-Tuong's Bac-son: it was in praise of the Revolution, and went down well. Literary criticism from now on was based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and dialectical materialism, official doctrine in all Communist countries. The literary critics of the period were Dang Thai-Mai, Nguyen Dinh-Thi, and Hoai Thanh. Socialist realism, the only accepted line in literature and the arts, had hardly time to show its paces before the country was caught up in the long war of resistance which was to last for seven years on end.
EIGHTH PERIOD (1946–54)
Literature inevitably suffered from the effects of the first Indochina war. From this point on, it can be subdivided into two: on the one hand the resistance literature sponsored by the government of the Vietnamese Republic, which had to retire into the highlands of North Vietnam to continue its struggle with France, and on the other a sort of “marking time” literature in the areas initially occupied by the French army and subsequently handed over to various Vietnamese nationalist governments. Some writers and poets followed the Communist government of the Resistance; others, disliking Communist ideology and wartime hardships, returned to Hanoi or Saigon to await the end of the war.
In the nationalist administration's area, writing was virtually in cold storage during these nine years. Translations of Chinese novels were reprinted; there were documentary features, and in particular there were accounts by those returning from the underground Resistance. New publishing houses started up in Hanoi, and some of them, such as Song Nhi and Vo Dat, took up the publication of historical and other learned works. In Saigon the novels of Ho Bieu-Chanh and the Tu-luc van-doan group were republished, particularly after Nhat Linh's return to literary life: his new edition of the group's main writings was brought out by the Phuong Giang publishing house in Saigon in 1952. Tan Viet published the works of scholars such as Dao Trinh-Nhat, Tran Trong-Kim, Nguyen Dinh Chieu, and Phan Van-Hum. No poetry of note was produced. Pham Dinh-Tan, Ai Lan, and Huyen Chi were the poets writing in Hanoi, and Ho Van-Hao in the South: their work was mostly influenced by the war.
The literature of the Resistance was taken over by the Lao Dong (the new name adopted by the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1951), and for these nine years (as in other Communist countries) was based on “Socialist realism” and centered around two main themes, the Resistance and agrarian reform. All writers were mobilized and urged to produce poems, plays, novels, or short stories calculated to arouse the fighting spirit of the people. They were urged to live with and among the people and draw strength and creative inspiration from “the tonic of contact with soldiers, workers, and peasants.” The fact remains that in the view of literary historians not one notable work was produced. Poetry was represented principally by the work of To Huu, the “Party poet”; and some of his finer poems show genuine feeling and an epic quality. Even today critics in Hanoi disagree as to whether he is to be classed with the school of revolutionary militancy or with that of Socialist realism. Other poets were Xuan Dieu, Tu Mo, Luu Trong-Lu, and Che Lan-Vien: they wrote according to Party directives, and their work is of uneven quality. Among prose writers some familiar names recur, such as Nguyen Dinh-Thi, To Hoai, Nam Cao, and Nguyen Huy-Tuong, and also a young novelist called Tran Dang, who died in 1950. These men wrote short stories in which narrative was more important than description. Another literary genre was war stories and reminiscences, which were well received by the “Vietnam Cultural Association” in 1951–52. In the theater there was Nguyen Huy-Tuong's classic play Nhung nguoi o lai (Those That Are Left), and some light plays by The Lu, Tu Mo, and Ngo Tat-To. In 1952 a “back to the roots” movement started, involving the revival of Vietnam's ancient cultural heritage: the folk songs, dances, and operettas of the so-called “feudal” periods were brought out and popularized, and research was done on Vietnamese folklore and that of the Montagnard minorities. Few learned works were produced; Dang Thai-Mai's Giang van Chinh-phu ngam (Analysis of the Poem “Lament of the Warrior's Bride”) and Hoai Thanh's Quyen song con nguoi trong truyen Kieu (The Right to Life in “The Story of Kieu”) are about all.
NINTH PERIOD (1954–62)
The 1954 Geneva agreements meant the end of the first Indochina war and the partition of Vietnam into North and South at the 17th parallel. This deplorable division was simply a reflection of the “cold war” frontier between the Eastern bloc (the USSR and its satellites) and the Western (the USA and Western Europe). Like Germany and Korea, Vietnam was arbitrarily split in two, the northern portion being the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, a member of the Communist bloc, and the southern the Vietnamese Republic, a puppet of the West (the USA and France). From now on Vietnamese literature, like Janus, faced two ways at once. In the early months of the armistice, people were free to opt for North or South; and while some writers left the North and settled in the South, others migrated in the reverse direction. Saigon and Hanoi became the capitals of the two republics.
In the North the first noteworthy cultural event after the armistice and the reestablishment of the people's government in Hanoi was the National Assembly of Artists and Men of Letters, held on December 16, 1954, with the object of reviving and popularizing the country's artistic and literary heritage. In 1956 a literary prize was awarded for works originating with the Resistance; and that year also saw the beginning of a new era in literature, coinciding with a drive towards speedier socialization of the country—a drive which came as something of a blow to the middle and lower-middle classes. In China this was the so-called “Hundred Flowers” period: its effects made themselves felt in North Vietnam in the Nhan van, giai pham affair, a revolt by writers and poets opposed to the régime, which the government in the North condemned as reactionary. After this Lao Dong took a firm hold on the situation, and called on writers to make a greater effort to raise the cultural level of their works and learn from the masses. A message from the Central Executive of the party to the 2nd Cultural Congress stated that “The people calls on all artists to adopt the role of ‘spiritual engineer.’” Poets like To Huu had to hymn the return of peace, the new happy life under Socialism, the greatness of the Socialist brother-countries, and Socialist realism. These requirements obviously left little room for maneuver; and so we find Xuan Dieu's book of poems Rieng chung (Private and Public) (1960) being criticized by a young militant on the grounds that it contained two I's, an essentially collective “I,” which was acceptable, and an “I” with no collective or communal connotation, which smacked of outworn individualism.
The poets of the day, apart from To Huu, were Huy Can, Xuan Dieu, Che Lan-Vien, Xuan Xanh, Luu Trong-Lu, Madame Van Dai, and Madame Anh Tho. Fiction was exemplified by Nguyen Huy-Tuong's Truyen anh Luc, on agrarian reform, and Nguyen Ngoc's Dat nuoc dung len, on the Resistance. Novelists such as Nguyen Cong Hoan and To Hoai were getting old by now, but there were also young writers like Dao Vu, Vo Tung-Linh, Nguyen Khai, and Vo Huy Tam; all sought to portray the new life in the mines and cooperative farms. There were also innumerable war stories and ex-soldiers' reminiscences, in which great feats of arms were recounted in terms of Socialist realism. But even the official critics still had much fault to find with all these writers, young as well as old: they were lacking in political and cultural maturity, depth of thinking, and skill in presentation.
The theater took on a new lease of life, and the stock of plays adopted from European drama was revived and refurbished, the big names in Western-style theater being Hoc Phi, Buu Tien, and Nguyen Hung. But in comparison with other art forms the theater made relatively little progress. On the other hand much excellent work was done by sinologists and Vietnamese scholars (e.g., the Le Qui Don group) in the field of learning and the translation of early Vietnamese classics from the Chinese. Indeed, it is thanks to them that we possess translations of Cuong muc (Annals) and works by Nguyen Trai, Le Qui Don, and Phan Huy Chu whose importance is recognized by everyone concerned with Vietnamese studies.
In South Vietnam, where French influence still predominated despite the impact of American culture, writers did not have to work to a prescribed plan—apart from the anti-Communist line which was a feature of Government policy. Let us be quite clear: neither in North nor South Vietnam was there true freedom of the press in the sense in which the phrase is normally used in the West, and both governments recognized this—though the arguments they used were diametrically opposite. The government in the South urged on artists and men of letters the official doctrine of “social individualism,” based on the ideals of progress and respect for the human personality. There was also a government party of the same persuasion.
In the last year or two of the period, literature in the South showed signs of change, e.g., a revival in poetry and the novel. There was evidence of headway in historical, philosophical, and literary research; and here the names of Nghiem Toan, Nguyen Duy-Can, Nguyen Hien Le, Thanh Lang, Buu Cam, Bui Khanh-Dan, Nguyen Van-Trung, Nguyen Manh-Bao, and Vuong Hong-Sen come to mind. Work on Vietnamese linguistics was done by research workers already known in the South, such as Le Ngoc-Tru and Nguyen Bat-Tuy, and by an American-trained academic, Nguyen Dinh-Hoa. A major translation programme from early historical and literary texts in Chinese was undertaken, with U.S. financial help, by the Ministry of Education's Translation Bureau. Thus scholars concerned with Vietnamese studies now have two sources of supply for quoc-ngu translations, one in the North and one in the South.
Journalism and feature writing had their ups and downs. The senior men such as Vu Bang and Tam Lang were joined by keen young writers like Ngu I. Book reviews in the newspapers and the Vietnam Pen Club's Review of Books appeared over new names—apart from those of Thieu Son and Thuong Sy. The only new columnists to compete with Lang Nhan and Trong Lang were Hieu Chan and Vu Khac-Khoan—the last-named being better known for his work in the theater. In this latter field there were some new plays by Vi Huyen-Dac; and a new playwright, Anh Tuyen, began to make his mark.
For some time now there had been signs of a quickening in poetry. There were still the same three schools, romantic, symbolist, and realist; and many young men and women had taken up poetry as a career, bringing with them new ideas and techniques. Vu Hoang-Chuong, Nguyen Vy, Dong Ho, Bang Ba-Lan, Dinh Hung, Quach Tan, and Madame Tuong Pho were already well known as poets before the war; they were now joined by a new crop from a mixture of schools, such as Bui Giang, Doan Them, Pham Dinh-Tan, Anh Tuyen, and Madame Minh Duc. In the opinion of Mr. Minh Huy, the new existentialist school of poetry was represented by a small group of young men such as Nguyen Sa, Bui Giang, Cung Tram Tuong, and Quach Thoai; most of them studied in France, and were probably influenced by Sartre, Heidegger, and Saint-John Perse.
The novel, like poetry, showed signs of a revival. Apart from the late lamented Nhat Linh, formerly head of Tu-luc van-doan, who died on July 7, 1963, and “old guard” novelists like Vu Bang, Tchya, and Tam Lang, they were mostly young writers like Doan Quoc-Sy, the overprolific Binh Nguyen Loc, Vo Phien, Ngoc Linh, Son Nam, Ngu I, Nhat Tien, Madame Nguyen Thi-Vinh, and Madame Linh Bao. The Government of South Vietnam sought to stimulate writing by offering prizes. The National Literary Prize was instituted in 1956 by the Cultural Section of the Information Office, and was first awarded in the following year in four separate divisions for fiction, poetry, plays, and learned works. Prizes were subsequently awarded for 1958–59 and 1960–61.
TENTH PERIOD (1963–75)
Literature continued to develop in both the North and the South. This was a crucial period, and two important events in it were to have a great bearing on Vietnamese literary history. The first was the coup d'état in Saigon on November 1, 1963, which overthrew the government of the Catholic president Ngo Dinh Diem. It came as a bombshell not only to Vietnamese politicians but also to writers and poets in the South, who saw in it the promise of greater intellectual freedom and of the lifting of the censorship imposed by Ngo Dinh Nhu (President Diem's brother). The official doctrine of the Diem government and the government party, the Can Lao (somewhat akin to a Labor Party), was “community personalism” combined with anti-Communism: but it commanded only lukewarm support among most writers. As for community personalism, a makeshift adaptation from the ideas of the French philosopher Emmanuel Mounier, it remained a dead letter. In objective terms writers had greater freedom in the South than in the North, especially after the overthrow of the Diem government on November 1, 1963. The abolition of censorship freed them overnight from all trammels and constraints: and they reacted with enthusiastic but uncoordinated activity, like fracture patients who have been confined in plaster for over eight years and have just had it removed.
The second notable date, which was of worldwide importance, was August 5, 1964. From then on, and particularly from February 7, 1965, the US Seventh Fleet shelled the coast and a number of built-up areas of North Vietnam. The intensive pounding of North Vietnamese cities by the Americans which started in February 1965 marked the beginning of the second Indochina war. Hence 1964 is to be seen as a key date: it saw the birth of a whole literature of anti-American resistance in the North, which continued to grow in intensity until the fateful date of April 30, 1975, when the US Army finally withdrew from the whole of Vietnam.
This twelve-year period (1963–1975) was highly eventful for prose and poetry both in the North and the South; and we propose to give a brief account of developments in both halves of the country.
In the South, after a series of coups d'état, the reins of power eventually ended up in the hands of the Catholic general Nguyen Van Thieu. Like the Diem government before him, he kept the anti-Communist war going with the heavily armed support of the Americans. Be it noted also that on December 20, 1960, during the Diem period, the FLN (National Liberation Front) was established in South Vietnam with help from the government in the North. The FLN took as its aim the overthrow of the nationalist Thieu government and the freeing of South Vietnam from the American yoke. Thus a resistance literature grew up in the South: it was the work of nationalist and Communist freedom fighters in the South itself. In the government camp the emphasis was placed on the war with the North and on goodwill towards the Americans, who had come as friends to save the Vietnamese from the clutches of Communism. The US Army took up positions everywhere to fight alongside the South Vietnamese army against northern troops who had infiltrated into the South, and also against the FLN guerrillas.
The US Army, with its 700,000 white and negro troops, severely disrupted the everyday lives of ordinary Vietnamese. People were already torn between two conflicting ideologies: and the bombings, the destruction of crops, the defoliation campaign, and the impact of death and bereavement on all classes of the population eventually reduced the mass of the people, uncertain of their future and caught between two fires as they were, to a state of acute mental distress. Though officially the US Army had come as a friend to help the South Vietnamese government, which was not strong enough to stand up alone against the threat from the North, in practice it behaved as though it were in conquered territory. There were continual clashes between it and the South Vietnamese, arising out of racial and sexual friction, cultural differences, the contrast between standards of living, mutual lack of understanding, and political ineptness on the part of the Americans. A whole new literature sprang up: it reflected the lives of ordinary Vietnamese in the cities, where US Army units were stationed, and in the countryside, where the fighting was fierce and the wretched inhabitants found themselves obliged to range themselves with one side or the other according to the vicissitudes of the battle.
Two distinct trends can be discerned among the new generation of novelists and poets. On the one hand there were those who recorded the physical and moral ruination of Vietnam, the depraving and damaging effect on the social order of forced cohabitation with a blindly destructive foreign army, the unemployment, the poverty, the high cost of living, the prostitution of respectable girls and women, and the evil influence of the dollar, and at the same time the appeal of the comparatively “pure” and more wholesome ideology of Communism. Most of these writers were torn between their hatred of Communism and their distress at finding themselves powerless to stop the US Army ravaging and battering their country. They also felt guilty and embarrassed to be describing the horrors of a war in which they themselves were taking no part. This trend is exemplified by Le Tat Dieu, Ta Ty, Madame Nguyen Thi Thuy Vu, and Madame Tran Thi Nha Ca.
Another group eschewed realism and objective writing and relapsed into anarchic romanticism or narrow individualism, publishing novels with an undue admixture of eroticism and pornography. The best-known novelists in this group were Chu Tu, Tuy Hong, Hoang Dong Phuong, and The Uyen: their books often became best-sellers among a blasé and demoralized public. Right-minded journalists and writers sounded the alarm in several government newspapers and magazines to warn the public against this dubious, debased type of writing. Some of these progressive writers, such as Vu Hanh (real name Nguyen Duc Dung), Le Vinh Hoa, Son Nam, and Vien Phuong, even earned the approval of the government in the North. But there was another group of writers who had the courage of their political convictions and remained resolutely anti-Communist: they included Ky Van Nguyen, Do Thuc Vinh, and in particular Doan Quoc Si, Vo Phien, Nguyen Manh Con, and Ho Huu Tuong.
We must also note the influence of existentialist philosophy in South Vietnam: it was popularized as a result of a number of articles and translations that appeared in various books and newspapers between 1955 and 1963. In 1955 a serious journalist wrote an article on the kind of fascination that existentialism seemed to exert on the South Vietnamese intelligentsia: it was called Critique de l'existentialisme de J-P. Sartre par un intellectuel petit-bourgeois, was by Nghiem Xuan Hong, and appeared in the journal Quan Diem (no. 3, June 27, 1955). The best-known existentialist poet of this period was undoubtedly Thanh Tam Tuyen; there were others more lyrical or more romantic, such as Vu Hoang Chuong, Dinh Hung, To Thuy Yen, Nguyen Sa, and Nha Ca.
Fortunately there was still a minority of research workers and writers who, despite the hardships and sufferings of a fratricidal war, still continued to do research and publish at their own expense serious work on literature, poetry, linguistics, and Vietnamese history. They included Le Ngoc Tru, Phung Tat Dac, Toan Anh, Gian Chi, Vuong Hong Xen, Dong Ho, and Do Trong Hue.
In the theater nothing startlingly new appeared. Apart from the works of Vi Huyen Dac, there were some plays by Tran Le Nguyen and Vu Khac Khoan. The latter's play Nhung nguoi khong chiu chet (Those Who Do Not Wish To Die) was given an impromptu performance on a stage at Dalat, and was published in Saigon in 1971 (184 pp.). The veteran playwright Vi Huyen Dac (who died in 1977) had already in 1962 brought out a play in four acts and a prologue called Gengis Khan, written in French. This is not to be confused with the play written in Vietnamese by Vu Khac Khoan under the title Thanh Cat Tu Han (the Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation of Genghis Khan) (Saigon, 1962). In 1963 Nghiem Xuan Hong wrote a three-act play called Nguoi Vien Khach Thu Muoi (The Tenth Traveler), which was published in Saigon by Éditions Quan Diem (277 pp.). In 1968 the great scholar and artist Vuong Hong Sen published a volume of reminiscences about the Revived Theater under the title Nam muoi nam cai luong (Fifty Years of the Revived Theater), which was published by Éditions Pham Quang Khai (254 pp.). In 1966, with financial help from the Asia Foundation, Vu Khac Khoan brought out a new edition of the old folk play so familiar to Vietnamese audiences Quan Am Thi Kinh (Saigon: Éditions Dao Tan, 1966, 98 pp.). The new edition was naturally accompanied by a commentary by Mr. Vu himself. This was the first in a series aimed at producing new editions of the best-known pieces of Vietnamese folk theater. At the same time as Vu Khac Khoan and his coworkers, who included Vu Huy Chan and Tran Trong San, were so engaged, the lexicographer Le Ngoc Tru, with the help of a number of research workers including Tran Van Huong and Pham Van Luat, brought out new editions of some folk plays once fashionable in the South, such as Sai Vai, Kim Thach Ky Duyen, Kim Van Kieu, and Ngu Ho Binh Tay. In 1962 Than Van, of the École Supérieure de Pédagogie at Saigon, brought out a new edition, based on research by Professor Nghiem Toan, of a play very popular with South Vietnamese audiences, San Hau. The publication of these period plays was undertaken by Éditions Khai Tri of Saigon, under the direction of Le Ngoc Tru.
To help literature to emerge from the doldrums it was in, President Nguyen Van Thieu's office instituted literary prizes. The idea was not new: the earliest known literary prize was that set up in 1924 under the auspices of the Khai Tri Cultural Society of Hanoi. In 1936 the Tu Luc literary group (which included Nhat Linh and Khai Hung among its members) set up its own literary prize, which was very popular with readers. During World War II two other literary prizes came into being, one established in Saigon in 1941 by the Hoi Khuyen Hoc Nam Viet (South Vietnamese Society for the Advancement of Education), and the other, the Alexandre de Rhodes Prize, instituted in Hanoi in 1943 under the aegis of the French colonial government.
After the 1954 Geneva Agreements, which ratified the temporary division of Vietnam into two halves, the first known literary prize in South Vietnam was that instituted in 1957 under the Ngo Dinh Diem government. Some 206 entries were received of works published between 1954 and 1957. The jury was chosen from among the most eminent figures in the world of literature and poetry; the first chairman was Doan Quan Tan, and he was assisted by a great many well-known writers and poets including Dong Ho, Ho Bieu Chanh, Vi Huyen Dac, Vu Hoang Chuong, Vu Khac Khoan, Tran Tuan Khai, and Nghiem Toan. Further literary prizes were offered in 1958/59, 1960/61, 1966 and so on. By this means many poets became known to the public, including Anh Tuyen, Mai Trung Tinh, Nha Ca, and Tue Mai. Writers such as Nguyen Manh Con, Binh Nguyen Loc, and Vo Phien received awards. Senior research workers received prizes for their work in the fields of literature and philosophy: e.g., Thanh Lang for his work on folk literature, Nguyen Manh Bao for his research on the I-Ching, Le Ngoc Tru for his Vietnamese Dictionary, and Nguyen Hien Le and Gian Chi for their “Concise History of Chinese Philosophy.”
In addition to these governmental literary prizes, there were also literary prizes set up by private bodies such as the Tinh Viet group and the journal Tieng Chuong; but they did not arouse as much interest as the state awards. The Pen Club of Vietnam also gave a literary prize for the period 1964–65. The Buddhist Party of South Vietnam gave a short story prize in 1966. The 1966 Pen Club novel prize was awarded to Le Tat Dieu for his novel Dem dai mot doi (One Night That Lasts a Lifetime).
On the other side of the barricades, among the FLN, the freedom fighters in the cause of Communism and anti-Americanism also set up literary prizes to foster the spirit of resistance. Thus the Nguyen Dinh Chieu literary prize (1960–65) came into being, and aroused a certain amount of interest among the South Vietnamese resistance. Its jury of 12, set up on December 31, 1965, with Tran Bach Dang, Delegate for Information, Culture, and Education of the South Vietnamese FLN, as its chairman, selected 54 works and awarded three categories of prize:
—special prizes, awarded to two books, Tu tuyen dau to quoc (In the Front Line for the Motherland), a collection of resistance fighters' letters, and Song nhu anh (To Live Like You), the life story of the activist Nguyen Van Troi, told by Phan Thi Quyen and set down by Tran Dinh Van;
—official prizes (proxime accessits), awarded to 8 collections of memoirs, reminiscences and short stories; 1 novel, Hon dat (The Clod of Earth), by Anh Duc; 3 volumes of collected poems by Giang Nam, Thu Bon, Thanh Hai and other less well-known poets; 2 plays by Nguyen Vu; and revolutionary songs and short films;
—consolation prizes, awarded to two “Revived Theater” plays by Tran Ngoc, and other original works.
Following the setting up of this Nguyen Dinh Chieu literary prize, a new wave of writers and poets began to make their names in the period 1965 to 1975. They included men and women such as Vien Phuong, Le Vinh Hoa, Hoai Vu, Cuu Long, Nguyen Khoa Diem, Dinh Quang Nha, and Duong Thi Minh Huong. According to some Marxist literary critics, this flowering of writers and poets among the South Vietnamese resistance was merely a continuation of the literary trend that started during the first Indochina war, i.e., among the anti-French resistance. Among playwrights the historian of contemporary literature Hoang Nhu Mai singles out in particular Nguyen Vu, a playwright from the South with some ten plays already to his credit: they were short, but of great revolutionary and patriotic merit. He invariably represented the conflict as being between South Vietnamese youth and American imperialism: and his works were recognized as a useful instrument of popular education for the glorification of the revolutionary fighter. Nguyen Vu's two best known plays are Mua xuan (Spring) (1967) and Duong pho day lua (Blazing Streets) (1969).
In North Vietnam, from the first bombings right up to April 1975, government and people mobilized for all-out defensive war and resistance to the American aggressor. All resources and energies were placed at the disposal of the state and the Party. As Dang Thai Mai, Chairman of the Union of Vietnamese Writers and Artists, put it in his report to the Fourth National Congress of Vietnamese Writers and Artists held in Hanoi at the end of January 1968, “the transition from peace to war is by no means an easy one.” But the writers and artists achieved it quickly and smoothly. The central problem was to defeat the aggressor. To this end Vietnamese writers “did their utmost to train and lead the literary and artistic intelligentsia, to increase the prestige of the nation's cultural heritage, and to safeguard in their writing the purity and clarity of the national language.” All writing was devoted to the glorification of revolutionary heroism. Poetry, both lyrical and satirical, took on a new lease of life; and various prose genres such as news reports, essays, diaries, and memoirs flourished. The life stories and reminiscences of servicemen and revolutionary activists were in great demand among a public eager for information. Dispatches from front-line areas, such as Quang Binh province and the island outpost of Con Co, had an enormous readership. Novels and short stories also dealt with the life of the peasants on the cooperative farms, coping with the practical side of the war against the Americans.
It is customary among literary critics and historians to classify North Vietnamese writers under three heads: (a) those who had already achieved fame long before the August 1945 revolution, such as Nguyen Cong Hoan, Nguyen Tuan, To Hoai, Nam Cao, Nguyen Huy Tuong, and Nguyen Hong; (b) those who made their name during the period of anti-French resistance (1945–54), such as Nguyen Dinh Thi, Tran Dang, Nguyen Van Bong, and Vo Huy Tam; and (c) the third generation of writers who began to come to notice during the second Indochina war against the Americans, led by the Party along the road to Socialism and the unification of the country. They included inter alia Nguyen Ngoc, Nguyen Khai, Ho Phuong, Vu Thi Thuong, and Nguyen Minh Chau.
In the first category a special place must be reserved for the novelist Nguyen Cong Hoan, who died in 1977. Born in 1903 at Xuan Cau, Bac Ninh province, he was best known as a writer of short stories. Between 1930 and 1945 he produced about thirty novels and two hundred short stories. In them he castigated the misdeeds of French colonial rule, the penury of the Vietnamese peasantry and the extortionate activities of the Vietnamese mandarins in the pay of the French administrations. After the Ho Chi Minh government came to power he held high office in the state Cultural Service, and in 1957–58 was appointed chairman of the Society of Vietnamese Authors. After the August revolution he seems to have produced far fewer short stories, devoting himself rather to writing a few novels, the best known being Tranh toi tranh sang (Light and Dark) (1956, over 300 pp.), Hon canh hon cu (Muddle) (1961) and Dong rac cu (The Heap of Old Rubbish) (over 500 pp.). In Light and Dark the author describes Vietnamese society as it was before the August 1945 revolution, vegetating whilst awaiting the cataclysm that was to bring this transitional period to an end. The second novel, Muddle, deals with the same situation but from a different viewpoint. The third (The Heap of Old Rubbish), on the other hand, describes the varied activities of Albert Thua and his wife, enriching themselves at the expense of the poor during the period of French colonial rule. In addition to these three novels, Nguyen Cong Hoan wrote some occasional short stories about the underground and the Resistance. He has also left us two interesting books about his own experiences as a writer: firstly Viet tieu thuyet (Writing Novels), written in collaboration with Vo Huy Tam, and secondly Doi viet van cua toi (My Life as a Writer), published in 1971 by Éditions Van Hoc. Despite the fact that he moved some way along the path of Socialist realism, the two novels he brought out during World War II, at a time when he was in a state of ideological turmoil, namely Thanh dam (Sobriety) and Danh tiet (Virtue), published in 1943 and 1944 respectively, earned him the disapproval of Marxist critics.
The famous essayist Nguyen Tuan, author of the remarkable book Vang bong mot thoi (Echoes and Reflections from the Past), published in Hanoi in 1940 by Éditions Tan Dan, was a writer of a very different stamp. Born in Hanoi on July 10, 1910, he liked an easy life, good living, and the pleasures of a middle class existence, and seems to have found it hard to adapt to the way of life expected of a revolutionary Communist militant. Now a member of the Executive Committee of the Vietnamese Society of Arts and Letters, he is one of the very few romantic or individualist writers to have been more or less accepted by the new literary movement that grew out of the August 1945 Communist revolution. His output from 1945 to 1975 consisted predominantly of essays written in the revolutionary army, with which he served in the northwest Highlands: they include Tuy but khang chien (Essays Written During the Resistance) (1955–56), Song Da (The River Da) (1960), and Ha noi ta danh my gioi (Our City of Hanoi Well and Truly Beat the Americans) (1972).
One writer who certainly adapted well to the Communist revolution was the young novelist To Hoai (real name Nguyen Sen), born on August 10, 1920, in a village on the outskirts of Hanoi. He started writing early, and his novels became known well before the end of World War II. His most popular works since the advent of the Socialist Republic are feature articles and short stories dealing with the Highland areas, e.g. Truyen tay bac (Tales from the Northwest) (1953), and a novel, Mien tay (The West), published in 1967.
Another novelist in the same age group as To Hoai who took part as a Communist militant in the August revolution was Nam Cao (real name Tran Huu Tri). Born on October 29, 1917, in a province south of Hanoi, Nam Cao was killed in action in 1951. He has left us some collections of short stories, including Doi mat (Two eyes) (1948) and Chuyen bien gioi (Frontier Stories) (1951).
Of the writers in the second category, i.e. those who grew up and made their name during the anti-French resistance, the most noteworthy are probably Nguyen Dinh Thi, Nguyen Van Bong, and Vo Huy Tam.
Nguyen Dinh Thi, born in 1924 at Luang-Prabang in Laos, returned to Vietnam in 1941 and took part in the various political movements. After the August 1945 revolution he was a Delegate, and he is now both Vice-Chairman and Secretary-General of the Vietnamese Society of Arts and Letters. Nguyen Dinh Thi is not only a novelist but also a poet, literary critic, and playwright. His novels and short stories are exceedingly popular, the best known being Xung kich (Attack) (1951), Ben bo song Lo (On the Banks of the River Lo) (1957), and Mat tran tren cao (The Upland Front) (1967). The latter has already been brought out in a French translation.
Nguyen Van Bong, born on January 1, 1921, at Quang Nam, Central Vietnam, started his career as a journalist in the central provinces. From 1954 to 1956 he was on the editorial staff of the daily Nhan Dan (The People), and from 1962 to 1969 he was posted to the South, where he adopted the nom de plume of Tran Hieu Minh. He is the author of some short stories and novels, the best being Con trau (The Buffalo) (1953), which tells of the life of Vietnamese peasants in the enemy-occupied area. After the first Indochina war he brought out collections of short stories such as Ve thanh pho (Back to the City) and Nguoi chi (The Big Sister).
Vo Huy Tam, born on December 28, 1926, in Nam Ha province, wrote about the life of Vietnamese coal miners in the mining areas of North Vietnam under the French administration. His most important work, a novel called Vung mo (The Mining Area), originally appeared in 1951 under the title Dinh cong (Strike Action). In 1961 he brought out his second novel, Nhung nguoi tho mo (The Miners), which tells of the miners' happier lot under the Socialist government.
The third category of writers comprises those who grew up under the August revolution and became the new creative impetus behind the Socialist Republic and the unification of the country. They include Nguyen Ngoc, who like To Hoai excelled at descriptions of the Highland areas, Nguyen Khai, Nguyen Kien, Chu Van, Dao Vu, and Nguyen Thi Cam Thanh, all of whom wrote a good deal about country life. Huy Phuong, Xuan Cung, and Le Phuong, on the other hand, chose to describe the lives of working men and the jobs they did. Others again, such as Bui Duc Ai, Doan Gioi, Le Kham, and Ho Phuong, found their inspiration in the lives of the South Vietnamese freedom fighters. Young writers from the ethnic minorities began to make a name for themselves: they included Hoang Hac and Nong Minh Chau.
In the theatrical field, there is no denying that much has been done to popularize the old-style folk theater. A number of actor-research worker teams have between them written dozens of books on the old-style Cheo and Tuong plays. On Tuong, for instance, we have excellent books such as Cheo va Tuong (The Cheo and Tuong Theaters), by Hoang Ngoc Phach and Huynh Ly (1958), Tim hieu nghe thuat Tuong (All About the Tuong Theater), by Mich Quang (1963), and So thao lich su nghe thuat Tuong (Outline Study of the History of Tuong), by Hoang Chau Ky (1973). In his book Hoa trang (Makeup) (1970), Nhu Dinh Nguyen explains the main principles underlying makeup in the old-style Vietnamese theater, and the ideas of Vietnamese actors on the subject.
The traditional Vietnamese theater or Tuong is certainly the oldest type of theatre in Vietnam, and bears no relation to modern Western-type theater.
Vietnamese theater today may be thought of as comprising four branches: the two classical genres, Tuong and Cheo, the “Revived Theater” or Cai Luong, and the spoken theater which is written and performed on Western lines.
Tuong, Hat Tuong, or Hat Boi is the classical theater, probably Chinese in origin. Following the Vietnamese victory over the Sino-Mongolian army in the reign of the Emperor Tran Nhan Tong (1258–1308), a Chinese prisoner-of-war in the hands of the Vietnamese army by the name of Li Yuan Ki taught the Vietnamese the techniques of the Chinese theater. In this theater the main object is to inculcate love of one's country, loyalty to the Emperor, and filial piety. The language is highly stylized and full of Chinese literary allusions; the gestures betray a very highly developed symbolism; and the music, performed by an orchestra comprising strings, wind, and percussion, is lofty and magnificent. The action moves at a majestic pace; the costumes are impressive and glittering; and the highly colored makeup also conveys a precise symbolism from which even the most inexperienced spectators at once recognize traditional characters such as the Emperor and Empress, the irascible general, the treacherous mandarin, the servile courtesan, the Demon, the Fairy, and so forth. Initially this theater was the preserve of the Emperor, the nobles, the literati and the intelligentsia: but the Vietnamese soon made changes in it and turned it into a specifically Vietnamese type of theater. Thus the female parts were played by actual women, not by men dressed as women as in China; and the costumes and makeup were different. Next, two kinds of Tuong emerged, Tuong Truyen, i.e., the theater based on Chinese and Vietnamese history, and Tuong Do, the fictional theater, in which all the characters are fictitious and quite unhistorical. A demand for this type gradually grew up also among the ordinary people, who liked to go and hear the singing, watch the action, and enjoy the flowery language and the epic or lyric poetry. But Tuong could not compete with Cheo, which was genuine folk theater. It was essentially comedy, the theater of the people created by the common people and often handed down orally from one generation to another. This folk theater of jokes and songs probably goes back a very long way to the early days of the Vietnamese nation, and probably grew out of the religious rites and songs exchanged between young men and women at harvest festivals and during work in the fields. According to the experts Cheo was widely known as early as the tenth century, and already included impromptu poetry, mime, singing, and dancing. Cheo plays are often about love of the land and of work, hatred of social injustice, resistance to tyranny, and steadfastness and loyalty to friends. The basic rules of this theater were laid down in 1501 by Luong The Vinh (b. 1441), the theoretician of Cheo. It was in the past and still is one of the forms of entertainment most prized by the ordinary people, who find in it relaxation from their everyday worries and wide-ranging moral sustenance. It is common knowledge that in Cheo the poor, unfortunate, and weak are the embodiment of all the virtues and always triumph over the cupidity and wickedness of mandarins and emperors.
In South Vietnam a new genre of theater, Cai Luong, grew up well before 1918 out of the choral and orchestral concerts organized by Tong Huu Dinh, and it took shape in 1921 with writers from Nam Tu to My Tho. The operas were divided up into acts, and the epic style gave way to free dialogue, psychological interplay, and recitatif interspersed with tuneful arias. This “Revived Theater” was of course Western in conception and influence.
It leads us on to the fourth and last type, the present-day “spoken theater” or modern theater, conceived and produced on European lines. This theater came into being during the French colonial occupation thanks to the efforts of Nguyen Van Vinh in 1915 and Pham Quynh in 1920; these two writers started by translating the plays of Molière and Corneille into Vietnamese. The first purely Vietnamese play in this tradition was Chen Thuoc Doc (The Cup of Poison), by Vu Dinh Long in 1921. It goes almost without saying that the modern theater still remains the most fashionable genre today, and is regarded as a highly effective instrument of political and ideological propaganda. There are now over sixty professional companies, and they are sustained by the École des Arts Théâtraux, set up in 1959. Among the best-known plays are such pieces as Doan tan di vo phuong Nam (The Train Leaving for the South), Doi mat (Eyes), Tien tuyen goi (Call from the Front), and Tinh rung (Love of the Forest). This movement did not prevent the revival of traditional Tuong folk plays such as Quan Am thi kinh, Luu Binh Duong Le (The Two Friends), Kim Van Kieu, Thach Sanh, and Son Hau. Modern writers are sometimes able to abridge very long traditional plays to bring them into line with today's tastes: thus for instance the play Tam nu do vuong, which in the old days required four consecutive nights for a single performance, has been rewritten as Ngon lua hong son, which only takes one evening. Modern authors also excel at historical plays, the best known examples being Tieng goi non song (The Call of the Motherland), Trung vuong khoi nghia (The Revolt of the Two Trung Sisters) and Tran quoc toan. Modern playwrights in North Vietnam include Nguyen Huy Tuong (1912–1960), author of three plays and several novels. Most plays today are inspired by patriotism and revolutionary militancy, these being also easier to work in than duller topics such as the building of Socialism or everyday life after the unification of the country.
POETRY IN NORTH VIETNAM
From 1963 to 1975 poetry in North Vietnam was essentially political, centering in particular on the war against the American “invaders.” The best-known and also the most popular poet was still To Huu (b. 1920), whose real name was Nguyen Kim Thanh. Poets established before 1945 admittedly remained in the majority in North Vietnam, and continued to deploy their poetry as a weapon against the South and the Americans. They included, among others, Xuan Dieu, Luu Trong Lu, Huy Can, Te Hanh, and Huyen Kieu. The latter brought out two collections of poems in 1964, Dao nhi vang (Yellow Deer Island) and Mua cay (Ploughing Time), and a further collection, Bau troi (The Sky) in 1976. Another poet previously known only as a literary critic, Hoang Trung Thong, has brought out some collections of poems, the most popular being Dau song (The Crest of the Waves) (1968) and Trong gio lua (In the Scorching Wind). His latest collection of poems came out in 1977 under the title Nhu di trong mo (As Though I Were Walking in a Dream).
Of the new generation of poets who rose to fame in the period 1963–75, i.e., those of the “Second Resistance,” let us begin with two woman poets. Phan Thi Thanh Nhan, born in Hanoi in 1943 of a modest family, started as a journalist in 1961. In 1973 she brought out a volume of poems under the title Huong tham (Secret Perfume), and their tenderness and quiet lyricism were well received. The other woman poet, Xuan Quynh (b. 1942), already has three collections of poems to her credit, including Choi biec (Emerald Buds) and Gio Lao cat trang (Wind from Laos and White Sand) (1974) She started out as an artiste with the Popular National Song and Dance Ensemble, and began to write in 1960; since 1964 she has been an editor on the weekly Van Nghe (Art and Letters). Turning to the men poets, first there is Le Anh Xuan, who was born in the South in 1940 and died in 1968. He left some posthumous poetry which has been collected together and published in 1971 under the title Hoa dua (Coconut Palm Flowers). Bang Viet, a native of Hué (b. 1941), has brought out two collections of poems, including Bep lua (The Hearth) (1968). Pham Tien Duat (b. 1942) is known for his two volumes of collected poems, Vang trang quang lua (The Moon with a Halo of Fire) (1970) and Tho mot chang duong (Poems Marking a Stage) (1972). Lastly there is a young poet, also born at Hué, called Nguyen Khoa Diem, the author of two volumes of poems, Dat ngoai O (Suburban Area) (1972) and Mat duong khat vong (The Road of Hope).
Apart from these poets who have already made something of a name for themselves, there are other younger poets who brought their first poems out in collective editions such as the two-volume anthology Hoa tram mien (Flowers from Everywhere); this contains a selection of poems written in 1974–75, and was published in 1976 by Éditions Van Hoc of Hanoi. The young poets represented include, among others, Hoang Vu Thuat, Le Duy Phuong, Nguyen Bui Voi, Tran Nguyen, Tuan Lan, and Vo Thanh An.
To end this chapter, it is only right to mention that Marxist historians of contemporary Vietnamese literature like to regard President Ho Chi Minh as one of the greatest poets of modern times. In fact his collection of poems in Chinese, describing his impressions and state of mind as a prisoner in a Chinese jail, deserves to be well-known. Entitled Nguc Trung Nhat Ky, it has been translated into French by Phan Nhuan under the title Carnet de prison (Prison Notebook). In the preface to the French translation Phan Nhuan writes: “In men like Ho Chi Minh, intelligence and sensitivity are but one. There is no hidden door between the private person and the man of affairs. The same enlightenment born of suffering informs both reason and feelings, both the man of action and the poet.”
From this Prison Notebook we extract two poems (from the French translation by Phan Nhuan):
On Reading “Anthology of the Thousand Poets”
The ancients liked to hymn the glories of nature:
Rivers, mountains, smoke, snow and flowers, moon and wind.
Today's verses need to be armed with steel;
Poets too must be able to fight!
“Evening Air”
The rose opens and the rose
Fades without knowing what it
Does. It only needs the scent of roses
Straying through a prison house
To bring all the world's injustices
Howling at the prisoner's heart.
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The Literature of Vietnam, 1954–1973
Literary Nomadics in Francophone Allegories of Postcolonialism: Pham Van Ky and Tahar Ben Jelloun
