Prof. Dr. People's Teacher Le Van Lan - teacher, poet and scientist

A teacher devoted to education

Mr. Le Van Lan has been associated with the Faculty of Literature for more than forty years and has held the position of Head of the Department of Modern Vietnamese Literature for a long time. Although he is now past his "ancient" age, he still teaches to generations of students, trainees, and postgraduates a comprehensive and profound horizon of knowledge, with a calm, gentle demeanor and a working style that is both serious and open.

His lectures, which are both rich and profound in knowledge, have fueled the passion for Vietnamese literature, especially modern poetry, for generations of students. He especially emphasized the importance of scientific methods and operations in literary research and poetry research. His lectures mainly aim to orient students towards a scientific mindset in studying different literary phenomena. His teaching style is not boisterous but gentle like confidences and sharing with students, making academic and erudite knowledge, both general and detailed, easily penetrate into students' minds. In class, he often raises many difficult questions that require deep thinking and high generalization ability. In the process of answering those questions, he never imposes a single explanation on students but often uses meaningful answers as a "suggestion". From there, he encouraged his students to work independently and creatively based on the inheritance of the achievements of their predecessors. Only then will the results of their research be profound and meaningful in both theory and practice. At the same time, the process of self-discovery and self-training is when they will accumulate the most knowledge and experience. That is an extremely necessary and important working style of a student and, further, of a researcher that a teacher with a long-term vision has passed on to his students.

Professor, Doctor, People's Teacher Le Van Lan

In teaching, Professor Le Van Lan is always the one who knows how to combine general knowledge about literary practice with theoretical knowledge in research, making his lectures easily attractive and always highly effective for generations of students. In the teaching process, he also has a long-term vision when training the next generation of students. Perhaps thanks to that guidance, many students who have been taught by him have achieved significant success in their careers. Many of them are currently holding high positions in publishing houses, press and media agencies or universities and research institutes. Thanks to that achievement, in 2010, he was awarded the title of People's Teacher, the most noble title for teachers.

A scientist who researches tirelessly

The attachment of Professor Le Van Lan to literature is not only shown in his capacity as a teacher but also deeply and persistently revealed in his capacity as a scientist. In fact, for him, teaching and research are two but one. Doing science is a way to generalize, synthesize and improve information and knowledge, but also to serve the purpose of improving the quality of teaching. At the same time, teaching is also the process of concretizing the issues that he has spent a lot of time and effort researching.

During his more than forty years of work, Professor Le Van Lan has published dozens of scientific works including monographs, textbooks, articles, magazines, and scientific proceedings. All of these works are the result of a long-term research process on issues related to modern Vietnamese literature, with poetry as the focus of his research. Even when he was in his seventies, an age that is "rare in the past and present", he still worked, researched, and created to make discoveries that demonstrate a profound, sharp level of thinking and a systematic, coherent working method. In the broad research issues of literature, Professor Le Van Lan is especially interested in the formation, movement, development, trends, topics, writing techniques, and poetic composition styles as a most important part of the overall Vietnamese literature. His works, which started out as surveys drawn from personal experience, later became much more profound thanks to the application of Western poetic theories and schools to the practice of national poetry. Here are a few examples to show the broad knowledge, profound writing style and flexible thinking of Professor, People's Teacher Le Van Lan in this field. In textbooks such asVietnamese Literature 1945 – 1954 (1990), Vietnamese Literature 1954 – 1964 (co-authored) (1990), Studying Poetry (1997), The Process of Modern Vietnamese Poetry (2000),Modern Vietnamese literature has been viewed from a general and systematic historical perspective. That shows that the author has a very broad and deep understanding of the literature of those periods in particular and the literature as a whole in general. The workPoetry – Formation and ReceptionMore recent publications demonstrate the ability to delve into the process of work formation based on the psychology of genre creation, with the profound literary knowledge of a serious scientist. With the workLiterary debates in the first half of the 20th century, from the statistics and generalization of the content of literary debates in the early 20th century, he gave his own objective and profound analysis and assessment. The work not only demonstrates a broad understanding but also shows a mature enough pen capable of delving into complex issues that have caused controversy in literary history. InThe structures of poetry, he again aims to study some structures of poetry (including overall structure and partial structure) and thereby re-examine some core issues about poetry such as: concepts of poetry, poems, verses, poetic language, poetic rhythm; thereby pointing out the relationship between verses and lines of poetry, between verses and poetic words. Most of the issues of the monograph have been published in specialized scientific journals. After becoming a book, journals such asPoetry, Vietnamese Soulhas reprinted many parts of the thesis. Having worked for a long time in documentation before switching to teaching, Professor and People's Teacher Le Van Lan is very concerned with authenticity and meticulousness in the research process. That is why, in some works written about literature before 1945, he used very new and modern literary materials that at the time he wrote, no one had ever mentioned...

Reading the works of Professor, People's Teacher Le Van Lan, readers can see in them a refined and sensitive ability to appreciate poetry and literature, along with a coherent, clear and universal theoretical thinking. He highly values ​​self-discovery in research, does not accept trite, easy-going paths, or vague or forced understandings of literary phenomena, and aims to decode them from an objective, scientific perspective with a particularly sensitive soul for poetry and literature. The knowledge foundations that he has devoted much effort to research have brought to generations of students a sense of serious and scientific learning and always maintain faith and love for literature.

He was Head of the Department of Modern Vietnamese Literature (1986-2010).

A poetic soul that endures over time

In addition to being a dedicated teacher and a dedicated scientist, Professor Le Van Lan is also known as a name in contemporary Vietnamese poetry. The pen name Ma Giang Lan that he uses is closely associated with his hometown of the Ma River. His journey of poetry writing is as long and persistent as his path of scientific research. He has published 6 collections of poetry:Dawn and Gunfire(1975),Flowers and the River(1979),A love like that(1990),Fragments of the subconscious(2009),About a bridge(2010),Waves of Language(2013). Looking at his career, we can see that his creative path has been interrupted, but his poetic pen and the emotional soul within it have almost never stopped.

Ma Giang Lan's early poetry collections were imbued with the atmosphere and spirit of the times of a generation of young people full of enthusiasm, spirit and aspiration to contribute to the country. The soul of poetry at this time sincerely reflected a simple, genuine love for the homeland, in which the image of the hometown river and Ham Rong bridge became two artistic symbols with consistent value. That was what brought him third prize in the poetry contest of the newspaper.Arts1969. In the poetry collections composed at later times, he still maintained his inherent honesty but contained a change in artistic thinking, which was a more modern thinking, leaning towards abstraction and generalization. In his poetic journey, poet Ma Giang Lan renewed traditional poetic forms by creating a new way of writing six-eight poetry. That is the way of rhyming at the sixth word of the eighth line, but the special thing is that the sixth word belongs to a reduplicated phrase. To rhyme like that requires the writer to have a rich Vietnamese vocabulary and sharp thinking.

Along with that, he moved on to experiment with prose poetry, a type of poetry that is not easy to write, read, or understand, but contains a high level of knowledge and art. This is a very special breakthrough in his creative career, marking a new step towards modernity. The combination of a simple, sincere soul and a Western way of thinking has helped the collection of poemsWaves of Languagewas honored at the Literary Award of the Vietnam Writers Association in 2013. His poems are subtle and refined, containing a noble soul and sharp artistic thinking. In his poems, readers can easily see a modern writing style that blends the rigorous thinking of a scientist with the dreaminess, romance, and creativity of an artist. His poetic voice has a melancholy tone, leaning towards contemplation, reflection, and philosophy.

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“Three people”, teacher, poet, scientist exist in harmony, complementing each other in the person of Professor, People's Teacher Le Van Lan. In any role, a teacher, a scientist or a poet, he still demonstrates a broad knowledge, a sharp grasp of problems and a tolerant, kind heart. The scientific path that he has, is and will continue to take brings many values ​​for the next generation to inherit, learn and continue. Professor, People's Teacher Le Van Lan is truly a beautiful image of a tireless working spirit, pure professional ethics, and a creative, dreamy soul, an example for the next generation to admire and follow.