Scholar Phan Ngoc: "Live a small but meaningful life"

1. At the age of 95, scholar Phan Ngoc, the last lecturer of the generation of teachers who "laid the foundation" for the early Faculty of Literature at the Hanoi University of Education (1954), the predecessor of the social sciences and humanities faculties of the Hanoi University of Education and the Hanoi University of General Studies, a brilliant and talented scholar remaining from a learning tradition where literature, language, history, and philosophy were inseparable… has passed away to the realm of eternal peace. Having traversed the many rapids and obstacles of a turbulent era, he reached this venerable age thanks to his pure soul, which throughout his life found joy only in books, and also thanks to the devoted care and love of his wife. He left behind an example of diligent self-study, of unwavering willpower to overcome the hardships of his time, of mastery of over a dozen foreign languages ​​and dozens of translations spanning a wide range of genres from literature to science, and diverse languages ​​from English, French, Russian, German to classical Chinese, Latin, Greek, etc. Standing before such a colossal intellectual monument, one cannot hastily grasp its full magnificence, for this vast storehouse of knowledge has been pondered, discussed, and even quoted as truth by countless researchers both domestically and internationally, from fleeting, insightful ideas to entire systems of solid argumentation. Given my limited knowledge, I choose a different perspective. I wish to record Phan Ngọc's insights (perhaps for myself) from his contributions to literature, linguistics, and cultural studies—fields in which he left a significant mark.

Growing up, I accompanied my grandfather to visit Mr. Phan Ngoc, but by then, the "past events" of his life had already flowed away like water to the east. I still vividly remember the wonderful impression I had of him for the first time. That day, he had surpassed the age of "ancient rarity," yet his resolute yet gentle demeanor, his calm yet serious bearing... was exactly like my imagination of an Eastern sage from some distant land of clouds and sky. From that initial attraction, I was even more strongly captivated by his stories. From his childhood in the "cultural homeland" of Hue to the arduous days in Viet Bac, from his conversations with the great master of Chinese studies, Rao Zongyi, to the conference rooms of the prestigious Paris Sorbonne University, etc., I often visited him and his wife to listen intently as he shared stories of his incredibly rich life. That was his given name, Nhữ Thành, which he later used as his pen name, originally taken by his father from the penultimate line in the immortal work of Song Dynasty Confucianism – the poem "Western Ming":The poor prefer to use jade in the wilderness."(Truong Tai) to further clarify that his given name was named after a mountain where he was born (Ngoc Mountain, Tinh Gia, Thanh Hoa); that he appealed to President Ho Chi Minh so that he could return home in time to rescue his father from the mistakes of a far-left era; that he also spoke about the article "The task of literature is not to illustrate policy" and the consequences that followed, etc. But every conversation, whether long or short, hurried or leisurely, ultimately returned to the never-ending reflections on his profession. I understand where, for him, the value system of life lies. I remember his works:

2. For over a hundred years, discussions, critiques, and studies of Kieu have attracted many intellectuals, because The Tale of Kieu is a masterpiece of the nation. Among the works written about The Tale of Kieu,Exploring Nguyen Du's style in The Tale of Kieu(basically completed in 1965 and further revised until its first publication in 1985 by the Social Sciences Publishing House) is a milestone that cannot be overlooked. Even meticulous researchers have to admit: "This work brings prestige to the academic world," while some (somewhat extreme) conclusions suggest: "The greatest study of the Tale of Kieu is by Phan Ngoc." Typically, studies of the Tale of Kieu focus only on the text to analyze the beauty of the language and the humanistic spirit of the plot, then, depending on the individual writer's perception, praise or ridicule it. As a result, numerous literary debates have arisen surrounding the fate of Kieu. Phan Ngoc stood at the heart of these debates to clarify his own, yet compelling, interpretation of the Tale of Kieu.

First, he recognized the need to build an objective set of tools – stylistics, a subfield that applies linguistic knowledge to interpret literature. Besides establishing theoretical and operational stylistic tools for analysis, he particularly focused on a empirical approach, starting from form but envisioning the harmonious correspondence of form to express content, aiming to find the points of Nguyen Du's genius, which were not learned from ancient times nor typical of his era. What Phan Ngoc praised about Nguyen Du lies in the things the author of *The Tale of Kieu* achieved that no one before him had attained and which could only be emulated afterward. Using his knowledge of history and society, Phan Ngoc demonstrated that the central idea of ​​"talent and fate being at odds," often mentioned in analyses of *The Tale of Kieu*, was a contemporary issue of the late Le Dynasty and early Nguyen Dynasty, with many authors and works having alluded to it, yet Nguyen Du generalized it into a contemporary issue.We need to remember that the story of talent and fate being at odds stems from the Tale of Kieu.“[P. Ngoc 1985; 52]. Along with establishing a fundamental ideological system, Nguyen Du's talent is demonstrated in his ability to vividly portray the nuances of emotions, forming tight structures to reasonably depict the inner workings of each character, rather than simply recounting events like Thanh Tam Tai Nhan's Kim Van Kieu story or, more broadly, the traditional Chinese episodic novel genre. According to Phan Ngoc's analysis, Nguyen Du was very knowledgeable about humanistic concepts (or philosophical movements) to apply Buddhist thinking methods; he even had profound knowledge of many genres to blend the achievements of the Nôm narrative genre, the lyrical genre, and especially the contrasts in the dramatic genre, aiming towards “elevating Truyện Kiều to the status of the first exemplary work of great psychological analysis novels that we know of.” [P. Ngoc 1985; 198].

To arrive at truly convincing assessments of Nguyen Du's genius, Phan Ngoc set very strict requirements for his work. He placed the criterion of "distinctiveness" at the heart of all comparisons in his research. From a specific phenomenon in the work to establishing a prominent distinguishing feature of Nguyen Du's style, the process involved statistical analysis of frequency, comparison with history and the era, and comparison with other authors and masterpieces. For example, in analyzing verses in The Tale of Kieu, Phan Ngoc always used contrast to draw conclusions. Similarly, calculating the ratio of verses and imagery demonstrates the reliability of the quantitative method he paid close attention to. Some argue that Phan Ngoc's thorough application of structuralism with its extremely rigorous formal analysis was only modern at the time the work was done (around the 1960s), and by the time it was published (mid-1980s), its limitations had become apparent due to the replacement of the structuralist movement by newer trends in philological research. It is true that Phan Ngoc's research method has its methodological basis in structuralism in linguistic research, and many analyses are even influenced by the American descriptive school, a school particularly concerned with form within the structuralist linguistic movement. However, let's not forget that, while consistently using the expressive form of The Tale of Kieu to understand Nguyen Du's style, Phan Ngoc also has his own supplementary viewpoints:...this format is good, not because it's good in itself, but because only this format can successfully convey the chosen content.“[P. Ngoc 1985; 6]. Clearly, with the sensibility of a Vietnamese language researcher, he understood the role and value of semantics. That's why, in the chapter on Nguyen Du's grammar, his interpretations of semantic grammar reflect the linguistic value theory of Tesnière and even the very modern grammatical structure of Fillmore.”[1]Along with that, Phan Ngoc undoubtedly paid attention to the decisive role of content over all specific formal expressions. And he succeeded in identifying content through form to more clearly see the corresponding expressive value in the masterpiece that made a genius author like Nguyen Du and The Tale of Kieu. Although the dialogue and the way of leading, of a person always enthusiastically wanting to share and express all the deepest thoughts, still have some imperfections, the effort to use his knowledge to transcend aesthetic perceptions and aim to explain the hidden layers of a literary phenomenon, thereby opening a new path of understanding, is an undertaking that would not be easily accomplished without a learned and discerning person.

3. After spending months in the archives of the Faculty of Literature, in the early 1980s, Phan Ngoc was invited to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. From there, he was able to freely present his ideas. The book...Language exposure in Southeast Asia(co-authored with Pham Duc Duong, published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in 1983) was a groundbreaking initial step, "liberating" the understanding of the linguistic approach, which had long dominated Vietnamese language research, focusing only on the internal structural system. In the first chapter, introducing the phenomenon of language contact, Phan Ngoc once again posed the task of explaining the influence of one language on the internal structure and operating mechanism of another, rather than simply considering it as a random, fragmented borrowing of a vocabulary, a few grammatical phenomena, etc. He sought answers in non-inflectional languages ​​such as Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian languages, where the bilingual approach proved necessary and effective.A bilingual or multilingual approach specific to the Southeast Asian region has an objective basis."[P. Ngoc 1983;19], due to several reasons analyzed by Phan Ngoc such as geographical distance, the process of conquest, the need for economic and cultural exchange. From here, Phan Ngoc examines the semantic contact between Vietnamese and Chinese in the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary group and the influence of European grammar in contact with Vietnamese, aiming to explain the linguistic sensibility of the Vietnamese people."

In the chapter discussing the semantics of Sino-Vietnamese words, from the classifications of forms and combinations of Sino-Vietnamese elements, he examines the relationships that determine the nuances of content in Sino-Vietnamese words and points out that:The story from Sino-Vietnamese seems more scholarly than the one from pure Vietnamese… primarily due to the element B.[Chinese origin element]It is placed before and second depending on whether this element B has high or low productivity. If the productivity is low, meaning that the element produces fewer words, then the scholarly and difficult-to-understand nature of the word becomes higher.“[P. Ngoc 1983; 180]”. Explaining the methodological contact between two languages ​​belonging to the same isolating type, such as Chinese and Vietnamese, at the content level, Phan Ngoc introduced the concept of “polysemy,” a prominent characteristic that adds semantic nuances and impacts acquisition, which may have attracted much attention but has not yet been generalized. Regarding grammar, the imitation of European grammatical structures (specifically French, Russian, and English) into Vietnamese is a case study of the contact between two languages ​​of different types, aiming to demonstrate the significant impact of this phenomenon on the modernization of the Vietnamese language. For the first time in Vietnamese linguistics, he compared Vietnamese grammar before and after contact with European languages, to see the differentiation of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc., thanks to accompanying elements such as "sự," "việc," "cái," "đã," "sẽ," "rất," "một," "cách," etc.; to see how, with the tools of prepositions and conjunctions, nouns and verbs, along with noun phrases and verb phrases, have gradually been hierarchically structured; and also to see the transformation between nouns and verbs (classification), especially the transformation of simple sentences into complex, multi-layered sentences with the expansion of subordinate clauses or into sentences with multiple components performing a syntactic function, with sentence fields that can be continuously extended, etc. Phan Ngọc's goal was to outline a grammatical model that is semantically consistent with the Vietnamese textual data, a non-inflectional language. This idea is a very modern suggestion for further research in Vietnamese linguistics, whether it's analyzing Vietnamese grammar from a synchronic perspective or studying the historical development of Vietnamese grammar.

With three parts in a book of less than 300 pages, Phan Ngoc made a significant shift in his understanding. He asserted a new approach – multilingualism – which should and needs to replace monolingualism if one wants to study the true nature of Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian languages. But hidden beneath this is the discovery of the nature of contact as a crucial characteristic of the peoples of this region. Simultaneously with this shift in methodology, Phan Ngoc also made a shift in his field of research. He moved from literary linguistics to cultural studies.

Scholar Phan Ngoc photographed with Professor Pham Duc Duong and the author (2009)

4. Unlike researchers who delve into specific disciplines and then expand on to more general, abstract issues, collectively referred to as culture, Phan Ngoc consistently defines a science called Cultural Studies with its own distinct subject matter, methodology, and terminology. This is evident in his most notable and outstanding work.Vietnamese culture, a new approach.(First published by the Culture and Information Publishing House in 1994 and reprinted many times) as the starting point for subsequent books on culture, he emphasized three central terms:relationship, choiceandrefractive indexTo analyze the subject matter and methods of cultural studies. The subject matter of this science is, of course, "culture," but not vaguely; its meaning is clearly defined by Phan Ngoc:The object of culture can only be the reciprocal relationship between the symbolic world and the real world, manifested in patterns of choice, expressed as a unique refraction present in all fields."[P. Ngoc 1994; 114-115]. He demonstrated that it is precisely because of this invisible relationship that humans will model what is in their minds (the symbolic world) into concrete objects and activities outside (the real world).[2]Culture is not the tangible object itself, but the thread connecting it to human intellect. And it is precisely because of this relationship that each ethnic group makes its own choices to form different cultures. Phan Ngoc borrows the concept of refraction from physics—the phenomenon where light rays pass through different environments with different deviations—to understand the penetration of an external phenomenon into an internal cultural foundation through a mechanism of selection. At this point, the line of thought about contact in language seems to have been extended and expanded to the scope of culture. Along with identifying the object, his analyses revolve around the task of attempting to establish a technical operation to explain the refraction in culture, more specifically Vietnamese culture. Operational theory, as Phan Ngoc defines it, is the steps to find a consistent and rigorous way to explain a phenomenon, not a story of providing general knowledge. He was very successful in interpreting Nguyen Du's mindset as expressed in The Tale of Kieu and made initial attempts to apply this to the study of Vietnamese culture.

Scholar Phan Ngoc and his wife pictured with Professor Hoang Thi Chau, People's Teacher Le Hong Sam and the author (2014)

Starting from the form to delve deeper into the content, value, and meaning of those forms, the work "Vietnamese Culture," a new approach, has contributed an important voice on Vietnamese cultural identity:Cultural identity, therefore, is not an object but a type of relationship. A relationship that combines and connects elements from many very different sources, yet creates a miraculous organic unity…the Vietnamese are masters of the art of bricolage.[3]"[P. Ngoc 1994; 108-109]. Phan Ngoc is very convincing in pointing out that contact is a prominent characteristic due to Vietnam's geographical and historical conditions. Therefore, cultural assimilation with contacts from many different major cultural sources, and then the fusion and assimilation of different expressions of foreign cultural phenomena on the "filter" of the indigenous consciousness, is the identity of Vietnamese culture – a composite culture."

Of course, the pioneering work may not be as complete as the theorist desired, nor can it immediately satisfy the academic community, especially in a field as vast and detailed as culture. However, the overarching systematic idea and the persistent efforts to build cultural studies into a legitimate science to decipher the Vietnamese psyche deserve for Phan Ngoc to be mentioned as a prominent figure in modern Vietnamese social sciences and humanities.

5. From the epistemological, discriminatory, and operational foundations, with works bearing such fundamental research hypotheses, supported by layers of logical arguments, and presenting such compelling and inspiring points, have the recognitions given to Phan Ngoc truly been commensurate? But he seems unconcerned! He chose to act like someone influenced by Confucianism: quietly without complaint and quietly without demands. Some opinions suggest that Phan Ngoc wanted to build his own theory. This is quite understandable! Because he possessed the character of a Confucian scholar, and moreover, a "stubborn" Confucian scholar from the impoverished but studious and literary-minded Nghe An province (Phan Ngoc always admitted to himself as a "stubborn scholar"), deep down he was a very orthodox person. And an orthodox Confucian scholar will always be driven by a legitimate need: to express his own opinions. Opinions are the common purpose of life for all those with character and intellect.

Phan Ngoc didn't think about fame, much less about profit, but he always harbored a deep desire to contribute to the nation. In his conversations, he often mentioned his life's motto:Live a small but meaningful life."With his significant contributions, raising issues that continue to inspire reflection and debate among scholars, and providing a foundation for future generations to continue exploring and refining his work, Phan Ngoc lived a useful life as he had always wished."