Read the epic poem "The Ten Thousand Day War" by Huu Dat.

The epic poem, a challenging genre for many, demands a wealth of life experience, intense emotions, and a certain understanding of the genre. Therefore, when I learned that Huu Dat had a "plan" to venture into the epic poem genre, I initially didn't believe it. It wasn't until I held the manuscript in my hands that I truly didn't believe it.The Ten Thousand Day WarIt was only then that I realized, for Huu Dat, nothing is impossible. I was even more impressed to learn that, in these times when "making a living is no joke for poets," a teacher, after achieving success in short stories, theater, film, and novels, in such a short time, simultaneously published two collections of "serious" poetry. I think that without true passion and dedication, such success would be impossible.

The epic poem is a relatively unique literary genre situated between narrative and lyrical modes of writing. It has not traditionally been a strong point in Vietnamese literature. Evidence shows that while Vietnamese poetry in general boasts numerous achievements, epic poems are quite rare. This is a fact. Clearly, Vietnamese literature has many poets, and the number of poets who have attempted epic poems may exceed ten, but the number of works that have received widespread acclaim from readers is unlikely to surpass that number (Tố Hữu, Thu Bồn, Nguyễn Khoa Điềm, Thanh Thảo, Hữu Thỉnh, Trần Đăng Khoa, Nguyễn Việt Chiến, Trần Mạnh Hảo, Thi Hoàng, Anh Ngọc, Nguyễn Trọng Tạo, Trần Anh Thái). Clearly, the epic poem presents a rigorous challenge for poets. Entering this field, as mentioned, poets, in addition to their life experience and literary knowledge (including a deep understanding of the genre), must also demonstrate a wealth of emotional capacity relevant to the times, a "capital reserve," much like a successful businessman on the path to success (willing to accept even failure). Lacking any of these elements, success in this creative field will be difficult to achieve. We believe that, as someone who has worked in many fields (theatre, film, prose), embarking on this writing journey is a worthwhile endeavor.The Ten Thousand Day WarHữu Đạt must have known his limits.

The Ten Thousand Day WarIt is structured into 12 chapters, beginning with "Autumn Aspirations" (Chapter 1), through "National Resistance Day" (Chapter 2), "Forever Dien Bien" (Chapter 3), "When We Grow Up" (Chapter 4), "The Historical Confrontation" (Chapter 5), "The Mothers" (Chapter 6), "The University" (Chapter 7), "The Villages" (Chapter 8), "The Last Battle" (Chapter 9), "The Country's Transformation" (Chapter 10), "The Challenge" (Chapter 11), and finally the chapter titled "Our Generation" (Chapter 12). Looking at the chapter titles,The Ten Thousand Day WarIt can be classified as a historical epic. This is because, from beginning to end, the events mentioned in the chapters almost encompass the entire history of the country, from the Autumn Revolution, which gave birth to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, through the two wars of resistance against foreign invasion, to the time when the country was completely unified and was undergoing reconstruction and integration. With the epic genre, I believe the greatest difficulty for authors is the structure. Writing a short poem only requires abundant emotion, a prose work requires life experience, and an epic requires both. If one cannot master the emotions, the work will be disjointed, but if one cannot master the structure, an epic will be "disjointed," and the reader will find it difficult to understand the author's intentions. A good epic, in addition to the captivating power of the verses, must also "anchor" in the reader's mind the beauty and structural coherence of its form. Because epic poems belong to the narrative mode, meaning they contain a story, if the structure is loose, or even nonexistent, the author will not know how to guide the narrative. To verify this, let's examine famous epic poems around the world: the Iliad and Odyssey of the Greeks, the Ramayana and Mahabharata of India, the Roland Epic of France… All of these epic poems present readers with very engaging and interesting stories, precisely because they have a tight structure.

In Vietnam, the concept of epic poetry only began to appear around the 1950s. According to authors Bui Van Nguyen and Ha Minh Duc, "epic poetry is a form of narrative poetry, more or less based on narrative methods... Epic poetry is also a form of narrative poetry, but not all narrative poems are epic poems or have epic characteristics... The content of epic poems is often linked to aesthetic categories of beauty, heroism, and sublimity. Epic poems often have incomplete plots." Researcher Hoang Ngoc Hien also affirms: "Epic poetry is a major genre in two senses: it has a large volume and carries a large content"; and "The relationship between the lyrical principle and the narrative principle is a central issue of epic poetics." This brief connection helps us understand why researchers assert that composing epic poems is a challenge for all authors.

Back to the structureThe Ten Thousand Day WarHuu Dat's work can be affirmed as an epic poem structured according to the historical events of the country. As we mentioned above, with 12 chapters, the author Huu Dat intends to "embrace" the history of the country from the very beginning (the autumn of the Revolution) to the present time (the country's liberation and ongoing process of reconstruction and integration). From another perspective, within the 12 chapters of the epic poem, we also encounter several chapters that...The Ten Thousand Day WarDetaching from the historical narrative, the poem delves into personal emotions. Sometimes it's about "Mothers" (Chapter 6); sometimes about "Villages"; and sometimes it's personal reflections from a generational perspective: "When we grew up / The battlefront remained a non-combat zone," "We grew up / Clouds sighed between the shores of hope / The alluvial plains were filled with green dreams," "We grew up / Understanding the country through history lessons / Mother Au Co gave birth to a hundred children from a sack of eggs…" Poet Nguyen Khoa Diem in his epic poem.Road of Aspirationwhen writing aboutCountryIt also reflects the ideological movement of the urban youth generation in South Vietnam towards the people and the nation during the anti-American war. Chapter 5 of the epic poem.Road of AspirationHis poem begins with the line: "When we grew up, the country already existed...", and the entire poem follows that emotional thread. I believe that Huu Dat is similar to Nguyen Khoa Diem in this respect: when writing about the country, both seek a point of reference from the perspective of a specific generation (we). With Nguyen Khoa Diem, "we" is very young; with Huu Dat, "we" grew up alongside the growth of the country and its people. In that respect, Huu Dat's ideas are truly profound.

The cover of the book "The Ten Thousand Day War" by author Huu Dat, published by the People's Police Publishing House in 2015.

Following closely the historical timeline of the nation,The Ten Thousand Day WarIt begins with the emotions of the autumn days before the Revolution (139 lines), continues through the long resistance war against French colonialism (333 lines), leaving behind the "eternal Dien Bien Phu" (227 lines), continues with the historical confrontation with American imperialism (143 lines), culminates in the final battle (203 lines), and ends with the country's transformation. If we consider...The Ten Thousand Day WarAs a historical epic, I think that with so many verses closely adhering to the major historical events of the nation, Huu Dat has fulfilled his responsibility. Hundreds of verses, written with the emotions of a young man born and raised in a village in the Northern Delta during wartime, exude the "heroic" tone of a true epic. Unlike some literary genres, epics have a somewhat epic quality, so readers can easily perceive the "elegant" tone emanating from the words. It is difficult to list all the examples of verses with such a heroic tone in the entire collection.The Ten Thousand Day WarHowever, just by glancing at the opening chapter, "Autumn Aspirations," we can already see its "majestic" appearance. The opening section (almost equal to the length of the poem)Viet Bac(by To Huu), like a concise history of the dark days of slavery in Vietnam, Huu Dat provides readers with many historical events in just 139 lines: unequal battles against the enemy, heroes that every Vietnamese person can never forget, and important historical moments when the nation opened a new chapter. Huu Dat chose free verse, a natural choice given the poem's clear emotional flow. The early history of the country is interwoven and contrasted on a palette of black and white, light and dark, tragic and heroic, groaning in pain, yet also deeply emotional. The choice of verse form depends on the emotional content. For example, the first four lines are written in nine-syllable verse: “Nearly a hundred years in the chains of slavery / Our nation poor in hunger and suffering / The country has endured countless upheavals / Young men and women love each other and sofolk song crossing the bridgeThe longer-than-usual lines of poetry also allow the author to create a more poignant emotional impact when speaking about the "pains" and "sorrows" of the nation's past. Meanwhile, in the section describing the indomitable will of the communists in their struggle against the enemy, the poet shifts to a completely different poetic form, with freer lines (in wording), a stronger and more resolute tone:

Hearts steadfastly devoted to the flag.

A staunch communist

Never give up.

Before money

Cannot be bought or sold.

Many comrades sacrificed their lives.

He still sang in prison.

Examples

Shining brightly forever

Even if my body dissolves into the earth

But the sacred spirit of the mountains and rivers will forever remain!

The author has noted at the beginning of the poem that this is a picture of ahourglassIndeed, I haven't had enough time or expertise to evaluate the verses written in the form of drawings, a unique experiment by Huu Dat in this epic poem (including in the poetry collection).Travel(published previously) – how effective was it in conveying the intended message? But judging by the textual form, I think that's probably one of the contributions of the poet, who comes from a linguistics background. Incidentally, I'd also like to reiterate that, right from the poetry collection "Lữ" (The Traveler),onionHuu Dat seems to be very "diligent" in creating visual poetry. In this collection of poems, he has quite a few pieces written in the style of illustrations. And in the epic poem "The Ten Thousand Day War," this creativity in his poetry is even more "intense." I have compiled statistics in the epic poem collection.The Ten Thousand Day WarThere are 39 stanzas written in a visual style with many different and impressive illustrations. These include: a stemmed glass, a longhouse roof, a rice jar, a wine gourd, an antique vase, a flower vase, a large glass, a key, a spinning top, an hourglass, a bronze incense burner, a cross, a decorative vase, a candle, a teardrop, a torch, an arrow, a bronze drum, a haystack, a candle, a sloping tower, a haystack, a map of Vietnam… The author's meticulous creation of such a dense array of illustrations cannot fail to attract the reader's attention. When discussing visual poetry (or pictorial poetry) in the history of poetry in general, many researchers have argued that, in specific and temporary circumstances, writing poetry in a visual style can also bring new and interesting impressions to the reader. Instead of readers simply "reading poetry," now, when encountering poetry from a visual perspective, they have the opportunity to "see a poem." With this "reading," seemingly "invisible" written words are transformed into a painting or a film (as in cinema). I believe that this blending of art forms is also a new direction in contemporary artistic creation. In the early 20th century, in French literature, at the same time as Picasso's Cubist school of painting, a school of visual poetry (Calligramme) also emerged, most notably represented by the poet Apollinaire, author of the famous poem.Mirabeau BridgeHuu Dat in the epic poemThe Ten Thousand Day WarThis "game" requires even more effort. And of course, like Apollinaire, some of his pictorial poems are purely a form of play. But some of his pictorial poems/stanzas contain hidden messages of content in their own way and interesting aesthetic information. Therefore, among these experiments, some of Huu Dat's pictorial poems have left a particularly strong impression on readers. For example, for me, when I carefully "looked at" and "read" the stanza depicting a haystack (p. 32), I felt as if I was reliving a very typical Vietnamese rural village from the past, enveloped in the fragrant scent of rice:

Our buffalo

eat grass in our fields

Whether clear or murky

We still prefer bathing in our own pond.

Remembering the village's melodious songs

She has been rocking me since I was a child.

Remembering the village through dreams.

The moonlit night was filled with the sound of a very sad lullaby…

Reading (and viewing) the poem depicting a map of Vietnam (p. 56), even without studying the content in detail, I felt a surge of intense emotion. The S-shaped figure that we've always seen on ordinary maps of our country now seems to possess a soul. It's no coincidence that in recent artistic life, we see the emergence of many novel forms: installation art, visual music, performance poetry… Perhaps this is also a way to make art less monotonous? I think visual poetry or pictorial poetry – with drawings – also follows this direction…

From another perspective, looking at it from a structural-ideological point of view...The Ten Thousand Day WarBeyond its nature as a historical epic, it is also a work brimming with emotion, reflecting the author's reflections on the times. This is perhaps an equally important element for an epic poem. A poem, sometimes, only needs to be musically and rhythmically beautiful to be sufficient, but an epic poem, without a foundational ideology and without providing the reader with a clear understanding of its content, will find it difficult to resonate with the reader.The Ten Thousand Day WarAlongside historical events spanning the nation's history, the work is interspersed with the poet's poignant "lyrical digressions." For example, after the first three chapters on "Autumn Aspirations," "The Nine-Year Resistance War," and "Forever Dien Bien Phu," Huu Dat pauses to converse with the reader about "Our Generation," the author's generation. After the chapters on "Historical Confrontation," he reflects on "The Mothers" of Vietnam during those years of hardship and sacrifice. Then he returns to "The University," to the land of Me Tri where he and I, our generation, lived and studied during the war years, to contemplate more deeply the people who experienced the resistance war against America with all its sacrifices and losses. Following this is a journey back to "The Villages." After "The Last Battle" and "The Country's Transformation," Huu Dat has a chapter brimming with reflections on the country after the war, the country on the path of industrialization and modernization. Similar to Nguyen Duy inUnleash your potentialHữu Đạt also has poignant verses in his epic poem, "The Ten Thousand Day War":

"The project opens up everywhere."

The house hasn't even been built yet, but my pockets are already full of money.

Public land is taken from the people.

"The compensation is negligible, but the price is exorbitant."

Or:

Market economy era

People's hearts are so unsettled.

Yesterday's truth

Now it's suddenly dirt cheap.

So much evil lurks around.

And the currency is destroying

Timeless moral values

Dissolving like foam on the waves.

The epic poem "The Ten Thousand Day War" was written between 2010 and the end of 2013, or the beginning of 2014, at a time when the South China Sea issue was not as heated as it is now. However, in this epic poem, we find verses that demonstrate the author's sensitivity, awareness of the times, and a deep, profound patriotism:

We grew up

Understanding the country through history lessons

Mother Au Co gave birth to a hundred children from a sack of eggs.

Half of them carried bows and arrows up the mountain.

Half of them went to explore the swamps and marshes.

Awareness of the South China Sea has existed since then.

It has seeped into every drop of water in the border region.

It can be affirmed that,The Ten Thousand Day WarThis is a success that demonstrates Huu Dat's unique style. It is an epic poem with rich, authentic, and emotionally resonant content, written in a free-flowing style with profound semantic depth and many unique innovations. It is an epic poem that enriches and expands the modern epic genre, very useful in spreading the patriotic spirit and the determination of our people in the war to defend the country and in overcoming challenges to build a new life today.