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

Epic, which is a challenging genre for many people because it requires the writer to have a rich life experience, intense emotions and a certain understanding of the genre. So when I learned that Huu Dat had a “plot” to jump into the epic realm, at first I really didn’t believe it. It wasn’t until I held the manuscript in my hands.The Ten Thousand Day Warof him, I just realized, it turns out that for Huu Dat, nothing is impossible. I admire even more when I know that, in the midst of the current era of "bread and butter is no joke for poets", a teacher, after successes in the fields of short stories, theater, cinema and novels, in just a short time, has published two collections of "serious and short" poems at the same time. I think, if he is not truly passionate and dedicated, he cannot have such success.

Epic is a relatively special literary genre that lies between the two modes of narrative and lyrical writing. It is not inherently a strong point in literary writing in our country. Evidence shows that, in general, the achievements in poetry of Vietnamese people can be cited quite a lot, but achievements in epic are very rare. That is a fact. Obviously, Vietnamese literature has many poets, the number of poets who have tried their hand at epic may be more than ten, but their works that receive response from readers are difficult to surpass that number (To Huu, Thu Bon, Nguyen Khoa Diem, Thanh Thao, Huu Thinh, Tran Dang Khoa, Nguyen Viet Chien, Tran Manh Hao, Thi Hoang, Anh Ngoc, Nguyen Trong Tao, Tran Anh Thai). Obviously, epic is a serious challenge for poets. Entering this field, as mentioned, the poet, in addition to his life and literary experience (having a deep understanding of the genre), must also affirm his emotional reserves with the times, "long-term capital", like a big businessman on the business path (daring to accept failure). Without one of these factors, it will be difficult to achieve success in this creative field. We think, as someone who has written in many fields (stage, cinema, prose), starting to writeThe Ten Thousand Day War, Huu Dat must have known his limits.

The Ten Thousand Day Waris structured into 12 chapters, starting with “Autumn Aspiration” (chapter 1), through “National Resistance Day” (chapter 2), “Forever Dien Bien” (chapter 3), “When We Grow Up” (chapter 4), “Historical Confrontation” (chapter 5), “Mothers” (chapter 6), “University” (chapter 7), “Villages” (chapter 8), “The Last Battle” (chapter 9), “The Country Transforms” (chapter 10), “Challenges” (chapter 11) and finally the chapter titled “Our Generation” (chapter 12). Looking at the chapter titles,The Ten Thousand Day War, can be classified as a historical epic. Because from beginning to end, the events mentioned in the chapters almost encompass the history of the country from the Autumn Revolution, the birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, through two resistance wars against invaders, until the country was completely unified, in the process of construction and integration. With the epic genre, I think the biggest difficulty for authors is the structure. Writing a short poem only requires the writer to have abundant emotions, a prose work requires life experience, with an epic, people need both of those abilities. If you cannot control your emotions, your work will be adrift, but if you cannot control the structure, an epic will be "disordered", and readers will have difficulty understanding the author's intentions. A good epic, in addition to the appeal of the verses, must also "anchor" in the hearts of readers with beauty and structural rigor. Because the epic itself belongs to the narrative method, meaning it has a narrative element, a story, so if the structure is loose, or even has no structure, the author will not know how to lead the story. To verify this issue, let's examine famous epics in the world, the Iliad, Odyssey of the Greeks, Ramayana and Mahabharata of India, Roland's Epic of France... All of these epics bring readers very attractive and interesting stories, precisely because they have a tight structure.

In Vietnam, the concept of epic only began to appear around the 50s of the 20th century. According to two authors Bui Van Nguyen and Ha Minh Duc, "Epic is a form of narrative poetry, more or less based on the narrative method... Epic is also a form of narrative poetry, but not all narrative poems are epics or have epic colors... The content of epics is often associated with aesthetic categories of beauty, heroism, and nobility. Epic often has an incomplete plot". Researcher Hoang Ngoc Hien also affirmed: "Epic is a large genre with two meanings: large capacity and large content"; and "The correlation between lyrical principles and narrative principles is a central issue of epic poetics". Such a little connection helps us see why researchers affirm that composing epics is a challenge for all authors.

Back to structureThe Ten Thousand Day Warby Huu Dat, it can be affirmed that this is a long poem structured according to the historical events of the country. As we said above, with 12 chapters of the long poem, author Huu Dat intends to "embrace" the history of the country from the beginning (the autumn of the Revolution) to the present time (the country is liberated and is in the process of construction and integration). From another perspective, in the 12 chapters of the long poem, we encounter some chapters inThe Ten Thousand Day Warseparate from the historical events, delve into the personal emotions. Sometimes it is the emotions about “Mothers” (chapter 6); sometimes it is the emotions about “villages”; and sometimes it is personal contemplation from the perspective of generations: “When we grew up/ The front line was still free of war”, “We grew up/ The clouds sobbed between the two banks of aspirations/ The sandbanks floated with green dreams”, “We grew up/ Understanding the country through historical articles/ Mother Au Co gave birth to a hundred eggs”… Poet Nguyen Khoa Diem in the long poemRoad of desirewhen writing aboutCountryalso clings to the movement of consciousness of the young generation of urban South towards the people, towards the nation during the days of fighting against America. Chapter 5 of the epic poemRoad of desireHis poem begins with the sentence: “When we grew up, the Country was already there”…), and the whole poem follows that emotional flow. I think that Huu Dat is similar to Nguyen Khoa Diem in this characteristic: when writing about the country, both seek a support from the perspective of a specific generation (we), with Nguyen Khoa Diem “we” are still very young, with Huu Dat, “we” grow up with the growth of the country and the people. In that aspect, Huu Dat’s idea is really great.

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

Closely follow the historical events of the nation,The Ten Thousand Day Waropening with the emotions of the autumn days before the Revolution (139 sentences), through the long resistance war against French colonialism (333 sentences), remaining with "forever Dien Bien" (227 sentences), continuing with the historic confrontation with American imperialism (143 sentences) leading to the Final Battle (203 sentences) and ending with The Country in Change. If we considerThe Ten Thousand Day Waris a historical epic, then I think with those verses that closely follow the great 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 the days of war, have exuded the "heroic" tone of a true epic. Unlike some literary genres, epics have more or less an epic tendency, so readers can easily recognize the "luxurious" tone emanating from the words. It is difficult to count all the examples of verses with such a heroic tone in the entire epic collection.The Ten Thousand Day War, but just by skimming through the opening chapter of “Autumn Desire”, we can see its “majestic” appearance. The opening (almost the same length as the poem)Viet Bacby To Huu), like a brief history of the dark days of slavery of the Vietnamese people. With only 139 verses/lines of poetry, Huu Dat has provided readers with many historical events: unequal battles with the enemy, heroes that today every Vietnamese person cannot forget, important historical moments when the nation opened a new page of history. Huu Dat chose the free verse form. That was also the inevitable choice when the emotional flow of the poem clearly followed this direction. The history of the country in the early days is interspersed, contrasting on the color palette of white/black, light/dark, tragic/heroic, groaning in pain, but also passionately emotional. The choice of verse form depends on the emotional content. For example, the author wrote the first four lines in a 9-word verse: “Nearly a hundred years in the chains of slavery/ Our nation was poor, in hunger and misery/ The country suffered through many ups and downs/ A boy and a girl fell in love and became lovers.”bridge dance”. The longer verse than usual is also the way for the author to create more poignant emotions when wanting to talk about the “pains” and “sorrows” of the nation at one time. Meanwhile, in the verse about the indomitable will of the communists in the struggle against the enemy, the poet switches to a completely different poetic form, the verse is freer (in words), more solid and also more determined:

Hearts loyal to the flag

loyal communist

Never give up

Before money

Cannot be bought or sold

How many comrades sacrificed

still singing in prison

Mirrors

forever shining

Even though the body dissolves into the earth

But the soul is forever sacred, oh mountains and rivers!

The author has noted at the beginning of the poem that this is a picture of ahourglass. I really do not have enough time and qualifications to evaluate the poems written according to drawings, a unique experiment of Huu Dat in this epic poem (including in the poetry collectionTravelpublished before) how effective it is for the content that needs to be reflected by him, but just looking at the form of the text, I think that is probably also one of the contributions of the poet who comes from a language expert. Here, I would like to mention again, right from the poetry collection LuonionHuu Dat seems to be very "diligent" in creating visual poetry. In this poem, he has written quite a few pieces in pictorial style. And in the epic poem "The Ten Thousand Day War", this creativity in his poetry is even more "concentrated". I have compiled a list in the epic poem collectionThe Ten Thousand Day WarThere are 39 verses written in visual style with many different and quite impressive images. These are: the image of a stemmed cup, the image of a communal house roof, the image of a rice jar, the image of a wine gourd, the image of an ancient vase, the image of a flower vase, the image of a large cup, the image of a key, the image of a spinning top, the image of an hourglass, the image of a bronze censer, the image of a cross, the image of a vase, the image of a candle, the image of a teardrop, the image of a torch, the image of an arrow, the image of a bronze drum, the image of a straw, the image of a candle, the image of a downward tower, the image of a straw, the image of a map of Vietnam... Such a feat of creating such dense images by the author cannot help but attract the attention of readers. When discussing pictorial poetry (or visual poetry) in the history of poetry in general, many researchers have argued that, in specific and temporary circumstances, writing poetry in pictorial style can also bring new and interesting impressions to readers. Instead of readers who have long focused on “reading poetry”, now when approaching poetry from a visual perspective, they have the opportunity to “see a poem”. With this way of “reading”, the seemingly “invisible” written words have now turned into a painting or a film (like in cinema). I think that mixing art forms like this is also a direction of innovation in artistic creation today. In the early 20th century, in French literature, at the same time as the emergence of Picasso’s cubist painting school, a school of pictorial poetry (Calligramme) also appeared in literature, the most representative of which was the poet Apollinaire, author of the famous poemMirabeau Bridge. Huu Dat in the epic poemThe Ten Thousand Day Warspends more effort on this “game”. And of course, like Apollinaire, there are also some of his pictorial poems that are purely a formal game. But there are also some of his pictorial poems/verses that contain their own content messages and interesting aesthetic information. Therefore, among these experiments, there are also some of Huu Dat’s pictorial poems that have left a special impression on the reader. For example, for me, when I “watch” and “read” carefully the poem about the image of a straw tree (p.32), I also feel like I am reliving a very typical Vietnamese rural village in the past in the passionate aroma of rice:

buffalo

eat grass

Whether clear or opaque

We'd rather bathe in our own pond.

Remember the village of melodious songs

Lulled us to sleep since we were young

Remembering the village through dreams

The moonlit night has a very sad lullaby...

Reading (and watching) the poem about the map of Vietnam (p.56), without having to study the content carefully, I suddenly felt a strong emotion rising in my heart. The S-shaped image that we have always seen on the ordinary map of the country, now suddenly seems to have a soul. It is not by chance that in recent artistic life, we have seen the appearance of many new forms: installation art, visual music, performance poetry... Perhaps that is also a way to make art less boring? I think visual poetry or pictorial poetry - drawings also follow that direction...

On the other hand, from a structural-ideological perspective, The Ten Thousand Day War, in addition to being a historical epic, is also a work rich in emotions, pondering over the author's current events. This is perhaps an equally important factor for an epic. A poem, sometimes, only needs to be good (in terms of music, melody), but an epic without an ideological support, without giving the reader a clear perception of the content, is difficult to stay in the reader's mind.The Ten Thousand Day WarAlong with historical events throughout the country, the work is also structured with interspersed "lyrical digressions" full of the poet's concerns. For example, after the first three chapters on "Autumn Desire", "Nine-Year Resistance War", and "Forever Dien Bien", Huu Dat stops to talk to readers about "Our Generation", the author's generation. After the chapters "Historical Confrontation", he confides about "Mothers" of Vietnam during the years of hardship and sacrifice. Then returning to "University", to the land of Me Tri where he and I, our generation, lived and studied during the war years, to contemplate more deeply about the people who experienced the resistance war against America with so many sacrifices and losses. Then comes the journey back to "The Villages". After "The Last Battle", "The Changing Country", Huu Dat has a chapter filled with thoughts about the country after the war, the country on the path of industrialization and modernization. Same as Nguyen Duy inAwaken your potential, Huu Dat also has some thoughtful verses in the epic poem The Ten Thousand Day War:

“The project is open everywhere.

House not built yet pocket full of money

Public land taken from the people

Compensation is not much but the price is high.

Or:

Market economy times

People's hearts are so unstable

Yesterday's Truth

now suddenly cheap as dirt

How much evil lurks

And the money is breaking

Eternal ethics

Melt like foam on the waves

The Ten Thousand Day War was written from 2010 to the end of 2013, the beginning of 2014, at a time when the East Sea issue was not as hot as it is today, but in this epic poem, we have encountered verses that prove the author is quite sensitive, up-to-date, and has a deep, passionate patriotic soul:

We grew up

Understanding the country through history lessons

Mother Au Co gave birth to a sac of one hundred eggs.

Half carry bows and arrows up the mountain

Half went to explore the swamps.

Awareness of the East Sea from that time

Permeated every drop of water in the border region

It can be affirmed,The Ten Thousand Day Waris a success that shows the uniqueness of Huu Dat. This is a collection of epic poems with rich content, authentic and emotional with a flexible writing style, deep in semantic content with many unique innovations. It is a collection of epic poems that enriches and enriches the genre of modern epic poems, very useful in spreading the spirit of patriotism and determination of our people in the war to defend the country and overcome challenges to build a new life today.