"Spring remembers the sun" - flowers or human fate

Ha Minh Duc's poetry focuses on ideas, which is the way for the poet to push emotions into depth, creating impressions and obsessions. Reading his poetry, we often have to ignore the rhythm of the language form to listen to the melodies inside the soul and emotions. In other words, Ha Minh Duc's poetry has the distillation of direct vibrations and the hidden flow of thoughts. Thanks to that, the intellectual beauty and generalization of the poem are displayed and enhanced. Possessing a poetic mindset rich in inner strength, combined with profound experiences of life, the author can both discover the unique, very own signs of a flower that takes "floating" as a fulcrum, and portray the portrait of a person who has found the meaning of his existence in the vast world:

There is a flower vine halfway up

Follow the wall forward

Green leaves like bewilderment

Where to go?

The sky is above

Let the wind blow

The support is the support

Every day cherish the little flower

Bring joy to people

(Climbing flowers)

It is not by chance that at first the author intended to name the work "Flowers in the Rainy Afternoon", or: "Flowers in the Rainy Afternoon", and later changed it toSpring remembers the sun– a more evocative and “sparkling” name… But whatever the name, it seemsFlowerstill the main character, given the "right to speak" by the author...

Flowers in Ha Minh Duc's poetry are subtly perceived in both color and scent. Depending on the inner development, the author will choose the space where the flowers exist as sunny or rainy and the time as morning or afternoon, day or night. The technique of contrast and opposition is exploited to create aesthetic effects:

No more sunshine

For bright flower color

No more wind

Let the fragrance of flowers spread

The petals glisten with morning dew

And whose hand?

Cosset

But the rain suddenly came

The sun gradually sets and the sky is filled with mist and rain.

Why are you still standing here?

Regret every fallen petal

The flowers are suddenly tattered

(Flowers in the rainy afternoon)

A day from dawn to dusk is the time for flowers to bloom and spread their fragrance. When night falls, it is also the time for a flower's life to end. But the day may not be over yet, but the flower has already withered. From those direct descriptions, the author ended the poem with a personification:

Tomorrow will be bright again

The rains come again

I secretly worry about fate

A day like a flower's life

(Flowers in the rainy afternoon)

Repeatedly appearing in Ha Minh Duc's poems are images of flowers past their prime, like the fate of women entering their twilight years - "the end of their beauty season". The sadness and regret of a "glorious time" that cannot be held back, as a matter of course, has become a stream of memories tinged with sorrow:

I remember

Dawn Flowers Bloom

The afternoon has faded away

My life is like a flower

There are bright days

Beauty reigns

The girl with the most power…

(Flowers wither)

From the lyrical subject’s perspective, through the “hidden dialogue”, the poet – the author – also shares similar feelings. Indeed, in life, past and present, in any time and place, beauty has its own power. The sad thing is that many times, the other half of the world feels and understands more not only the value and strength but also the fragility of that “one-day” power:

Why not like a flower's life?

In the midst of decline

The scent of flowers rises to the sky

Thousands of petals in the wind…

Just leave in the world

Unforgettable love

(Flowers wither)

The story of “pitying flowers and regretting jade” has always been very familiar in the system of metaphors in the art of poetry in general and especially in the traditional poetics of the East and national poetry in particular: from folk (folk songs) to classical and modern. Through the combined image: the fate of flowers - the life of a person, the poet will send and entrust his life philosophy and human thoughts. Some poems such asClimbing flowers, Flowers in the rainy afternoon, Faded flowers...written in that "aesthetic" spirit. However,Spring remembers the sunThe strong impression is also due to the presence of a world of female lyrical characters, including “strange flowers”: Ba Chua Kho, Thi No… And flowers at this time no longer have a general symbolic meaning but are the individual faces of each fate. In Ha Minh Duc’s poetry, she is a “Queen of Nom poetry” with extraordinary talent and beauty, but her name is still a mystery to this day - poetess Ho Xuan Huong:

The talented girl

Pure and loyal heart

A lifetime can teach you endless words.

Maybe spring is fading

Flowers are buried in the green grass

(Ho Xuan Huong)

Thuy Kieu, "whose beauty she demands first, her talent she demands second", had many ups and downs and wandered abroad for fifteen years, and then every evening - the most sensitive time for those who are separated - she felt homesick and missed her father and mother endlessly:

Half a life of wandering

Wild in the countryside

Memories sent back with the pale sunlight

Every sunset

(Sunset of Thuy Kieu)

These are also familiar names that “came to the throne” thanks to being born in the “multi-romantic and sentimental” land of Vietnamese culture; associated with personalities that are almost “default” in the consciousness and acceptance of Vietnamese people. A flirtatious Thi Mau full of vitality and “gender” instinct:

The young monk was drunk on sour food.

A beautiful woman who practices Buddhism all her life

Meet the fragrant ripe fruit, Mau is not indifferent

Despite the temple's prohibition

The color of the spell, and the love spell…

(Thi Mau goes to the temple)

And a "swinging Thi Hen" like "walking in the shoes" of lustful men, causing a bunch of "foolish for women" to fall into the trap and become a laughing stock for generations:

She decided to cast the net of love.

All back and forth are trapped

The old story is still there

Later generations recorded a story

(Swinging Thi Hen)

Different from the characters that are perceived and expressed in a style that is both serious and humorous but somewhat humorous, Ha Minh Duc's poetry collection also has a number of characters built on the foundation of inspiration of praise and admiration. Although not a long poem, the majesty and grandeur radiating from the death of female general Bui Thi Xuan created a source of upward emotions, which is the basis for the author to write verses with the heroic and noble nuances of an epic:

The country is grateful to her.

The enemy burned her in a fierce fire.

War elephants kneel at your feet

The eternal spirit of female general Bui Thi Xuan

(Female general Bui Thi Xuan)

In this stream of inspiration of gratitude, there is a character that is perhaps very difficult to put into poetry because of the dominance of the “prose nature”, that is Ba Chua Kho. However, the presence of this strange character partly explains the worldly color of the poem in particular and Ha Minh Duc’s compositions in general:

Lady of the Warehouse

No title but became a censor

Do not lead troops to fight the enemy

But contribute to the peace of the country

Treasure of the country and the people

A virgin must also be clear

(Lady of the Warehouse)

With Thi No - a character with the most "anti-poetic" appearance, the author also chose a reasonable "point of view", with "poetic nature": the perspective of love and private life. Surely, those who have read the short story "Chi Pheo" named after the famous lover Thi No by Nam Cao will meet each other in the images of the love story of the most unusual couple in modern Vietnamese prose and Nam Cao's humanitarian thought, but Ha Minh Duc, with a shared, "sympathetic" view, has brought a new discovery rich in humanity, humanism through a poetic tone mixed with a bit of "parody", humor but the main theme is sympathy:

No Will

Blooming embraces the heavy word of virginity for life

(Thi No's Love Story)

As a writer with a rich and "multi-disciplinary" literary and artistic career, Ha Minh Duc's poetry attracts readers with its profound experiences and philosophy:

The limit of the earth is the sky

The limit of the river is the sea.

The Limits of Winter

It is a spring day

The summer sun lights a fire

Autumn will return

Life is still messy

Yellow leaves fall all over the alley…

(Limit)

Prolific in many genres, but poetry is still the field where the author is most true to himself, lives with many dimensions of space and time, expressing many levels of mood:

Which wind brought you here?

This afternoon the flowers and leaves are in full bloom again

Happiness speaks silently

Drop by drop…

drunk

(Suddenly come)

It is the sincere voice of a soul that is always passionate about life and knows how to wait for love. In the endless nostalgia of memories and reminiscences of youth, the most precious thing is that in the "present tense", he still finds the sweet, passionate taste of love. It is the "muse" who revives, rejuvenates the soul and brings new things to Ha Minh Duc's poetry.