Happiness in Vietnamese literature?
From: Diane Fox (dnfox) <dnfox@hamilton.edu>
Date: Apr 18, 2006 11:27 AM
Subject: [Vsg] Happiness in Vietnamese literature?
Hi--
I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you would answer a student who,
at the end of a term of reading Vietnamese literature, asks "Is there
any happy literature in Vietnam"? This is not a question from a
mindless student, as it might sound from the wording, but from one who
has been very much engaged and thoughtful for two terms now--and who
also studies French colonialism and China.
You might ask that of most world literatures, of course. And it is
easy to point to moments of happiness, and to talk about the function
of writng and literature, and the laughter and playfulness of moments
in daily life.
But how would you answer the question? And are there pieces of
literature you could point her to?
with thanks for any thoughts you may have!
Diane
From: harry aveling <haveling@hotmail.com>
Date: Apr 18, 2006 12:05 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] happiness in Vietnamese literature?
HI!
A good question, applicable (as you say) to many national literatures.
Is nostalgia a form of happiness?
I would send her to John Balaban's beautiful ca dao collection.
Harry Aveling
From: Gilbert <mgilbert@ngcsu.edu>
Date: Apr 18, 2006 1:08 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] happiness in Vietnamese literature?
You are so right! The Old Man and the Sea is not very funny. Billy Budd?
Researche Du Temps Perdue? The Sound and the Fury, etc. I took a look at
the list of Pulitzer prize works for fiction and found little to laugh
about!
One aspect of the problem is that in the Buddhist world, happiness,
like all things, is fleeting (annica); when humans seek to hold onto it,
they become frustrated. It is this frustration that produces dukkha, or
suffering. Tragically, most humans seek to hold onto the happiness
seemingly offered by lovers, by pride of family place, by wealth, by
rank, by party or national loyalty and therefore are rarely happy. This
sensiblity enobles much of Vietnamese literature.
While it can be done, I would resist trying to find a funny piece of
Vietnamese literature and redirect the student to Thich Nhat Hanh. Other
than his prose in The Cry of Vietnam (and even perhaps there), Thich
Nhat Hanh embodies the Buddhist view of how to be happy without
attempting to possess it. Students can hear him at
www.seaox.com/thich.html.
Besides, is not contentment more fulfilling that the transitory feeling
of happiness, a question whose answer is found at the end of Kieu's
Tale?
A friend's head resting on one's shoulder may offer more lasting
happiness than one soul can absorb in a lifetime. If it does not, one
can always try again in the next life and the next, until it suffices
and the salvation this knowledge brings transcends all human emotion.
Now, its back to the hermit's hut for me!
Marc
From: Sarah Whitney Womack <swomack@umich.edu>
Date: Apr 18, 2006 2:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] happiness in Vietnamese literature?
Strangely enough, my class on colonial & postcolonial Southeast
Asia asked exactly the same question last Friday, but for the area/era as
a whole-- they rose up en masse after reading Kipanjikusmin's The
Darkening Sky (which I thought was very funny) and demanded to know why
the literature of colonialism couldn't be "perkier."
In their case, the question wasn't posed after 2 semesters of
thoughtful reading, but it did lead to an interesting discussion of what a
national literature is meant to do, what it does, and what we can learn
from that. Asked why they thought literature should be "perky," or at
least happy, they said that it is a sign that a given society is doing
well (that is, stable), and that the highest goal of the individual is to
be happy (that is, stable and contributing to stability). Asked what they
thought Vietnamese (most of our readings are Vietnamese) and Southeast
Asian literature was a sign of, they (after considerable debate that
included such suggestions as "that life really, REALLY sucks"-- one
student's efficient repackaging of the concept of samsara) decided that,
in a colonial society, the fundamental quality lacking is the certainty of
justice, so meditations on justice, rather than on complacent stability,
become the chief concern of a national or pre-national literature.
I don't know that they're right, but I thought the conversation
that followed the uprising was very productive, and left them questioning
the literature of "happiness" as much as the literature of "really freakin
depressing." We'll see if it lasts-- they're reading Memories of A Pure
Spring and watching Regret to Inform for next week. Ha.
So. Just some reflections from middle America,
Sarah Womack
From: Tuan Hoang <thoang1@nd.edu>
Date: Apr 18, 2006 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] happiness in Vietnamese literature?
I am ignorant of what is and isn't available in translation out there, but if the student reads Vietnamese,she may want to give the "kids fiction" from Duyen Anh a shot. I found his stuffs on the wartime Saigon youths (du-dang) suffer with sentimentality and moralizing. But the novellas on kids - from the pre-war North and wartime South - are comical in plot and language enough to overcome the moralizing spots in them.
Delightful are his stories that even the police to whom he had to report to each week (between his release from prison and his escape to France), said to him that the government made a mistake putting him in jail after the war because "you are the best writer about children" in the entire country. A good place to start is his quartet of novellas about pre-war mien Bac - "Thang Vu," "Thang Con," "Thang ---" , and "Con Thuy."
(Sorry, one of the names escapes my memory!)
For slightly older characters, try "Ngay Xua Con Be," also by Duyen Anh - and "Tuan, Chang Trai Nuoc Viet" by Nguyen Vy. Both deal with one of the most universal themes in modern world lit and film, which is The Young Man from the Province." Think, for instances of "Great Expectations," "Anna Karenin," "Sophie's Choice," and the movie "Il Posto," where the provincial youthful and idealistic male protagonist arrived from small towns to London, St. Petersburgh, New York, and Rome, respectively. In the Vietnamese examples, they came as
students from northern provincial towns to late-colonial Hanoi, one pursuing the dream of writing modern poetry when not trying to win the hearts of local girls, the other getting into anti-colonial activities, if memory serves. Both are heavily autobiographical, almost to the point of being memoirs. But enough is dramatized - and comically too, even if the Nguyen Vy's isn't comedy proper - that I think they'd qualify as fiction. They may be available for free online. But beware of possible difficulties in grasping some of
linguistic expressions, esp. from Duyen Anh who loves to sprinkle conversations with slangs and expressions.
Tuan
From: jon mcintyre <jon.mcintyre@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 18, 2006 2:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] happiness in Vietnamese literature?
Reading Vietnamese literature (especially relatively contemporary literature), I've likewise been struck by the often cynical and dispairing tone of much of what I've read. I'm thinking especially of Nguyen Huy Thiep, Le Minh Khue, Pham Thi Hoai, and others. As other posters have pointed out, this is by no means an exclusively Vietnamese phenomenon.
Yet, in most world literatures, and Vietnam is no exception, there are often lively strains of comedy, hope, and romanticism that express happiness. In Vietnamese literature, I think of the work of Ho Anh Thai. One of my favorite contemporary VN authors, his stories, while they express hardship and human cruelty, are often both playful and, at the center, hopeful about the human condition. "Still Believe in Fairy Tales" (translated as "The Man Believed in Fairy Tales" in the Curbstone english translation) catches this stream in his writing.
From: Nir Avieli <avieli@bgu.ac.il>
Date: Apr 19, 2006 12:13 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] happiness in Vietnamese literature?
While literature from many part f the world is 'unhappy' and while Vietnamese 'happy' literature (or, shall we say, 'optimistic and joyful') exists of course, I think that the question is important and deserves some reflection.
As an anthropologist, I consider cultural universals such as "much of the world literature is unhappy" as important (indeed, we often seek such universals in our grand theories), but what we are mostly after nowadays are cultural particulars. In our case, I think that the enigma has to do with the feeling of many scholars of Vietnam (often conveyed in VSG texts) that contemporary Vietnam is an exceptionally lively, joyous and optimistic society. However, much of the Vietnamese literature I have read seems to me, a foreigner reading English translations, somewhat gloomy and sad and, at times, really depressing.
Indeed, my Vietnamese teacher (who holds an MA in Vietnamese literature from the Uni. of Hue) suggested that "most Vietnamese stories end up tragically, and usually this is caused by wrong moves by the leading female character..." . (while gender this is not the issue in the present discussion, i thought that comment is worth mentioning).
I think that the context is not only Southeast Asia and colonialism/post colonialism but also Chinese cultural and literary tradition. Gilbert's comments on the impact of Buddhism are important here and I would like to offer yet another point: I have once asked Yuri Pines, a sinologist from the Hebrew University with whom i worked in the PRC why is China such a gloomy, melancholic and sad place. Yuri suggested that this has to do with the Chinese deep awareness to passing time and long duree history: the fact that ever since Chinese culture exists empires come but always go, emperors rise and always fall, greatness is achieved but always lost, does not leave much space for optimism, as the tragic end is expected and inevitable.
I am not suggesting that exactly the same logic holds true to Vietnam, but maybe the melancholic and pessimistic nature of much of Vietnamese literature has to do with such disturbing awareness regarding the viscitudes of time...
From: John Balaban <tbalaban@earthlink.net>
Date: Apr 19, 2006 7:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] happiness in Vietnamese literature?
Narratives may be one thing; poetry--especially the oral folk poetry known as ca dao--another. In 1971-72, I collected on tape about 500 ca dao sung in a tradition at least 2000 years old. Many of the poems were about love, or lost love. Many were lullabies. A few were naughty. A lot of them were funny. Others moral or patriotic exhortations. In them, even the war was going on and was sometimes in the background of my recordings, one had in the oral folk tradition a glimpse of Vietnam beyond the war. 50 of these poems are collected in a revised edition of Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry (Copper Canyon Press, 2003), but you can also hear some of these bai hat at my website:
http://www.johnbalaban.com/ca-dao.html
From: will pore <willpore@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 19, 2006 9:22 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] happiness in Vietnamese literature?
Dear List:
A very good example, among others, of the pervasive influence of Chinese literature on Vietnamese might be the comparison that can be made between the Tang dynasty poet Du Fu's anti-war poem "Bingchexing" ("The War Chariots") and Bao Ninh's "The Sorrow of War."
From: Lily Chiu <lily.chiu@ilmh.be>
Date: Apr 19, 2006 10:58 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] happiness in Vietnamese literature?
Thank you for this thought-provoking question. I'd like to know how we are defining "happiness" here. Is it a happy ending, is it joy and ecstasy, is it the attainment of wealth and power? I agree that much of Vietnamese literature is melancholic, tragic, bittersweet and nostalgic. Yet if we understand happiness to mean a satisfactory conclusion, or a righting of wrongs, then wouldn't Truyen Kieu (The Tale of Kieu) qualify as a story with a "happy ending," despite all the bitter trials the heroine has experienced?
I also wonder if some of the texts chosen for translation into English are "unhappy" simply because this is what an American readership expects of Vietnamese literature. Unfortunately, I too plead guilty to choosing certain texts for study or teaching because of their "tragic"contents. However, one story I am familiar with in which the protagonist leads a materially contented life (although she has suffered in the past) is Le Minh Khue's "Than Phan Cu Ly," which was translated as "The Coolie's Tale" by Bach Hoai Tran and Dana Sachs. Miss Canh, a former prostitute and guest worker, returns to Vietnam extremely rich and infinitely eligible for love, two qualities that might, to an American audience at least, signify the successful achievement of "happiness."
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: Apr 19, 2006 4:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] happiness in Vietnamese literature?
Yes, indeed, how can we ? And if we follow our hermit's advice, and look up Thich Nhat Hanh's writings, it'd be a kind of happiness that is very different from what we normally think of as "happiness." This is very much culturally conditioned, or culturally set free, depending very much upon where we are coming from.
My first reaction is that the reason is rather mundane: the paucity of the amount of translated works available. I can assure you that no Vietnamese, regardless of how masochistic, would read one depressing fiction after another life long and enjoy it. Secondly, I remember one time Michel talked about the publishing industry, why one work is chosen and not another. It's supposed to be a free system, but if we look at it closely underneath, lots of things are not what they appear to be.
Among the works available, I think Le Luu's "A Time Far Past" does not fall into this category: there are sorrows but not despair, and there are lots of struggles, and in the end, hope. But it's only in hardback, which is rather stiff (Full disclosure: I am a co-translator of some of the volumes mentioned here). Ho Quang Minh has made it into a movie, of stunning photography
Thirdly, the modern form of fiction, novels and short short stories, are fairly new, of recent history vintage.Poetry is probably Vietnam's most ancient literary form. Every body is engaged in it. It would not be too far fetched to say that in every Vietnamese there is a poet, either still born, waiting to come out, and in full flower (which could be either enjoyable or frightening). In it you would probably find the widest range of emotions practiced by the greatest number of people. There are a number of works you can sample - Nguyen Duy's Distant Road, Nguyen Quang Thieu's The Women Who Carry River Water, Vietnamese Poetry from the war, Six Vietnamese Poets, etc.
Fourthly, there are many shades of sadness. Trinh Cong Son's songs are never about mirth or fun, but millions listen to his music again and again, for a sadness that brings about deep satisfaction. This is also culturally embodied, and it might not be possible to recreate it precisely in another language.
And fifthly, it's the meaning of things that's outside the meaning of things. The Vietnamese language has a lot of words that designate "poverty" with a very positive, ennobling connotations - thanh ba.ch, thanh lie^m, thanh ba^`n, etc. For when the country lives under foreign rule, or a corrupt ruler, the highest respect is reserved for those who refuse to collaborate, to sell out for wealth and rank. Conversely, it has a lot of words that designate wealth with contempt - tro.c phu', bo.n nha` gia^`u, cuong hao ac ba, etc. It's a system of values that is not always on the same page with other cultures.
And finally, it's about the view of sufferings as Marc indicates. Today the US probably has some of the best Buddhist masters in the world. But the Buddhist view of sufferings is still fairly unknown, and often misunderstood, as it was often mischaracterized in the 18th and 19th century. It's true that the Buddhists view the world, our phenomenal world, as a place of deep sufferings. But that's only step one. Step two is understand its causes - desire and attachment to something that we want to be permanent, include our own fleeting self. Step three is to know that there is a way to remove the causes of sufferings. Step four is the goal when the causes are removed. The end is total freedom and quiet joy. It's like unless you know that you have a disease, you can never be cured. So suffering is not necessarily always delibitating, if we could use it to find out the cause, and transfrom it, if not for the whole society, at least for oneself.
Nguyen van Vinh is famous for writing that "We Vietnamese laugh at everything / An Nam ta cai gi cung cuoi." He says that with certain exasperation, as if it were a disease. Well, you can't laught at everything unless you know that everything will come to pass, whether it's pleasures or sufferings, which Nir Avieli mentions.
-NBC