Pre-1945 Vietnamese classics
From: Nhu Anh
Date: 2009/04/28
Nhu Anh 04/28/2009
Dear list,
My query has two parts.
1) David G Marr mentions in _VNese Tradition on Trial_ that there was a poll conducted in 1942 on the 10 most respected Vietnamese books. According to the footnote, it was a poll conducted by the journal _Thanh Nghi_. Here in Saigon, I can't get a hold of that journal, as there's only a children's journal under that name at the library here. Does anyone who's worked w/
_Thanh Nghi_ happen to know what those 10 books were?
Marr mentions that some of them were: 1) Tran Trong Kim's _Nho Giao,
2) truyen Kieu, 3) Tran Trong Kim's _Viet Nam Su Luoc_, and (ranking unclear) Dao Duy Anh's _VN Van hoa su cuong_.
Hardcopy: pg 279 / googlebooks link:
http://books.google.com/books?id=FkcZ_nGkW-oC&pg=PA279&dq=david+marr+most+respected+books
2) Setting aside the poll by _Thanh Nghi_, I'm am curious as to what you would consider the 10 or so most important Vietnamese works written before 1954, esp non-fiction scholarly works. With the benefit of hindsight, what works formed foundation of Vietnamese intellectual thought and constituted a
canon of classic by 1954? This is especially interesting to me because much
of this takes place before the extreme Cold War polarization and extension
of Cold War politics into cultural policy in the DRV and RVN. I have an
everchanging working list myself, but I'm curious what other opinions are.
I'd be happy to compile and post the results (or send to interested parties
off-list, since this is a rather narrow interest).
Thanks for any assistance!
Nu-Anh Tran
Grad student
UC Berkeley
Dear list,
I meant to post my list and see if other vsg members might add or subtract entries and had any comments or ideas, but an unexpected out-of-town trip took me away from my books. I have been aiming to determine what might be considered the most intellectually influential colonial-era (pre-1954) works written in quoc ngu. Specifically, I am interested in works that in some informal way form a canon of classic works with which most educated, intellectually engaged people would have been familiar with. Since I am interested in well known published works, I obviously have not included illegal revolutionary tracts that may have been influential politically but not necessarily popular among intellectual circles. I am interested partly because many of these works would form the foundation for much of the intellectual discourse during the RVN. In no particular order...
1) Tran Trong Kim, Nho Giao
2) Tran Trong Kim, Viet Nam Su Luoc
3) Duong Quang Ham, Viet Nam Van Hoc Su Yeu & Viet Nam Thi Van Hop Tuyen
4) Dao Duy Anh, Viet Nam Van Hoa Su Cuong
5) Vu Ngoc Phan, Nha Van Hien Dai
6) Hoai Thanh & Hoai Chan, Thi Nhan Viet Nam 1932-1941
7) Nhat Linh, Doan Tuyet
8) Khai Hung, Nua Chung Xuan
9) Pham Quynh’s journal, Nam Phong
10) the Tu Luc Van Doan’s journal, Phong Hoa and Ngay Nay
I know it's an incomplete list, and I would love to hear other list members about what works I've completely forgotten or what works what I've overrated.
Thanks!
Nu-Anh
Dear Nu-Anh and list,
This is a very interesting question. As the last two items on your list suggest, one problem might be in the assumptions that we bring to the question of what categories of texts may be considered "canonical." If we accept that periodicals can be considered as individual texts (as you seem to do, and rightly in my opinion), this opens up quite a large range of possibilities in the context of colonial Vietnam. What about Phu Nu Tan Van, for example? And how about La Cloche Felee? On the latter, I know that you're interested specifically in quoc ngu works, but is it necessarily a safe assumption that the most influential texts were written in quoc ngu? Intellectuals during and after the colonial period operated in many languages. Along these lines, I also think it likely that one could make a case for a number of pre-colonial era texts (which raises the question of whether they were "influential" in characters or in quoc ngu translation) - I'll leave it to those better-qualified than me to hash out which ones might qualify. Finally, what does "influential" itself mean? And when does "influential" mean - during the colonial period itself, or after? And if after, when? And on whom? The "most influential" texts surely differed at different moments during the RVN period (and depending on who you are talking about), and these texts were surely different from the colonial-era texts that are influential now - and if not, they're likely influential now for different reasons than they were then. But as I said: this is a very interesting question, and I'll enjoy following the thread.
Charles Keith
Michigan State University
I'd agree with Charles. If one were to ask individuals of my parents' generation in the South, Cloche Felee would be instanced of having had the greatest influence. My father recalls copies being passed around clandestinely in his school (College de Cantho, from which he was expelled in 1926, he and Ung van Khiem having produced a paper that was considered subversive).
The issue is that Cloche Felee was no longer read by the 1950s; but it did shape a whole generation's view of its historical role.
I'd also list Phu Nu Tan Van, if you are to include Nam Phong and Phong Hoa.
I'm not entirely sure of the dates, but Vu Trong Phung's works as well as those of Ngo Tat To were re-published in the South either in the later 1950s or early 1960s.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Nu Anh,
Your question is an intriguing one. I have seen that poll as well, and think of it as a good snapshot of what many intellectuals must have thought were the most important books that should appear on a list of important books. That last sentence is awkward, I know. What I am trying to say is that I think that there is a big difference between what might appear on a list -- and what, actually, might have been important.
Take, for example, the geographical spread of the authors. They are all from the center or the north. No southerner is on the list. This reflects the beliefs of many intellectuals that all high culture emanated from the north or center. But how do we measure "importance"? Is it only by high culture? The novelist Ho Bieu Chanh was read far more in the south before 1950 than Tran Trong Kim's tomes. And of course a similar argument can be made about, say the Lotus sutra -- parts of it were far more widely read, or heard, than any of the other books on the list. Or the Tay Du ky. One could go on and on . . .
I also wonder, when looking at the list, if those polled had actually READ some of these books. I say this because occasionally you will come across individuals saying that Tran Trong Kim's Nho giao is about Vietnamese Confucianism. It is not -- it is overwhelmingly about CHINESE Confucianism, with a little bit added on Vietnam, and what is added on Vietnam is sometimes in error.
Vu Ngoc Phan's Nha van hien dai seems to me overrated. Is it a great book? Hardly. Is it a good snapshot of what many probably thought about the literary scene? Yes. It's on the list because it helped to define a canon, not because it is a masterpiece. I prefer Hoai Chan and Hoai Thanh's Thi Nhan Viet Nam, which is less pedestrian, more emotional, more interesting. But that's my opinion.
One other note. there are some authors who don't show up on the list because they mostly wrote for newspapers -- the writings of Phan Van Hum come to mind, but Tran Huy Lieu, Phan Khoi, and others as well. Personally, I find what I have read, or struggled with, by Phan Van Hum to be much more interesting than Vu Ngoc Phan. Intriguingly enough, Phan Van Hum's prison memoir is not on the list. Shouldn't it be? It was the first of the genre, well-known in its time.
(An aside: it is my humble opinion that the street in front of the General Sciences Library in Saigon should be renamed after Phan Van Hum -- this because the library is on the old site of the prison made famous in that book. But would Vietnam ever name a street after one of the greatest southern intellectuals, a man who flirted with Trotskyism? I'm dubious.)
One last point -- years ago, I picked up a reprinted copy of Viet Nam su luoc by Tran Trong Kim. the printing had been paid for by a grant from the US government -- I think it was US AID! One assumes that the US had asked what books were important, and some intellectuals dutifully suggested that Viet Nam su luoc was, and so it was reprinted. Of course, by the late 1960s, that was a dated work indeed.
My two cent's worth.
Shawn
Shawn McHale
Director
Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
I completely agree with Charles and Hue-Tam about La Cloche Felee's considerable influence among a whole generation of Vietnamese. Through the newspaper, it was the personality of Nguyen An Ninh that transpired with his unique personal style of writing. It was also his excentric extra-journalistic actions which had a lasting influence on many people. I think this is what often characterized the Vietnamese press and their authors in the 1920s: their style and political stand rather than their intrinsic literary value, by contrast to the 1930s which displayed a much more intellectually elaborated literature (Phu Nu Tan Van, Phong Hoa, etc.). I am at least talking about the press. For literature, personalities like Ho Bieu Chanh, Nguyen Chanh Sat or Le Hoang Muu, were obviously important, at least in the south.
To return to the press, I would add to La Cloche Felee and Nguyen An Ninh the examples of Tran Huy Lieu in the Dong Phap Thoi Bao, who, for over a year, from 1925 to 26, exerted a real fascination among readers (often more than 10,000 copies sold per issue). THL's later fame started from this unique political journalistic experience. And there are those who later disappeared from the literary reference screens but who had major impact at their time, and not necessarily for their writing prowess. I am thinking of Cao Van Chanh for instance, the original co-founder of Phu Nu Tan Van (and its last director), who made his fame by publishing a newpaper, the Tan The Ky (1926-27) whose stragegy consisted in publishing so virulent anti-government articles that the paper's front page appeared blanked due to censorship. This propaganda technique made Cao Van Chanh in the eyes of the public. He remained so all the way till the end of the 30s.
In that sense, 1920s militant journalism, especially in the south, was as much important for the content of its newspapers as it was for the style and mark its authors left on the public. Maybe I am moving away from Nu Anh's question.
Philippe Peycam
Dear Nu Anh and list,
I don't want to take this discussion off on a tangent, but I have to say my 2 cents about Tran Trong Kim's Nho Giao. It's not entirely accurate to say that it's not about "Vietnamese" Confucianism because most of it is about "Chinese" Confucianism. Prior to the 20th century, there was no "Chinese" or "Vietnamese" which preceded the term nho giao. There was just nho giao (the teachings of the scholars). As it turns out, those scholars who's teachings made up this tradition came from the place which we today call China, but that was not a point which was commented upon or which garnered much, if any, concern until the 20th century.
In the 20th century, scholars in "China" and "Vietnam" came to believe, through their exposure to Western ideas, that each "nation" (a neologism) needed to have its own "philosophy" (another neologism). This led to tremendous changes in the way in which things like nho giao were perceived and packaged. In "China" this started at least with Liang Qichao's study of Chinese thought (if not earlier) and culminated with Feng Youlan's "A History of Chinese Philosophy" in the early 1930s which had the explicit purpose of demonstrating that China had a "philosophy" just like Western nations did.
Liang Qichao's writings and other works by Chinese who were transforming the way in which "Confucianism" was understood were translated into Vietnamese and published in journals in the 1920s. It is in this context that Tran Trong Kim wrote his Nho Giao. He wrote at a time when ideas about how to perceive and package knowlege were changing. What was significant about Tran Trong Kim was that he succeeded in writing a book in this new manner. Is it not about "Vietnamese" Confucianism? Yes and no, because that way of perceiving and packaging knowledge had never existed prior to the 20th century. What he wrote was something very new - an invented tradition - and that, I would argue, is why it was (and should still be considered) significant.
Liam Kelley
U of Hawaii
Dear list,
I want to thank everyone who responded to my posting. Your comments were most enlightening and thought-provoking. I want to clarify that I haven’t taken a look at the _Thanh nghi_ poll yet and 10 works I named were merely colonial era works that I compiled based on their prominence during the RVN period. Specifically, these works were featured in public school curriculum, discussed by intellectuals, or cited by RVN-era writers as their favorite works. For some reason, they tended to be works by northern and central writers, while the south was often discussed as a completely separate category, by writers such as Son Nam, Binh Nguyen Loc, and Nguyen Van Hau, to name a few. It also appears that French-language journals were not cited or discussed with as much frequency as Vietnamese-language ones. This is all from an impressionistic reading, of course, as I am in still in the process of reviewing the materials. Below I’ve compiled the full list of
suggested works, beginning w/ my list.
My original list:
1) Tran Trong Kim, Nho Giao
2) Tran Trong Kim, Viet Nam Su Luoc
3) Duong Quang Ham, Viet Nam Van Hoc Su Yeu & Viet Nam Thi Van Hop Tuyen
4) Dao Duy Anh, Viet Nam Van Hoa Su Cuong
5) Vu Ngoc Phan, Nha Van Hien Dai
6) Hoai Thanh & Hoai Chan, Thi Nhan Viet Nam 1932-1941
7) Nhat Linh, Doan Tuyet
8) Khai Hung, Nua Chung Xuan
9) Pham Quynh’s journal, Nam Phong
10) the Tu Luc Van Doan’s journal, Phong Hoa and Ngay Nay
Other suggestions (in no particularly order):
1) novels of Ho Bieu Chanh
2) Phu Nu Tan Van
3) Cloche Felee
4) Pham Van Hum
5) writings of Phan Khoi
6) writings of Tran Huy Lieu
7) writings by Vu Trong Phung
8) writings by Ngo Tat To
9) Hoang Dao: Muoi dieu tam niem, Truoc vanh mong ngua, Bun lay nuoc dong
10) Tam Lang, Toi keo xe
11) writings by Nguyen Cong Hoan
12) writings by Ngo Tat To
13) Nguyen Hong, Nhung ngay tho au
14) Truong Tuu, Van chuong truyen Kieu
Thanks again, everyone!
Nu-Anh
05/06/2009 Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Dear Nu Anh:
I don't recall the specific wording of your original request, but
several respondents--myself included-- took it to mean that you were
asking about which authors who wrote during the period 1920-1945 or
thereabouts (I can't recall the exact dates you used) were influential.
So we answered as we understood the question.
With your clarification, your query becomes far more teleological; it
also raises different issues.
This leads to the question of who established the RVN "literary canon"
and who was in charge of curriculum. In both cases, one would find that
there was a preponderance of writers and government officials who were
from north of the 17th parallel and tended to think of southern writers
not as innovators (such as Ho Bieu Chanh) but as "regional" writers,
whereas writers such as Nhat Linh or Khai Hung or Ngo Tat To who
described a society that was clearly northern were considered "national"
writers. You may want to refer back to the article by John Schafer on Ho
Bieu Chanh.
There was an AAS panel on southern writers in SF not long ago, where I
raised the question about what made a "southern writer" southern when
the writers under discussion were clearly northern transplants whose
writings were suffused with nostalgia for the North.
Thanks to the cultural policies of the RVN, southern readers were
exposed to a wider range of literature than readers in the North; but
they were also affected by disdain for homegrown writers such as Son
Nam, Binh Nguyen Loc, Ho Bieu Chanh. I remember when the fiction of a
writer named Le Xuyen began to be serialized in a newspaper. Southern
readers reacted with delight at his use of southern idioms and scenes of
life from the southern countryside.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Dear Prof Tai,
Thank you for your clarification. I apologize for being unclear. I was in fact asking about authors who were prominent from the 1920-1945 period, and the many respondents were very helpful.
I do not work with colonial materials myself, so my own list was based on RVN period. For that reason, I was very interested in seeing the discrepancies between my list and the list of people more familiar with the colonial period. I wanted to get a sense of the overall changes from before and after 1954 and wondered about which works were forgotten and which ones were celebrated, which works became part of the cannon and which ones remained popular without any official enshrinement. Unfortunately, I won't have time in my current project to trace the formation of what became the "national canon" and the intellectual genealogy bridging the colonial and post-independence period (but maybe that will be project somewhere in the far, far future after I reach PhD land?). So my query was a sort of quick-and-dirty way of getting a sense for historical changes that I won't be able to investigate myself. Again, thank you for your response and the response of others. It both confirmed some of my hunches and provided new leads.
Nu-Anh
Dear Nu Anh:
As I wrote, it would be helpful to know who was in charge of curriculum and canon formation. Nguyen An Ninh & Phan van Hum were Southerners and thus far better known to southern readers than to northern readers.
Also, I wonder if it might be useful to distinguish works and authors. For example, a lot of southern intellectuals would be able to identify Nguyen An Ninh as a crucial influence in their general intellectual and political development even though none of his works might be considered canonical. These would be members of the "generation of 1926." Daniel Hemery wrote about them in "Une Emigration patriotique" and I did also, in my Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Dear list,
Liam Kelley was ever so kind to send me a copy of the article. For those who are interested, I thought I'd post the official results from the Thanh nghi poll.
Nu-Anh
Thanh ngh? list:
1) Tr?n Tr?ng Kim, Nho giáo
2) Nguy?n Du, truy?n Ki?u
3) Tr?n Tr?ng Kim, Vi?t Nam s? lu?c
4) Nguy?n Tr?ng Thu?t, Qu? dua d?
-the rest are unnumbered:
Ðào Duy Anh, Vi?t Nam van hóa s? cuong
Ph?m Qu?nh, Kh?o v? ti?u thuy?t (appears to be a translation)
H? Bi?u Chánh, Cay d?ng mùi d?i
Khái Hung, Tiêu son tráng si
Hoài Chân & Hoài Thanh, Thi Nhân Vi?t Nam
Nguy?n Van Ng?c, T?c ng? phong dao
(if the diacritial marks don't go through...)
1) Tran Trong Kim, Nho giao
2) Nguyen Du, truyen Kieu
3) Tran Trong Kim, Viet Nam su luoc
4) Nguyen Trong Thuat, Qua dua do
-unnumbered-
Dao Duy Anh, Viet Nam van hoa su cuong
Pham Quynh, Khao ve tieu thuyet
Ho Bieu Chanh, Cay dang mui doi
Khai Hung, Tieu son trang si
Hoai Chan & Hoai Thanh, Thi Nhan Viet Nam
Nguyen Van Ngoc, Tuc ngu phong dao
An odd list.
Pham Quynh's article was indeed very influential. I can't remember whether it was a translation or not. If not, he followed very closely LiangQichao's Trungguo hun (Soul of China) in which Liang argued that fiction's role need not be limited to entertainment only (Nguyen Du's "mua vui mot vai trong canh") but could be used to convey important messages.
Ho Bieu Chanh made use of French storylines. I believe that Cay dang mua doi was a reworking of Hector Malot's Sans Famille.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai