Poet Che Lan Vien always creates new heights

Poet Che Lan Vien - Photo: TL

At every stage of his literary journey, Che Lan Vien always had a strong need to think and brainstorm about his profession and poetry to come up with concepts and declarations. His concepts reflect a "dialectical philosophical thinking", with negation, inheritance and development, supplemented to suit the spirit of the times and the laws of poetry.

Che Lan Vien's poetry is always moving and developing on each journey and at each stage, his poetry creates new peaks. After the August Revolution, he immediately had Gui cac Anh - a collection of poems with many limitations but meaningful as a way to recognize the way. With Anh sang va silt, Che Lan Vien truly matured in thought and style, making a surprising change with a new concept of poetry, marking an important innovation not only for himself but also for the whole of Vietnamese poetry.

Later, in the collections Flowers on a daily basis, Storm Signaling Bird (1967), Poems for Fighting the Enemy (1972), New Dialogue (1973), and even the collections published after 1975 but mainly written before 1975 such as Flowers before the Mausoleum (1976), Great Day (1975), Picking in Season (1977) all have the same inspiration and concept from Light and Alluvium (1960).

The soul of Che Lan Vien's poetry from 1945 to 1975 had fundamentally changed compared to the time he wrote Destruction (1937). Like a lone traveler, Che Lan Vien trudged through the metaphysical desert, from the valley of sorrow to the field of joy. Once he reached the field of joy, his poetry was filled with the spiritual light of ideals and the material alluvium of life, forming his brilliant journey of revolutionary poetry.

Che Lan Vien quickly became a soldier on the ideological and cultural front, of course he had to orient himself with a new artistic concept based on the new reality of social life. The aesthetic object of poetry now is the Fatherland-People-Life. That is the vast social environment that is changing every hour in the direction of revolution, resistance, and nation building.

With such an object, it is certainly powerful enough to transform and open up the sensitive poetic soul of Che Lan Vien. The poet stands in the position of the master, the insider to praise the new life, the new person with a positive, harmonious spirit. That is the decisive transformation of Che Lan Vien to move from extremism, mysticism, metaphysics to the category of realistic, revolutionary poetry. The poem Two Questions is like his artistic manifesto: “ Who am I? Like the metaphysical wind/The question of nothingness blows out a thousand candles/Who am I for? Gently turning the wick/The human hand relights a million green buds”.

Che Lan Vien confessed that when he joined the Party and the revolution, his soul and life changed: "My heart has never been able to go all the way/ I have gone all the way, my cries turned into songs".

He believed that poetry, first of all, must be deeply rooted in the great source of life of the People and the country with positive human meaning. In the poetry collections Hoa ngay thuong, chim che bao bao, Doi thoai moi, the above concept has taken shape and had new discoveries. Through that, it further proves the personality of a citizen-artist of Che Lan Vien: " Life hits poetry with a thousand layers of waves/Don't sit in the room eating foam, my dear/Your soul is half of life/The other half is also of life".

Che Lan Vien passionately praised the Fatherland and the People for reviving his long-lost poetic soul. He realized that his poetry was deeply blessed by life: "Be grateful for the salt of life that gives poetry its saltiness." And he constantly affirmed the truth of life in relation to poetry: "We must put the flower grower after the rice grower/Put all the genius poems about Dien Bien /after Dien Bien."

In Light and Alluvium, Flowers of Everyday Life, Stormy Birds, Poems of Fighting and New Dialogue, Che Lan Vien thoroughly demonstrated the above artistic concept. He became a singer praising the new era, voluntarily becoming a tireless bird circling a hundred times over his beloved Fatherland to pick up the colors of the distant sky:

My soul when the Fatherland shines on

See thousands of mountains and hundreds of rivers beautiful

The pearl of summer night at the bottom of the sea

Drinking the tide suddenly brightens the pearl

(The bird circled a hundred times)

Wherever he is, he always looks at life with his blue eyes, bewildered and constantly looking into the present to understand the past and hope for the future. He praises life with a comparative and contrasting view to enjoy the joy of existence. Has the Fatherland ever been this beautiful? is a question that makes people surprised and moved: " The days I live here are the most beautiful days of all/Even though tomorrow life will be a million times more/Fruit falls on the shirt of the person watching the fruit/The path of humanity passes through the shadow of green leaves/The sun comes every day like a stranger/Meeting every face, I want to kiss it".

Even in later poetry collections such as Great Day, Flowers before the Mausoleum, and Picking in the Season, although published after 1975, the sound and time of composition were all during the fiercest period of the resistance war against America to save the country, which is an expansion and enhancement of the previous perspective on poetry.

The above concept of poetry clinging to the source of life must be associated with an extremely great requirement, which is to expand the direction of poetic emotions in many directions and dimensions to cover all aspects from the great to the close of revolutionary life. The poet must go to every corner of the Fatherland to constantly discover new things, discover hidden beauty and truth: "The Party teaches us that we cannot let our hearts follow the Party/And far from what the nation loves". He believes that the object of life will create the poet's soul; from there, the poet will find the value of true life: "Wherever the heart has not gone, it will go/When returning, the heart holds branches of poetry".

Only then will the poem be both realistic and concise, both comprehensive and specific, creating a magical and lyrical beauty:

Poem of the sea calling far away

Must understand the color of clouds and the color of sunlight

Thousands of stars of the times shine above

Latitude fog longitude wave

(Thinking about poetry)

Che Lan Vien is a modern poet, living in a situation where the whole nation is fighting against the enemy, regaining independence and freedom for the Fatherland, so he clearly understands the relationship between himself and Life and the People: "Be grateful for the salt of life to give poetry its salty flavor". He has been restless with the lamp and the paper because of that responsibility to make poetry useful to life. That is because life needs poetry and poetry is the child of life: "We live in years where bullets are heavier than people/ The task of poetry is heavier than the paper and poetic talents". To do so, poetry "Go before life like a flame/ Don't go after the torch, eating the ashes".

Che Lan Vien's poetry during the war years carried the strength of millions of people's hearts, of the troops going to battle. Later on, in the collections New Dialogue, Great Day, Picking According to the Season, Flowers on the Rock, especially the collections Ta Gui Cho Minh and Posthumous Poetry (3 volumes), Che Lan Vien's thoughts on the mission of poetry became more urgent and tormented.

Che Lan Vien never gave up this great aspiration. In peacetime, there are weapons of poetry of peacetime, in wartime, there are weapons of poetry of wartime. During the painful yet heroic years, Che Lan Vien once wished, “The poet’s stature stands at the same level as the ramparts/ Next to the brave soldiers chasing tanks in the fields and shooting down helicopters.”

It is a noble wish. Poetry must be the birds of the storm, and at the same time the flowers of everyday life, but it must carry the soul of a message of good news and the strength of a great love for the Fatherland and the People. “I dare not be sad and forget my duty/Every verse must surpass itself” when the poet has been equipped with the “steel” of a great revolutionary life and the “love” of the flesh and blood of the People and the leader:

When we want our poetry to become a pit of spikes to kill the enemy

Become a cool flower for life

When every step of our hearts is imbued with class sentiment

I know in my life Uncle has come

(You changed my life, You changed my poetry)

With such a clear concept of the function of poetry, Che Lan Vien has constantly researched and created. The entire world of Che Lan Vien's poetry is the most eloquent proof of an artist-soldier-citizen who spent his whole life thinking about his profession, thinking about poetry... and he is the winner. "Whether pyramid or diamond shape, each grain of rice must make flesh and blood/Whether low or high branch, each flower cluster must call bees/Poetry needs to be useful/Let's start from there and go."

Throughout his entire poetic career, Che Lan Vien has become a “poetry treasure” of modern Vietnamese literature, always creating new heights for himself and for the entire poetry scene. His poetry is a haunting message about the universe-humanity-poetry, helping his contemporaries and “people who create the future” (Nguyen Dinh Thi) think about him and sense the vitality of his poetry; think about what the cultural-artistic man Che Lan Vien participated in, meaning that these are great values ​​that everyone wants to know, needs to know in order to love and respect a talented poet even more.

Ho The Ha

Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/che-lan-vien-nha-tho-luon-tao-ra-nhung-dinh-cao-192839.htm