Surrealist poetry is not unfamiliar

Poetry performance at the program Vietnam Poetry Day Spring At Ty 2025 - Poetry Night "Non nuoc Van Xuan" organized by the People's Committee of Pho Yen city in coordination with the Provincial Literature and Arts Association in February 2025.

The philosophical thought of surrealism is based on Bergson's intuition theory and Freud's psychoanalysis. The aesthetic principles of this school can be summarized as follows: Orienting towards the unconscious world of human beings; promoting spontaneity, not under the control of reason; discarding logical analysis, only trusting in intuition, dreams, hallucinations, delirium, instinctive premonitions; calling for the innocence of children... Therefore, surrealism advocates that poetry must flow freely. From the above principles, surrealism proposed automatic writing.

In fact, surrealism, as a movement, completely disintegrated after only about ten years of its birth (in the late 1930s, 20th century). However, until today, the (positive) elements of surrealism have spread throughout the world, including Vietnam, bringing poetry to a new level.

Surrealist poets often attach great importance to the construction of surrealist poetic images. When poetry lacks or eschews rhyme, images are the element that determines the good or bad of the poem. So how is surrealist poetic imagery different from ordinary poetic imagery?

The basic thesis of the surrealists when constructing surrealist poetic images must be born "From the approach of two more or less distant realities" (Breton quoted Reverdy in the first manifesto of surrealism). The more separated and distant the two images placed next to each other, the more interesting and surreal they become.

Of course, this difference requires an appropriate similarity. The three indispensable elements in constructing surrealist poetic images are: surprise, difference and absurdity.

According to Dr. Dao Huy Hiep, the leader of surrealist literature - poet Robert Brechon pointed out three levels of building surrealist poetic images from simple to complex.

In this article, the author aims at a different direction so he does not focus on the theoretical aspect. In fact, in Vietnam, poetic images bearing the shadow of surrealist poetic images have been used by poets for a long time. In folk literature, medieval literature also has the mark of surrealist poetic images.

During the New Poetry period (1932 - 1945), French culture and literature were widely spread in Vietnam. Therefore, scattered in the works of poets such as Han Mac Tu, Bich Khe, Che Lan Vien, Nguyen Xuan Sanh... we see, some more, some less, some consciously, some spontaneously, but all have the appearance of surrealist elements. Among the New Poetry writers, the most impressive surrealist color is Han Mac Tu.

Surrealist poetry did not have a systematic formation in Vietnamese poetry, especially after 1945 and during the resistance wars against France and the US. It was not until the period of renovation that Vietnamese poets had the conditions to accept what had not been allowed by historical circumstances before.

In the past few decades, although surrealist poetry has not had a great and widespread influence on Vietnamese poets, there are still some authors who are attached to and have a predestined relationship with this trend. We can mention poets such as: Hoang Cam, Le Dat, Tran Dan, Hoang Hung, Duong Tuong, followed by Nguyen Quang Thieu, Mai Van Phan...

The poem “La dieu bong” can be considered the most typical and beautiful surrealist poem of Hoang Cam in both the subconscious - dream and automatic writing. It is an oriental surrealist poem that rises from a poetic and lyrical quan ho countryside. Poets Nguyen Quang Thieu, Mai Van Phan… are also poets who have had much success in the “Vietnameseness” of surrealist poetic images, which have been accepted by Vietnamese readers.

Thus, we see that surrealist poetry is not strange to Vietnamese poets. Even in the poetry movement in any locality, we can find verses with surrealist shadows. We can cite a series of poetic images scattered in poetry collections of authors in Thai Nguyen over the past few decades:

Night dream sleep in wet bamboo hair

Lo Giang like a young woman missing her husband

(Ha Giang's shock - Nguyen Duc Hanh)

The river hides many underground wartime routes

The water flows gently, the road sleeps in the lullaby of the water.

(My Cau River - Vo Sa Ha)

I, the Vietnamese coriander plant, step out onto the street on the day of farewell.

(Poetry before the death anniversary - Nguyen Thuy Quynh)

The thin strip of your soul in the bottom of my eyes

Love poem binds my life

(Afternoon Sun - The Chinh)

The images: “Lo Giang like a young woman missing her husband”, “The road sleeps in the lullaby of water”, “Bitter as the night” are images with surreal colors. In particular, the image “Con, the Vietnamese coriander tree…” by Nguyen Thuy Quynh was “extracted” from the folk song “The wind carries the mustard tree to the sky/the Vietnamese coriander stays to endure gossip” and “The thin bamboo strip of my soul…. the love poem…” was also formed from the idiom “soft bamboo strips tie tightly”. These are very Vietnamese surreal images.

The surrealist method is only a means, not a “treasure” to create valuable works as some people mistakenly believe. The most important thing to avoid is the desire to show off that you are writing in surrealism to fool others. Theorist M. Micheli once said: "To create surrealism, one must also have “surrealist talent”, and the unconscious in the creation of a surrealist artist must also have a basis in political-social and scientific experience… related to the unconscious psychology of Freud, of K. Jung…" (quoted by Nguyen Van Dan).

We can come to a common conclusion: surrealist poetry is not strange at all. Its birth only had one great purpose: to fight against rigidity, to overcome the cliched reality to find a reality at a new height.

As mentioned above, from a philosophical perspective, surrealism no longer exists, but one thing that cannot be denied is that its shadow from a poetic perspective is still widespread and always fresh, not only in Vietnam but in many countries around the world.

Source: https://baothainguyen.vn/van-hoa/202503/tho-sieu-thuc-khong-xa-la-b0d23f5/