The priceless heritage of Ho Xuan Huong

The Queen of Nom Poetry. Painting by artist Ba Sieu

Who is Ho Xuan Huong? With this question, it seems that collectors, textual scholars, cultural researchers and Vietnamese literary critics have long had a definite answer. Just re-read the works of Hoa Bang, Duong Quang Ham, Hoang Ngoc Phach, Hoang Xuan Han, Tran Thanh Mai, Nguyen Duc Binh, Pham The Ngu, Thanh Lang, Le Dinh Ky, Nguyen Loc, Van Tan, Xuan Dieu, and especially Dao Thai Ton, and it will be clear enough.

However, the personal history of Ho Xuan Huong - that private history, from family background, education, social relationships, to the anecdotes passed down among the people - no matter how specific and detailed it is, cannot "clear up" a dark spot in the history of medieval Vietnamese literature: is there such a Ho Xuan Huong in the world, the legitimate author of all the extraordinary rebellious Nom poems that people have long considered "by Ho Xuan Huong"? Many people think not. For example, Do Lai Thuy, when he raised the question: "Is Ho Xuan Huong just a female mask for male scholars to pour out their hidden frustrations into?”. Or Tran Ngoc Vuong, when he said that Ho Xuan Huong was: “Anonymous rebellion, reflecting the needs of a certain majority, and more broadly, the need for emotional liberation of society.”.

At first, I agreed with these denials, but I was still worried: if that were the case, wouldn't the feminist content - one of the great, often mentioned values ​​- of Ho Xuan Huong's poetry be all bankrupt?

Therefore, in the end, I myself had to make a compromise: there really was such a female poet Ho Xuan Huong in the world, the author of a few Nom poems that were condemned by strict moralists as "obscene" - Mr. Truong Tuu once said that Ho Xuan Huong was an extremely lustful genius - and there were also many other authors who were willing to accept anonymity, voluntarily giving their works to the mass of poems filled with carnal pleasures, under the general name of "Ho Xuan Huong's Nom poems".

The gentleman hesitates. Synthetic material, artist: Minh Chau

Agreeing with this hypothesis, we will easily accept that Ho Xuan Huong's Nom poetry, whatever you say, is the poetry of an extremely strange female author, a unique phenomenon in Vietnamese literary culture, and the world as well.

“The woman in Ho Xuan Huong's poetry is not a shy young lady "gently behind a curtain, the butterflies and bees on the eastern wall go to anyone's discretion". To a certain extent, she is the image of the author herself. She is brave and bold. Knowing that she has talent, has friendships - and that is also something new - with many talented people in many regions, she hopes and waits for a worthy happiness. That strange woman, like a tourist, leaves her footprints on many famous landscapes, boldly and confidently writes poems everywhere. In the places she passes, everything becomes vibrant, full of life, even overflowing beyond the usual framework. For the first time in the history of Vietnamese literature, there is an author, a female author, who dares to look at the world through the lens of fertility studies.". Researcher Tran Ngoc Vuong wrote like that about Ho Xuan Huong's poetry in the essay "Confucian scholars and Vietnamese literature" (National University Publishing House, reprint, 1999).

This comment, especially the idea that Ho Xuan Huong "dared to look at the world through the prism of fertility studies", will receive a response and be made clearer and deeper in the treatise "Ho Xuan Huong, nostalgia for fertility" by Do Lai Thuy, a fundamental study based on M. Bakhtin's carnival theory (Literature Publishing House, reprint, 2010).

Do Lai Thuy affirmed in the "A few words before" section of this work: "Historically, Ho Xuan Huong’s poetry is considered the crystallization of a “vulgar culture”, which is the result of a festival whose core is the fertility worship that flourished during Ho Xuan Huong’s time and has survived to this day. The fertility worship, in turn, originates from fertility beliefs, one of the most primitive beliefs of mankind. The characteristic of this belief is that the sacred (sacre) and the profane (profane) are one, in the sacred there is the profane, in the profane there is the sacred. Therefore, in this original harmonious view, Ho Xuan Huong’s poetry is no longer profane, but is a symbol of the worship of fertility, vitality, and the longevity of humans and all things.”.

Poet Ho Xuan Huong. Painting: Ho Thiet Trinh

Such analysis and assessment must be considered profound and thorough. But in my opinion, it is only meaningful to specialized researchers, while ordinary readers of all generations have received and will receive Ho Xuan Huong's poems in a much more innocent and natural way. Let's ask the question: why, for what reasons, do the general public like to read and pass on to each other - in many cases accompanied by bursts of joyful laughter or shy blushes - Ho Xuan Huong's poems so much?

The most appropriate answer is because they, most of those poems, all aim to talk about obscenity and vulgarity, all intentionally lead people to think of images of obscenity and vulgarity. To be more specific, we can express it like this: no matter what the description or commentary is on, what phenomenon or activity (a piece of betel, a coin, a sticky rice cake, a fan, a jackfruit, a snail, a well, a cave, a cave, a stream, a zinc, swinging, beating a drum, weaving, bailing water, hooking moss, letting go of a net...), in Ho Xuan Huong's poems, the images of those objects, phenomena or activities are only superficial, bland, and have secondary meanings. The main meaning, occupying the entire depth and dense pleasure of the text, is the image of male and female genitalia, of erotic parts of the female body, and of sexual activity. Let's just read a few poems:

“A hole as deep as it goes

Our fate has been stuck together since ancient times.

The rim of the three missing leather corners

Close both sides still have excess meat

Hero's face is cool when the wind stops

Cover the head of a gentleman when it rains

Cherish and ask the person in the tent

Are you happy with your heart pounding?”

(The Fan I)

“Heaven and earth created a constellation of stones.

Cracked into two pieces, hollow and hollow.

The moss-covered cellar is bare and bare.

The wind rustles the pine trees

The drops of water fall gently

The endless dark road

Praise the one who carved stone and distorted it

Be careful not to expose yourself to many people.”

(Cac Co Cave)

“Light the lamp and see white

The stork fluttered all night long.

Both feet step down firmly

A cross-section stab like fast

Wide, narrow, small, big, just right

Short and long framework are the same

If you want to be good, soak it carefully.

Wait until the third autumn to see the colors”

(Weaving)

Ho Xuan Huong. Painting: Hoc Ha

According to the classification of Ho Xuan Huong's poetry by Pham The Ngu in "A new summary of Vietnamese literary history" then the song "The Fan I" under category "The Poems", post "Cac Co Cave" under category "Poems of the Scenery", and the article "Weaving" under category "The poems of work”. But no matter what category the poem belongs to, the situation remains the same: few, except the most naive, pay attention to the subjects to which the title of the poem refers. The reader knows perfectly well that the poem “The fan"Not to tell the story of the fan, the poem"Cac Co Cave"Not to tell the story of Cac Co cave, the poem"Weaving"It is not meant to tell a story about weaving, and many other poems by Ho Xuan Huong are the same. Because the poet's fertility worldview has covered everything and permeated everything.

Looking at any object, phenomenon or activity, no matter how ordinary or trivial, Ho Xuan Huong also saw the image of male and female genitalia, the image of sexual intercourse, which is the beginning of sexual satisfaction and pleasure, reproduction, birth, and endless life in this world. Those things, in the orthodox moral concept of Ho Xuan Huong's time (Confucianism) - and in the orthodox moral concept of many later times as well - were all considered nonsense, wrong, obscene, and forced to endure the strict regulations of taboos (tabou).

But the interesting irony is that, for Ho Xuan Huong, taboos seemed to exist only for her to violate, and she did violate them with her artistic genius: fully exploiting the profound expressive capabilities of the national language to create ambiguous and double-sided symbols, that is, to create cracks, abysses, earthquakes, deadly volcanoes within a safe and innocent shell.

Do Lai Thuy is a researcher who has proven that quite convincingly. And he has reason to declare: “Previous researchers considered Ho Xuan Huong's poetry to be either obscene or not obscene. Overcoming that exclusive way of thinking, I prove that her poetry is both obscene and not obscene. Immediately, the reader has the pleasure of eating the forbidden fruit without fear of punishment." (Do Lai Thuy, ibid).

Pay attention to the phrase “eating the forbidden fruit without fear of punishment”. It is related to an earlier idea of ​​Xuan Dieu, when he wrote about Ho Xuan Huong: “Ho Xuan Huong's poetry is a type of poetry that refuses to stay within the usual framework, a type of poetry that wants to dive deep into things, into the very hidden depths of the mind, those very hidden depths are not isolated, lonely, individualistic, but on the contrary, are sympathized and understood by thousands and thousands of people.” (Classical Vietnamese Poets, Literature Publishing House, 1987). To put it simply: Ho Xuan Huong's poems "are agreed and understood by tens of thousands of people" because they are both obscene and not obscene, and thanks to that they make "readers feel the pleasure of eating the forbidden fruit without fear of punishment".

Portrait of poetess Ho Xuan Huong. Painting: Ta Tam

Among the nearly 50 poems in the "Ho Xuan Huong Nom poetry" block, there is a rather strange poem, titled "Bondwoman”. Let's read together:

“Hey sisters, do you know?

One side child crying one side husband

Dad crawled on his belly

The baby was crying under her hip.

All is in full swing

Hurry up, the goby and the flower

Husband and children in debt are like that.

Hey sisters, do you know?”

I say that this poem is quite strange because it does not have ambiguous symbols, it is not “both obscene and not obscene” like other poems of Ho Xuan Huong. It is a poem of lamentation, in which the woman complains to the world less about her busyness with her husband and children, and more about her joy in telling stories about love with her “father”. It is a direct and vivid description to the point that researcher Dang Thanh Le once said that “extremely brazen and very questionable”.

But in my opinion, that is a judgment that reflects the submission to orthodox moral taboos about sex. I share Do Lai Thuy's open and liberal judgment about the poem: "These are grotesque images that cause laughter. The woman is enlarged, while the man and the boy are reduced, making the word “boy” understood in a different sense. At the same time, the enlargement of the woman’s belly, the wideness of her belly, speaks to the immense heart of the woman. And that woman becomes “Mother Nature”, “Mother Creation” (Xuan Dieu’s words), in line with the view of fertility, considering the woman’s body as nature, hills, mountains, rivers." (Do Lai Thuy, ibid).

From another perspective, that analysis makes me think of Ho Xuan Huong from Francois Rabelais, author of “Gargantua and Pantagruel”, to Giovanni Boccaccio, author of “Ten Days”, and many other humanists. These outstanding people always knew how to joke with cultural taboos and superficial blushes to soar in praise of the beauty of the human body, the purity of instinctive needs and the aesthetics of sensuality. Ho Xuan Huong and her “obscene” Nom poems are the continuation of that great humanist tradition.

And that is the never-deprecating legacy of Ho Xuan Huong.