The enduring legacy of Ho Xuan Huong

The Queen of Nôm Poetry. Painting by artist Bá Siếu.

Who was Ho Xuan Huong? It seems that Vietnamese collectors, textual scholars, cultural researchers, and literary critics have long had a definitive answer to this question. Just reread 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 the answer will be clear.

However, the personal history of Ho Xuan Huong—her family background, education, social relationships, and the anecdotes passed down through folklore—no matter how specific and detailed, cannot clarify a murky point in the history of medieval Vietnamese literature: did such a Ho Xuan Huong exist, the true author of all the extraordinary, unconventional Nôm poems that have long been attributed to her? Many believe the answer is no. For example, Do Lai Thuy, when he raises the question:Was Ho Xuan Huong merely a female mask for male Confucian scholars to vent their pent-up frustrations?Or Tran Ngoc Vuong, when he said that Ho Xuan Huong was: "Anonymous rebellion reflects the needs of a certain majority, or more broadly, the need for emotional liberation in society."

At first, I agreed with these denials, but a nagging worry lingered: if that were the case, wouldn't the feminist content—one of the great and frequently mentioned values—of Ho Xuan Huong's poetry be completely bankrupt?

Therefore, I ultimately had to make a compromise: there really was a poet Ho Xuan Huong in the world, the author of a few Nôm poems that were severely condemned as "obscene" by moralists – Mr. Truong Tuu once said that Ho Xuan Huong was a genius with extreme lewdness – and there were also many other authors willing to accept anonymity, voluntarily giving their works to the mass of poems overflowing with explicit flesh, under the common name "Ho Xuan Huong Nôm poetry".

A gentleman hesitates. Mixed media, artist: Minh Châu

Agreeing with this hypothesis, we can easily accept that Ho Xuan Huong's Nôm poetry, however one may feel, is the poetry of an extremely unusual female author, a peculiar phenomenon of Vietnamese literary culture, and indeed the world.

"The woman in Ho Xuan Huong's poetry is not the shy, demure young lady "living peacefully behind closed curtains, ignoring the comings and goings of bees and butterflies in the eastern garden." To a clear degree, she is a reflection of the author herself. She is courageous and bold. Knowing that she possesses talent and has friendships—and this is quite a novelty—with many talented men from various regions, she hopes and awaits a well-deserved happiness. This extraordinary woman, like a traveler, leaves her footprints on many scenic spots, boldly and confidently composing poetry everywhere. In the places she visits, everything becomes vibrant, brimming with life, even overflowing beyond conventional boundaries. For the first time in the history of Vietnamese literature, there is an author, a female author at that, who dares to view the world through the lens of fertility philosophy."Researcher Tran Ngoc Vuong wrote this about Ho Xuan Huong's poetry in his monograph."The talented Confucian scholar and Vietnamese literature” (National University Publishing House, reprinted, 1999).

This observation, especially the idea that Ho Xuan Huong "dared to view the world through the lens of fertility philosophy," will receive further support and be clarified and deepened in the treatise "Ho Xuan Huong, a nostalgic reflection on fertility."by Do Lai Thuy, a fundamental study based on M. Bakhtin's theory of masquerades (Literature Publishing House, reprinted, 2010).

Do Lai Thuy asserts in the "Introductory Remarks" section of this work:Historically, Ho Xuan Huong's poetry is considered the crystallization of a "culture of obscenity," a culture that, in turn, was the result of festivals whose core was the flourishing fertility worship during Ho Xuan Huong's time, with many remnants still lingering today. Fertility worship, in turn, originated from fertility beliefs, one of the oldest beliefs of humankind. The characteristic of this belief is that the sacred and the profane are one; the sacred contains the profane, and the profane contains the sacred. Therefore, in this primitive, harmonious perspective, Ho Xuan Huong's poetry is no longer obscenity, but rather symbols of the worship of procreation, vitality, and the longevity of humanity and all things."

Poet Ho Xuan Huong. Painting: Ho Thiet Trinh

Such analysis and commentary must be acknowledged as profound and insightful. However, in my opinion, it only holds significance for specialized researchers. For ordinary readers of all generations, they have received and will continue to receive Ho Xuan Huong's poetry in a much more open and innocent way. Consider why, for what reasons, the general public enjoys reading and sharing – often accompanied by bursts of joyful laughter or blushing embarrassment – ​​Ho Xuan Huong's poems so much?

The most appropriate answer is that, for the most part, these poems are about obscenity and vulgarity, deliberately directing the reader's thoughts towards obscene and vulgar images. To be more specific, we can express it this way: whether describing or commenting on objects, phenomena, or activities (a stinky betel quid, a dilapidated coin, a rice dumpling, a fan, a jackfruit, a stuffed snail, a well, a cave, a crevice, a ditch, a ravine, swinging, drumming, weaving, scooping water, digging through moss, releasing water into a stream...), in Ho Xuan Huong's poetry, the images of these objects, phenomena, or activities are only superficial, bland, and secondary in meaning. The primary meaning, occupying the entire depth and intensely conveying the pleasure of the text, is the image of male and female genitalia, of the sexually suggestive parts of the female body, and of sexual intercourse. Just read a few poems:

"No matter how deep the hole is, it will fit.

Our destinies have been intertwined since time immemorial.

The three-cornered leather rim is missing

When you close it, there's still leftover meat on both sides.

A hero's pride is restored when the wind dies down.

A gentleman shelters his head from the rain.

Gently and cautiously, he inquired of the person inside the tent.

Is the fluttering in your heart already satisfying?”

(Fan I)

"Heaven and Earth created a cluster of rocks.

It split into two pieces, a hollow, hollow shape.

The crevices in the tunnel are covered in moss and lichen.

The wind rustled through the pine trees.

The water droplets fall gracefully with a plop.

The road stretched endlessly into the pitch-black darkness.

Who can praise the stone carver for his talent in distortion?

Carelessness can attract unwanted attention.”

(Cac Co Cave)

"When you light the lamp, it's pure white.

The stork fluttered its wings all night long.

Both feet are firmly planted on the ground.

A sharp, quick, sideways thrust

Wide, narrow, small, large, just right, all sizes

Whether short or long, the framework is the same.

Any girl who wants to be well-fed should soak it thoroughly.

Wait until three autumns before spreading the colors.”

(Weaving)

Ho Xuan Huong. Painting: Hoc Ha

According to Pham The Ngu's classification of Ho Xuan Huong's poetry in "A Newly Compiled Concise History of Vietnamese Literature" then the article "The fan I" belongs to the category "Poems praising objects", post "Cac Co Cave" belongs to the category "Poems describing scenic views”, and the article “Weaving" belongs to the category "Poems praising events"But regardless of the poem's title or category, the situation remains the same: hardly anyone, except the most naive, pays attention to the subjects indicated by the poem's title. Readers know perfectly well that the poem is...The fan"The poem is not meant to tell the story of the fan."Cac Co Cave"The poem is not intended to tell the story of Cắc Cớ cave, it is not meant to tell the story of Cắc Cớ cave."Weaving"It's not primarily about telling stories of weaving, and many of Ho Xuan Huong's other poems are the same. This is because the poet's worldview of fertility and fertility has permeated and deeply influenced everything."

Looking at any object, phenomenon, or activity, no matter how ordinary or commonplace, Ho Xuan Huong saw the image of male and female genitalia, the image of sexual intercourse, that is, the beginning of sexual satisfaction and pleasure, procreation, childbirth, and eternal life in this world. These things, in the orthodox moral concepts of Ho Xuan Huong's time (Confucianism) – and in the orthodox moral concepts of many subsequent eras as well – were considered nonsense, obscene, lewd, and subject to strict taboos.

But the intriguing irony is that, for Ho Xuan Huong, taboos seemed to exist only for her to violate, and she actually violated them with her artistic genius: maximizing the extraordinary expressive capabilities of the national language to create ambiguous, two-sided symbols, that is, creating cracks, abysses, earthquakes, and deadly volcanoes within a safe and innocent shell.

Do Lai Thuy is a researcher who has proven this quite convincingly. And he has good reason to declare:Previous researchers have considered Ho Xuan Huong's poetry either obscene or non-obscene. Breaking free from this exclusionary thinking, I demonstrate that the poetess's poetry is both obscene and non-obscene. Immediately, the reader experiences the pleasure of consuming forbidden fruit without fear of punishment.(Do Lai Thuy, op. cit.)

Pay attention to the phrase "eating the forbidden fruit without fear of punishment." It relates to an earlier idea by Xuan Dieu, when he wrote about Ho Xuan Huong:Ho Xuan Huong's poetry is a kind of poetry that refuses to be confined within conventional boundaries; a kind of poetry that seeks to delve deeply into things, into the most hidden depths of the human psyche. These hidden depths are not isolated, lonely, or individualistic, but on the contrary, resonate with and understand tens of thousands of people." (Classical Vietnamese poets(Literature Publishing House, 1987). To put it simply: Ho Xuan Huong's poems "are appreciated and understood by tens of thousands of people" because they are both obscene and non-obscene, and thanks to this, they give "readers the pleasure of eating forbidden fruit without fear of punishment."

Portrait of the poet Ho Xuan Huong. Painting by Ta Tam.

Among the nearly 50 poems belonging to the "Ho Xuan Huong Nôm poetry" collection, there is one rather unusual poem, titled "BondwomanLet's read together:

"Do you know, sisters?

One side the child cries, the other the husband.

The baby was crawling all over my stomach.

The little boy whimpered and cried under his hip.

Hurrying around, tidying up and arranging.

Hurry up, little fish!

That's what it's like when a husband and children are in debt.

Do you know, sisters?”

I say this poem is quite unusual because it doesn't use ambiguous, two-sided symbolism; it's not "both obscene and non-obscene" like other poems by Ho Xuan Huong. It's a poem of self-pity, where the woman complains less about her preoccupations with her husband and children and more about her joyful tales of intimacy with her "father." It's such a direct and vivid description that researcher Dang Thanh Le once stated, "extremely brazen and highly suspicious."

But in my opinion, that's an assessment that reflects a conformity to mainstream moral taboos regarding sexuality. I share Do Lai Thuy's open-minded and liberal perspective on the poem:These are grotesque, almost comical, images. The woman is magnified, while the man and the boy are shrunk, giving the word "boy" a different meaning. Simultaneously, the magnification of the woman's belly, her broadness, speaks of her boundless heart. And this woman becomes "Mother Nature," "Mother of Creation" (to use Xuân Diệu's words), fitting the fertility-seeing perspective that views the woman's body as nature itself, the hills, mountains, and rivers.(Do Lai Thuy, op. cit.)

From another perspective, this analysis leads me to think of Francois Rabelais, author of "Gargantua and Pantagruel," Giovanni Boccaccio, author of "Decade," and many other humanists, starting from Ho Xuan Huong. These outstanding figures always knew how to playfully mock cultural taboos and superficial blushing to elevate hymns praising the beauty of the human body, the purity of instinctive needs, and the aesthetics of sensuality. Ho Xuan Huong and her "obscene" Nôm poems are a continuation of that great humanist tradition.

And that is the legacy of Ho Xuan Huong that will never lose its value.