Doctor of Literature Le Thanh Nga: The 'lost' person

(Baonghean) - To me, Le Thanh Nga is a friend, a brother. But to many generations of Vinh University students, Le Thanh Nga is a teacher - a respected "crazy scholar".

He was once the youngest doctor of literature in Nghe An (in 2007), and one of the first doctors invited to work under the "attraction" program of the province.

Once, I told Le Thanh Nga, I had the feeling that he was a lost person in life. Truly lost, not like some people who separate themselves from the majority, choose a different, arrogant life. But Le Thanh Nga had to suffer, struggle, with all her innocence and sincerity to blend into that majority, but still could not...

When I said that, he was a little moved. It seemed like I had called out a hidden corner of him?

Dr. Le Thanh Nga.

Childhood memories

At the age of 3, the only memory of Le Thanh Nga's father, the youngest child in a family of 6 siblings, was the hammock and stretcher that the patriarch and his uncle used to take his father to the hospital with a joke: Take your father on vacation. Then, a short time later, his father passed away forever... He passed away without knowing that his 3-year-old son, at every meal of the family, always made him save a portion for his father...

“The civil servant family in those years was very poor. His parents were teachers, living in the countryside but had no fields or buffaloes, and the family lost its breadwinner, so life, which was already difficult, became even more miserable,” Le Thanh Nga recalled. But he also silently thanked those difficult days for giving him a better understanding of life, and from there, it further ignited his love for literature.

He always remembers the family gatherings, his sisters sitting and making conical hats and reading poems to each other. At first, it was just poems in the textbooks. Then, one person would read, the whole family would work and listen, Tale of Kieu, Lament of a Soldier’s Wife, Three Kingdoms, Kim Binh Mai… The youngest brother in the family has memorized the lessons in the textbooks until now thanks to those “listening” sessions.

What else about those years? I imagined the small Russian boy with round eyes, still bewildered from childhood until now. Some people said that Russian eyes were too full of hidden feelings, filled with sadness that was not easy to express. That boy - boy - man chose to express it in poetry, in the painful essays about "Memories of the River" and "Village Well".

The boy was lost in the “thong the” house (as Le Thanh Nga used the word), wandering in the small yard, with books and a pair of scissors as his companions. He said scissors because he had no drawing paper, so he used the scissors to draw on the dirt floor. Drawing was Nga’s endless joy in those days.

The floor was always rough. Even though her mother and siblings forbade it, it could not stop her passion. Le Thanh Nga had always wanted to become an artist, but because of financial concerns about her art education, she decided to study to become a teacher.

“My childhood grew up in every cool drop of the village well. My childhood grew up in my mother's lullaby (like billions of people who have lived or died in this world), in folk songs, proverbs, in old stories from the mouths of the elderly, in watching rehearsals and plays of the Tuong troupe and was proud that my mother was the main character like Trung Trac, Ngoc Hoa, Cuc Hoa...

At the age of ten, I read Nguyen Trai's poems. I never expected that this seemingly peaceful childhood would lead me into storms, turn me into a fool before the misfortunes of life, and lead me into meaningless, unrealistic dreams.

I even sometimes foolishly imagine myself as a white horse without a bridle on a vast, sunny and windy prairie and many other things like that. It seems that all children who are exposed to fairy tales and folk songs early on grow up to be often misunderstood, sensitive, crumpled, superficial and vulnerable.

The work consists of essays and literary criticism by Le Thanh Nga.

The "encounter" with literature

It was his childhood that lit the literary fires that made him love and be passionate about it later. Although he had many hardships, although he said that "it led me into unrealistic, meaningless dreams", although he was "sensitive, misunderstood, crumpled, superficial, vulnerable", Le Thanh Nga never had the slightest regret when choosing to enter the literary career (as a literature lecturer, researcher, literary critic, poet, writer...).

For Le Thanh Nga, calling it a “meeting” is not enough, it must be called a “fortune encounter” with literature. I once asked Nga what literature has brought him? He said: “It has given me a miserable life, a sometimes contemptuous and bitter perspective, and the courage to live the way I want. That makes me feel at peace when facing myself. And importantly, I feel less boring, even when I am silent and silent, I still do not feel boring, being a boring person is very boring.”

The poems and works that her mother and sisters read while making conical hats, along with the cultural space of the countryside, where there were conical hat guilds bustling with folk songs, where there was Grandfather Dong with his endless and never-ending collection of humorous stories, where there was Grandmother Nguon who knew countless poems and folk songs by heart... created Le Thanh Nga's first love for literature.

The second love must be mentioned, those are the old textbooks, the books and magazines that mother borrowed from the library to bring home, and the books that Le Thanh Nga fasted and wore to get on her journey to school, work and even now...

There are many other things that led Nga to literature. For example, he was a good student in literature for many years, and participated in the national literature competition in 1987 (at that time, Le Thanh Nga was in grade 5 at a village school). The trip by bus to Vinh with his mother to participate in the competition that year was also the first long trip by car for the young Nga.

Also on this trip, Le Thanh Nga practiced writing his first poem, a poem about a bus trip, still naive but an important mark for him to continue his literary works later.

In 1995, Le Thanh Nga had her first poem published in the Vietnamese Student Magazine. Then Nga became the head of the Blue Stream writing group at Vinh University for many years.

Throughout his student years, hardships and difficulties covered Nga’s life as well as his poor mother’s life in the countryside. It was the books, the love of literature that helped him anchor, endure and try to overcome everything. So that he was one of the few best students, becoming the youngest master and then doctor in literature at that time.

Returning to the province, under the attraction program, Le Thanh Nga worked at Song Lam Magazine (Provincial Literature and Arts Association), and then, another turning point brought him to become a university lecturer. He transformed himself into a "flutist", quietly playing his own song of joy to fill the "distance", "worry", "immense wilderness", "sad rhythms" to find a dream.

A dream of yearning to be in harmony with life “Is it from the distant valley that the calls of the flock come out/ Is it the deep voice of fish from the bottom of the river/ Is it the sad sound of snails crawling from somewhere in the sand/ All my life I have dreamed of the penguin's dream of flying/ My hair sleepwalks across the sky.”

The "lost" person

Le Thanh Nga, whether she is laughing happily in a crowded place or quietly in a hidden corner, always gives me that feeling: a lost person. He is lost in life, because of the "misunderstanding" that he once confessed literature brought him. Not a misunderstanding about himself, but a misunderstanding about life, about the people around him.

He is gullible, emotional, always “naive” in life. The tricks and blows of life seem not to change him. He still persists with his thoughts and way of life. Many people say that he “lives like that is foolish, is a loss”, many people consider him “crazy”, but Le Thanh Nga knows what she chooses, firmly believes in continuing to live as herself, true to her own self.

For many generations of students of the Faculty of Literature and Pedagogy of Vinh University, Mr. Nga is a shining example of personality, dedication and devotion. Over the years, Le Thanh Nga has lived a humble and simple life, riding an old motorbike to class every day. His wife is also a teacher, teaching in Thai Hoa. But he has never thought too much about wealth or poverty.

Being so strict, somewhat “conservative”, one would think that Le Thanh Nga must be rigid? But that “rigid” person can cry on the pages of books like a 5th or 7th grader. Le Thanh Nga once cried while writing a research paper about the status of peripheral characters in Franz Kafka’s works.

He also said that many times he felt like he was falling into a state of depression, because he was actually somewhat weak. Le Thanh Nga seemed to use her rigid appearance to hide her sad eyes that made her cry, to hide the hidden layers of resentment that if anyone touched them, they would be hurt and bleed.

Le Thanh Nga - that lost person is always struggling to be able to accompany the "crowded" noisy people out there, struggling with so much pain and suffering, and the desire to recognize himself, and in the end, he chooses a lonely journey "alone listening to moss" (With Hue, poem by Le Thanh Nga - PV).

Forever, that "crazy scholar" still sees himself as the boy in "Memories of the River": "I used to secretly wipe away tears of longing and desire when my friends rode buffaloes and played the flute; when my friends were dripping with sweat holding onto the kite string.

I once dreamed of riding a buffalo's back and stretching a flute across the river, of having a kite so I could cut the string myself to let my dream soar higher, higher, where there were no storms, no droughts, no neighbors' curses to break the eternal silence"...

And I, when writing these lines, know that Le Thanh Nga is again spinning and bustling in life with so many unfulfilled plans, so that at night, in the small room, a night light stays awake with him, with the pages of books that have accompanied him throughout the long difficult journey of life. He will smile, and perhaps also be restless, when closing the page of that day's book, and rest assured that he has lived a day that is not boring.

Thuy Vinh