Author Cung Dinh Tue: 'The many troubles of the past have trampled on people's feet'

(Baonghean) - One of the deepest impressions that Yen Thanh land left on me is the writers of this land.There are many of them, strangely enough, who live a simple, quiet life. At most, they only discuss literature when they have a few friends with similar interests, after hours of hard work in the fields, or when they go to catch eels… They blend in with the clothes of the hard-working farmers. Or sometimes, I think they are farmers who write.Cung Dinh Tue is one of those people.

He did not belong to any literary and artistic association of the commune, district or province... His poems were stored together with a chest of rice, in a corner of an old house. And from those poems that seemed to be reserved for him, he was encouraged by some close friends to publish 5 poetry collections. The poetry collections were also a gift that he gave himself, not aspiring to become a poet. There were haunting poems, and when reading his poems, people realized that the quiet man actually harbored a fierce inner life...

Cung Dinh Tue was born in 1938 in Duc Thanh commune, currently residing in Tan Thanh commune (Yen Thanh). He was a teacher, taught at Nghe An Transport Culture Supplementary School, then was a secondary school teacher in Dinh Son (Anh Son), then returned to his hometown to teach at Phuc Thanh Secondary School and several schools in the district. In the years 1978 - 1988, he volunteered to go to the mountains to spread knowledge while he was the head of the Literature department. After 10 years in the Western Nghe An region, he held the position of principal of Nam Can School and several other schools until his retirement...

Although life can choose a smooth path, the soul can live peacefully and happily, but for those who, as poet Nguyen Binh said, "God made them poets", they choose for themselves thoughts, obsessions, and sadness that go "before the world". Cung Dinh Tue is the same, one of the things he chooses is nostalgia. He misses Tho Bang village, Duc Thanh commune, his hometown, when following the immigration policy, he followed his parents to another hometown, although it was not far from the old village.

Author Cung Dinh Tue. Photo: TV

If in his poems, people see him expressing his heart frankly to the point of panic, then in real life, Cung Dinh Tue is extremely gentle and polite. Not only does he fulfill his civic responsibilities, his responsibilities as a teacher at work, he also fulfills his duties as a husband and father of the family. He has worked hard through many periods of "starving and yellow eyes", once sat pumping and patching tires in a most prosperous city (Saigon), once studied oriental medicine... to earn more money to help his wife and children in their retirement days... Now, he quietly takes care of his paralyzed wife.

Cung Dinh Tue had articles published in newspapers since the 1960s. He said that he once received an invitation to attend a meeting and training for the Nghe An Newspaper's information staff in the 1960s, but for personal reasons he could not attend. He said that although he really wanted to, the writing career had not yet come to him at that time. Therefore, he still keeps the royalties from his first article or that old meeting invitation as a little memory in his life.

The poems, written for who knows how many years, silently accompanied him - sharing his loneliness to the end. Until one day, a close friend read them and encouraged him to collect and publish them. One after another, the collections "Cactus" (Writers' Association Publishing House, 2015) then "Chalk Dust" (Writers' Association Publishing House), Vinh Kieu (Writers' Association Publishing House), Sedentary Sea of ​​Love (Ethnic Culture Publishing House), and The Ferry Call (Literature Publishing House, 2016) were published.

“Chieu cho co - Bu” is perhaps the best poem in Cung Dinh Tue’s poetic career. The poem is as hazy as the new poetry period of 1930 - 1945, or as we see somewhere in the past life: “The sunlight of ancient Bu is fading the grass leaves/ The autumn rain is cold this afternoon/ I promised to wait for a few days/ But why... the rain comes here and there”. If in those 4 stanzas, there was no weak last stanza, and the weakest was the last sentence, then the poem would be worthy of being honored. That is to say, Cung Dinh Tue has a defect that many writers often have; the defect of “letting go when it’s ripe” or the type of “letting go when it’s nine” that people often forgive each other...

The work "Chalk Dust" by author Cung Dinh Tue of the Writers Association Publishing House.

Reading Cung Dinh Tue, we see that he worked very hard, worked very hard for his poetry, had a variety of styles, and established a solid idea. Cung Dinh Tue is a talented poet, he said that he had a story, even if it was just about the television: "Thinking about my fate/ My wife is old, my television is first" and then he daydreamed: "Lying down at night, I secretly wish/ I wish I could use the wrong television"... This is probably the most harmful thing for him and many people, when living in peace, they often think about random things, even though sometimes they say it to sound humorous. But reading Cung Dinh Tue, we see that it's not just for fun, he also has admirable courage and honesty in his poetry... He is passionate, praising his wife, his wife shows all the emotions of a woman, and yet she is also very honest when talking about her ex-lover.

He said he was a teacher, and teaching is a profession that follows the book, even now, just pressing the button to prepare lessons... all year long. However, to avoid this phenomenon of following the book, many people with self-respect have to prepare lessons, read documents, observe their colleagues, and then speak privately with their own voice, and those are the people who deserve to be taken off their hats by their students. "Maybe so, after a lifetime of teaching, I return to the page of poetry, pour out my soul and say what I have to say, even the most private and emotional matters, living my true self in this "cuckoo" era."

Reading his poems, there are not many bad poems, but there are also lines that make people startled: "There are days living here/ The rain stops, the sky turns pink again/ Far from home, I feel like it's been many autumns/ Remembering the days when I feel dizzy". The word "dizzy" is very strange, he has the talent to put very rustic words into poetry. However, when emotions are ripe, especially with love, Cung Dinh Tue can still write very smooth lines: "The delicious fruit has not yet touched the branch/ The fragrant flower has not yet been smelled, the night-blooming cereus has already fallen/ The pond bank reflects the lonely moon/ Many times, the footsteps of people from the past are stepped on again". In life, what is lost in our thoughts is often very big, although sometimes that very big thing is due to our illusion: "The full moon is waning and dim/ The grass is stuck in the trouser leg that has just been removed", it can be removed at the "trouser leg", but who can remove it in the heart. That failure passes, the foolishness comes again: "I naively thought they loved me in a hurry/ Then the waves of love rose to the bottom of my eyes".

However, after the sighs, there is still some brilliance in the poems he wrote when he went to the mountains to sow words: "Muong Xen tonight the sky is full of stars/ Tomorrow you go, it will be very sunny/ The slope is long, the forest is deserted/ Several mountain passes are waiting for your steps to pass"... "You go downstream/ In the afternoon, you bathe in the Sen River/ Watch the moon in Lo abyss, eat corn in So field"...

Besides the loss in love, Cung Dinh Tue also has another pain, the pain of being away from home. He lamented: “The human race is also strange, some people are born in the countryside and then complain about poverty and hardship, leave far away to earn a living, when they are old, they ask their children and grandchildren to let them return to ask for three meters of land, to feel relieved when the leaves fall back to their roots. Some people are embarrassed to mention their hometown because of all the funny and complicated stories, then leave and never want to return. Some people are poor and far from home, when they have a bowl of food to eat, they return to pull the hard-working villagers up from the rice fields. There is a class, more miserable, who loves their hometown, wants to be attached to their hometown until they return to their grandparents and are forced to leave their homeland”... Cung Dinh Tue must have felt very sorry for this feeling, the village of Tho Bang (Thach Tru), in his subconscious, became a lingering pain: “The bowl of rice drifts to many places/ The homeland is here, the umbilical cord of the region/ Where are the banyan trees to keep the trees green/ The green canopy is also gone, carrying a load of confusion”... Losing hometown, also losing the love of youth: “The old river missed a The ferry trip/ With whom do I wait for the loving advice/ Traveling for miles/ The bridge of liberation still has lingering feelings"...

Lost twice but suddenly the image of his mother appeared: "A time of busy hands and feet/ Both carrying and plowing tilted/ Bamboo used as a carrying pole, a stretched pole/ Mother used as a support for the tripod legs of my life"... perhaps those are the best verses of his life - verses written about his mother...

Closing the pages of Cung Dinh Tue's poems, I suddenly felt sad; a life full of hardships and losses; but if only those pains, with that passion for poetry, Cung Dinh Tue had entered poetry earlier, or if there had been a support, a launching pad for him, then perhaps, his suffering would have turned into assets; but fortunately, fortunately for him, he still had something to say to life, and could say it in a voice; although mixed with a little bit of direction here and there, but deep down it was still his own voice.

T. Vinh - D. Khanh