Discussion: Realism, Reportage, Romantic Fiction, and the Question of the Individual

Ngo^ Vi~nh Long's collections contain mostly documentary fictions and only a few essays in realist literature, a ratio that reflects the publishing situation in colonial times. Few essays were allowed to circulate Ngo^ Vi~nh Long suggests, perhaps because in Europe the essay was the preferred vehicle for political commentary. Hoa`ng Dda.o 's long essay Mud and Stagnant Water [Bu`n La^`y Nu+o(+c DDo^.ng], a fairly moderate report of the suffering of peasants (excerpted in Before the Revolution), was immediately banned when it appeared in 1938. Ngo^ Ta^'t To^' 's fictional treatment of the same topic, When the Light's Put Out [Ta('t DDe`n], however, a more radical attack on the colonial system, was allowed to circulate after it was published in 1939 (Ngo^ Vi~nh Long, Revolution, pp. xxvi-xxvii). In this latter work, Ngo^ Ta^'t To^' describes a peasant family so poor that it must sell a daughter and a dog and her four puppies to a high official to pay a head tax. When the mother brings her daughter and the dogs to the official, he treats the dogs better than the daughter.

When in the early 1930's leftist critics in the Soviet Union struggled to define a new "socialist realism," they contrasted this new brand of realism with what they called "critical" or "bourgeois" realism, the realism of Balzac, or of Russia's great nineteenth century novelists Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Both Gleb Struve (See Section VII, note 19) and Hue^.-Ta^m Ho^' Ta`i (Section XI) discuss these terms. Critical realism, although considered useful in exposing the evils of pre-socialist society, was judged to be too morbid and negative, too loaded with victims and too bereft of heroes, to be useful in building a socialist mentality. Vietnamese Marxists, who have been influenced by these debates in the Soviet Union, consider works like When the Light's Put Out and Nguye^~n Co^ng Hoan's Impasse to be works of critical realism.

Most of the stories collected by Ngo^ Vi~nh Long reveal Vietnamese mandarin officials oppressing their own people. Writers made Vietnamese officials the villains in part because stories with French villains would probably be censored but also because, as Christine White points out in her article "French Colonialism and the Peasant Question," the French system of exploitation involved the use of Vietnamese as intermediaries. For an account of unmediated French cruelty and exploitation, see Tra^`n Tu+? Bi`nh's memoir of life on a rubber plantation.

The Light of the Capital, Greg and Monique Lockhart's translation of two works of reportage (pho'ng su+') and one autobiography (tu+' truye^.n) from the 1930's, nicely complements the collections by Ngo^ Vi~nh Long. Most of the selections in Ngo^ Vi~nh Long's two collections are examples of fictional reportage. The Lockharts, however, have selected two intriguing examples of the rarer first- person type of reportage (Tam Lang's I Pulled a Rickshaw and Vu~ Tro.ng Phu+?ng's Household Servants) and an even more unusual autobiography (Nguye^n Ho^'ng's Days of Childhood). While most of the stories collected by Ngo^ Vi~nh Long describe suffering in the countryside, the works in the Lockhart collection take place in urban areas (two in Hanoi, one in Nam DDi.nh). All three selections reveal how the lower classes--rickshaw pullers, servants, orphans-- suffered during the late colonial period when modern urbanization began. G. Lockhart's very useful scholarly introduction explains why first-person narration using "to^i" (I) was a new development in the 1930's, one that is related to larger political and social changes. Teachers who wish to emphasize the Society vs. the Individual theme can read this essay which chronicles the arrival of the "I" in prose with Neil Jamieson's account of its arrival in poetry. See his "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th Century Vietnam."

This Society vs. the Individual theme is played out even more dramatically in the lives and works of poets like Lu+u Tro.ng Lu+, Xua^n Die^.u, Che^' Lan Vie^n, and Huy Ca^.n, poets who in the 1930's led self-absorbed lives and wrote romantic poems glorifying individual love and then later became communists and began writing poems glorifying the revolution. Hoa`i Thanh, a critic who described and experienced himself this transformation, talks of a "miraculous resurrection" that led his group to "realize how little our individual life means in the immense life of the community" (quoted in Nguye^~n Kha('c Vie^.n and Hu+u Ngo.c, p. 145). Jamieson discusses these poets in the essay mentioned above ("Shattered Identities") and also in Understanding Vietnam. In both his essay and book Jamieson translates some pre-war romantic poems by these writers and also their revolutionary poetry, examples of which can also be found in the anthology Vietnamese Literature edited by Nguye^~n Kha('c Vie^.n and Hu+u Ngo.c.

Modern Western culture glorifies individualism; in traditional Vietnamese culture, however, the individual is enmeshed tightly in a web of social obligation. Though embraced by revolutionaries, Marxist-Leninism with its stress on political and social issues may have been accepted in Vietnam because it was, in certain respects, less revolutionary than other political philosophies. Reading this pre-war fiction and poetry will make students aware of the variety of viewpoints that existed as Vietnam struggled to become a modern society. It will help them understand that in the wars that followed Vietnamese were fighting for ideas as well as power.