85th Anniversary of Poet Han Mac Tu's Death: A Unique and Creative Poetry Style

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"This is Vi Da village" is a haunting love voice - a confession to life of a hopeless, unrequited love. The poem is also a passionate love of nature and people of Vi Da - a place filled with countless memories. Photo: thethaovanhoa.vn

A unique and creative new poetic style

Han Mac Tu's real name is Nguyen Trong Tri, born on September 22, 1912. Han Mac Tu showed his poetic talent very early. At the age of 16, he started writing poetry and became famous in the poetry scene with his first poem "Voi vang chi lam" (Hurry up) which is similar to the poem "Goi nhan" (Sent to swallow) by poet Mong Chau. Han Mac Tu's early poetry was imbued with the mark of ancient poetry, the lyrical quality in his poetry was classical lyrical, with conventional comparisons and the Tang Dynasty poetry form. However, although starting with stereotypes, Han Mac Tu's poetry had the seeds of bold innovations:

“The shadow of the moon climbs the window and touches the pillow,
The autumn wind blew through the door, rubbing the blanket”…
(Stay up late)

Since 1935, he changed his pen name to Le Thanh, then Han Mac Tu. "Han Mac Tu" means "cold curtain boy" or "cold lonely boy". That name seemed to correspond to his premonition of his last years at the peak of his own lonely and cold poetry.

In 1936, Han Mac Tu published the famous collection "Country Girl" and it was at this time that he discovered he had leprosy. He had to fight the disease for almost his entire life, and for almost his entire life, he fought for his desire to live and to love.

It can be seen that thanks to the sufferings in life, combined with the creative instinct, Han Mac Tu's poetry has taken off, bringing him to the pinnacle of modern literature and art. Since the 1930s, in his artistic thinking, Han Mac Tu has been conscious of finding something new and nurturing creative inspiration at a high intensity: "I have lived intensely and fully - lived with my heart, with my lungs, with my blood, with my tears, with my soul. I have developed all the feelings of love. I have been happy, sad, angry, almost to the point of losing my life". The artistic world in Han Mac Tu's poetry is extremely rich and diverse as he once said: "My poetry garden is vast and boundless. The further I go, the colder I get".

Romantic lyric poet

In the New Poetry village, Han Mac Tu is a poet with an extremely rich, creative and mysterious poetic appearance. Besides the crazy verses, drunken verses, surrealist verses, there is a lyrical, tender voice, expressing a passionate love of life, a burning desire for humanity.

Literary critic Do Lai Thuy said: "If The Lu, Luu Trong Lu, Nguyen Binh are pure romantics, if Xuan Dieu and especially Huy Can are romantics with symbolic elements... then Han Mac Tu is a harmony of romanticism, imagination, even surrealism". Perhaps it was from his weary life in illness, loneliness, in the desolate darkness full of nightmares, repression, obsession between reality and dreams that he sublimated from the unconscious to burst into surreal images on a romantic background: "The space is dense with the moon/ I am also the moon and she is also the moon", "Water turns into the moon, the moon turns into water/ Silk is soaked with the fragrant moon"...

Han Mac Tu's poetry does not force readers to feel what he feels. The words only act as a lever, a means to open up unique associations, to bring out individual emotions in each person, thereby receiving aesthetics more fully, more satisfyingly, and exclaiming with delight:

The moon lies sprawled on the willow branch
Waiting for the east wind to come back to flirt
Flowers and leaves are so innocent they don't want to move.
My heart is pounding, Sister Hang"
(Bashful)

The hands of a leper are cramped with pain, but the more pain, the more those hands yearn, crave to hold on to life, to hold on to life's love. It seems that the poet tries to put all his strength into his hands to "squeeze", to "hold", to "tie" with life. And there are also times when those hands are spread out wide, the poet seems to open his heart to love, to write and to blend with nature and poetic life:

Open your poetry, open your dreams, open your love...
(Sleep with the moon)

Strangeness and uniqueness are one of the criteria to evaluate the artistic talent of Han Mac Tu's poetry. Strange in the way of thinking, forming ideas, comparing, in the use of words and images. And the strangest thing is that a person must go through such terrible physical and mental pain, but the general tone of poetry is not pessimistic but always dreaming, looking towards the eternal world of "four seasons of spring, mountains and rivers". Besides the crazy verses filled with ideas of soul, moon, and blood, people also know poems as pure as folk songs, sweet as ripe fruit with the youthful, romantic and mysterious view of the poet. That is the lyrical character of a time: "Twenty-one years old, age like flowers". With so many hopes of youth: Coming into the world, we see how happy life is/ Full of intoxication and sweetness.../ At that time, our hearts were fluttering/ Hesitantly wanting to drink Quynh Dao wine/ (Chasing Happiness).

Han Mac Tu attached his soul to the country's nature, to the spaces that had witnessed many happy and sad memories, gains and losses in the poet's life and love. Strangely enough, with Han Mac Tu, "specific place names also became magical", also poetic with Dalat in the moonlight, This is Vi Da village, Phan Thiet! Phan Thiet. The love for his homeland in the poet's feelings and thoughts is not only love for people, love for life like in Nguyen Binh's poems or a picture of the countryside like in the poems of Bang Ba Lan, Anh Tho, but is an echo of the soul, with evocative images, rich in melody: Afternoon clouds still drift / Wandering on the countryside hills / Afternoon wind forgets to stop / The water always flows / Thousands of reeds have no voice / My heart seems to be infatuated... / Sad sounds in the mist / Resentful sounds in the bamboo hedges / Under the vast autumn sky / Pervading the mountains and streams (Love for the homeland).

On November 11, 1940, Han Mac Tu passed away at the age of 28 due to the harshness of illness. Half of his life was not over yet, but Han Mac Tu had fulfilled his mission, leaving behind a life of valuable poetry for Vietnamese literature.

According to VNA

Source: https://baoangiang.com.vn/85-nam-ngay-mat-nha-tho-han-mac-tu-mot-phong-cach-tho-doc-dao-va-sang-tao-a466695.html