The previous episode, "Giac Phai" (2024) describes the space of the Northern Delta region associated with soldiers, while "Hoa pang nang roi roi" is a picture of the highlands today associated with the working life, living habits and thoughts and concerns of the people here, still intact with the precious rusticity and sincerity.
“Păng nang”, people in the lowlands call it the kapok tree. In the folk tales of many ethnic groups in the northern highlands, the common motif is that the Pang nang flower is the incarnation of a girl waiting for her lover. The story goes that in a certain village, there was a poor, kind, strong man who fell in love with a charming, beautiful mountain girl.
The wedding had been carefully prepared when it rained and a big flood swept everything away. The villagers discussed planting a pole so that the young man could go to heaven to ask for clarification. On the day of his departure, he tied a red cloth band around his lover's hand, each end with a five-petaled tassel, promising to return. The pole turned into a păng nang tree, but the young man still had not returned. Since then, the tree has become a symbol of unfulfilled love. The păng nang flowers kept falling sadly, but did not change their bright red color, like the girl's heart achingly waiting...
Cover of the story collection "Flowers of the fallen leaves". |
Throughout the collection of stories, although pear trees, lim trees, sa moc trees... are described, readers still see them as variations of the păng nang tree, such as seeing the color of the păng nang flowers dyeing the space of the story red or falling with sadness, sadness, regret... Nguyen Phu skillfully relied on cultural archetypes to write stories that sometimes do not have stories to create natural shapes and depict the psychology of characters that only exist in the Northwest highlands. That is a premise for the poetic quality to float throughout the spaces, landing on beautiful lines of literature, rich in cinematic qualities, vivid shapes and colors.
The book seems to prove a rule that writers must live deeply in life to grasp the rhythm of life, understand the life scene, the sky scene and sympathize with the thoughts and desires to be able to write soulful pages. Only by truly understanding the Northwest can writers have the capital to describe the poetic moonlit nights as just the surface, while hidden deep under the fields, the forests, the foothills... is the tense competitive life of all animals. And inside the stilt houses are throbbing hearts, filled with nostalgia or sorrowful pain...
Good literature must create obsession. In the collection of stories, the images that cause lingering, sympathetic feelings in readers are the images of female characters. They are Si-"Red Chao Leaves", Cho-"House on the Windy Slope", Soa-"Last Market", May-"Flower of Late Spring"... embodying the desires for love, freedom, happiness but have not yet escaped the net of habits and customs. Are they willing to be "prisoners" of old, backward customs and the selfishness of men? That lingering question echoes out of the book, inviting and waiting for readers to answer in sympathy with human nature and life. To enhance the visuality and bring the story closer to real life, the collection of stories uses many fresh, interesting comparisons, close to the psychological thinking of the people, especially the Mong people.
One contribution to the narrative is the semi-direct structure of the text, which is both the character's and the narrator's words, difficult to distinguish, creating the illusion that the character is both near and far, real and also illusory, such as: "Spring rain flutters outside the porch. Warm gusts of wind blow in... This morning, only May is home. May has to watch the New Year's wine pot for her father" in the short story "The new moon hangs on the mountain top". May's perspective and point of view are inserted into the narrator's words, as if to claim the right to express, lament, blame, resent... Thanks to that, the writing has soul, excitement, and liveliness.
Source: https://baoangiang.com.vn/mot-giong-van-tru-tinh-tinh-te-a422748.html
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