Du Tử Lê and the Experiments With Literary Devices
Phạm Văn Tiên
It was my pleasure to read the original English version of Du Tử Lê's presentation paper, "Some Experiments on Vietnamese Literature" in HỒN QUÊ 3 (March 15, 2001). Although I have been reading the Vietnamese translation of Du Tử Lê's paper for some times in the past, this English version helps to clarify the ambiguity in the Vietnamese translation that I have carried on since my first readings of the paper. In this essay, I took the advantage of the reader-response criticism to examine the attempt of Du Tử Lê on "the concept of conversion" in Vietnamese literature, or specifically saying, the traditional Six-Eight verses.
1) Use Punctuation Marks to Change the Meters of a Line:
What Du Tử Lê attempted to do is to use the existing punctuation marks to alter the iambic meters of a line or verse. The example given is a couplet of the Six-Eight verses from one of his poems,
phố cao, gio' nổi, bóng mờ,
đe^m lu, trời nặng, tôi gù lưng, đi.
(Du Tử Lê, "The Last Poem of 1966." VĂN MAGAZINE (1966))
The purpose of the poet is clear. He used a comma to create an extra-syllable ending (the word "đi") and a tri-syllable meter ("tôi gù lưng") for the line's variations. But, the extra-syllable ending "đi" actually does not count (as a meter) in comparative English literature; so I suggest it will be the same in Vietnamese literature. Therefore, the prior line has three meters and the latter line also has three meters instead of four.
A close reading of the lines shows that three meters from line Six and the first two meters from line Eight have the same pattern or grammatical structure: noun + adjective. They serve as a dependent clause to modify the independent clause "tôi gù lưng đi." The odd-number-syllable meter ("tôi gù lưng") and the feminine ending ("đi"), as sometimes it is called, is problematic since a comma was intentionally put there. The main clause "tôi gù lưng đi" has a complete sentence structure, that "đi" is the main verb for the subject "tôi"; "gù lưng" is an adverb modifying "đi," telling the action of the verb—how "tôi đi". When a comma was put there to separate the words, "gù lưng," an adverb now becomes the adjective modifying "tôi," the subject. "Đi" is no longer a main verb. It now has the same element as "gù lưng," which is an adjective. Therefore, the meaning of the line has been altered from the presupposition "tôi gù lưng đi" (I walk with a hunchback) to "tôi gù lưng, [và tôi] đi" (I am hunchbacked, [and I am] walking).
2) Eliminate the Common Stressed Syllable on the Fourth Word of Line Six in the Six-Eight Verses:
Any attempt to eliminate the common stressed syllable on the fourth word of line Six in the Six-Eight verses is not a new idea. Because of its use to raise the tone of the reader before he or she lowers his or her voice by the unstressed syllable at the end of the line, a stressed syllable on the fourth word of line Six—or saying it in different ways, the last word of the second meter in the 2/2/2 metrical patterns, or the first word of the second meter in the 3/3 metrical patterns—is sometimes considered as a necessity, but the line could be written without it. Readers who are familiar with the traditional verses, or ca dao, will recognized that "the rule" has been omitted extensively. Other poets in the early 1940's such as Nguyễn Bính in his well known poem "Lỡ Bước Sang Ngang" also wrote the verse without using the common stressed syllable on the fourth word of line Six. Though, most readers in recent decades acknowledge that Du Tử Lê is the pioneer to promote this idea.
3) Split the Compound Word to Get More Meanings:
Again, Du Tử Lê attempted to use the punctuation marks to separate the compound (combined) word in order to attain the original meanings of the separated words and argued for the chronological actions the words represent.
sương, trần thân mây chia, ly
nhập chung nỗi chết: sầu khô, héo về
(Du Tử Lê, "Khúc 19 tháng 9." END OF KARMA: YOU WALKED OUT (1993), p. 50)
"Chia ly" (farewell) is a compound word. When divided into "chia" and "ly," the individual words form a group of words having the same mechanism. They should be all verbs, all adjectives, all adverbs, or all nouns.
Consider the following picture poem by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), "The Red Wheelbarrow," the splitting of the combined words is very much like those of Du Tử Lê's with a very strong run-on, without using the punctuation marks:
- The Red Wheelbarrow
- so much depends
- upon
- a red wheel
- barrow
- glazed with rain
- water
- beside the white
- chicken
In stanza 2, the single word "wheelbarrow" (as the title suggested) is divided with a run-on to portray the mechanical parts of the instrument: "a red wheel / barrow." Or as the stanzas illustrated, they suggest the picture of the wheels in a side view.
4) Reconstruct a Line Using the Slash:
Du Tử Lê's attempt here is to use the slash (/) sign to separate the syntactical units within a line, saying that any word or words between or before the slash(es) is/are removable from its or their setting. The example given, "Rừng / tôi / sâu / thở / nốt chân trời" (Nguyễn Mạnh Trinh, NHÀ VĂN NÓI CHUYỆN VỚI CHÚNG TA, 1994), is ambiguous. The omission of the conjunction between the subjects "rừng" and "tôi" (Du Tử Lê translated "Rừng / tôi" as "Forest and I") lacks the clarity to show that the subjects are plural because "rừng tôi" could be understood in the singular form as "my forest." Moreover, the slash (/) sign in comparative English literature is used to separate the lines within a poem. Therefore, the above line could be written as followed, with the notion that it could be read in either direction—from top to the bottom or from the bottom up, just like a river’s current flows downward when it is low tide and upward when it is high tide:
- Rừng
- tôi
- sâu
- thở
- nốt chân trời
An American poet who took the advantage of the slash sign is Jim Daniels (b. 1956) in his "Short-order Cook":
- It is the crucial point—
- they are ready for the cheese:
- my fingers shake as I tear off slices
- toss them on the burgers/fries done/dump/
- refill buckets/burgers ready/flip into buns/
- beat that melting cheese/wrap burgers in plastic/
- into paper bags/fries done/dump/fill thirty bags/
- bring them to the counter/wipe sweat on sleeve
- and smile at the counter girls.
- (ll. 13-21)
The use of the slashes here is to divide the movement into three phrases (l. 16), then another three (l. 17), two (l. 18), four (l. 19), and then two phrases (l. 20), to speed up the assembly of thirty cheeseburgers and thirty fries by a single cook in a fastfood restaurant.
In summary, the experiments of Du Tử Lê on the literary devices have at least raised the attention and the debate among the Vietnamese writers in recent decades. The use of the punctuation marks to change the meters of a line and to separate the compound word in order to get more meanings for the text, I believe, is very encouraging for those who want to follow a more academic and technical way to write their poem. For the use of the slash sign, although Vietnamese and English literature each has its own uniqueness, I believe they still share certain elements and mechanism that are comparable.
Phạm Văn Tiên
Bibliography
Du Tử Lê. "Một Vài Nỗ Lực Cách Tân Thể Lục Bát và Quan Niệm Hoán Vị / Conversion Concept." TUYỂN TẬP VĂN HỌC NGHỆ THUẬT LIÊN MẠNG. No. 2 (September 1997): 209-219.
Du Tử Lê. "Vài Thử Nghiệm Văn Chương / Some Experiments on Vietnamese Literature\." HỒN QUÊ 3 (March 15, 2001). (http://www.honque.com)
Wallace, Robert and Michelle Boisseau. WRITING POEMS. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.