Re: Hon Vong Phu vs Me Viet Nam

[Tuan Pham <tuan.pham@unsw.edu.au>]

>
>Whatever it was, Kieu certainly was not grounded in
>Viet folklore. So what gives?
>

Hi Ian

I think that is probably the single or greatest weakness
of Kieu. Being based on a little known second-rate weepy
Chinese novel, it will remain for ever a purely literary
achievement without a commensurate philosophical basis.
It is a shame that Vietnam's greatest No^m work is a kind 
of literary orphan with little intellectual content (apart
from some trite remarks about ta`i and me^.nh), and it is 
an indication of the paucity of our No^m literature - 
which is scarcely surprising since our ancestors chose
to express their higher thoughts almost exclusively 
in Chinese.

Pha.m Quy`nh seized on Kie^`u to try to "prove" that
Vietnam was also capable creating great works of literature.
He was, in his own way, an intellectual orphan, cut off
from the ancient Ha'n-Vie^.t culture and inheriting
bits and pieces of Western culture via the French.
The tearful atmosphere of Kie^`u and its fatalistic tone
was admirably suited to the mentality of a defeated, 
conquered, culturally adrift, hopeless people which 
the Vietnamese were in Pham Quynh's time. I can see 
interesting parallels between the cultural adriftness
of Kieu and that of Pham Quynh.

Cheers
Tuan Pham