Essay, criticism of Assoc. Dr. PHAN TRỌNG THƯỞNG
We are standing before the task of summarizing the reality of 30 years of innovation as insiders, direct participants, direct achievement creators and also the persons inheriting the fruits of the Doi Moi process.
1. Considering literature during the Doi Moi period.
a/ Looking from a divergent viewpoint. Doi Moi period was in the contemporary literary category that is moving and developing, and year 1986 was identified as a separation landmark, opening the literary stage with the first criterion of innovation and reform (innovation is main stream and reform is second stream. According to the common understanding way, the literature mark is to close a stage and open another stage. However, the 1986 mark here does not mark the separaion, not saying farewell to the past, it has both characteristics for literature: opening the door to the future and opening for us to come back to the past to find, reconstruct and revive the old literary values. The 1986 milestone is not a cross section that separates the literature and the following stage is no longer related to the previous period.
The real history shows that the literary innovation does not take place on empty ground, on the contrary, it was ever a valuable literary field with harvests. The previous values are respected, inherited, and create the foundation for the next development.
b/ Looking from the law of intrinsic movement of literature. In the history of literature, innovation and reform do not occur for one time. Only in the twentieth century alone, there are three innovations and reforms taking place in the early, middle and late years of the century. Such innovations and reforms have their own reasons and circumstances, but they all come from the intrinsic law as the self and survival requirements of of literature. Next, they will affect the society and the development of literature from the outside. As we see, writers leading in the Doi Moi period are those who directly participated in the creation of literary achievements during the war revolutionary paintings. When the rule of wartime literature control expires, another rule will appear and replace it.
With the impact of this rule, writers awaken to realize the limitations, even weakness in their previous works Our products before, since then, require change. On the other hand, awareness across the political and social system of the 90s of the last century after socialist camp collapsed has made the literary value and the core systems of literary theory also changed drastically: How should social realism be understood? What is the real relationship between literature and politics? And in general, the what's the difference in function and attributes of literature in careful consideration again? European-American art theories refused by us in one age all need to be adjusted and released from narrow stereotypes. Next is the appearance of a team of young writers who have fresh thinking way and absorbed with new thoughts, trained in the contemporary context, in the era of information explosion and global integration. All these factors are really the driving force for the innovation and reform process.
c / Looking from the objective movement process. At least, in this period, there are the following dominant factors: The impacts of the political ideology in our country after the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe collapsed; impacts of market mechanisms, impacts of strong and comprehensive international integration; the impacts of morality and and lifestyle changes in society; the impact of rapid development of science and technology; impact of the Internet and global information system. There are many new factors appearing in this period, which makes a very clear and interesting difference for those who study literature and sociology, because it's absolutely not available in the past before.
2. Assess the achievements and limitations of literature during the Doi Moi period.
a/ Achievements in critical reasoning. The Doi Moi key is innovation in thinking, awareness and conception. It can be said that "the whole country has brainstorm" to search for answer for the problems of life, economy, politics - society and literature. We have rethought, re-perceived, reconsidered a lot of fundamental issues and the importance of literary theory and history. Thanks to thinking innovation, literary theory and Marxist aesthetics are still defined as a fundamental theoretical basis, however, they have not kept a unique and absolutist position as in many decades of the second half of the 20th century. With the new democratic atmosphere, the art theory systems are constantly introduced, absorbed and applied with an more objective and scientific spirit.
At this time, most of the modern European-American literary theories have all been known in Vietnam. That practice has created theoretical and academic skills, quickly bringing literature from a single- theory state into a multi-theory state, expanding thinking, innovating methods and approaching way, with adequate prerequisites to update and make equal dialogues with countries in the region and the world. When reason has been awakened, one of the early promoted activities is is to re-realize values and fight revaluation of literary phenomena, as a way to cover limitations from the past. Since 1987, scientific conferences have had the opportunity to evaluate New Poetry of 1932-1945 period, the value of literature of Tu Luc Van Doan, romantic literary movement and other literary phenomena that used to be heavily prejudiced due to the one-time childish perceptions, sometimes deliberately left behind on the side of history literary. From these changes, we also gradually reset a new literature value system, which is both compatible with the general literary value system of the world and responding to the requirements of Vietnamese contemporary literature reality.
Process of literary emocratisation is formed in parallel with this step of innovation.
b/ Achievements in composition. From the start-up phase of Doi Moi Period for about 5, 6 years, many authors have all kinds of works (poetry, prose, drama ...), which has formed a strong, deep and public-minded innovation ideas, recognized as "breaking-out phenomena". But only from 1986 onwards, the views on selfcomposition were "untied", literature really works with democratization, independence and creativity in an open and conscious way. A new humanity inspiration has appeared, bringing people and their daily and contemporary problems into the center of literature, with new discoveries. The genre range is expanded, even broken. Innovative trends in techniques, forms of expression... are unprecedentedly blooming. Team of young writers greatly increase. However, any too rapid development process faces the negative aspects. In addition to great achievements, standard deviation in creativity is revealed, there are also compositions go toward simply technique of form, following the "commercialization" trend of the market. It can be said that that is the enthusiasm for innovation "beyond the limit", which is the trend for creating theory of "time." in a natural, impudent and misguided way.
3. Some lessons from reality.
After more than 30 Doi Moi years, we can rethink and draw a lot of useful lessons as a premise for future transitions:
- First is a lesson about the release of the capacity of creative teams.
They are those who created the literature before Doi Moi period, however, after they are free from constraints, tangible and intangible "taboos", "ideological subsidy" for a long time, they actually become true masters of literary creativity during the Doi Moi period.
- In addition to following your own rules and requiring intrinsic innovation, if literature wants to truly innovate, it still depends on a lot of factors of politics, society and age. Predicting and well handling relationships and narrowing these impacts will limit the unnecessary negative aspects and promote the initiative of the literary development process in the future.
- Experience also shows that when objective laws of nature and society affecting literature are not timely recognized and discovered for prompt solutions and even not respected properly, the literary history will have to pay a price for such wrong prejudices. Amendment, redo ... sometimes coonsume time, brainpower and efforts, so badly that amendment is not different from implementing from the beginning.
(Introductory for a seminar on literature of Doi Moi period in Tam Dao, 2016)
Source: Vietnam Writers and works
VNQD