Vietnamese poetry( Viet Nam mon pays natal )

The Lục Bat is a verse of six feet followed by a verse of 8 feet. The term foot or word is employed as a syllable because Vietnamese is monosyllabic language. The Lục Bát is the meter the most used in Vietnamese poems, in particular in the masterpiece Kim Vân Kiều of Nguyễn Du.

Kiều càng sắc xão mặn mà
So bề tài sắc lại là phần hơn.

Contrary to the impaired rhyme chosen by the Chinese, Vietnamese prefer paired rhyme i.e.:

2 - 2 -2
4 -4

Therefore the two foregoing Luc Bat verses are cut the following way:

Kiều càng - sắc xão - mặn mà
So bề tài sắc - lại là phần hơn.

In referring b to tones bằng and t to tones trắc, the two verses cited above in Kim Vân Kiều of Nguyễn Du have the following melody:

b b t t b b
b b b t b b t b

The Song Thất Lục Bát is made of two 7-foot verses followed by a 6-foot verse and a 8-foot verse of. One finds these meters in Chinh Phụ Ngâm (or The Complaint of the Warrior's Wife ) of Ðoàn Thị Ðiểm and in Cung Oán Ngâm Khúc (or Sadness of the Palace ) of Nguyễn Gia Thiều.

Here is the rhyme of Song Thất Lục Bát:

3 - 2 - 2
3 - 2 - 2
2 - 2 -2
4 -4

Thời cười nọ, lại nhãn mây liễu
Ghẹo hoa kia, lại diệu gót sen
Thân nầy uốn éo vì duyên,
Cùng cảm một tiếng thuyền quyên với đời

As for the melody, the 6-foot and 8-foot verses follow the rule of Lục Bát. In the 7-foot verses, the first word may be bằng or trắc indifferently. However, the other words are grouped by two alternatively bầng and trắc. Here is the form of melody in Song Thất Lục Bát:

-ttt bb tt
-bbb tt bb
-bb tt bb
-bb tt bb tt

Those are general rules one finds in Lục Bát and Song Thất Lục Bát. But the best known poets passed them. They each have their own rhyme and melody. They used poetry as a hobby but also as a mean of expression to vent out their burning aspirations of their nature that life did not fulfill or to criticize Vietnamese society of the time absorbed with Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist influences.

Kim Vân Kiều

It is the case of Nguyễn Du with his masterpiece Kim Vân Kiều. He was of Hà Tỉnh origin and belonged to a family of mandarins under the Lê dynasty. In spite of his acceptance of a post during the accession of Gia Long, he always considered himself a partisan of the Lê dynasty. He was always gnawed by remorse for being disloyal to the fallen dynasty. That is why he transposed the internal drama in Kim Vân Kiều. It is the story of a young woman, fiancee of Kim Trọng who sold herself to save her parents. After so many eventful years, Kiều was rescued by a nun and found Kim Trọng again at the temple. By then, Kim Trọng was married to her sister Vân whom Kiều requested to replace her.

It is also the case of poetess Hồ Xuân Hương that I admire the most not only for her sensual poems but also for her bitter refections on Vietnamese Confucian society of that time, and of Trần Tế Xương for his satires and his ever biting irony.

Vietnamese classical poetry rests essentially on a language with musical tonalities. It is made of tenuos correspondences, images and sounds as well as a certain singing effect of rhyme and parallelism. The translation into French or another language sometimes constitutes a real betrayal. It is the case of Hồ Xuân Hương's poems. The reader only thinks of obscene side of it and forgets the picturesque side of the partition.

Hồ Xuân Hương

Quả mít

Thân em như quả mít trên cây,
Da nó sù sì, múi nó dày
Quân tử có yêu thi` đóng cọc (1),
Xin đừng mân mó nhựa ra tay

The Jack fruit

My body is like the jack fruit on the tree,
Its skin is coarse, its pulp thick
If you love it, Lord, separate it with a wedge (1)
Don't palpate it: its juice would make your fingers stick

(1) No: in Vietnamese, also means the viril organ. To make it ripe, one drive a wedge in the middle of the fruit and opens it.

Trần Tế Xương

Anh em đừng nghĩ Tết tôi nghèo,
Tiền bạc trong kho chưa lãnh tiêu,
Rượu cúc nhắm đến hàng biếng quảy,
Trà sen muốn hỏi giá còn kiêu,
Bánh đường sắp gói e nồm chảy,
Giò lụa toan làm sợ nắng thiu,
Thôi thế thì thôi đành Tết khác,
Anh em đừng nghĩ Tết tôi nghèo

The same article in format pdf

New Year Tết

Friends, don't think I'm poor this Tet!
I haven't yet withdrawn money from my safe
My chrysanthemum wine, they deliver it late;
And the lotus tea, the price is still bargained for,
For my sweet cakes, I'm afraid they would run down
At the heat, the same as my pork pastes.
Come on, never mind, let's wait until next year
Friends, don't think I'm poor this Tet.

Those are the poems extracted from a book entitled "Aigrettes sur la rizière" (Egrets on the rice paddies) of Mr. Lê Thành Khôi in the collection " Connaissance de l'Orient "(Knowledge of the East ) published by Gallimard. How to understand and feel Vietnam, its mountains, its rivers and its people without some knowledge of its culture, in particular its poetry?. A work not to be missed for those who love to understand Vietnamese poetry, a poetry that knows how to unite the interior freedom of poets and the dream of peasants.





Vietnamese poetry
Lục bát - Song thất lục bát

Apart from the meters coming from China, one finds practically in most of Vietnamese poems the following two specific meters: the Lục Bát (or Six-Eight) and the Song Thất Lục Bát (or Double Seven-Six Eight ). In each of these meters, the tones named "bằng" alternate with the tone named "trắc" and the interior rhymes with the final rhymes. Tone bang (b) is words without accent or with grave accent (`). On the contrary, tone trac (t) is words with acute accent ('), falling accent (?), rising accent (~), drop tone (.). The accents are always placed over (' ` ? ~) or under (.) the vowels. As for the rhyme (or vần), it may be found at the same time in verses ( inserted rhyme ) and at the end of the verse. If the last word of the verse is bang, it rhymes with the last word in paired verses 2,4,6,8.

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