Poetry
Tiếng thu
Not translated into English
Lưu Trọng Lư · 1939
Synopsis
The piece that gave the book its name puts three questions to an absent woman: does she hear the autumn sobbing under the cloudy moon, the heart of the soldier who has gone away, the rustling of the yellow leaves where a golden fawn passes? Around it are brief verses on memory, departure and love that does not last. Nothing in them is described at length: the music of the verse carries the whole, and the images return from one poem to the next like motifs.
Context
The piece that gives the collection its title seems to have five syllables per line, like regular verse, but every sentence runs over from one line to the next and the diction is that of speech; in the 1939 printing, only three capital letters remain, at the start of each question. Its author was the spokesman of the new camp as much as its poet: as early as 1932, he was the first to support Phan Khôi publicly, who had just published the manifesto of the new poetry, by sending him a letter and a few verses which a Saigon newspaper published.
Who it is for
Brief, in Vietnamese. One enters it through its music rather than its meaning, and the poem of the title is known by heart throughout the country.
Prizes and reception
The collection in which a single poem sufficed to fix an image, that of the golden fawn on the dry leaves, which became the commonplace of the Vietnamese autumn.