Meet and mingle at village festival

For generations, for Vietnamese people, spring has always been the season of festivals. Village festivals have a very important position and role in the life as well as in the cultural identity of Vietnamese people. Therefore, spring village festivals have become a source of inspiration for many poets. With the poem "Village Festival", author Nguyen Lam Thang (member of the Thua Thien Hue Literature and Arts Association) has brought to readers a very unique perspective and feeling because the village festival is the meeting place of love, the meeting place, the meeting place of many young men and women: "In January, the village opens the village festival/The palanquin is swaying, the drums and flags are bustling". The excitement and jubilation of the festival is expressed through the rhythm of the six-eight verse, with two reduplicated words: fluttering, fluttering, bringing excitement and joy to the festival-goers. The indispensable activities of the village festival seem to be taking place before the reader's eyes through the inversion: "The procession is swaying, the drums and flags are bustling". That excitement and bustle awakens the beautiful memories of "the teacher's mother" from the past: "The teacher remembers the time when we were young/ A shy smile, a hesitant umbrella".

Nguyen Lam Thang has a special talent for using reduplicated words in six-eight poetry. Shy and hesitant are reduplicated words that have the power to suggest and subtly describe the emotional state of young men and women, as if "love is already there, but the outside is still shy". "The temple yard is filled with incense/The moss roof is illusory, the spring rain is hazy/You show off your peachy cheeks/On a spring day, someone is absent-minded at the temple gate".

Each village festival has its own meaning and nuances, but it blends into the "festival flow" of the homeland and country. That is the belief in spirituality. Along with the excitement of the "festival" is the solemnity of the "ceremony". The second stanza opens up a magical scene in the temple yard "full of incense". The scene is as real as a dream, evoking the beauty of a spring day in a sacred place: "The moss roof is illusory, the spring rain is hazy". In the midst of that unreal, real scene, the character "you" appears with "peach cheeks" that make people's hearts flutter.

The village festival is not only a place to preserve and pass on beautiful traditional cultural values ​​to generations of children and grandchildren, but also a place for young men and women to meet and date: "Your flirtatious eyes/ Your singing of the Cheo tune calls for the intoxicating spring/ My soul is ecstatic/ Waiting for you, waiting forever, the rain fills my heart...".

Coming to the village festival is when everyone can have fun, interact, meet and join the festival, "immerse" themselves in the traditional singing and Cheo tunes of their homeland, which are both poignant and captivating: "The Cheo tune you sing calls for drunken spring". The listeners are so captivated by the song that "My soul is as if ecstatic", to the point that "My eyes are swaying with love". The author's uniqueness is in separating the word "ecstatic" to emphasize the appeal of the Cheo tune, the fascination of "you" - the Cheo girl. The echo of that fascination makes the young man "wait for you, wait forever", despite "the rain overwhelming his heart"...

Perhaps the village festival has become a meeting place for many couples, where love sprouts and promises to blossom and bear fruit: "... And from that night on, I secretly hoped/ The village festival would be held several times a year".

The poem ends with a silent but passionate wish: “The village festival is held several times a year”. Nguyen Lam Thang has spoken for the wish of many young men and women. The poem ends but the echoes linger on, as if sowing in the reader’s heart the hope of a good relationship that will blossom in the future.

With the six-eight verse form, sweet melody and rhythm, resonating like the bustling sound of the rowing drum, like a gentle, affectionate love song, the poem "Village Festival" brings readers back to the cultural quintessence of their homeland.

NAM HONG