message from the novel Vinh Quyen

Writers face painful memories - from individuals to communities, from ecology to spirituality - to open profound humane messages.

In the novel by writer Vinh Quyen, the sea heals the wounds of national history, the forest heals ecological and spiritual damage, returns to nature to feel secure. Sharing about the writing process, author Vinh Quyen once confided: "The forest not only heals me literally, but also generously gives me the opportunity to contribute each word and picture to make an ecological corner in my small literary garden; the wild forests make me feel like I have lived longer than usual (A thousand thousands) ". From that mindset, some recent works by writer Vinh Quyen have expressed gratitude for nature and spread beauty.

"Memories help people improve, but some memories are beyond the endurance of some people, becoming a place of imprisonment" (Infinite).

Trauma is "a state of miserable spirit that pertains in an unpredictable way in the lives of certain individuals" ( freud). From the theory of trauma, the characters in Vinh Quyen novels are often people who are seriously affected by trauma - due to war, due to the breakdown of love, due to evil arising in just one moment, but people are haunted by a lifetime and even unnamed wounds.

"Fragile of Brokeness" is the flashback of the simmering pain during and after the war, reflecting the fate of a generation of Southern intellectuals. "A thousand" are ecological and historical traumas. "Infinity" is the pain of the family line, talented intellectuals are always caught up in the multi-talented, multi-talented, multi-faceted.

Those wounds are sometimes difficult to heal, but with a humanistic view, the writer has returned them a peace of mind. The phoenix wing, a legendary symbol in the work, carries the power of faith, as the writer wrote, "it is possible to correct the mistakes of man who have lost the golden age of the natural world, a dream that transcends the limits of human life".

Vinh Quyen often writes about a generation of enthusiastic intellectuals in complex historical periods. They belong to a generation of change. Artists' intellectuals are not stable but are always confused by internal and external conflicts. How to reduce the gap between the constraints of war and peace; between preserving tradition and catching up with modernity; between ethnic/close culture and Western civilization; the psychology of weakness and pride in a Dai Nam country - the power of East Asia; the constant use of awareness, including conflicts in marriage, love...

All of this makes Vinh Quyen's character always uncertain, immersed in painful memories. "Memories help people improve, but some memories are beyond the endurance of some people, becoming a place of imprisonment" (Infinite). The novel character Vinh Quyen has such a prison. In the painful memory of "me", there is an image of the sudden death of the girl Phu Tang, just after the moment "I cautiously helped her lie on the cold, moist ground, gently immerse myself in her".

"Soul security", a core concept in Buddhism, became an underlying cultural material flowing in the novel of writer Vinh Quyen. With the novel "Infinite" (ASEAN Literature Awards 2021), "I" was seriously injured by Ayumi's death in a forest tornado while researching a tribe in Asia.

Facing the death of a lover, the obsession with guilt - double trauma makes "me" fall into a state of depression to panic. Dark. The night of struggle. The mouth of the abyss smells of white dust. And Ayumi's hand was in a good position, in a good position. The vague call of the name "me"...

The ancient pagoda is about the size of Kim Phung mountain, the traditional monk's house and the monk's house are over Ninety years old and set up a "self-treatment plan" for "me": Every morning, I go to the pagoda to carry water to water flowers, in the afternoon and evening, I go to the main hall to paint a portrait of Ayumi with ship's squid on Do paper in the electronic sound of the English Quyet Phung, then, when the monk performs a super- Prayer for Ayumi, "me" transforms the portrait into gold as it is painted in a bronze canopy. That was repeated day by day, until the injury was gradually eliminated.

One of the key subjects of Freuds research in developing the theory of trauma is the psychological state of veterans returning from war. They often live in a state of post-psytic shock, when war memories constantly recur, encroaching on reality, causing people to fall into a state of depression, depression, leading to panic.

In the novel by writer Vinh Quyen, war is not directly depicted, but appears haunting and brutal through memories. As the American veteran character always lives in obsession because he once "files on the roof of a low-lying tent, smoke begins to rise, on the clay drying yard, a young husband lies helplessly with his knees broken while next to his wife kneeling to ask for forgiveness" (Infinite).

The past was so engrossed that he watched the photo recording that moment. From personal injuries, the writer generalized it into collective injuries when he and his former teammates often made weekends, "drinking beer together and listening to explosions, screams, and seeing the image of themselves as muddy and bloody young men" through documentary footage.

Carrying the pain of his father, the veteran's daughter quietly made a visit to Vietnam, the main tour guide was an old, yellow photo of her father. When she returned, she gave her father a new photo. "The setting is a red-tiled house in the rice field, in front and on the brick drying yard, a middle-aged American girl standing next to a black Vietnamese farmer couple and a husband in his 60s wearing shorts to expose his silver-fried legs. That contrasting color brightens three smiling faces".

An elemental crisis is a psychological phenomenon, a state when people lose orientation towards themselves, doubt their existence in the community and society. This is a manifestation of a deep mental trauma, when the individual is stuck in the past, suffering from pain, inferiority complex and gradually losing the ability to connect with others as well as with himself.

In the novel "Thuong ngan", Kien is the type of character with double injuries leading to a state of extreme crisis. He had a "manhole in his head" and a deep wound in his heart. But, "a wound in the mind - a hole in the spiritual experience of time, self and the world - is not like a wound on the body, that is, it is not like a simple event that can be healed" ( freud).

That injury made it impossible for the character to return to a normal reality, causing the past and present to be mixed, time to break, and the ego to become fragile. After being discharged from the army, Kien followed the forestry industry, and was involved in internal conflicts.

Although he loves the forest, "the forest's son" was a notorious "hunting" when he was a reconnaissance officer at the border guard station. More painfully, when he majored in nature conservation and respected animals, in his hometown, his father and younger brother continued to encroach on the forest, committing crimes against rare animals. The love of the forest and the indifference to protect the forest are mixed together, becoming sick with "ollusionary, painful macerations".

The gloomy, harsh memories made Kien "lonely and quiet". His words also became a shocking language. When the wound spoke, the line of tu nguyen " reasoned, confused, divided the story, many fans forgot where they had spoken...". Inter actions, bringing relief to Kien's soul from where he can - listen - listen.

The meeting with the Australian girl, " Katy's confident blue eyes in the night forest lured me out of me, looking back at my life, half silver, half painful, and keeping to words"; along with the "sunset Wolves" and the magical moment of integration of love... all contributed to overcoming the fundamental crisis, Kien found himself again.

"The novel is a big game in the field of literature in many ways," writer Vinh Quyen shared. Perhaps one of the great games with humanistic significance in the novel is to guide people towards goodness - where literature becomes profound spiritual therapy.

Writing about pain, Vinh Quyen's works moved readers with gentle aesthetic vibrations and profound contemplations of people and life. For him, writing is a way to spread the beauty - the beauty of nature, of the soul and of self-healing ability.