READING CORNER

“A Dewdrop's foretelling”        – a chorus with strange melodies…     At the age of sixty, Nhat Chieu – a teacher and literary researcher, is known to many readers near and far as a writer, a “young writer” with hair dyed in the color of autumn. The writer with a gentle smile like Buddha and squinting eyes as if smiling entered the writing career unexpectedly and lightly as if playing… If we say that literature, in the journey to find beauty, in the end, is a game: the game of chasing the shape and catching the shadow, writer Nhat Chieu is a true player in that game with his readers… So in this artistic game, who is the shape, and who is the shadow? Is it right the writer is the shape, the reader is the shadow? Is it right the writer is the shadow, the reader is the shape? Or is the writer himself the shape and also the shadow? Chasing the shape and catching the shadow or is the writer chasing himself? And at the end of that chase, who caught whom: the shadow catching the figure or the figure catching the shadow? Are there any answers needed? When the game only poses one problem: that is to play. And each player just needs to ...play... like...play...like...play... Enter the world of Nhat Chieu, where exciting games always beckon. There, there is a player who always plays with all his heart with the magical, shimmering art game designed on the enchanting dance of parody: absorbed, passionate, and innocent. Play and play. Playing as a way to find again... Playing as a way to return... After the long journeys starting from the short story collections The Wind Eater and the Flying Bell (2007), Masked Rain (2008), and Writing Your Name on the Water (2010), the return journey to find beauty, the writer has brought to readers a new and impressive game with the short story collection The Prophecy of the Dew Drop, published in the autumn days of 2011. "A dewdrop's foretelling" is more than a short story collection - a short story, is a choir with strange sounds made up of 109 fugues. Each fugue has its sound. There are sounds echoing from the ground. There are sounds coming from heaven. There are sounds of God. There are sounds of Man. There are sounds of laughter, sounds of crying. Sounds of good. Sounds of evil. Etc... All are mixed on the background of parody music, sometimes low, sometimes high, sometimes melodious, sometimes broken, and uncertain... The parody rhythm is always increased, and changed, and between the steps are continuous pauses full of effort like the gaps in Chinese ink paintings, like the silence in Haiku poetry, like the blank spaces in Japanese dry-garden techniques (dry mountains and rivers)... In that chorus, the world that Nhat Chieu builds and brings to us is a world where comedy and tragedy blend. Using the element of parody, in "A dewdrop's foretelling", Nhat Chieu has renewed things that seem too familiar, familiar to the point of being trivial. There, the nature of parody has been pushed to the peak of art in the sense of play... "A dewdrop's foretelling" is a game - Fun (the comedy) but Painful (the tragedy). The parodies alternate and correspond to each other in 109 super stories on three levels: parodying life, parodying people, and parodying oneself, leading to pain in life, pain in others, and pain in one's pain. In the past, reading the Chinese novel "The Water Margin" (水滸傳) of Shi Nai'An (施耐庵), people passed down the names of 108 heroes of  Liángshānpō (梁山泊). Now, in the last days of winter, ponder the prophecies that the dewdrop - the messenger of heaven - left for people through 109 super stories. Please try reading ones in this collection of stories and feel: Parody One day the Toad appeared and said to me: “Be cautious! I will write about you and circulate the story in the toad-world, and you will surely be the worst character.” (story number 9, STORIES OF EMPTINESS series, page 130)   A letter to Swift Please allow me to commit suicide as I can no longer stand HUMAN SMELL.  Gulliver (story number 7, STORIES OF EMPTINESS series, page 126)   Crocodile Not yet satisfying its boss, the Dragon-Gate leaping carp was able to transform only into a crocodile, and was sent to a pond to be King over there; shedding tears it starts receiving gifts from the pond’s residents (story number 14,  STORIES OF SOMEWHERE, page 111) The collection includes 109 extremely short stories. Some stories are only one sentence long like the length of a blade of grass... Please, read: God spelling a Vietnamese word T-Ô-I (self) plus a heavy tone = “TỘI” (guilt) A drop tone of self is guilt. (story number 7, STORIES OF ENCHANTMENT, page 158)    Some stories are only two words long like a sigh, a click of the tongue... Spelling Death in Vietnamese   “C-H-Ế-T”(death)-Waiting for (Chờ) the End (Hết)  (story number 8, STORIES OF ENCHANTMENT, page 160)   Some stories are compressed into one word like a blink of an eye of a person... realizing...  The epic of Sita (newly discovered, extremely short) Earth (story number 9, STORIES OF SOMEBODY, page 192)   This has caused the definitions of short stories - definitions that have not stood firm with the development of literary creation practice - to truly collapse. Nhat Chieu's extremely short stories, even in this extremely short nature, have left on them the mark of a gentle smile, as gentle as a smile that squints....ha ha........... The pain of life and... bliss is right here!…    Where is the Land of Bliss? “HERE”, the Simple Woman Sunu replied. (Imitating Ho Xuan Huong) (story number 3, STORIES OF SOMEWHERE, page 88)

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