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c2pizza 's review for:
The Song of Kieu: A New Lament
by Du Nguyen
This is an epic unlike any other that I've read so far.
First of all, the poetry of the translation (done by Timothy Allen) is breathtaking and reminds one of the beautifully melancholic poetry from the Tang Dynasty or The Tale of Genji. Building an epic around sad poetry might be the fastest way to my heart in literature.
Secondly, I haven't seen another national epic where the main character is female, nor one where a woman who is the victim of circumstances is portrayed in any remotely sympathetic way, let alone as a heroine.
Thirdly, the lack of warriors slaughtering each other right and left is also a innovation of highest originality in epic writing (at least to the halfway point that I've reached as I write this. Update: Only one short section with wholesale slaughters in the second half, which is by far the least violence I've read in an epic.)
Lastly, this work uses plot device rarely seen in epics. For example, the judge finds Kieu guilty of being a fallen woman because she wears makeup, and consequently she is unworthy of the man who pulled her out of prostitution and she must return to the brothel. That's the kind of ignorant, nonsensical, and sexist logic that remains a universal characteristic of our species to this very day, and the thing I love about epics is how they lay out universal characteristics of humanity, both high and low, so simply and elegantly. This poem does it as well as any in its own unique way. On a side note, the fact that she gets acquitted because she writes fire poetry makes this part less bitter and more sweet, and is very on theme.
Post lastly, I can't help compare The Song of Kieu to the Odyssey, the epic I've read with the next most prominent female "lead". As expected of works written 2500 years apart, there is a culture gap, but Odysseus reclaiming his wife as a part of his chattel after she had to resort to every machination to stay pure, and Kim and Kieu becoming friends who've moved beyond just being lovers after her very different history than Penelope, is a gap I've expect to see between 1900 and 2100, not 800 BC and 1800. Here is one example of Kieu's different approach to suiters than Penelope's unrelenting chastity:
"Từ Hải curves Kiều to him like a phoenix:
she sits astride and rides him like a dragon"
Penelope would have been decapitated at the end for doing that with a suiter. Kim doesn't really care. It elevates this work so much that her erotic pleasure isn't seen as an absolute taboo and is more a hang up for her than for her man. Furthermore, those two lines alone also separate Kieu from the contempory works in Europe at the time. One wants to throw one's head back and laugh when considering that this was written around the time Jane Austen was writing her brilliant asexual romances in England. It should be noted that outside of a few open references to sexual acts, this epic is far from the bacchanal one might expect from my single quote.
Beyond lastly, the moral of the typical epic is something along the lines of: violence is the answer for everything, even if it ends tragically, it was still the answer. Compare that with the last lines of Kieu:
"Some suffer dreadful misery;
some live lives of luxury.
The most talented are not always
the ones who succeed:
that would be too neat and is too rare.
Looks and luck don’t always rhyme.
Never complain about your fate:
you have one life. Live it."
First of all, the poetry of the translation (done by Timothy Allen) is breathtaking and reminds one of the beautifully melancholic poetry from the Tang Dynasty or The Tale of Genji. Building an epic around sad poetry might be the fastest way to my heart in literature.
Secondly, I haven't seen another national epic where the main character is female, nor one where a woman who is the victim of circumstances is portrayed in any remotely sympathetic way, let alone as a heroine.
Thirdly, the lack of warriors slaughtering each other right and left is also a innovation of highest originality in epic writing (at least to the halfway point that I've reached as I write this. Update: Only one short section with wholesale slaughters in the second half, which is by far the least violence I've read in an epic.)
Lastly, this work uses plot device rarely seen in epics. For example, the judge finds Kieu guilty of being a fallen woman because she wears makeup, and consequently she is unworthy of the man who pulled her out of prostitution and she must return to the brothel. That's the kind of ignorant, nonsensical, and sexist logic that remains a universal characteristic of our species to this very day, and the thing I love about epics is how they lay out universal characteristics of humanity, both high and low, so simply and elegantly. This poem does it as well as any in its own unique way. On a side note, the fact that she gets acquitted because she writes fire poetry makes this part less bitter and more sweet, and is very on theme.
Post lastly, I can't help compare The Song of Kieu to the Odyssey, the epic I've read with the next most prominent female "lead". As expected of works written 2500 years apart, there is a culture gap, but Odysseus reclaiming his wife as a part of his chattel after she had to resort to every machination to stay pure, and Kim and Kieu becoming friends who've moved beyond just being lovers after her very different history than Penelope, is a gap I've expect to see between 1900 and 2100, not 800 BC and 1800. Here is one example of Kieu's different approach to suiters than Penelope's unrelenting chastity:
"Từ Hải curves Kiều to him like a phoenix:
she sits astride and rides him like a dragon"
Penelope would have been decapitated at the end for doing that with a suiter. Kim doesn't really care. It elevates this work so much that her erotic pleasure isn't seen as an absolute taboo and is more a hang up for her than for her man. Furthermore, those two lines alone also separate Kieu from the contempory works in Europe at the time. One wants to throw one's head back and laugh when considering that this was written around the time Jane Austen was writing her brilliant asexual romances in England. It should be noted that outside of a few open references to sexual acts, this epic is far from the bacchanal one might expect from my single quote.
Beyond lastly, the moral of the typical epic is something along the lines of: violence is the answer for everything, even if it ends tragically, it was still the answer. Compare that with the last lines of Kieu:
"Some suffer dreadful misery;
some live lives of luxury.
The most talented are not always
the ones who succeed:
that would be too neat and is too rare.
Looks and luck don’t always rhyme.
Never complain about your fate:
you have one life. Live it."