A Personal Manifesto: I Write to Define Myself

 Something I wrote many years ago

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A Personal Manifesto:
I write to define myself

(just for fun, "Ce n'est que pour rire, mesdames, messieurs...")

(Open) letter to the leaders of a(n) (imagined) Creative Writing Faculty at a(n) (imagined) (US-based?) University

(Draft, junk, improvised and (unbridled?) version)

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Tran Tien Cao Dang (Tran is my last name, Dang my first name, Tien Cao my middle name).

I was born in 1965. I am working as an editor for the Vietnam-based online newspaper VietNamNet. I have published a short stories collection titled “Baroque and the Hidden Flower” (2005). As a translator, I have translated two books by some of the world's leading authors, namely, Milorad Pavic's “Dictionary of the Khazars”, and Haruki Murakami's “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle”. My latest translation, which will be published by the end of this year, is Kazuo Ishiguro's “Never Let Me Go”. I am now working on the translation of Franz Herbert’s “Dune”, one of the classic science fiction novels. My main foreign languages are English and Russian. I can read French, Spanish, Japanese, and a little Italian.

I am now working on a novel, my first one.

I am happy to write this letter to you on behalf of myself, a writer.

Why do I write?

I write to define myself, re-define myself, to regain my authentic identity, emancipating myself from the false identity imposed on me by others, the so-called mainstream, or what O. Pamuk refers to in his Nobel Lecture as the “center” of the world.

Vietnamese writers are so often thought of as being pre-ordained with a limited agenda to carry out throughout their writing life. This agenda consists of, namely: war, post-war conditions, totalitarianism, and, in a condescending goodwill action to allow for a picture of a somehow “full-fledge” culture, some exotic elements such as water puppets and Vietnam’s unique chèo or tuồng drama.

I’m too fed up with this faked destiny that is so unworthy to me.

What I am doing is to regain my authentic voice, develop it to its right power, and raise it to the right altitude, where it will be clearly heard and properly recognized by the world.

Here a sentence I read from an online document: “I was so consumed by reality to afford fantasy”. Well-said! I myself have for such a long time been “so consumed by reality to afford fantasy”, being caught in the trivial daily issues, but I’m now striving to get over it, to break through and lift myself to the point where I can take off with all the power of fantasy that has always been lying untapped inside me and the main, vital part of my so far unactualized self.

Now I know I can say the same as Pamuk did in his recent Nobel Lecture. For me, Vietnam is not any marginal part of the world. It is the center of the world. Similarly, we Vietnamese are not any Others to the rest of the world - implicitly, to the West. We are among the most authentic and qualified dwellers of the world. Here I live and write, creating, exploring, watching the growth of, and developing myself in, the entire multitude of imaginable and unimaginable worlds and realities.

These worlds are the territory where readers from all other corners of the world will not find an Otherness - a war-torn Vietnam, a post-colonial, totalitarianism-ridden Vietnam, an exotic, “unexplored” Vietnam, a “young tiger” Vietnam, you name it -, but rather another, strikingly alien yet disturbingly similar to their own world.

My project - my ongoing novel - is to create a multireality, multiuniverse version of what exists. The idea itself is far from “new” and unique, of course. The newness of the idea itself is not my concern. What essentially costs is the way the idea is developed and comes into full being, the way images, fantasies, emotions, passions, speculations, insights are added to it as bone, flesh, veins and blood are to a soul.

I am fully aware that many will find my future novel unsatisfying in the sense that it does not give a portray of Vietnam as they expected: no war atrocities, neither war victims nor war veterans, no retired generals, no bribing officials, no disappointed intellectuals, no would-be dissidents, no young people eagerly grasping the opportunities brought about by WTO and globalization.

This having been said, who knows, here and there in my novel this or that of all the abovementioned elements can be touched, yet it will be clear to readers that these are far from being what the novel is all about.

Here what I am doing: to discard any predetermined notion about the so-called Vietnam, to deconstruct any assumption of what a Vietnamese novel should be and should not be.

Anyone who couldn't imagine that a Vietnamese writer could afford to devote herself to, say, writing science fiction, will feel compelled to change his way of thinking as soon as he faces this kind of writing.

This kind of writing I am creating will partake in the workings of the world in such a way to adjust the common perception of one of its integral parts: in fact, I myself and Vietnamese writers like me are working to help change the world.

Naturally, it would be good for to me if I could attend a creative writing at your organization. It would be a good opportunity to me to see the world, physically. The world, which I know so intimately through words, sounds, and images, will present itself before me in all its mighty liveliness, infinite diversity, and rigorous beauty.

Of course, I’m not so stupid as to expect that such a trip will change my writing in a magical manner.
Instead, the trip would be, I think, one into larger dimensions of myself, one that would provide me with a deeper insight into the vaster realm which I would be able to partially fill with my own being.
In other words, this would help me strengthen the universal quality of my writing.

If, on the other hand, the trip would not be granted to me for this or that reason, I still have other, equally good ways to “attain the universal”, for, more than anyone else, I am fully aware of my free will and creative power.

The seed of something undefined and, although I’m barely aware of it at the present, much greater and better than me, has chosen to dwell within me, and it’s my responsibility to make it grow to the largest possible extent of its being.

Thanks for your kind(est) attention,

Tran Tien Cao Dang

Haiku verse around 'fork', 'hook' and 'heart'

And the day will come
When you wake up
With a fork that blossoms in your heart.

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A fork slides
Along your mind
Until it meets its paradise

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And earth and sky
Will look at your fork
As if at a thunder that severs the world.

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A landslide, an avalanche
Are kept from moving down
By the hooks that are my eyes.

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My hook keeps her
From disappearing
My fork draws her on a fog yet to come.

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My body stinks
My hook radiates
My heart emits bright dark cries.

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Of course it fits:
Your heart, your hits
The dream that twists you then quits.

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Your heart, amid the fire,
Thinks it's a happy squire
Doesn't know it's a clown who burns himself.

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Among the scattered ashes
Which had once been my heart
You can still find a splinter of smile.

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The slips of your heart
The slides of your soul:
The knife and fork that slice you into songs.

India looks at me…

(A Brief Note on My Participation in the recent Dibrugarh University International Literature Festival, Dibrugarh University, Assam, India, March 19-21, 2024)

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India looks at me with both the stony, relentless stare of some local men from the poor neighbourhood along the Brahmaputra river and the open-hearted, pristine smiles of Dibrugarh University students. Each of the few days I spent here in this ‘remote’ part of India, I felt myself hanging along the spider web-thin, razor blade-sharp, clear-cut and yet ever-shifting line that separates forces that weigh India down from those that pull her forward and upward.

Me staying at the luxurious HM Resort had on one hand served as a superb protective shield against the notorious Indian social violence and, on the other hand, encased me in a rigid etiquette framework out of which I always felt want to break free. I always felt drawn to the ‘real’ India behind these thick, transparent, impenetrable walls of the luxury offered to me, the ‘real’ India that I felt both intimidating and wonderful.

Mr. Krishnan Srinivasan, former State Secretary of India, told me he does not believe that India has a future, the dire poverty and lack of education that ravage the great majority of its population being to be blamed. “It’s so sad”, he said. He has every reason to make this conclusion, of course, having been tormented by this problem all his life. And yet, looking at the radiant faces of Dibrugarh University students and scholars turning toward us panelists and trying to answer their well-informed, ‘thorny’, highly inquisitive questions and having the honour to get to know their dreams, I’d want to be and remain a stubborn idealist who, despite all those bleakest signs and depressing indicators, keeps on believing that this enormous country has every reason to believe she has a bright future.

A bright future, not only for India but also for the whole world.

A lonely ‘old’ wolf who would always prefer the harsh solitude within the privacy of his vast jungle of literature, I was not that ready to be in the company of such wonderful representatives of my kind from around the world. I’m always aware, of course, of the fact that quite a few of members of my ‘tribe’ are scattered all around the world. And yet, meeting them in their ‘real’ version, conversing with them in the same physical room, and giving them the occasional tap on their shoulders, is something radically different from nurturing the company of their ‘incorporeal’ souls. Here I am, among them, and I feel that yes, I belong to a tribe, one of the not-that-numerous humans who see what many others don’t see, think what many others don’t think, feel what many others don’t feel, and try to do things that many others don’t do, out of a seemingly futile desire to make the world a better, safer, and more tolerant place to live.

The mere fact that we’re all speaking about literature and spiritual values is ‘unusual’ in itself: How could ever people like us, normally without any power, strive to oppose quite a large array of utterly real and huge powers that are doing nothing better than spoiling human souls and destroying Mother Earth? And yet we go on speaking about how we can strive, about our paths, our efforts, our dreams, our hopes: in a way, we are fighters who dedicate themselves to the case of preserving humanity.

For this reason, no amount of gratitude would be enough to FOCAL and Dibrugarh University for creating such an unforgettable event in my life, in our lives. May this spirit live on forever. 

Me speaking at the session, "The East European Tale", March 20, 2024, at Dibrugarh University, together with Halina Kruk (to the right) and Irena Karpa (to the left), both from Ukraine, and Ashes Gupta (far right) as the moderator.

Về tình lãng mạn

Tôi biết mình không đủ tuyệt cho một mối tình lãng mạn. Để là nhân vật trong một mối tình lãng mạn, cần phải có một số phẩm chất nhất định ở bên ngoài – về ngoại hình, về "tinh anh phát tiết ra ngoài", về "sức hấp dẫn bẩm sinh" và/hoặc những thành tựu vật chất mà anh đạt được bằng năng lực của anh. Những thứ mà tôi không có hoặc có rất ít.

Để làm nhân vật trong một mối tình lãng mạn, những “phẩm chất bên trong”, “vẻ đẹp tâm hồn”, “sự đồng điệu” không thôi, không đủ. Những thứ đó - “phẩm chất bên trong”, “vẻ đẹp tâm hồn”, “sự đồng điệu” - đủ cho một tình bạn đẹp, tình đồng chí, tình tri kỷ, tình yêu phi tính dục, phi giới tính. Đủ cho tình yêu lãng mạn thì không. Điều này không sao cả. Đơn giản là bạn không sinh ra cho vai đó - cũng như không phải ai cũng sinh ra để làm nhà leo núi, làm người mẫu nam, làm Bill Gate, làm Lionel Messi.

Khi đã ngộ ra điều này, bạn không mất thì giờ chờ đợi, đi tìm, xây dựng tình yêu lãng mạn. Thay vì vậy bạn biến con người mình, cuộc sống của mình, sự có mặt của mình trên trái đất thành chất liệu và nguyên liệu cho một tình yêu lớn, một tình yêu khởi đầu từ rác và tựu thành ở sự thấu cảm không phân biệt dành cho thế giới và mọi sinh thể. Mỗi người có vai của mình, giống như trong trận bóng đá. Có người mà vai trò chủ yếu hoặc duy nhất là tấn công. Có người mà vai trò chủ yếu hoặc duy nhất là bảo vệ. Cũng tốt nếu vai trò chủ yếu hoặc duy nhất của anh là, giống như thủ môn, không bon chen vào các cuộc tấn công (trừ vài trường hợp ngoại lệ), mà ở yên tại chỗ của mình, chuyên tâm bảo vệ những gì cần được bảo vệ.

Tình yêu lớn dành cho thế giới: đó là tình yêu duy nhất không làm bạn mệt mỏi chừng nào bạn còn sống.

Assol (Anastasya Vertinskaya) trong "Những cánh buồm đỏ thắm". Người đàn ông xứng đáng với nàng trước hết phải là người hùng mạnh, có đủ khả năng vật chất để cứu nàng khỏi số phận hẩm hiu.