Terre des oublis (ii)
from novelist Duong Thu Huong, translator Phan Huy Duong, and publisher Sabine Wespieser
In one jump, water dumps itself in torrents from the sky, vapor lifts from rocks grilled by the sun.
This first sentence of the second paragraph of her novel, conjuring a squall, strings 2 otherwise complete sentences. In French this suggests clinical description in logical order, the author’s restraint in the face of the precipitate then the sublime.
In English we instead run one verb after another to let go after we have displayed taut command of the language. We gush, as would be appropriate to this strange rain but is not what the translator wrote.
More generally, a series of independent clauses attracts the pen of a copy editor in New York, taking out the commas and capitalizing each subject of a new verb. I am not sure that they edit copy as such in Paris.
The guiding idea is that the author knows what she is doing. So too in Ha Noi.
When a Vietnamese, when this woman, gets going she will string one subject and verb after another with commas through a long paragraph. That will be the river of her story in flood.
All at once, water splashes from the sky, fumes rise from rocks baked in the sun. Ice water and steam mix with dust in a blind fog. Sharp odors spread, wild, heavy with dried resins, perfumes of faded flowers, rank with saliva birds spit in their cries of desperate love all summer and the fragrance of grasses gone violet that cover the mountain ridges. All mix in the downpour.
This strange rain dissolves and aerosolizes all traces of life gone by. As when a summer rain hits asphalt after a dry spell dissolving roadkill and leaked oil. You can smell it.
You have to ride it. Watch out. Read the instructions on the back of the book:
EARTH OF OVERSIGHTS.
Land of Oblivions?
When she returns from a day in the forest, Miên, a young woman of the Hamlet of the Mountain, right in the heart of Viet Nam, runs into a crowd: the man she had married 14 years beforehand, whose death as a hero and martyr had been announced a long time ago already, has returned. Miên has remarried with a rich landowner, Hoan, who she loves and with whom she has a child. Bôn, the veteran and Communist, claims his wife. Under pressure from the community, Miên, convinced of her duty, resolves to go with live with her first husband.
Why would you read something that miserable? We are at the second paragraph on the first page of chapter I of XXVII totaling 6 short of 800 pages.
I expect to find every last 1 of them florid with neurosis. Why would anyone do that?
You might be a voyeur, watching others under the illusion that your life isn’t like theirs. Watch out for strange rains.
Or you might be my age, like publisher Sabine Wespieser, or a boomer like our uncle translator Phan Huy Duong. You might have been around this block before with our aunt the novelist Duong Thu Huong.
You might be wondering what the great lady has made of her illusions and our suffering since we saw her last.
This was the second Viet Nam letter of 2 so far addressing Terre Des Oublis from from novelist Duong Thu Huong, translator Phan Huy Duong, and publisher Sabine Wespieser. The first went out on August 7, 2023.
Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.
The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.