From Shakespeare to Nguyen Du and Cao Ba Quat

These "paintings" were taken from the Internet. 

 Strangely, there was no portrait or visual portrayal of Nguyen Du or Ho Xuan Huong....

REPOST FROM FB: 

SHAKESPEARE AND THEN "SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE"!

Some time ago, Harvey Weinstein decided to make a movie about young Shakespeare...in love, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. I just came across a FB posting by a Vietnamese attributing the "rejuvenation" of Shakespeare's sonnet to this movie! In that same posting, Shakespeare was called "cha`ng." something like "su nghiep ky tai cua...cha`ng!"

I can't say enough that I disagree with the heightened perceived "role" of that movie. But here, I would only discuss the "cha`ng" form of address. The Vietnamese language is rich and multilayered in its various forms of address that denote how we feel about a person.

Shakespeare is not just a poet. He is the Western Hemisphere's foremost dramatist and playwright. In his time, he was also an actor. He is the bedrock of the English language. Mind you, Shakespeare is NOT our contemporaries, but he is still, today, our benchmark for English poetry, and more...He is more than 500 years old. He is not just admired. He is revered due to the depth of his dramatic works and how they reflect the plights of humans, true to this day. "To be or not to be" is not just a simple string of simple English words!

I once compared Nguyen Du to Shakespeare and i was scolded by my English-teacher-father, who warned me not to fall victim to Vietnamese ethnocentrism. Our Nguyen Du is great for our Vietnamese language, and our bloody history, but perhaps, just perhaps, he has not reached the vastness of Shakespeare's legacy, in the English language. At best, it might be a case of contrast!

I think that the movie "Shakespeare in love" must have given a number of Vietnamese a sense of entitlement and familiarity, for example, to call Shakespeare "cha`ng", which perhaps is a credit given to ...Harvey Weinstein and "his"...allegedly harassed object Gwyneth Paltrow!

I myself have resorted to calling our very own Cao Ba Quat and Nguyen Du "nga`i" to distinguish them from the "nga`i" quan chuc ngay hom nay. Indeed, I was stunned in 1994 when i attended international conferences in Asia where Vietnamese officials called others "nga`i." I thought "nga`i" for living persons was the bad relic of French colonialism to be done away with!

But today, looking back at Vietnamese history, I think Cao Ba Quat is "nga`i" to me. I won't dare calling him "cha`ng" out of my own self-respect as a Vietnamese, let alone my respect for the poet, his "noblesse" ideas and works!

So, on behalf of those Vietnamese compatriots of mine who have seen Shakespeare in Love, thanks, Harvey and Gwyneth, for giving us "cha`ng" Shakespeare and his sonnet! I myself don't need to thank Harvey and Gwyneth, because Shakespeare was brought to me in 1973-74 in Saigon, Vietnam, with samples of Hamlet, Othello, and MacBeth! I won't refer to Shakespeare as "nga`i," but I certainly will not call him "cha`ng" by all means! I am too much in awe!

By the way, for those of us who have had Shakespeare in our soul and heart since teenage days, from one corner of the world to another, our favorite might be THE TEMPEST, and not necessarily those sonnets about love or marriages from Weinstein's creation for the silver screen! I am actually thinking about the Shakespeare expert that I know and used to work for: the late Senior U.S. District Judge Hugh Gibson of the Southern District of Texas, Galveston Division -- a Carter appointee! He who read to me Shakespeare's The Tempest in that quiet federal courthouse on an afternoon when we did not hold court (of course, no Weinstein movie existed yet, at that time). He who modeled for me that in the law, i should be a civil rights advocate and ultimately a federal judge (civil rights advocate yes, but federal judgeship? I quickly disposed of such goal, two years into the practice of law in our Capital City!)