Translator's note: In April 2002, while searching for material at the Vietnam National Library in Hanoi on the great colonial-era Vietnamese writer Vu Trong Phung, I discovered the following interview with the writer conducted by the brilliant young literary critic Le Thanh. The interview first appeared on April 1, 1937, in Bac Ha, a short-lived weekly journal of arts and culture published in Hanoi and edited by Ngo Van Trien (a.k.a. Truc Khe) and Bui Huy Phon (a.k.a. Do Phon). The interview is of interest for several reasons. First, it is very likely the only interview with Vu Trong Phung ever published. Second, it has never been reprinted, and there is not a single mention of it in the hundreds of essays, articles, memoirs, monographs, and research bibliographies that have been published about Vu Trong Phung during the sixty-five years since his death in 1939. It is safe to assume, therefore, that this piece has been lost and completely forgotten. Moreover, the interview allows us to hear Vu Trong Phung discuss, in his own words, the heated debates that raged during the late 1930s around his most famous and controversial works: Dumb Luck, The Storm, To Be A Whore, and Venereal Disease Clinic. Of special interest is his defense against charges that these work are pornographic, his forthright description of his "conservative position on the 'question of women'" and his account of what he sees as his three most important duties as a writer. Finally, the tragic premature deaths of both Vu Trong Phung and Le Thanh add an inescapable note of poignancy to their exchange. In 1939, less than three years after the interview took place, Vu Trong Phung died from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-seven. Le Thanh died in 1944 at the age of thirty-one, also from tuberculosis.

Peter Zinoman


 
Anyone interested in the literature of our county must certainly pay attention to new work by the realist writer Vu Trong Phung.

Many of his novels—including The Storm, To Be a Whore, and Dumb Luck—and his nonfiction reportage such as Venereal Disease Clinic have been understood by readers in different and often contradictory ways. Some admire the literary value of these works and believe that they may even contribute to the positive reform of present-day society. Others contend that Vu Trong Phung's writing reflects neither a lofty ideology about society nor a consistent and agreeable aesthetic. Rather, they see in his work a crude effort to boost sales through sexual titillation. The radical contrast between these two positions has generated intense curiosity about his work—a curiosity that we feel as well.

Vu Trong Phung met us at his newspaper office. Had you accompanied us on that day, you would doubtless have shared our surprise that this serious, thoughtful, and reserved person is the same writer who produces such famously audacious sentences and who has the courage to write novels like The Storm, To Be a Whore, and Dumb Luck.


 
VTP: Your letter mentioned that you would like me to talk about my novels. . . . I know that I have many readers but only a small number of them seem to understand me clearly. With regard to the others, I am not sure if they truly do not understand me or if they try to misunderstand me on purpose. Many of them do seem to misunderstand me intentionally so as to better attack me. There are some who have praised and promoted my work and even defended it from attack but who now attack it themselves. This calls into question their original sincerity. Some even charge that my novels trade in sexual titillation. How absurd!

LT: Do you try to titillate your readers when you write?

VTP: How can one titillate a reader? Do you think my readers are so ignorant and childish as to permit themselves to be titillated by me?

LT: So, can you let us know your motives when you create one of those scenes that many consider pornographic?

VTP: If you tell a story that is basically about a rape, how can you not describe scenes like the ones that appear in my novel The Storm? In writing The Storm, my only purpose was to offer a snapshot of present-day society. And when you look at this society, it is hard to view it with optimistic eyes. Today's society is in the process of decay; it is a society the likes of which we have never seen before in our history. Its very atmosphere is rotten and stinking. We live in an era during which those with power and money live only for sensual pleasure. Certainly you have heard stories about members of the nouveau riche who, despite having a half-dozen wives, still commit acts as indecent as those perpetrated by my character Nghi Hach. Not to mention what they do day and night in cheap and tawdry taverns. A large part of our country's youth are concerned only with play and pleasure. They can no longer bear difficult work or, indeed, anything that requires sitting and thinking hard. They think only of cruising the streets, dancing and singing, or going to the cinema.

And the women. They are even more damaged. Men today often see young girls walking the streets with scarlet lips, dressed in the most modern outfits. I would advise these gentlemen not to rush to celebrate this or to see these girls as contributing to the progress of our civilization. Most of them have progressed on the outside only. If they look happy to you, please remember that they are thinking, as few of you suspect, of a kind of happiness that exists outside of the family. If they look to be deep in anxious thought, do not jump to the conclusion that they are thinking about how they are being oppressed by their mothers-in-law. These are no longer the kind of daughters-in-law that allow themselves to be oppressed by mothers-in-law. Indeed, life has turned them into daughters-in-law who oppress their mothers-in-law!

LT: You are too pessimistic.

VTP: How can I not be pessimistic in the face of such a society? I am very "conservative," sir, especially on the question of women. I am against the movement for the Europeanization of external forms promoted over the past several years by the leaders of the Self-Strength Literary Group. They argue that the "progressive renovation of external forms will trigger the progressive renovation of our spirit." They say that once external forms begin to evolve, a spiritual evolution will follow automatically. They teach people to progressively reform their appearance. They introduce new fashions and teach us how to apply powder and lipstick. Their project of Europeanization has already achieved some results. The recent growth of obscenity, for example, is partially a consequence of their efforts.

LT: You are also opposed to the literature of the men who lead the Self-Strength Literary Group?

VTP: This you should know if you read my work. I don't want to use this opportunity to take shots at those guys. I only point out that in our society today, not only do mothers-in-law no longer oppress their daughters-in-law but the reverse is true. Ninety out every one hundred families are actually dominated by members of the younger generation. Hence, I see no reason to promote in my writing the liberation of daughters-in-law or demand freedom for youth within the family. I think that social novels should be more than novels that stray far from the truth; I want my novels to reflect contemporary society.

LT: It is a good thing that your novels reflect society. But many critics attack your kind of realist writing for its pornographic tendencies.

VTP: You can't call my kind of literature pornographic! On the contrary, it is more accurate to call it literature that describes obscene scenes. But how can anyone say that I shouldn't describe such scenes? My literature is realist literature and those are scenes that have really happened; some I have seen with my own eyes. I invite you to report on a province such as Tuyen Quang. You will discover stories a thousand time more obscene than the ones that I describe.

LT: Do you think that one reason why critics attack you is that realist literature has never before existed in our country?

VTP: I am not the inventor of this kind of literature nor am I the first to bring it into our country. Valuable realist works first appeared here seven or eight years ago, such as The Tearful History of Kim Anh (Kim Anh Le Su), so how can I be considered our first realist? Perhaps you wonder why The Tearful History of Kim Anh does not have scenes like the ones described in my novel? The reason is that the level of lewdness at the time of that novel was not as "advanced" as what we have today. Those scenes described in my novels are all true. They continue to play a role in our daily lives today. This becomes clear if we look closely at our lives even a little bit. . . .

Let me say a little more about the charge that my work is pornographic. What you are calling pornographic is no less pornographic than . . . one of those dreamy novels that describe a boy and girl stealing out of their houses at midnight to flirt with each other in some garden or to sit with each other alone in an empty house. In my opinion, these novels deserve to be called pornographic because when we read them, we can feel a kind of affection growing aroused within in our lustful hearts. On the other hand, when people read my novels, they are disgusted—disgusted because my work reveals to them a truth that is truly filthy. And this disgust can turn to bitterness. I believe that the feelings of disgust and bitterness provoked by my writing are strong enough to make readers forget their feelings of arousal.

Some say that my novels are bad for children. But my stories are not intended for children to read. It is truly sad if Annamese families indiscriminately let everyone read the same newspapers from the oldest grandmothers to the smallest children. Grandmothers ought to be reading newspapers like The Buddhist Torch (Duoc Tue) and Nirvana (Nat Ban) while children should read Lads and Young Ladies (Cau Am Co Chieu). Doesn't the fault here lie with parents who don't know how to raise, monitor, and educate their children rather than with me?

There are three kinds of work that I must do. The first, which I call social work, involves describing the obscenity of wealth and power—the obscenity of Nghi Hach, for example. Here is a man with eleven wives who still rapes a young peasant girl, destroys several families, and disgraces and humiliates many different people. The second is to describe the sexual urges of pubescent girls who are not given sufficient education; I address this in To Be A Whore. I wrote this after reading the translation of a German book . . . which compiles the darkest confessions of young students. After reading that brave, scientific book, I imagined that all of our youth today are being driven by puberty toward masturbation and perversity, and I began to see the necessity of sex education for adolescents. . . . If people start getting used to some of these terms and topics that have long been considered filthy, perhaps there will be less real filth in the future. My third task is to describe the grief and suffering caused by poverty, in particular the epidemic of prostitution that I describe in V.D. Clinic.

[After saying this Mr. Phung smiled and went on.]

It is very strange that people have accused V.D. Clinic of being pornographic. This is a work of nonfiction reportage that only records things that are true. What I describe there is no different than what can be found in a daily newspaper. Perhaps I will translate several books compiled by Frenchmen that discuss the lasciviousness of the Annamese. I will translate these works to show those who attack me just how lustful our people have become and that no one knows what to do about it.

This will demonstrate clearly that the movement for the Europeanization of external forms has given birth within this civilized society to depraved and immoral customs which our history—a history of several thousand years of miserable slavery—has never recorded before.

I sacrifice more than other writers. As you know, I have been in the literary world for six or seven long years. Don't you think I could have found an easier artistic road, a road on which—even had I not succeeded or earned real praise—at least I would not be subjected to attack? Why have I chosen this dangerous road—a road that so many people dislike, a road on which vulgar people attack me with vulgar methods?

[Mr. Vu Trong Phung also spoke a lot about realist writers in France—Maupassant, Colette, Richepin, and Victor Marguerite—who have been a great influence on him.]

Le Thanh

Tap Chi Bac Ha

April 1, 1937

Translated from Vietnamese by Peter Zinoman