Viet Nam. Hữu Ngọc
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Nam, some might think French culture no longer has the least importance to Vietnamese culture. It’s true that in Việt Nam, as in other Asian countries, young people are going crazy for English, although not to master Shakespeare or Hemingway but, above all, to secure a job, particularly one involving foreigners.
French (which is to say, Western) culture has made important contributions to Vietnamese culture. Naturally, this leaves aside the crimes of colonialism. The BBC interviewer was astonished that I would compare the one-hundred-year influence of French culture to the impact of Chinese culture covering two millennia. But I think we shouldn’t measure cultural influence by duration. The truth is that each of those two cultures had its own impact on our Vietnamese culture. The introduction of French culture in the mid-1800s brought Việt Nam its first stage of modernization (or Westernization). The second stage came after the August 1945 Revolution and especially since Đổi Mới (Renovation or Renewal) in late 1986.
Many cultural triumphs illustrate Franco-Vietnamese cultural integration: the adoption of Romanized script to replace Chinese Hán and Vietnamese Nôm characters in social, political, and literary activities; the Revolution’s successful literacy campaign, which was built on that foundation; the creation of a scientific vocabulary in Vietnamese to enable higher education in our national language; integration of the ideal of liberty from the 1789 French Revolution in our Vietnamese struggle against feudalism and for our own national liberation; creation of new genres in painting (lacquer, silk), architecture (the Indochinese style), theater (kịch or spoken theater, cải lương or reformed theater), music (pop songs), the humanities (new disciplines, including historical science, archeology, sociology, ethnography, and literature).
This brief review shows that French (or Western) culture is an integral part of Vietnamese culture. It is our responsibility, along with the people of France, to preserve and develop this heritage in the interest of our two peoples. Our researchers should guard against two extremes—considering the French (Western) contribution as the only culture of value on one side and, on the other, completely rejecting the French contribution in favor of a traditional, Confucian culture. Moreover, in this era of globalization, we should open ourselves to all the world’s cultures and absorb the best qualities from each one.
Franco-Vietnamese Karma
A French stamp sealed our forced marriage with the West at the beginning of Việt Nam’s modern history. Then, after nine years of war (1945–1954), reconciliation led step-by-step to a remarriage based on free consent. This included Việt Nam’s Francophone participation heightened by the Seventh Summit of French-Speaking Countries held in Hà Nội in 1997. French colonization had brought Việt Nam face to face with modernity. That conflict between our traditional culture and modern French culture enabled us to reap fruits, which at times upset the colonizers’ calculations. Vietnamese culture, while modernizing (Westernizing), also preserved itself.
Our political culture modernized from contact with the French. At the end of the 1800s, ideas from Montesquieu (1689–1755), Rousseau (1712–1778), Voltaire (1694–1778), and others captivated many Confucian scholars, who had read the French authors’ works in Chinese translations. Phan Châu (Chu) Trinh (1872–1926), a famous patriotic scholar, espoused ideas from the French 1789 Revolution, advocated abolition of the monarchy, and encouraged pursuit of national independence through education.
Many Vietnamese arts reflect Western (French) cultural grafts onto Vietnamese cultural stock. For example, French dramatic arts impacted traditional Vietnamese musical theater in the creation of two new genres: spoken theater (kịch nói) and renovated musical theater (cải lương). Stage directors Bửu Tiến (1918–1992) and Tào Mạt (1930–1993) analyzed French dramaturgical and scenographic influences on popular opera (chèo) and classical opera (tuồng). French music influenced modern songs, including revolutionary songs. Musician Nguyễn Xuân Khoát (1910–1993) combined Western and Eastern music. Georges Sadoul (1904–1967) exerted a profound influence on newly emerging Vietnamese cinema. Students at the Indochina Fine Arts College assimilated Western painting techniques, transformed lacquer art, and renovated painting on silk. French architecture produced the Indochinese style pioneered by Ernest Hébrard (1875–1933). The French Institute for Far-East Studies (École française d’Extrême-Orient)—with eminent researchers Georges Ceodès (1886–1969), Léopold Cadière (1869–1955), Louis Bezacier (1906–1966), Henri Maspéro (1883–1945), Madeleine Colani (1866–1943), Louis Finot (1864–1935), and Léonard Aurousseau (1888–1929)—began modern Vietnamese Studies.
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