Duyên Thương dich thơ HXH: Đánh Đu

Dịch Thơ Hồ Xuân Huơng


From Sóng Việt Đàm Giang

Introduction.

About Ho Xuan Huong
"Ho Xuan Huong was born at the end of the second Le Dynasty (1592-1788), a period of calamity and social disintegration. By the end of the Le period, the Confucian social order had calcified and was crumbling. In the North, the powerful Trinh clan controlled the Le kings and their court at present-day Hanoi. The Trinh warred with the Nguyen clan whose southern Hue court was aided by Portuguese arms and French troops recruited by colonial missionaries. Finally, adding to decades of grim chaos, in 1771 three brothers known as the Tay-Son began a populist rebellion that would vanquish the Trinh, the Le, and the Nguyen rulers, seizing Hanoi, Hue, and Saigon, and creating their own short-lived dynasty (1788-1802) that would soon fall to the Nguyen.
At the end of the Le Dynasty, when the social status of women was sharply reduced, Ho Xuan Huong constantly questioned the order of things, especially male authority. The rigid feudalism of the latter Le Dynasty took the 2000-year-old Confucian Book of Rites as its fundamentalist guidebook in which a woman "when unmarried, should obey her father; when married, her husband, and, if widowed, her son." To make matters worse, dowry and wedding rules had become so expensive and complicated by Ho Xuan Huong's time that fewer women of her class were getting married; more were becoming concubines.
Ho Xuan Huong chose to write in Nom writing system that represented Vietnamese speech rather than Chinese, the language of the mandarin elite. Her choice to write poetry in Nom gives her poetry a special Vietnamese dimension filled with the aphorisms and speech habits of the common people.
The most surprising fact is that the greater part of her poems--each a marvel in the sonnet-like lu-shih style--are double entendres: each has hidden within it another poem with sexual meaning.
For her erotic attitudes, Ho Xuan Huong turned to the common wisdom alive in peasant folk poetry and proverbs, attitudes that from her literary pen might be read more accurately as defiance rather than as a psychosexual malady, as some of her critics have charged."

Note. All of above facts are retrieved from the internet, John Balaban is the writer.

And now, dear friends and colleagues,
I would like to introduce to you one well-known poem written by Ho Xuan Huong, “Đánh Đu” (The swing/La balançoire), translated beautifully by one of our Pharmaceutical community, Pharmacist Nguyen Xuan Duyet/Duyen Thuong with a gracious touch by Chị DS Bình Nhung.
Thank you Mr. Duyet and chị Bình Nhung for providing us two excellent French and English versions of Đánh Đu.
Hope you all enjoy reading the poem.

Truly,
So’ng Vie^.t
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/dd_duockhoa_vn/message/8998
Friday November 29 2002

***
DDa'nh DDu

Bo^'n co^.t khen ai khe'o khe'o tro^`ng !
Ngu+o+`i thi` le^n dda'nh ke? ngo^`i tro^ng
Trai du go^'i ha.c khom-khom ca^.t
Ga'i uo^'n lu+ng ong ngu+?a-ngu+?a lo`ng
Bo^'n ma?nh qua^`n ho^`ng bay pha^'p-pho+'i
Hai ha`ng cha^n ngo.c duo^~i song-song.
Cho+i Xua^n dda~ bie^'t Xua^n cha(ng ta' ?
Co.c nho^? ddi ro^`i lo^~ bo? kho^ng.

Bốn cột khen ai khéo khéo trồng!
Người thì lên đánh kẻ ngồi không
Trai du gối hạc khom khom cật
Gái uốn lưng cong ngửa ngửa lòng
Bốn mảnh quần hồng bay phất phới
Hai hàng chân ngọc duỗi song song.
Chơi Xuân đã biết Xuân chăng tá?
Cọc nhổ đi rồi lỗ bỏ không.

La balançoire

Félicitations à celui qui adroitement
A planté les quatre poteaux de la balançoire.
Les uns montent se balancer, les autres assis, regardant.
Le gars cambre ses genoux, bande ses reins.Victoire!
La fille arquant sa taille de guêpe, offre son bassin.
Quatre pans de pantalons roses claquent au vent.
Deux paires de belle jambes s'étirent parallèlement.
Pour ces jeux printaniers, êtes -vous réellement mûrs?
Les piliers retirés, on laisse tels quels les trous.

****
The swing

Congratulations to whoever, skillfully
Planted the four posts of the swing, beautifully.
Some people climb aboard to swing, while others
Are just quiet onlookers, observing and smiling.
Curving his knees, the boy arches his back.
Twisting her wasp- waist, the girl pushes her pelvis.
Four pink pant-tails are flapping in the wind.
Two pairs of legs are stretching side by side
For these spring games, are you really mature ?
Once the posts are removed, the holes are left as such.
29 Nov 2002
Duyên- Thương