Technique Annam - Nguyen Manh Hung - holylandvietnamstudies.com

INTRODUCTION By Professor in History PHAN HUY LE – President of the Historical Association of Vietnam – Section 2

3894 Views phan huy le

by Le, Phan Huy ^{1

… be continued …}

The second researching project is the one of Associate Professor Doctor NGUYEN MANH HUNG entitled Technique of the Annamese people, treasure of Vietnamese history and culture towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The author is one among the first persons that got in touch with the collection of woodblock prints preserved in HochiMinh city, and he has reserved a greatest amount of time and efforts to study and introduce it. In 1984, this author has officially registered his work as a scientific researching subject, and has organized several worshops to widely introduce H. OGER’s collection of woodblock prints in Hanoi and HochiMinh city, attracting a great attention in the opinion of the researching world at that time. Besides the articles, published on magazines and reviews, this author has also achieved successfully his Doctor Thesis entitled Vietnamese Society towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century through the collection of woodblock prints “Technique of the Annamese people” by H. Oger, in 1996.
In this work, the author has written in a light and clear manner, very easy to understand, while containing concise scientific contents, drawn from an elaborate researching process, accumulated from several years of heartfelt studying. His book has been arranged into 5 sections:
+ Discovering and conducting researching work (1),
+ Summarily introducing H. OGER’s collection of woodblock prints (2),
+ Researching work on author H. OGER and the Vietnamese draftsmen (3),
+ Studying the contents through the woodblock prints, with their annotations in Chinese, in Nom (Demotic characters) of Vietnamese craftsmen, and in French by H. OGER to bring about general evaluations (4),
+ A conclusion proposing the putting forward of ideas for discussions that must be continued (5).
H. OGER himself introduces his collection of woodblock prints as having a total number of 4000 sketches, while a number of researchers have written that the collection contains some 4000 or 4200 sketches. Associate Professor Doctor NGUYEN MANH HUNG is the first person that has double-checked and given the concrete statistical number: 4577 sketches that consist of 2529 showing people and sceneries, with 1048 among them showing sketches of women, and 2048 showing ustensils and instruments used for production. Associate Professor Doctor NGUYEN MANH HUNG also states clearly that the abovementioned statiscal number doesn’t include repetitions and a small amount of tiny instruments that cannot be seen clearly to recognize their shapes.
With regards to H. OGER, the author of the collection of woodblock prints, Associate Professor Doctor NGUYEN MANH HUNG has had exact confirmations and evaluations about him. Reconsidering the life of H. OGER who, at a time was considered as an anonymous person, then later on, was considered as a scholar, a wise man, the author (Doctor Hung) has noticed a
great difference between this French man and other French officials, and scientists in academic studying organizations. With a passion reaching foolishness, H. OGER had adopted for himself an original researching way. The author highlights H. OGER’s researching method that consists of going around with several Vietnamese draftsmen to examine and note down, through sketches, the instruments in combination with the manipulation to produce. According to the author “this method permits the re-materialization of series of activities of a same kind, through two forms of sketching that are different while supplementing each other. And these are the instruments or tools and gestures used for making use of them.” Along with H. OGER, the author emphasized the participation of Vietnamese draftsmen. The author has found and gone to two villages, well-known for their woodblock prints in the Red river delta, namely the Lieu Trang and Hong Luc (Hai Duong) villages that have their founder Tham Hoa (third highest academic title owner) LUONG NHU HOC. A pleasant discovery is that the author has discovered within the collection of woodblock prints four sketches that note down the names, and native villages of four draftsmen: NGUYEN VAN DANG, NGUYEN VAN GIAI, PHAM TRONG HAI, and PHAM VAN TIEU, while he has also gone to their native villages to investigate the line of descent of the draftsmen Nguyen and Pham. The author had also visited the Hang Gai village communal house and the Vu Thach pagoda, cherishing the hope of finding out the traces of 400 sketches that have been engraved but weren’t printed. I do enjoy and appreciate the concrete way of researching, and the efforts to find down details of all matters, which Associate Professor Doctor NGUYEN MANH HUNG has been realizing in his scientific researching works.
I take this opportunity to introduce to our readers a manuscript of H. OGER’s woodblock prints that’s preserved at the Library of the Keio University in Tokyo, Japan. In one of my visits to this University, I was allowed, by Professor KAWAMOTO KUNIE, to go down to the books depository of the Library to look at the manuscript of the collection of woodblock prints of H. OGER. This is a manuscript consisting of 700 pages on which the sketches have been pasted on each one of the pages, along with annotations and order numbers like the set that was published. This set is a manuscript that has been completely done, but hasn’t been engraved and printed into woodblock prints, and so, it’s not a printed set like the one that was published. Professor KAWAMOTO KUNIE let me know that, in the years 60’s of the last century, based on old books sale advertising, he was asked by the Keio University to negotiate and buy this precious manuscript. I do hope that later on this manuscript will be printed by the Keio University to provide researchers with precious documents, not only the printed books, but also the manuscript consisting of sketches and annotations on Rhamnoneuron paper.
Going farther into the contents of the collection of woodblock prints, Associate Professor Doctor NGUYEN MANH HUNG is the author of the researching work that points out a certain number of mistakes that existed in previous researching works, introductions, and workshops, some of those mistakes even caused the significations of the sketches to turn wrong. The author has been quite right when conceiving that the contents of this collection consist not only of the sketches, but they also include the annotations in Chinese and Nom of Vietnamese craftsmen and scholars, as well as the ones in French of H. OGER. The author considers such annotations as “the second lay-out”, and “the languages section” of the work, accordingly to the tradition of Oriental painting. This author presents the image of craftsmen “wishing to stand beside their sketches to explain to future generations so that they can throughly understand the depth of a society that will turn blurred under the layer of time dust later on”. The statistical number – as announced by the author – is that among the total number of 4577 sketches. There are about 2500 with Chinese and Nom annotations (55%) and 4000 with French annotations (88%). The author evaluates H. OGER’s collection of woodblock prints as “a painting of the whole Vietnamese society towards the beginning of the 20th century, an important connecting time between modern and contemporary times”. He has analyzed and demonstrated the realistic nature, and reflective nature of the collection of woodblock prints through several lively examples. By means of sketches and annotations, this collection of woodblock prints has sketched and preserved, not only the traditional handicrafts, but also the social life in cities as well as in the countryside of all classes of people, from kings, mandarins, village chiefs, “the village herald”, traders, farmers, shoulder pole carriers, rickshawmen… to village teachers, fortunetellers, herbalists… The simple life of people including men, women, old and young, as well as the life cycle from birth to death, all such matters are reflected in it. All the people appear with special features in their ways of living, customs, habits, religions, and faiths. The transitional period is also revealed with the appearance of “the interpreter”, the scene of “learning french”, even the scene in which Ky Dong was executed… The author has chosen quite typical examples, and has profoundly analyzed within the historical background of the traditional society and the transitional nature of the beginning of the 20th century, in combination with folk-songs, proverbs and classical literature relating to the content of each one of the sketches. And thus, his ways of describing has turned more attractive and has heightened the depth of knowledge.

… be continued in section 3 …

BAN TU THU
06 /2020.

SEE MORE:
◊ INTRODUCTION By Professor in History PHAN HUY LE – President of the Historical Association of Vietnam – Section 3.

NOTES:
¹ : PHAN HUY LÊ (Thach Chau, Loc Ha district, Ha Tinh province, 23 February 1934 – 23 June 2018) was a Vietnamese historian and professor of history at the Hanoi National University. He authored of many studies on village society, landholding patterns and peasant revolution in particular, and in Vietnamese history in general. Phan was director of the Center for Vietnamese and Intercultural Studies at Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Phan belonged to the school of historians, including also TRAN QUOC VUONG distinguishing ‘Vietnamese-ness‘ without relation to Chinese influences. (Source: Wikipedia Encyclopedia)
² : Associate Professor, Doctor of Phylosophie in History HUNG NGUYEN MANH, former Rector of Hong Bang International University, is the founder of these websites: “Thanh dia Viet Nam Studies” – thanhdiavietnamhoc.com, “Holyland Vietnam Studies” – holylandvietnamstudies. com in 104 languages, “Việt Nam Học” – vietnamhoc.net, etc …
◊ Translated by Asso. Prof. HUNG, NGUYEN MANH, PhD.
◊ Header title and Featured sepia image has been set by Ban Tu Thu – thanhdiavietnamhoc.com