Two Seasons by Mai Van Phan: A Vietnamese Poem Explicated

Translated into English by Pompen Hantrak

Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

I stand between

a cicadas chirp and

A chrysanthemum

Explication

The poet Mai Van Phan  positions the readers between two conflicting perceptions and impels the readers thereby to probe deeper into the koans of existence.The poet stands between  a cicadas chirp and a chrysanthemum.The cicadas chirp imples auditory perception. The chrysanthemum implies visual perception.While visual perception gives us the sense of space the auditory perception gives us the sense of time.Now a days it is posited that space and time go together they together constituting the fourth dimension. But Mai Van Phan asks  what if  there is an apparent conflict between space and time? Apparently sense perceptions take place somewhere beyond the sphere of consciousness.We have five senses in eyes ears smell tongue and touch. But when two sense perceptions are at war with one another our consciousness is impelled to rise up to the occasion.A fruit may look beautiful. But if its smell is repulsive consciousness is awake to the situation. It often vacillates—to eat the fruit or not to eat the fruit. That is how we can explain the vacillation of Macbeth who wavered from to do or not to do or vacillation of Hamlet who wavered from to be or not to be in Shakespeare.Each one of the five senses has its own object of love.And  the object of love of one sense might come in conflict with the object of love of another sense and the person who is decked with these different senses is at a loss what to do or what to make out of such a conflicting situation.Cicadas indicate summer. It is in summer that cicada males sing to invite their female counterparts. They sing together to invite their female counterparts.They can hibernate in the earth for years together and they can choose the time when they should be born.When they sing they sing in a group . Sometimes the sound of their songs wax and sometimes wane.But their song seems to have no ending because they can sing throughout the livelong day.They donot have any voice organ.They beat their bellies with their wings just as we beat drums.And there is droning sound may be reminiscent of the primordial sound Om.While towards the end of summer their songs continue the first autumnal flowers such as chrysanthemum wake up. The Bible says In the beginning there was the Word and God said Let there be Light and there was Light.Chrysanthemums stand for light ;they show up at the bidding of the cicada which stands for Word.True that Chrysanthemums are not  specific to any season.But in Vietnam they show up mainly in September and they continue till the Tet festival. In Vietnam they gather chrysanthemum particularly during the lunar new year , tao mo and cung gio.Tao mo speaks of the last day of every lunar year.It is on this day that the people visit the graves of their ancestors and clean them and decorate them . Cing gio is the anniversary of an ancestors death. It is during the Cung gio that the ancestors are worshipped. Chrysanthemums espied when cicadas sing might mean that the ancestors are hibernating,The poet does not see the cicadas but he can hear them. Similarly the poet cannot see the bodiless ancestors. But he can hear their inaudible somgs. This is not all. The cicadas stand for resurrection. Does not the poet Mai Van Phan position his readers between two seasons life and death? It is an unforgettable experience for any reader whatever.