POETRY AND PROPHESY OF RECLUSION: THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VIETNAMESE SCHOLAR NGUYỄN VĂN ĐẠT (A., NGUYỄN BỈNH KHIÊM, 1491–1586) A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Hoai Khai Tran May 2021 © 2021 Hoai Khai Tran POETRY AND PROPHECY OF RECLUSION: THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VIETNAMESE SCHOLAR NGUYỄN VĂN ĐẠT (A., NGUYỄN BỈNH KHIÊM, 1491–1586) Hoai Khai Tran, Ph. Cornell University 2021 Nguyễn Văn Đạt (a., Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, 1491–1586) was a sixteenth century poet, scholar-official, and teacher in northern Vietnam. Starting in 1535, he served as a Mạc Dynasty (1527–1677) official until 1542, when he retired to his native village on the northern Vietnamese coast. He adopted the life of a recluse and produced volumes of poetry about his experiences in politics, war, and reclusion.
As valued as he was in life, his reputation only grew after his passing. Later generations remembered him as a sagacious, prophetic figure whose advice to Vietnamese leaders dictated the course of history. This dissertation explains this transformation as the result of successive replications of Nguyễn Văn Đạt’s particular style of reclusion poetry through social literary interactions centered around the places he wrote about in life, namely White Cloud Hermitage and Centered Mooring Shelter. Đạt styled the former in the memory of the renown worthy Nguyễn Trãi (1380–1442), whose dwelling in retirement, White Cloud Hermitage, Đạt assumed as the name of his own retirement studio and sobriquet.
With this gesture of association, Đạt cast himself as a recluse of historical proportion even as he abandoned the arena of political contestation. Although he linked himself to Nguyễn Trãi’s memory, Nguyễn Văn Đạt forged his own literary persona around the two structures he built upon retirement. Đạt made his hermitage and shelter sites of literary exchange and, through such social interactions, Đạt and his contemporaries created a style a poetry apropos visitation to his hermitage and shelter. This poetic style incorporated the language of divination from the Book of Changes and spoke in the voice of an aloof observer of the world’s affairs from the perspective of a conceptual space “outside it all,” which was embodied by Đạt’s hermitage and, especially, Centered Mooring Shelter.
Once planted in these tangible sites, Đạt’s literary persona could outlast the person, and his literary habit eventually grew into a poetic tradition that later poets perpetuated whenever they visited the places Đạt inhabited in life. In time, their collective musings fostered Đạt’s remembrance as a prophet of the ages. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Hoai Khai Tran is a student of Sino-Vietnamese Studies with a particular interest in the literature and religion of Vietnam. As an undergraduate student at George Washington University, he started studying Literary Sinitic (Hán) and the Vietnamese Demotic Sinographic Script (Nôm) with Dr.
Phạm Văn Hải of the Institute of Viet Studies in 2002. After graduating from George Washington with a major in Chinese Literature and Language and minor in Japanese Literature and Language, he participated in NGO work in the D. area before matriculating at Cornell University, where he earned his master’s degree in East Asian Studies with a thesis on Vietnamese Buddhist poetry from the Lý Trần period (1009–1400). He spent almost a decade living in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he worked as a journalist, editor, and translator for Thế Giới Publishers and Vietnam Heritage Magazine.
From 2014–2015, he served as the chief curator of the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation’s digital collection of Sino-Vietnamese texts at the National Library of Vietnam. In 2017, he returned to Cornell University to complete his dissertation on the life and writings of the Vietnamese scholar Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm (1491–1586) under the guidance of Dr. Taylor and graduated with his doctorate degree in May 2021. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I could not have completed this project without abundant support.
Foremost, I must thank my graduate advisor Keith W. Taylor as well as my committee members Suyoung Son and Nick Admussen. Their guidance and instruction have been indispensable. I am also grateful to the kind folks who make so much work in the Asian Studies Department happen, Kim Scott, Erin Kotmel, and Sheila Haddad.
I learned much during my time from fine teachers at Cornell University, including Daniel Boucher, Dingxiang Warner, TJ Hinrichs, Arnika Fuhrmann, Bruce Rusk, Eric Tagliacozzo, and Lorraine Paterson. I am indebted to Jonathan Chaves, who got me started on this journey. I learned the skills necessary to tackle this project from my Hán Nôm mentors Phạm Văn Hải and Nguyễn Quang Hồng. In addition, I am grateful to those who helped me navigate the archival materials at the Institute of Sino-Vietnamese Studies: Chu Tuyết Lan, Trịnh Khắc Mạnh, Nguyễn Xuân Diện, Mr.
Duy, and Ms. I also received support in Hanoi from members of the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation and Nôm Na, namely John Balaban, Lương Thị Hạnh, and Lê Văn Cường. I would also like to express my gratitude to Lương Đức Mến and others who helped me acquire and assess several genealogical records used in this project. My project was made possible by the generous financial support of Cornell’s Department of Asian Studies, East Asia Program, Southeast Asia Program, Mario Einaudi Center of International Studies, and the Graduate School.
I also received funding from the American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright Scholar Program, and Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation. iv Finally, I thank those who offered me precious advice and encouragement: Alex- Thai Vo, Yen Vu, Hoang Minh Vu, John Dương Phan, Claudine Ang, Masaki Matsubara, Chikai Shi, Christian Lentz, Lan Duong, Chuong-Dai Vo, and Trần Lâm Tú. v TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS.
10 The Littoral East. 10 Family and Mentors. 28 Embodying the Dao. 52 Death of a Unicorn.
52 The Shadow of Lychee Garden. 54 Recluses of White Cloud Hermitage. 57 Storytelling, 14th–15th centuries. 68 Bình Ngô đại cáo: Great Proclamation on Pacifying Ngô.
118 Tutelage of Lương Ngạn Ích, circa 1508–1516. 123 Early Poetry, ca. 183 From the White Clouds of the Chí Linh Mountains to the Cold of Snow River. 183 Retired Teacher of Softshell Turtle Pond.
190 Daoist of Clear Vacuity Grotto. 196 Ghost of a Dream. 256 Centered Mooring Shelter. 261 vi Moored in Morality.
277 Leaving for Đại Đồng. 282 Returning to Centered Mooring Shelter. 289 The Social Construction of a Literary Tradition and the Making of a Prophet for the Ages. 316 Sinographic Manuscripts and Xylographic Texts.
316 Modern Editions and Translations of Sinographic Texts. 325 vii INTRODUCTION In 1491, Nguyễn Văn Đạt, who is better known by his professional sobriquet Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, was born in Trung Am (now Lý Học), a small village in northern Vietnam along the right bank of the lower Thái Bình River near the Eastern Sea. As an infant, Đạt took the ferry with his mother to the opposite side of the river to live with his maternal family. Whereas his father never achieved much distinction as a scholar, Đạt’s mother hailed from the prestigious Nhữ clan and her father was an advanced scholar in the service of the Lê Dynasty at the Thăng Long capital (Hanoi).
Within the Nhữ household at his mother’s native village, Đạt undertook a traditional education with a particular interest in the Book of Changes. In 1503, when Đạt was twelve years old, his grandfather retired from his career at the capital, returned home, and became Đạt’s mentor. As Đạt continued his studies under the guidance of his grandfather, he was impressed by the contrast between the career trajectories of his rustic, uncelebrated father and his distinguished grandfather. Equipped with his study of the Changes, Đạt could begin to contemplate the conditions, chance, and timing as well as personal choices that factored into such disparate outcomes.
When Nguyễn Văn Đạt came of age, he became a student of Lương Ngạn Ích (a. Lương Đắc Bằng), second graduate of the 1499 palace examinations. Đạt traveled with his new teacher to the capital, where Ích served as an imperial lecturer. Đạt came to Thăng Long at a turbulent time when the emperor, Lê Tuấn, engaged in increasingly depraved behavior.
During this uncertain period, Ích participated in an effort to depose Lê Tuấn, which succeeded. Ích’s actions at this juncture would leave a strong impression on his disciple. Once a new emperor was installed, Ích served as a moralizing presence and, 1 in 1510, when his advice and remonstrations went unheeded, he withdrew from his post, retired to his village at Hới Estuary (Thanh Hoa), and opened a school. There, he taught Thái Ất studies for which Đạt would become renown.
Decades later, when faced with similar circumstances, Đạt would take after his tutor’s example and seek the life of a reclusive teacher. In circa 1516, Nguyễn Văn Đạt returned to Trung Am and became a local teacher much like his father had been. During the ensuing years, Đạt weaved the language of the Changes and Thái Ất studies into his poetry and formed a particular style of expression that reflected his littoral homeland, including images of snow, cold, and whiteness inspired by the local river, which was formerly called “Cold River” and “Snow River.” In 1527, a new ruler, who had emerged from the eastern coast, founded the Mạc Dyansty. Seven years later, in 1534, Đạt entered the civil service examinations under this dynasty and, a year later, graduated with highest honors.
Đạt served as a Mạc Dynasty official until 1542. In that year, recognizing the danger of an increasingly contentious situation at court and the futility of his protestations against its ill-minded actors, Đạt left Thăng Long and returned to life as a teacher in the littoral east. Once back at his native village, Đạt built a retirement studio that he called White Cloud Hermitage and a rest station along the river that he named Central Mooring Shelter. Although Nguyễn Văn Đạt had quit officialdom, Mạc Dynasty rulers continued to call for his service.
This was especially true 1550–1551 and 1559–1561, when parties representing the former Lê Dynasty launched military campaigns that threatened to topple the Mạc regime. Đạt dutifully complied and was instrumental to the Mạc’s success in weathering these challenges. Afterwards, although the Mạc rewarded Đạt and tried to compel his ongoing service, Đạt summarily declined and returned to Trung Am. Back 2 home, Đạt further cultivated his style of poetry by reimagining his themes of snow and cold to express his experiences leaving and coming back to life as a retired scholar.
As part of this effort, he incorporated images that represented the nobility and wisdom of aging in his later years. Đạt was indeed a man of exceptional longevity. In his nineties, he personally compiled at least a thousand poems from throughout his life into a collection that he bequeathed to posterity. He passed away at his home in the eleventh lunar month of Ất Dậu (Dec.
Thus we might summarize Nguyễn Văn Đạt’s life. However, through the generations much more has been said about him. According to one story that goes back at least to the early eighteenth century, three sixteenth century contenders for control over the lands of the Red River consulted Nguyễn Văn Đạt about decisions that would determine the course of history. When the Mạc emperor learned that Đạt was ill on his death bed, the emperor dispatched a messenger to pay respects to Đạt and solicit his thoughts about the state of the dynasty.
Đạt mused, “If someday there is an emergency, then although Cao Bằng is small, it is a place where several generations might survive.” Seven years after his death, the Mạc indeed faced a crisis that drove them out of the Red River Delta and forced them to seek refuge in the north at Cao Bằng along the Chinese border.