1. The renovation of our Party began with the 6th Congress (December 1986) opening a new period of development for the Vietnamese revolution. As a brilliant milestone, the renovation has the stature of a revolution, starting from the renovation of thinking to comprehensively, thoroughly, and profoundly change all areas of life. Looking back after nearly 4 decades, we must affirm that the renovation thinking and mettle of our Party are extremely valuable and great.

Today, the diverse and vibrant Vietnamese revolutionary literature and art scene owes its thanks to General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh, who has contributed to orienting and paving the way for the cause of profound and comprehensive renovation. His words have gone down in the history of national culture as a golden key that opens up creative horizons: “Look straight at the truth, reflect the truth correctly, evaluate the truth correctly”, “Untie the hands of artists and writers”, “Save yourself before God saves you”...

Innovation is an inevitable law of life. Innovation in literature and art is the inevitable of the inevitable. Because it belongs to the spiritual field with the characteristic of thinking with the individual ego to create unique, non-repetitive artistic images, it must always be new.

The public visits the exhibition “General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh - life and career”. Photo: HOANG HOANG

2. In the history of Vietnamese culture, October 6 and 7, 1987 became special events marking a new period of creativity. Those were two days of meetings between General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh and nearly 100 artists. According to reports, in nearly 15 hours, General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh spoke for the first 5 minutes, before ending the meeting, he spoke for 50 minutes, and the rest was spent listening. That was the clearest sign of innovation: Our Party paid great attention, respected, and demonstrated the spirit of democracy, attentively listening to the voices of artists. The term “unleashing” that General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh used will live forever, because it is the soul of innovation in literature and art. First of all, it is innovation in ideology: “Don’t bend the pen, you have to write what you think.” As the task was extremely difficult and complicated, General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh foresaw the difficulties through his affectionate, profound, and delicate wishes: "I wish you comrades good health, perseverance, and courage."

In the end, innovation in literature and art is to answer the questions: Innovation in what? How to do it? Why are there no good works yet? What to do to have more good works? These things have been said a lot, let me say more about the "unleashing" of the artists themselves. A typical example is the story of the documentary " Hanoi in Whose Eyes" by director Tran Van Thuy. Completed in 1982, but not yet released because of public opinion saying "there are problems".

In October 1983, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong watched the film and reminded that it must be publicly screened. But due to some invisible force, the film was still not released in theaters. It was not until May 1987 that General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh personally watched it and requested its release that it was seriously implemented. Thus, the "ban" may not be from "above", but the invisible string binding the artists' thoughts lies within the team itself. Is there a "fear of shadows" somewhere? Is there jealousy, a lack of respect, love, and sincere help for each other?...

3. The Vietnamese literary boat after 1986, as if having a new helmsman, as if having a new driving force, went right into the orbit of the country's favorable wind of innovation, proudly rising on the ocean of life, heading towards the horizon of independence, freedom and socialism, and thus reaped great achievements. Many new names appeared in the literary world such as: Bao Ninh, Ho Anh Thai, Da Ngan, Nguyen Ngoc Tu, Tran Anh Thai, Mai Van Phan, Le Ngoc Tra, Do Lai Thuy...

In reality, the harvest seasons have never had so many achievements. The outstanding mark of literature is 3 excellent prose works that won the Vietnam Writers Association Award in 1991: "The Sorrow of War" (Bao Ninh), "The Land of Many People and Many Ghosts" (Nguyen Khac Truong), "The Wharf Without a Husband" (Duong Huong). On the theater stage, Luu Quang Vu's plays stirred up public opinion, lit up theaters in the capital and major cities, and were well received on the international stage. In costumes of national colors combined with modernity, Vietnamese painting confidently stepped out into the world. Many exhibitions of young artists were opened domestically and internationally. Many Vietnamese films participated in international film festivals and won high prizes...

In terms of innovation in both depth and breadth, we must mention the contribution of critical theory. This is the foundation for successful innovation. It is the introduction of names who are also great thinkers of the world: VIPropp, M.Bakhtin, M.Lotman, M.Foucault, R.Barthes, J.Derrida, G.Genette, S.Freud, CGJung, M.Heidegger... In general, all 8 trends and theoretical schools (Russian formalism, Marxist criticism, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, poststructuralism, postmodernism, psychoanalytic criticism, phenomenological criticism) have been present in our country, having a clear influence on a number of studies, especially in doctoral theses.

The world's leading research directions such as poetics, narratology, psychoanalysis and literature, art, reception aesthetics, comparative literature, semiotics, discourse theory, ecocriticism... have been widely applied. It is also necessary to affirm that thanks to the individual talent of the writer, the inheritance of the achievements of the national language and culture, and the absorption of new writing styles from abroad, we have quite excellent literary works...

4. General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh's ideas of cultural and artistic innovation have become the nation's cultural assets. Not only creating new values, these valuable ideas also leave behind lasting lessons.

Firstly, the lesson is closely following the leadership of the Party. Based on the practice from the 1986 renovation to the Resolution of the 5th Central Committee, Session VIII, dated July 16, 1998 of the Party on "Building and developing an advanced Vietnamese culture imbued with national identity", Resolution No. 23-NQ/TW dated June 16, 2008 of the Politburo on "Continuing to build and develop literature and art in the new period", Resolution No. 33-NQ/TW dated June 9, 2014 of the Party Central Committee on "Building and developing Vietnamese culture and people to meet the requirements of sustainable national development"... has brought a new vitality to Vietnamese culture and art. That is the light, the fulcrum for the development of literature and art. Under the Party's flag, literature and art need to fulfill their mission of serving the people and the country, for the goal of a rich people, a strong country, democracy, fairness, and civilization.

Second, General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh's slogan "Looking straight at the truth, reflecting the truth, evaluating the truth" is a concretization of the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint that considers reality as the source of cognition. As a form of consciousness, literature and art must go deeper into the land of reality, must dive to the bottom of the river of life to grasp, understand, generalize, and describe the nature of life. If separated from reality, art will certainly wither. Only from life, originating from life can talent flourish. There is no other way, if one wants to train talent, the artist must return to the root of art, which is the colorful and varied life of truth.

Third, the history of human culture shows that any great creation originates from tradition and has clear marks of individual innovation. Thus, creation must fly harmoniously on the wings of tradition, nation and innovation, modernity.

Fourth, in the context of the 4.0 Industrial Revolution, to compete with artificial intelligence (AI), like green trees, artists must diligently plant strong roots deep into the traditional lands of the nation, world civilization and contemporary life; reaching high branches and leaves into the sky of the era of photosynthesis of the ideal light of the Party, of love, peace and friendship, only then can they produce works that are both the common denominator of human culture and have their own ideological flavor. As mentioned above, cultivating political ideology, ethics, stance and mettle for artists is very important and must be trained regularly, substantially and effectively.

Associate Professor, PhD, writer NGUYEN THANH TU

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    Source: https://www.qdnd.vn/tu-lieu-ho-so/van-kien-tu-lieu/tong-bi-thu-nguyen-van-linh-gop-phan-khoi-dong-doi-moi-cho-van-hoc-nghe-thuat-phat-trien-835140