Express your feelings about the poem 'Waves'

Express your feelings about Xuân Quỳnh's poem 'Waves'

Sample essay: Express your feelings about Xuân Quỳnh's poem 'Waves'

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Essay

From the era of Tang poetry, Nguyen Du, Thế Lữ, Xuân Diệu, to us today..., love remains what drives people's passion, desire. Xuân Quỳnh - the poet of boundless love with the poem 'Waves' has expressed many facets of love. Xuân Quỳnh's poem ignites the intense love of youth and the longing of people for love. Love in Xuân Quỳnh's poetry is not just about the simple, tender, sweet love of the early days, but the love that is intertwined with life.

In the opening passages of the poem, the poet describes the waves with various nuances, different shades, then goes on to talk about the laws of love. Love is the harmony of seemingly contrasting emotional nuances. Love has its own natural laws that reason cannot explain. People seek love, immerse themselves in love to discover themselves:

Intense and gentle
Noisy and silent
The river does not understand itself
The waves find their way to the ocean

The four opening lines of love do not touch on love at all, but when the poem is read, all is enveloped in the emotion of love. It seems that love is hidden behind those lines. There is something truly tumultuous and yet so calm. 'Intense', 'noisy' to then 'gentle', 'silent' - love is there and that is love. It seems contradictory, seems conflicting but is unified in the feeling of love. It's not just waves and water - it's the soul of someone in love... and love will always be something people cannot understand:

The river does not understand itself
The waves find their way to the ocean

Clearly, this is not the simple, tender, sweet love of the early days. It is the inevitable path in nature, where waves must find the ocean, but it is also the inevitable law of emotions: people seek their 'other half' to complete themselves. The meaning is clearer in the later lines of the poem:

Oh, the waves of yesteryear
And still the same today,
The longing for love,
Tumultuous in the young heart.

This stanza is the development of the four previous lines. So many generations have passed, where journeys were filled with hardships, joys, sorrows, and overflowing happiness - all because of the longing for love. From Adam and Eve's time, through human desires to modern times..., love is the eternal light for people to live, fight, and work towards. What on this earth can replace the heart as well as love, which will never cease!

We find in the poem a robust, innocent love. The love of youth brimming with boundless vitality. It is not the shallow, immature love of simple courtship, not the love tainted with melancholy and suffering 'to love is to die a little inside' as in Xuân Diệu's poetry before the Revolution, but this is a love that dares to live, dares to love, a love that contains the fire of sincerity. It is not without reason that Xuân Quỳnh uses the image of 'waves' to symbolize her love:

Waves start from the wind
...
My heart remembers you
Even in dreams, I am awake

This is the love poem of someone in love, not the love poem of someone watching others love, because only those in love can express love in such a way. The longing, then love comes... who knows when love comes and who knows where the waves come from! Xuân Quỳnh speaks of the feelings of love of many:

Oh, the waves longing for the shore,
Day and night unable to sleep

The image of the waves is a very unique and profound symbol. Only the waves surge day and night, just like the loving heart. The soulfulness, the intoxication, the most passionate love is expressed through this image. Using waves to express longing, to express love, not only Xuân Quỳnh does it, but when it comes to Xuân Quỳnh, this poetic image becomes so fresh. Those waves have love, have longing, but they also carry the kindness, the gentleness of a woman, and that is the unique characteristic of Xuân Quỳnh's poetry. The longing of those waves is also the longing of many others for their loved ones. Xuân Quỳnh's longing is also the feeling of many in love:

My heart goes to you,
Even in dreams, I am awake

Xuân Quỳnh's life is like the life of many others, Xuân Quỳnh's happiness is also the happiness of many others.

Even if I go north,
Even if I go south
Wherever I rest
I face you - one direction

Reading the poem makes me think of other verses by Xuân Quỳnh

I return to the true meaning of my heart
Flesh and blood of everyday life everyone has
Knowing when to stop beating when life is no more
But knowing to love you even when I'm gone

(Self-Sung)

There is something very intimate in those verses because both stanzas, although not from the same poem, affirm love. A beautiful love is always a love that knows how to overcome difficulties, knows how to struggle to protect dreams, but with genuine aspirations, believes in the future of life, believes in its own and others' happiness. And a faithful love, resolute and steadfast, always has a stopping point for longing - that is the person you love.

Out there in the ocean
A hundred waves come,
Each one reaches the shore
Despite countless obstacles.
Though life is long,
Years still pass by,
Clouds still drift away

Xuân Quỳnh is aware of the hardships on the journey to happiness, but as a person with a heart, Xuân Quỳnh has a strong belief in love. That is the power of love in Xuân Quỳnh's poetry, a power that not every love possesses - the power of belief. Love does not end dreams; even at the end, there is happiness, and when Xuân Quỳnh has completed that journey, she still dreams. The belief in her poetry is so grand, so are the dreams:

How could it ever dissolve,
Into a hundred small waves
In the vast sea of love
To keep crashing for a thousand years

The dream of love is eternal, even in dreaming, it bears the image of the beloved. Here, Xuân Quỳnh is very close to Xuân Diệu's 'Ocean'. The intense passion exudes from every word when Xuân Diệu writes:

Having kissed and kissed again
Until forevermore
Until the earth and sky
You finally cease to surge

But Xuân Diệu will one day 'cease to surge' while Xuân Quỳnh will 'keep crashing for a thousand years'. The intense passion remains, but added to it is a deep contemplation. Love in Xuân Quỳnh's poetry has the added dimension of absolute integration. So, who would dare say that love in Xuân Quỳnh's poetry is immature, simple, sweet? Love in the poetry is just the longing, the search for one's own sanctity. Love in Xuân Quỳnh's poetry contains the depth of the soul, it is the happy love with shared life. Xuân Quỳnh's love is also the profound love of many others who have loved, are loving, and will love.

Full of emotional nuances of someone in love: the longing for endless passion, the nostalgia along with the excitement and contemplation... and even dreams, Xuân Quỳnh depicted with great subtlety and talent in the poem 'Waves'. Later on, we will discover a passionate Xuân Quỳnh, a fervent Xuân Quỳnh, a compassionate Xuân Quỳnh in many more love poems, but clearly, in 'Waves', Xuân Quỳnh has fully revealed her poetic style. Amidst years of fiery war, Xuân Quỳnh's love poetry made people believe in life, believe in humanity even more. Xuân Quỳnh's love poetry brings a sense of peace to the reader's soul, brings love to the loving couples...