(VOVworld) – The French School of the Far East has just released two volumes of a comic book adapted from the poem Luc Van Tien by Vietnamese renowned poet Nguyen Dinh Chieu. The new publication entitled “Luc Van Tien fairy tale” is based on an 1897 French version illustrated by French naval officer Eugene Gilbert and Hue royal painter Le Duc Trach.

The book’ manuscripts were discovered by Prof. Phan Huy Le on September 30, 2011, while he was visiting France. The comic book is beautifully laid-out with 1,200 color illustrations. On one page, a canto of 14 verses written in the sin-eight-word distich metre is at the center and surrounded on the top and bottom by panoramic pictures and on the left and right by portraits of characters. The book gives an overview of Vietnamese southerners in the 19^th century. Prof. Phan Huy Le said: “The publication contributes to the treasure of stories about Luc Van Tien. It is valuable thanks to the original Vietnamese poem and the lively, colorful illustrations. The pictures have the unique folk characteristics associated with Dong Ho folk paintings in Bac Ninh or royal style Sinh Village’s paintings in Hue. This publication is attractive”.

Illustrations of the comic book “Luc Van Tien fairy tale” is associated with Vietnam’s fine-arts in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. The book is a result of the lasting cooperation between Vietnamese and French researchers. Nguyen Dinh Chieu’s poem Luc Van Tien was translated into French in 1864.

A French naval officer named Eugene Gilbert was struck by the idea of illustrating it with color pictures. He and painter Le Duc Trach of the Hue royal court worked on the idea between 1895 and 1897. When returning to France, Gilbert donated the work to the Academy of French Literature in 1899. This manuscript had been kept in the academy’s library for 110 years before Prof. Phan Huy Le found it in 2011. Dr. Pascal Bourdeaux, a researcher of the French School of the Far East who edited and annotated the manuscript, said he and his colleagues had travelled all over Vietnam to retrieve related documents: “During fact-finding tours, we discovered various versions of the Luc Van Tien story. We know that Poet Nguyen Dinh Chieu’s Luc Van Tien story is comprised of more than 2,000 verses in the sin-eight-word distich metre, which was passed down orally and became popular in the late 19^th century. But this story gained more popularity when it was translated from ancient Vietnamese into modern Vietnamese and French”.

Prof. Phan Huy Le said the publication vividly reflects the indigenous culture: “It’s good that some of the French intellectuals who came to Vietnam during the colonial time are interested in Vietnamese culture. Luc Van Tien story and other works are precious assets of Vietnam’s folklore”.