Part 4: Lost in Translation
“I once read somewhere in between the pages of the books that lay down to rest around my insomniac nightmare—aromantic poet asks the world a seemingly meaningless question.He says, ‘If the world is indeed filled with evil, why does theapple tree blossom?’ And I’ve wondered ever since. I care lessfor the right meaning; rather, I…
The title of the short story mentioned, Lost in Translation: An Essay in Conversation, is a humble attempt at following the great Oscar Wilde’s literary footsteps. Readers may find in the plot and the prose style a few similarities—the conversational tone weaves into the philosophical themes, or the depiction of background settings as a stage play, and the story moves not through a conventional structure but rather, much like a one-act script.
However, the story is never meant to be born as a cheap copy of anyone. No story ever is. Thus, Lost in Translation bears a heavy responsibility, which lies in the meaning of its name, and the couplet that inspired the whole collection:
Nếu cuộc đời chỉ toàn chuyện xấu xa
–Luu Quang Vu, Vietnamese poet and dramatist
Tại sao cây táo lại nở hoa1
Indeed, in these hard times, it is almost impossible to look at the world and think about goodness, even the smallest one, like the beautiful blossoms of the neighbor’s apple trees.
Long after I finished writing the first draft of the story, I had a conversation with one of my friends. The conversation naturally led to a vital point: Anne Frank’s “I believe people are good at heart.”
Please bear with me: I am not diverting from the discussion of the story’s themes. Rather, that conversation with my friend helped me alter the story, to answer the scorching question that keeps my heart bleeding since the news of wars: Are people truly good at heart?
—Lost in Translation: An Essay in Conversation
“The earth’s existence is the existence of war. See,
our history is filled with so many wars that everyone thinks
we won peace over. But when you look at the earth from the
moon, you can still see the flaming tongue of the war gods and
goddesses licking through the burning cities. We never learn.”
A Fresh Take on War and Peace
The two protagonists in Lost in Translation: An Essay in Conversation open the story with a thesis statement: they believe that war speaks their languages. And I didn’t write it just in jest, because from my observation, our children are speaking that same language.
From the war in Gaza to the current one in Venezuela, whenever I turn on the news at night now, all I see and hear are bloodshed and starvation. One side is trying to convince the masses that the other side is less human, less deserving of the same rights and the same freedom.
I weep because we are going in a circle—the same circle of hurt that we have traversed through bitterly for thousands of years since the last judgment. We preach, but we don’t follow the words we speak.
—Lost in Translation: An Essay in Conversation
“Last night, I dreamed of them dying.”
“Who?”
“The people who were killed and the people who killed. After
a while, they switched positions. But in the end, what was left of
the two sides was a field of bones. The empty eye sockets stared
into nothingness. That is where we belong. We are born from
nothingness, and we will return to its cold embrace once again.
And I wonder, why does that fact not make us a race full of love?
The poet was right to ask his question. Who knows why the
apple trees blossom?”
The question of Luu Quang Vu stares at me in the dead of night, like an awakening: it isn’t hope but desperation. I am searching for a meaning in a labyrinth of words and reasons: Why must there be goodness if we keep falling to the temptation of evil? If wars are the only choice we see as befitting to resolve our pretentious problems, are we on the right side of history? Or will someone, a hundred years from now, look back at us and deem us as the ignorant, silent lamps that help fuel the fire on the battlefield?
For there to be light, there must be darkness. Luu Quang Vu, in questioning why the apple trees blossom, dissected an existential theme far greater than the simple words indicated. Because there is darkness and evil in life, we must hold onto hope. It is the pure beauty in our hearts. Flips the coin, and instead of desperation, you will see:
—Lost in Translation: An Essay in Conversation
If you believe in evil, there’s no
place for goodness. But if you believe in goodness, then evil
has won. You already know how much depends upon the tip
of the scale in your conscience. If you can’t see the blossom,
what is left for you to choose but to believe in a world that will
continuously be at war until the last remnant of our civilization
is reduced to a single rock?
From Luu Quang Vu to Nietzsche: Find Peace Through the Needle’s Eye
To go beyond goodness and evil. To hope against all that could be. To have faith in the flimsiest existence of all: a flower that may or may not die after a windy storm. Such is the theme of the whole collection—visible most strongly here in Lost in Translation: An Essay in Conversation.
And such is what I want to convey in every word.
I asked my friend if she believed Anne Frank was right in thinking that people were good at heart, and we both agreed there was nothing wrong with trusting in that ‘narrow hope,’ as we talked about other irrelevant things. Because the crucial thing is never about whether people are good or bad—we were born with the nature of a saint and the temper of a sinner—but the unshakeable conscience on our shoulders.
I trust that, much like Atlas, much like Luu Quang Vu and Nietzsche, we hold onto our goodness, and stand on our evil, so that we can see the light against the unfathomable abyss of darkness.
- T/N: If life is indeed filled with evil deeds, why does the apple tree still blossom? ↩︎