Last Words from Montmartre

by Qiu Miaojin

  I’m putting this eleventh letter in my desk drawer. Details. I. Can. Not. Face. I’ve already conveyed the emotions and feelings that would make you understand. As for our love, we’ll write a more perfect novel someday when there is more content, okay? I won’t send this to you after all. J’ARRIVE PAS!

  LETTER TWELVE

  MAY 23

  Having climbed to the peak of the mountain and drowned in a valley of tears, I’ve experienced too much trauma. But having overcome it, I can live honestly and with dignity, no more self-criticism. I can become my best self, a person I can admire.

  I can’t assume anyone else will ever love me more. What Xu bestowed upon me was already too much. I can’t excuse it as luck and expect luck to bring me another beloved while I go on kidding myself it’s still possible for me to care for another, that there’s something else out there I want and life needs me to experience a relationship again. I’m clear about what my heart really “wants” and whose home it wishes to return to.

  A purity. That’s what I want from life: to devote myself to a lover, a teacher, a profession, an organization, a way of life. This is how I want to live.

  Sincerity, courage, and honesty will deliver humanity. I’ve realized this since coming to France. With sincerity, courage, and honesty, one can face death, extreme physical pain, and even extreme psychological pain. One can resist persecution from individuals, society, or government. To live in preparation of adversity and finding ways to preserve your core values—this is what it means to learn “how to live.”

  I think the hardest thing in life is to “respect others” because only after you’ve attained a thorough understanding of someone can there be any real respect to speak of. Without “wisdom” there can be no real sadness.

  And “fate.” “Fate” is fraught with mystery and determines the shape life takes. One can only overcome fate by being open to this mystery while understanding one’s own unique circumstances. I must be stronger than fate, stronger than my circumstances, stronger than others, stronger than human tragedy, stronger than pain and disease, stronger than the life or death of my body, stronger than my talents. The state of being alive is the most beautiful manifestation of all that is true and good, and to die is to become “absolute” and “eternal.” Only by examining one’s innermost self can will and desire merge in love. This “examining one’s innermost self” isn’t psychotherapy. It’s essentially philosophical and spiritual. The “merging of will and desire” is the subject of my thesis.

  Scott said that if someone can’t peacefully adapt to society or to nature, then they are destined to be unhappy.

  Materialism, utilitarianism, possessiveness, selfishness, aggression, destructiveness, domination . . . I can’t stand these characteristics in others. These qualities saturate society, causing me to become unhealthy and wounded, and so I run away. It’s simple: I can’t show my true self to people because I am “other” to them, and this agony warps me. “Otherness” prevents society from accepting your true self so that you are powerless to be your true self. This is why a so-called “social life” has been so traumatic for me and why I’ve never been able to live the life of authenticity and dignity that I crave. Perhaps the reason I can’t tolerate those qualities in others is that I possess them myself.

  I am a “passionately artistic” person, and I would like to lead a bucolic country life; or maybe what I’ve really longed for is a monastic life. Are the two compatible?

  It’s criminal that people can’t tolerate each other. While being alone, life is empty, meaningless. These two facts cause me much agony.

  I believe there’s no degree of pain I cannot bear as long as I know I want to live. If only my life did not need Xu, that I did not need anything from her and did not have any expectations of her and did not retain any lingering threads of “possessiveness” toward her, then I could love her the way I want to love her and respect her with fairness and equanimity.

  Objectivity. The objectivity of a great artist like Tarkovsky.

  I will live the life of a monk. A twenty-six-year-old monk.

  The reason I love Xu, why I’ve always loved her and will always love her, is because of the purity of her character.

  MAY 25

  I have no doubt that people are stupid and mean. Everywhere people are stupid and mean. I don’t understand why humans are so stupid and mean. It’s impossible to comprehend.

  I have to grow up. I won’t be stupid and mean anymore, I promise. I’ve purged all the anger and resentment I could and have no cause left to purge, neither love nor hate. I feel as if my burden has lightened. Maybe from clarifying each detail over the phone? I needed to vent my resentment and maybe Xu did too. If a couple’s resentments aren’t vocalized, then their love can’t flow. The mutual resentment in our hearts is the main reason our love cannot move forward.

  Passion. Is there really no hope for humankind? I don’t believe it. Passion, suffering, and more suffering to bear. But you must be passionate to know how to live and find what’s most meaningful to you and know that there are those you really love. Then the pain will ease and you’ll have no regrets.

  Only suffering and death can tell you what’s real.

  Xu isn’t mature enough yet, she hasn’t suffered enough. She couldn’t possibly understand what’s real.

  It’s not true that suffering linked to passion can’t be overcome, that it can’t be transcended. Religion, nature, sports, people, daily life . . . it all matters. To find the meaningfulness you want to achieve. And when you’ve found someone you truly love, then you understand what’s real and can continue to live.

  Tarkovsky was right. The responsibility of the artist is to stir people’s hearts and minds toward loving others: to find the light and the true beauty of human nature within this love. Religion can rarely show us what fate means in concrete terms. Yet everyone needs to be understood and this understanding is found within each individual’s fate, one’s life journey that clarifies the way. I’m not a therapist or a philosopher or a priest. I’m an artist.

  If Xu came back to Paris, even for just a day, I would make her happy, so happy. All I want to do is make her happy. I want to do whatever it takes to make her happy. I want her to know that I understand her and that I love the way she loves. I am the right person for her, for her life and soul. I want her to see that she is wrong about me and that it was a mistake for her to believe I can’t make her happy: a mistake for her to believe I can’t live a happy, pleasant life; a mistake for her to believe I was bound to scorn her and hurt her, and how wrong she was about my innate character. I want to give her a fuller picture of who I am, who I am completely.

  I want to take her on my bike to the woods. I want to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner for her; listen to music with her before bed; read poetry to her, and while I work during the day she can wander away and do whatever she likes until dusk when we’ll walk along the Seine or stroll through the streets. . . . I want to go to the Louvre with her, and at night visit the park in Villette; I want to take her to see Angelopoulos movies and to listen to Argerich’s wild concerts; I want to take pictures of us around the fourth arrondissement as we sweep the dust from the cracks of our everyday lives. . . . If she could stay longer, I would finish my novel and write poetry for her, and make art for her. . . . I want to give her a life that inspires her and is delicate and tranquil and gentle and makes her content. Only such a life will make her happy, and only such a temperament will enrich her life. . . . Physical intimacy isn’t important; no need to process anything, nothing intense, no promises of passion or love. I’ve grown and reached a place where I can give her the love and life that she wants. . . . I want us to feel close again on a spiritual level.

  Suicide. As for the sheer animosity that has split us apart, that animosity buried for a whole year deep in our hearts . . . as for the wrongs she’s done to me this past six months, that have wrought havoc and devastation in my life, her coldness, her selfishness, her lashin
g out, her indifference, her betrayal, all this has accumulated in my flesh like a lingering illness, and the scars she’s left on me, my explosions, her resentment toward me deepening each day, leading to the final wrong she committed against me—I will no longer reflect this back onto her, and if it continues, I won’t let it distort my sincerity toward her . . . all as it hurls toward my death. Resolution in death, my resentment toward her and lack of compassion for myself will melt away upon my death. I will unite completely with her in my death, our compassion, our love for each other . . . my death will be a final act of prayer for her forgiveness and repentance, a final effort to help her grow whole. . . .

  Suicide. This is the exact opposite of last time, for this time I’m experiencing a kind of pleasure in life, in being alive, a pleasure in living that I’ve never experienced before, and I’m hopeful and confident that I can become someone with dignity. I know now why I couldn’t change certain characteristics and certain things about myself, but it’s not a problem anymore. Certain pathways I failed to open in the past have now opened. My whole self is radiating light. I see with clarity. I understand the cause and effect of the last year. What I had imagined I’ve now attained. It’s as if I can see my life right in front of my eyes, and all I have to do is reach out and draw it in. . . . Now I don’t feel the acute pain I felt before; I feel enlightened, at peace. It’s as if I’ve instantly found the secret of “suffering,” how to bear it and how to endure it. . . . Yes, this time I’ve decided to kill myself not because I can’t live with suffering and not because I don’t enjoy being alive. I love life passionately, and my wish to die is a wish to live. . . .

  Yes, I’ve chosen suicide. The endpoint of this process of “forgiveness.” Not to punish anyone or to protest a wrong. I’ve chosen suicide with a clarity I’ve never possessed before, with a rational resolve and sense of calm, in order to pursue the ultimate meaning of my life, act on my belief about the beauty between two people. . . . I take complete responsibility for my life, and even if my physical body disappears upon death, I don’t believe my spirit will disappear. As long as I have loved people fully in this world, loved life fully, then I can be content fading into “nothingness.” If I’m using death to express my passion for life, then I still don’t love her enough, don’t love life enough, and I will reincarnate in a different form to love her and to be part of her life. . . . So the death of my flesh really doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t solve anything.

  Is this a tragedy? Will there be a tragedy? At the end of 1992 when I dreamed of Xu’s bleak, wasted expression, did it foretell this tragedy? Was that the look on her face when I died?

  After three months of catastrophe I am already dead. I don’t fear death anymore.

  Compared to my defeated appearance of determination to pursue this love, compared to the beautiful shimmer of the glittering life that I want to bring to completion, the suffering of the body means nothing. I can endure, and I will keep smiling.

  LETTER THIRTEEN

  Don’t die. I’m not afraid to talk about death. But just don’t die as a protest. That kind of loneliness and pain hurt me so much I don’t want to live. How can one endure it, indeed, this thing called life; even though I am still alive, just thinking about your pain feels unbearable to me, even more so when I think about you as you fade away night after night, the screaming and resentment in your body. . . . I cannot face this kind of pain under any circumstances, not because I fear pain myself, nor for lack of understanding, but because I want to dissuade you from dying. It’s because I understand your very being, and if you really were to kill that being, the significance of this extinction would make me feel like life was utterly hopeless and unjust. If you don’t even want to be alive, how can I reason with you?

  —a key letter from Tokyo, 1995

  It was 12:30 in the morning, May 29, 1995. My twenty-sixth birthday.

  Ma and Ba just called to wish me happy birthday. I couldn’t stop grieving. They had given me everything. They had loved me unconditionally, and when I really do kill myself, how much will it hurt them? Yes, Yong understood my life and asked, “You’re really going to kill it?”

  Yong, oh Yong, you know me like you know yourself, so you know that the time of my death is near! But I still have so many creative ideas burning inside me! You know me like you know yourself. What I mean is that you’ve already given me enough in my short, short life. You’re the only one in my life who has ever really known who I am; your love for me is art, and I offer you my deepest gratitude. . . .

  Yong, is my death worth it? Worth your collapse? Worth the collapse of my parents, worth the collapse of everyone who loves me, worth being pitied by all those who know my temperament and “talent”? Is it worth it? Yong, so many tears. . . .

  MAY 28

  Xu,

  This morning I received the gift you sent me. A set of magazines about classical music. I was very happy.

  I’ve started to stand on my own steady feet. I don’t need help. I’ve begun the most important part of my life. . . .

  I must prepare to be objective about my own situation, it’s true. I’ve been hoarding letters for you, hoarding birthday presents for you. The reason I can’t send you the letters I’ve written you is also for objective reasons. You aren’t really the true object of my love, not the person with whom I’m connected at the very center of my being. I long to share these words with you, to write the most intimate things to you, for my being is compelled to, given our deep connection. What I’ve wanted most in this life is this level of intimacy: to be able to form the deepest creative connection with another human being. And I’ve attained it. I’ve achieved inner happiness. But if I were to actually send you these letters of my pure openness, of my truest values, I would just be hurt all over again. . . .

  I miss you. Even these three words are not easy to say. I no longer know how to describe missing you. Ah, I can just secretly ask with a quiet voice in my heart if I’m really not good enough for you. Wouldn’t your life be a little empty without me to talk to? I can’t understand why you would toss away the treasure that is my presence in your life. Xu, life’s logic defies me.

  “Femme, je suis retourné.” (Alexandre le Grand)

  Oh beautiful, beautiful Alexandre, oh beautiful love that transcends life and death, oh beauty, so much beauty it brings tears to my eyes. . . . Alexandre is me, don’t you think? My archetype, the mark inscribed on my embryonic self, how I love a woman, my life saturated with her love, my soul consecrated before love . . . my sacrifice for a lover . . . ah, but it is the greatest dream of my life: to find someone and to be true to her! Alexandre is me, and I am Alexandre!

  “Immortal Beloved” (Beethoven)

  There is no love but true love. The love in my past does not count as love. From now on it is true love.

  “Happiness is an act of continuous and long-term fulfillment, a stability and tranquillity.” You wrote this to me once, and I learned what kind of happiness you were seeking in life. Can we really attain it now? Perhaps my passionate nature is such that my inner self cannot sustain it. But I think we can treat each other well. I hope to treat you the way you want, to love you as you are.

  Xu, you don’t know how I love you. I’ll be here till the end loving you this way. You don’t know how I love you, or maybe you just don’t want to know. . . . You dismiss the value of my love, plaguing me with ulcers. But I’ll use my life to prove my beauty and my love; I’ll use an “immortal” self to make my love shine forth with its lustrous glow, and I’ll persuade you that all of this is the ultimate meaning of life. But I’ll stop talking about it now, and keep my silence. Heaven will make people understand, as you will too. . . .

  Lost, lost! Besides completely losing you, I will never fully love as I had dreamed, nor will I ever let you love me again. My God, could you be more any more thorough and move one step farther, two steps, three steps until you’re gone, stripped from my life. . . . I know now no enormous suffering of losing you, I w
ill keep loving you.

  Xu, love is not only emotions, moods, passions. Love is a kind of “will.”

  I must learn how to be quiet with you, learn how to not harm you and then love will be revealed, like a boulder beneath a receding wave. . . .

  Tranquil love is not love. The tranquillity of a bear at rest is not true tranquillity. Everything is the bear in motion, dialectical, and everything has consequences. Indeed.

  MAY 29

  Today is my birthday. Ah-Ying put a cute coffee-colored bear on my bed. On the bear’s belly is a sign that says “Happy Birthday.” I’m touched. Touched that someone like Ah-Ying risks the consequences of this world. Most I’ve encountered are too selfish and miserly to love, either people or the world. Living here with Ah-Ying, I often admire her. She’s an independent, mature, courageous, pure, deeply feeling person who knows what it means to give freely. I need such a person with me.

  Gaiety is better than amusement, and joy is better than gaiety. (Scott)

  If I have not killed myself, it’s because art and virtue have stopped me. (Beethoven)

  Angelopoulos didn’t win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and I wept for him. But fame and glory are not an artist’s nectar; they are a poison-tipped sword! Cast off the world of dust and keep working, Angelopoulos.

  On Saturday the twenty-seventh I attended a lecture on the sculpture of Paul Landowski. I admire the vitality of his work, and though he is one of the most revered sculptors since Rodin, I wouldn’t agree exactly. The only pieces that moved me were Les Fantômes, La France, Le Retour Éternal, Les sources de la Seine, Le Monument de Narvir, and a rose-colored sculpture of a woman looking upward in prayer that was part of Le Temple de l’Homme. I find that an artist’s work only really moves me if the artist has suffered through profound tragedy and death—only then can greatness be achieved. Landowski’s sculpture La porte de l’école is layered with meaning. Better still are Les Fantômes and La France, both of which he carved in fulfillment of a promise to make fallen soldiers “rise again” after the Second World War. In the wilderness of an old battlefield, the figures of eight soldiers stand tall with their heads held high, looking at the sky, and low on the slope of a distant mountain is a woman holding a shield representing the spirit of France, her skirt rippling in the wind. . . . These could be the most heroic works of Landowski’s career.