Qiu Miaojin - Last Words from Montmartre

Even though my “unfulfillment” has often caused me to feel frustrated, to suffer, and even to hate Xu temporarily, she never really understood that what she meant to me made up by far for any “unfulfillment” on my part, and was the most important thing to me…. Perhaps the way I talked to her was too confusing and so I wasn’t able to clearly tell her that what I wanted most of all was eternal in her, and only her, and not in anyone else. Although it is important to be fulfilled and to fulfill others, now if someone can completely fulfill me and be fulfilled by me, she cannot also be the one whose eternity I desire most of all. My expectations of eros reach far beyond “fulfillment” and “being fulfilled.” What I desire is the full profundity of eros in my life — the “eternal.”

Xu, what exactly is the “eternal”? “Eternal” is the very limit of time and of space that we can transcend, the dividing line between life and death, the existence (or emptiness) of our love for each other. This mutual love for each other is not sealed within our individual bodies but is expressed through shared understanding, shared communication of this love. Death and life don’t matter; we flow and we penetrate into the very essence of this eros that is part of us…. This is your “eternity,” along with the “eternity” I save for you.

I think you couldn’t ignore the fact that you weren’t able to fulfill me completely, and I couldn’t ignore my ideal expectations of eros from you, and from the moment you fell in love with me, you had to deal with this disappointing problem, and eventually you couldn’t bear my ideal expectations of eros anymore, and this transformed your wholehearted devotion into a desire for someone else, and so you planned your escape for your soul and body to settle with another, and I felt the depths of your love for me, and I told you yours was the most intense I’d ever experienced, and because you couldn’t deal with the burden of your own disappointment, you discarded me from your heart and removed my “eternity.” Or put another way, my “eternity” stopped expressing itself within you.

But still your past love for me awoke something deep inside that held on to your “eternity” in me and our union of love yielded blossoms of eternity in my heart and this most precious possession has been the most beautiful and joyous gift of my life and I will cultivate these blossoms in my heart forever and even though I cannot expect you to cultivate the same blossoms in your heart, mine are still the most beautiful and most longed-for I could’ve prayed for, and this is a gift from you, a gift of blossoms that your love brought into my life. And for this I say thank you!

You aren’t aware that this is my way of loving you from the depths of my heart because so far I’ve only expressed the burning anguish and resentment your painful behavior has subjected me to. But I treasure the blossoms you’ve given me just as I treasure Bunny and every little thing, every blade of grass and every plant, every needle and every thread, every little word that you have given me, and I will water these blossoms each day, fertilize them, let them bloom and wilt and bloom again according to the season, and let you live forever at the center of my desire, breathing, smiling, playing…. My life can go on like this (if I can suppress my resentment). I’m so happy!

In Memoirs of Hadrian , Marguerite Yourcenar describes how at age twenty the young Greek Antinous, the favorite of the lascivious Roman emperor Aurelius, drowns himself in the river to demonstrate his love, thus fulfilling a promise of true devotion to the emperor. Facing his death, the gray-haired old emperor finally comprehends Antinous’s love for him and the real meaning of “being one’s emperor forever.”

A man too completely happy, and who is growing old becomes blind and self-content. Could I have been so grossly satisfied? Antinous was dead. Far from loving too much, as doubtless Servianus was proclaiming at that moment in Rome, I had not been loving enough to force the boy to live on. Chabrias as a member of an Orphic cult held suicide a crime, so he tended to insist upon the sacrificial aspect of that ending; I myself felt a kind of terrible joy at the thought that death was a gift. But I was the only one to measure how much bitter fermentation there is at the bottom of all sweetness, or what degree of despair is hidden under abnegation, what hatred is mingled with love. A being deeply wounded had thrown this proof of devotion at my very face; a boy fearful of losing everything had found this means of binding me to him forever. Had he hoped to protect me by such a sacrifice he must have deemed himself unloved indeed not to have realized that the worst of ills would be to lose him.

Antinous was not the only one to use death to fulfill his promise of eternal love to Aurelius. Yourcenar dedicated Memoirs of Hadrian to Grace Frick, her companion of forty years on a deserted island in the North Atlantic. In 1975 she cremated Frick’s body, wrapped the ashes in Frick’s favorite wool scarf, placed all of this an Indian woven basket that Frick loved, and buried her in one final gesture of eternal love.

Xu, even if you’ve already abandoned me, I want to act with the beauty of Antinous and Yourcenar. I am too greedy for life — only this kind of beauty can be the crowning laurels of my existence. I want this crown of laurels so much so as to be as beautiful as Antinous and Yourcenar. Even if you are unwilling to accept this crown that I offer you, I want to transform myself into an idol in the temple of my own life so that I can complete the meaning of my eternal love for you, a sacrificial offering to you who have abandoned me!

MAY 11

Dearest Yong,

My sister sent me the two CDs that I wanted. She sent them on May 7. The courier rang the doorbell and handed them to me this morning, and I immediately rushed over to my desk to record the flood of Tokyo memories. The two CDs were of music we listened to together in Tokyo. I secretly hid our love we experienced in three of the tracks.

I’m still waiting for the pictures we took, the ones I took of you and the ones you took of me, and most of all, those of both of us. You hate having your picture taken. I had to force you to borrow a camera from a friend, saying it was a shame you didn’t even have a single picture of me. I could die soon; perhaps this trip to Tokyo would be the last time we’d see each other, and so I visited to give you whatever remained of my love in this life. If you were to lose me forever, and not possess even one picture of the one you had loved so deeply, you’d have difficulty recalling the way she looked when she belonged to you alone, which would be too sad. How could you keep so little of me? And I really was beautiful while in Tokyo….

I haven’t received the pictures yet. When I called you yesterday, I didn’t dare ask if you had sent them or not, as I knew you had already ensconced me in a hidden corner of your life. You didn’t want me to write you or call you, and I could feel your fierce resistance, a temperamental cry from within, aimed at me: “I don’t need anyone. I’m fine on my own!” Leaving the phone booth outside the post office, I stood for a moment by the door, my legs weak, head swimming, and grieved for you. I would never hurt you, and I have always been gentle with you. Why do you resist even me? If other people hurt you, why do you hurt yourself even more, throwing away everything you could have? I feel sorry for you! Are you really telling me that you want me to walk away from you for another three years? It’s precisely because I understand you so well that I’ve become weakened. I don’t know how to persuade you to not stubbornly founder in the “wasteland of love.” I don’t know how to overcome your stubbornness. I know how cruel it was when I turned my back on you for three long years. What you asked of me sharply contrasted with what you really needed from me. In the past I had been defeated, I felt defeated and took your outward refusal and cold rejection at face value, so I just left and didn’t look back.