Qiu Miaojin - Last Words from Montmartre

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 lashing 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.

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.