Qiu Miaojin - Last Words from Montmartre

It’s precisely because I’ve realized this that I can express a simple conclusion in a time of chaos: Let us have no rupture between us. I’ve also gradually come to see more clearly what actually happened this past year — my violent outbursts and your shutting down; what my issues were, what yours were…. I no longer have to depend on you for information because I’ve found my way through the labyrinth and have left the jungle behind. None of this chaos has been caused by other people or your desire for them — all that doesn’t matter. What matters is that an obstruction has blocked our spiritual communication; an emotional disconnect has grown between us. But the significance of your betrayal has already been carved in stone. In the future, when the time of reckoning arrives, you will pay by losing me, by having lost, whether in whole or in part, my most beautiful, most precious fidélité to you. This is something no one else will ever be able to give you in full. Loyalty is not a passive, negative guardianship of the gate — loyalty arises from the complete and utter opening and subsequent blazing forth of one’s inner life. It is an active, determined desire that demands total self-awareness and deliberate engagement.

And I don’t agree with your tangential use of the “secular” and the “non-secular” to describe our differences and to explain the rupture between us — I wholly disagree.

“Secular life” assumes a kind of passive, moralistic “loyalty.” It’s the kind of life my parents and yours have been leading as they do their best to conform to the standards of such a life. Apart from relating to the outside world as a couple, however, you could say that their shared inner life is minimal and shallow. This isn’t to say they have no spiritual needs at all, or that their passions never cause them suffering, but they focus instead on the external world or find other outlets for their passions. The “secular life” they live demands they compartmentalize the very structure of their lives. This is their right, but they have no choice and no imagination.

So if you say I’m a “non-secular person,” then I agree: The “loyalty” of a so-called “secular life” means nothing to me. I have no desire to have a barren life and soul. If you say that you, on the other hand, are precisely this kind of person and that you are well-suited to such a life, fine. I won’t suffer then. If you are such a person, or you want to become one, then I won’t be bound to you because I couldn’t possibly need nor want someone like you. My relationship with Xuan Xuan was an example of this kind of disjunction, and I ended up hurting her.

Although I could depend on her completely day to day and received from her as much love as I could ever ask, what I didn’t understand was that my soul could never really need or long for her. I tried to be responsible, to care for her and cherish her. I earned a living, shared my livelihood, listened to her, protected her. What she and I achieved was precisely the ethical fulfillment of the “loyalty” component of a “secular life.”

Only later did I realize that wasn’t what she wanted from me.

She yearned for me, but I was completely dispassionate as I hadn’t given her my whole soul. Crueler still, she watched helplessly as I offered my soul to you and I burst into a brilliant flame. She watched and she understood. She experienced the difference between zero degrees and a hundred and this was so painful that it nearly destroyed her. This is the wrong I committed against her. It’s a story about Xuan Xuan in which you were also implicated, a story of my failing to live a “secular life.”

Don’t say that I do not understand, that I am incapable of living a secular life or that I don’t belong in a secular world. I’ve discovered that I actually may be able to simultaneously live two kinds of lives. The strength needed to lead a secular life is stored inside my body. You could even say it’s hidden deep within the seed of my desire for love. It grows in the opposite way of most people’s experiences, because first a deep spirituality developed in my life and only later a desire, and capacity, for the real world. The seed of my desire for love could never fully mature. Instead it drained all my energy reserves, with tragic consequences. During those six months when you came to France, I had a chance to make that seed bloom and bear fruit, and my secular life might have thrived. But instead I was drawn into a period of incredible turmoil and self-destruction because you totally shut down and didn’t reciprocate my love. After the pain of your betrayal, I went to Tokyo to visit Yong. For a month my body and mind were on the verge of total collapse, and Yong was the one who took me in and cared for me. For the first time she opened up to me, lightening the load of my longing and anguish and offering the passion and connection that I desired so desperately. Only then did I suddenly see what had actually happened this past year.

The story of Yong and me is too long and too dense to be summarized in just a few lines.

In fact she admitted a deep love for me. Although her love wasn’t absolute, somehow it caused that seed within to bloom and bear fruit. Three years of maturing had made her realize that she loved me, and that she was ready to admit her desire. It would not be for me to call this a kind of redemption. She knew what she wanted from love and she accepted and paid the price for her comprehension with her whole self. So there was no need for me to possess her completely even as she loved me deeply, and my life quickly recovered from a malaise so profound I was almost blind with it. My potential to live a secular life began to bloom and bear fruit.

Because of her I wanted to recover, I wanted to become a healthy, whole person again. Moved by her love, I wanted to mature into someone strong enough to be accountable for her (particularly for the secular aspects of her life). Because she had loved the wrong person for a very long time, part of her soul had suffered and shut down. She had sworn an oath to that person like the oath I swore to you (you, though, haven’t yet entered the phase of life yet where oaths are sworn). Once I am completely liberated from the burden of my responsibility for you (When? Maybe the day when you become completely irrelevant to me. How sad to even mention it….), I now believe that Yong is the “final” one, the one I will spend my life waiting for. She’s already a fixture in my life story and genuinely needs me, her need highly exclusive and selective. Only I, and no one else, can occupy that position. If I can’t have you, ultimately I will love her and our future family. Moreover, I am prepared to do whatever’s necessary and care for her, since in the end I am the only one who can shoulder the burden of her broken life. More important, she and I have already forgiven each other. Our feelings for each other have already passed beyond desire and possession, emancipating me from desire. What I mean is that she is the first person with whom I’ve experienced “creative loyalty.” Before we parted, she told me to find an outlet for my passion at all costs. I replied that I would survive, for her, and mature into a whole and healthy human being who would be able to take care of her.

As for you, Xu, like I told Qing Jin: “My misfortune is that I have devoted myself completely to someone who can’t accept my perfect love.”

There are still so many long, long reflections and experiences that I want to write to you about… but after writing for seven or eight straight hours, I’m empty and exhausted…. Xu, can I point out a few things to you with these last words, though they may not be true?

(1) On betrayal

Your betrayal of my life, my will, my body tortured me this past month, leaving a wake of hate and trauma, and I’ve paid dearly. This was the most painful betrayal you could inflict. But I didn’t die, I survived and will continue to heal. Your spirit, however, could never betray me, because your spirit will always yearn for me and belong to me.