Letzte Worte vom Montmartre

by Qiu Miaojin, Martina Hasse (Translator)

Als sie im Alter von sechsundzwanzig Jahren Selbstmord begeht, hinterlässt die bereits zu frühem Ruhm als Autorin einer rebellischen Gegenkultur gelangte Qiu Miaojin ihr unveröffentlichtes Meisterwerk Letzte Worte vom Montmartre. Darin erzählt sie in einer Reihe von Briefen, die von einer namenlosen Erzählerin in Paris, Taipeh und Tokio geschrieben werden, die Geschichte einer leidenschaftlichen Beziehung zwischen zwei jungen Frauen – ihr sexuelles Erwachen, ihre Trennung und die verheerenden Folgen ihrer zerbrochenen Liebe – und bietet so erschütternde Einblicke in das Leben zwischen den Kulturen, Sprachen und Geschlechtern. Zwischen den Extremen schwankend, zwischen Selbstironie und Pathos, zwanghafter Wiederholung und rhapsodischen Träumereien, Zurückhaltung und Verletzlichkeit, entwickelt sich dieser genresprengende Roman zu Thriller, Romanze und Abschiedsbrief in einem. Miaojin erweist sich darin als eine der aufregendsten chinesischsprachigen Autor:innen der letzten Jahrzehnte.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Classics, Lesbian, Asia, Literary Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1996

About the author

Qiu Miaojin (1969–1995) was one of Taiwan’s most innovative literary modernists, and the country’s most renowned lesbian writer. Her first published story, “Prisoner,” received the Central Daily News Short Story Prize, and her novella Lonely Crowds won the United Literature Association Award. While attending graduate school in Paris, she directed a thirty-minute film called Ghost Carnival, and not long after this, at the age of twenty-six, she committed suicide. The posthumous publications of her novels Last Words from Montmartre and Notes of a Crocodile (forthcoming from NYRB Classics) made her into one of the most revered countercultural icons in Chinese letters.

NYRB Classics newsletter - 5/21-20114

- Mr Nicolello

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

My soul is lonely. Lonely in a lonely way that I’m unwilling to express to you.

Last Words from Montmartre is an unrelenting study of absolute sorrow and heartbreak. At times it was difficult to read. I wavered between feeling a deep empathy for Qiu and wanting to shout at her to ‘get over it.’ But we don’t get over it, do we? No, we never quite do.

I’m sorry I have to write in this circular and torturously convoluted way.

Written in the form of letters, a genre that I generally don’t care for, here it serves Qiu well and left me feeling despondent and somewhat suffocated. She wallows, she whines, she ponders and at times is overcome by the simple beauty of the world around her. Maybe this is the great mystery. How someone is still able to fully appreciate the wonder of the world and articulate it so beautifully yet still the darkness is too great. Perhaps if this piece was 100% bleak, it would’ve broken my heart less. As it stands, there were small windows of poetic awe that, knowing the author’s imminent demise, it hurt just that much more to read.

And Tokyo is the cherry blossoms, the sunset at dusk, dawn sunlight through her windows, the cry of the crow, the cityscape of darkened rooms on a rainy evening, the depth of feeling in her eyes….

She wrote honestly and unselfconsciously and left behind a glimpse into the psyche of the deeply wounded. This is an uncomfortable read but for some of us, a necessary one. What would have happened if Qiu had received a reply? Why aren’t any of us listening?

Forgive me for being so open.

[Jacob Wren]

I was reading this book and found it so sad and distressing that I think I somehow managed to misplace my copy. At the very least I now can't figure out where it is.

And then, three weeks later, it was returned to me. (I had left it at the breakfast place I sometimes go to. They had it waiting for me next time I went.)

In some ways this book helped me understand why I haven't killed myself. (I'm not quite intense enough, there's always a little voice in my head that can see at least a smudge of irony or humour in any given situation.) But it definitely made it painfully clear to me why Qiu Miaojin did. Novel as suicide note seems to be some sort of burgeoning genre and it frightens me. Then again, I always have a strange admiration for suicides, or actually for anyone truly able to make up their mind.

And then this quote. Qiu Miaojin writes:


"Another paradox: Often the one most plagued with lust is the one most capable of restraining it. The monk and the philanderer are likely to be the same person."


Also this Henry Giardina article about the Chandos Letter:


http://www.berfrois.com/2014/07/henry...


Here is Giardina's paragraph:

"We don’t ever really know why people take their own lives, but we just as little know why people don’t. When talking about depression and suicidal feelings, usually the fact that someone is still alive to talk about it makes us take them less seriously. Perverse, but true. But talk might not be the most important thing when language itself so often fails us. When I think about the problem so many of us have with talking honestly about bad feelings, I think of an invisible network of people who have pulled back at the last moment, despite everything, and not for any real reason, but because of some insignificant detail at the last moment, completely divorced from ideas of God or reason or earthly ties. Because the weather changed, or because it didn’t: because someone was suddenly and randomly able to live in spite of pain."

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

And so I continue, unintentionally, my readings of young women expatriating themselves to Paris (The Dud Avocado; American Woman in the Chinese Hat; and now this).

There's a lot going on here, which is odd because there is almost no plot. But here's a SPOILER ALERT anyhow. What I mean is you can read this 'novel' in several ways.

First, you can read it as experimental fiction. Its structure is 20 letters, more or less. Most are written by our narrator who may or may not be Zoë. Most of them are written to Xu. Some are written to Yong. Some are written, I think, by Xu to Zoë. It is hard to tell sometimes who is writing to whom. Intentionally so. Tenses change, willy-nilly. The letters - think: chapters - are numbered, but they are produced out of order. 'Letter Five' follows 'Letter Seventeen' which follows 'Letter Ten'. In a preface-like paragraph, the author tells us to start anywhere we want.

Or, you could read this as an annoying love story. Zoë and Xu are lovers. Zoë and Yong may have been lovers too, I think, but they are not lovers like Zoë and Xu are lovers. Except, Zoë is mostly in Paris, 25 to 26 years-old, having published one novel, and now studying for an advanced degree. Xu moves about. They are both Taiwanese women and apparently both cheated on each other (just like The American Woman in the Chinese Hat). The letters, sent or un-sent, are about feelings of betrayal and expressions of undying love. The letters, sorry to say, are New Age self-analytical, dissecting what went wrong. Stuff like:

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.

I hope that cleared everything up. The sound you hear, by the way, is me, screaming as I pull my hair, running away, in search of a restraining order.

A third way of reading this - (and here I'm going to have to re-SPOILER ALERT, even though it says all this on the back cover of the book) - is as the author's own suicide note. Yes, she went all Breece D'J Pancake. In real life. So, this book is not semi-autobiographical. It's immediate, and morbid. The dedication is:

For dead little Bunny

and

Myself, soon dead

Qiu was Taiwanese, lesbian, a novelist once-published, who went to Paris to study for an advanced degree, and, at 26, killed herself.

So, the reader has to deal with that.

Qiu name-drops, impressively. Marguerite Yourcenar is someone Qiu admires, perhaps more for her relationship to her lover than for Memoirs of Hadrian. Although she highlights Antinous drowning himself. Her favorite film-maker is Angelopoulos, liking, especially, his The Suspended Step of the Stork. She listens to the cello sonatas of Jacqueline du Pré. She favors those who die young, or like Mishima, at their own hands. There's even an Elvis sighting: I can't help falling in love with you.

So what to make of this experimental work? In an afterward, the translator, a scholar of both Chinese and Queer Literature, says this is supposed to be "a collaborative reading process" between author and reader. Since there is "no guiding narrative" and the sentences are "unmoored from the usual referents of plot and argument," only "theme" remains:

Nested within this challenge ... lay another and more essential one: that of trying as a reader to extrapolate the deeper structural meanings that Qiu intended--meanings themselves only tentatively articulate--knowing that a decision to disambiguate one part of a text will have a cascade of consequences for the rest.

Let me translate: Qiu hid the meaning of this novel, if she ever had one; what it means is instead up to the reader to determine; but if you do manage to figure it out, then you've missed the whole point of the novel, which there wasn't any anyhow.

Sadly, I come from a long line of disambiguaters. You should see us after a nice meal, finishing a bottle, listening to Yo-Yo Ma play Bach, and saying, "Nope, nothing ambiguous about that!"

[Léa]

I have so much to say about this book and I feel like I could discuss it forever whilst simultaneously needing to stare at a blank wall for a week straight to process it...

last words from montmartre is at once an ode to grief, unrequited love and mental illness, a suicide note and an autobiographical account of the authors' lasting legacy. this was devastating and without a doubt one of the hardest reads I've ever experienced (I don't recommend this lightly, please check TWs before reading). learning more about qui miaojin's life was as fascinating as it was heartbreaking... it touched so much on queer rights, living a life with mental illness and the lengths of documenting your own suffering for art? for yourself? the writing was BEAUTIFUL, it is no question that qui miaojin was an astonishing writer.

this book gives for so much conversation and I feel it would be IMPOSSIBLE to mention without sparking a whole discussion, so I've decided not to rate it

[Jenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book.

Fact #1: LWFM is one of only 4 East Asian novels to have been deemed worthy of inclusion in the "NYRB Classics" series, which currently comprises a total of approximately 384 titles (mostly by European and European-American authors).

Fact #2: The glowing back-of-the-book blurb makes LWFM seem too amazing to pass by. I'm normally a sucker for books about female sexuality, thwarted eros, transnational Asian identities, and/or depression/suicidality/mental illness, not to mention books with modernist, multifarious, experimental, boundary-pushing, "genre-bending" styles. A book that's "rhapsodic," "raw," "wrenching," and "transcendent," stuffed with "psychological" "insights"? Sign me up! I cried.

With my expectations cranked up so high before I even started, perhaps it's no wonder that I ended up feeling disappointed with this book. Although LWFM's narrator is in her mid-twenties, she has the dense solipsism and obliviousness of someone stuck in the middle of their adolescent years. For most of its length, this book reads like one of those long, meandering, repetitive "Sure, you THINK you don't love me anymore, but you actually secretly love me" missives that recently jilted lovers pen to their exes. And because everything that happens in the book is filtered through the perspective of a densely solipsistic narrator, most of the characters (with the exception of the free-spirited French lesbian Laurence--more about her later) never come alive as three-dimensional human beings but instead remain largely indistinguishable.

The narrator of LWFM isn't exactly someone I'd call insightful. When she tries to distill her impressions of events into insights, she often arrives at trite, hazy, half-baked platitudes, e.g.: "Everyone needs to be understood and this understanding is found within each individual's fate, one's life journey that clarifies the way" (p. 88). The narrator is a Taiwanese living abroad in Paris (voluntarily, for the purpose of pursuing graduate studies in the humanities), but, despite what the back of the book advertises, she doesn't have many fresh insights to offer about "liv[ing] between cultures [and] languages."

Over and over, in true meta-fictional fashion, the narrator refers to the book she is narrating as a "novel." Only in the last 40 pages did the book start to feel anything akin to my own personal definition of a "novel," though. Up until that point, the book seemed to me to lack any flesh-and-blood characters, any vividly rendered scenes. I would have been OK with this if the author had had the stylistic brilliance of, say, Djuna Barnes or Elizabeth Hardwick, but Qiu's style is comparatively muted (or maybe its brilliance got lost in translation).

The book was somewhat redeemed for me in those last 40 pages: pages 106-115 present the book's most "novelistic," most vividly rendered scene, an imagistic description of the character Laurence skinny-dipping in the Seine, and the pages that follow do some interesting experimental work introducing a character named Zoe who sort of turns the narrative on its head. My takeaway impression, though, is that Qiu Miaojin's talent was, regrettably, not fully realized in the writing of this book.

[mwana]

DNF 42%. No rating.

I cannot listen to this woman any more. I can't pay any further attention to her waxing poetic about how she was loved la disponibilité absolue—absolute availability. As someone who barely gives two shits about romantic love, I can't bring myself to care about the endless neurotic pining from this narrator. Even though the writing is sublime, with some quotes perfect for those who worship at the altar of unbridled yearning, I've realised I need my yearning to be a bit more sedate, forced by circumstance beyond the characters' control, or at the very least not all-consuming.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I finished this yesterday and initially gave it 3 stars. Not because I thought it was just 'decent', but because I didn't really think it spoke to me; in my 34 years of life, I don't think I could manage to write such raw, unedited emotion that this 25/26 year old poured out over just under 200 pages.

Many have lost a lover and felt like they were lost in the world they live in.
Many have doubted another's trust, just to see their heart open up and be fulfilled.
Many have tried endlessly to make a relationship work and with their past experiences, have mauled over decisions for the future.
Many have not written as much about love and the lengths their heart and mind can go to make things work at such a young age.

Whether this story serves as Qiu's initial suicide note or outpour of thoughts for an everlasting love that knows no boundaries, through life and death, one may never know, but it's definitely unforgettable.

An NYRB like no other.

[El · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the world of heartbreaking dedications, this one might take the cake:

For dead little Bunny
and
Myself, soon dead.

It appears that Bunny was an actual bunny, and the author killed herself at age 26.

Knowing that the author killed herself shortly after completing this slim volume changes, I think, the way one reads this. Billed as semiautobiographical, it's hard to distinguish what is real and what is fiction, or if there really is any difference. Ari Larissa Heinrich comments similarly in the Afterword:

Knowing that an author writing about suicide has in fact committed suicide naturally complicates the reading of any book. If nothing else, it suggests that no matter what the author's claims may be to artifice or character development, there is a degree of "realism" or autobiography to be accounted for that differs from the range of what usually may be called the "semiautobiographical." The idea that Last Words was in fact literally the capstone work of Qiu's career draws us in, while simultaneously confounding our attempts to assign a truth-value to the text. Is it a "true" story, or a fictionalized account? Is the narrator a constructed persona or just a transformation of Qiu? The relationship between the writer of memoir and the reader is a bond of trust.As an empty point into identification with a main character or narrator, these are dark waters indeed.

This semiautobiographical writing was left behind and published posthumously. Because of the truth/fiction dichotomy, there's a feeling of unease as we read Qiu's words - passionate, emotional, dramatic, even melodramatic at times. Doomed. There's a feeling of doom in these pages, through all the beauty of Qiu's writing. We already know how the story - if there is in fact a story - ends.

The nameless narrator of these letters loves very deeply. She is heartbroken over the end of a relationship which is something most people can relate to on some level, and some of us may even be able to relate to the intensity which this character feels. These are honest writings, usually, admissions of personal fault and self-accusations, recognition that the destruction of the relationship was, ultimately, on her. She slips into self-destructive thoughts and tendencies, she recognizes she is a flawed person.

And this is where it's difficult to read now, knowing the author's demise. It is so difficult to read the pained words of anyone who is suffering, the inability to reach through time and space to help someone understand that this is a blip, relatively-speaking, on the greater experience of their lives.

In the beginning of the novel, Qiu herself tells the reader that it's okay to read the letters in any order. I'm sort of a traditionalist in that sense, I like to read from beginning to end, but I can see how it wouldn't matter. We see the character's despair on most of the pages, so it's not like there is a clear deterioration that is witnessed throughout the reading. But now that I've read it once, I would more easily be able to flip through the pages and read certain sections again.

Would this book be as heartbreaking to read even if Qiu was alive and well today? Probably, because the story is still powerful in and of itself. Does the knowledge of Qiu's death give reading these letters, the last testament, a sense of morbid curiosity? Absolutely.

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 admire.
(p85)

I would have liked to have known that author, the one who overcame it all and came out stronger in the end. But as with any creative person who took their life too early (by my own personal standards and selfish feelings), I am grateful for what she did share with us.

[Hux · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first few chapters of this book (more precisely the first few letters she writes to her lover) almost made me want to quit given that they were the whining laments of an angst ridden teenager. It was just endless 'why don't you love me? I'm so lonely. Life is so unfair, you love me but you just don't know it' etc, and it was irritating to say the least. But as I kept reading, she finally fleshed out her world a little more and incorporated other aspects of living, certainly enough that I was gradually more invested by the content. But nonetheless, the book is essentially one big whine about being betrayed by her lover, letter after letter about the depths of her love and her unhappiness. It wasn't exactly what i would describe as fun to read.

The book is a collection of letters she has written to her lover Xu. Sometimes it's letters to her lover Yong and, at the end, it's letters she (Zoe) receives. This gives the whole book a sense of auto-fiction, especially when you consider that Qiu Miaojin killed herself after this book.

As such, we have the issue of authenticity. This does not feel like a novel, it feels like a suicide note. And frankly, I didn't feel comfortable reading her suicide note. And yet there's the possibility that this is a genuine piece of fiction. But it's hard to see it that way (certainly for me). The fact that Qui Miaojin repeatedly references Dazai's 'No Longer Human' a book which was essentially his own suicide note, further muddies the waters. Maybe I'm wrong but I found it impossible to interpret this book as anything other than her real experiences.

And as those experiences go, they didn't really reach me. I found the whining tedious and immature (and self-indulgent) and I found the rest of her life a little, I dunno, performative? Her lesbian relationships made for a diverting exploration of early to mid nineties attitudes (though to pretend the 90s was somehow like the 50s is disingenuous) and her Taiwanese background may have added to a sense of otherness in this regard; plus her notions of maleness and femaleness will no doubt fascinate contemporary audiences (while they slightly bored me). Then there's the physical abuse she inflicts on her lover, a thing which, had this book been written by a man, would almost certainly make the people giving the book rave reviews change their tune.

I honestly can't say the book held my interest with any success and even when it momentarily did, it felt voyeuristic and sullied. There are pieces that are of some worth but overall, I just found the relentless misery, wailing, and navel-gazing grating. Poor me. Poor me. And yet, she did actually top herself so maybe I should be more impressed, more reverent. And yet I'm not. It was just a little too self-indulgent for my liking. The way she implied her lover will have to live with her suicide. The way she referenced Dazai and... I dunno, it was just a tad juvenile. If you're a lesbian (or just one of those people who pretends to be queer as an alternative to having personality) then you might find something of value here. All I found was a teenager threatening to kill herself if you refused to bend to her will. The fact that she followed through with it doesn't add weight to her complaints (or elevate this drivel to the status of good art).

[Seigfreid Uy · Rating 4 out of 5]

i have no words — i don’t know where to start.
last words from montmartre was everything it promised to be.

an unpublished masterpiece that qiu miaojin left when she died by suicide at the age of 26,
it is an experimental work that transcends form and fiction — and i mean that quite literally.

last words from montmartre is a work that is incredibly hard to read.
not because of it’s prose or it’s style of writing.
but because of it’s themes and the gray space it lives in between fact and fiction.

taking the form of twenty letters that can be read in any order,
with stories that overlap with what seems to be her own stories,
with feelings and emotions that contradict themselves,
with actions and thoughts that go against convention.

it is a book that takes the form of what-seems-like a novel,
opening with an aching dedication of: “myself, soon dead”.

that should tell you all you need to know about the darkness that resides within these pages,
with plenty of discussions on highly triggering topics of tw: depression and suicide.

it is an important novel, no doubt — especially within queer literature.
but it is also one that requires a good head space upon reading.

but largely due to its themes, and the unavoidable fact of the author’s life.
how do you separate fact from fiction? does it even matter?

4.25/5 -- tentative rating

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

An astoundingly odd book, and not necessarily in a good way. The translator (and publisher) makes great claims for Qiu's text, and in some ways they're completely justified. This is a novel in a great tradition stretching back at least to Goethe's Werther: an utterly sincere discussion, in epistolary form, of love and one's authentic self. As well as the literary tradition, Qiu's letter-writer is deeply invested in high art film and late twentieth century French theory, and productively brings them both into her story.

On the other hand, Qiu was only 26 when she killed herself. Gentle reader, consider yourself at 26, and now imagine yourself roughly twice as smart as you were. Do you want to read a book written by that ultra-smart version of yourself? How much stomach do you have for naked emotion disguised as intellectual depth? In order to get to the interesting discussion-with-a-tradition stuff, through how much Hallmark greeting card meets self-help malarkey about true souls and fate and ineradicable connections are you willing to wade?

Well, fear not, because if nothing else this is pretty short, and you can roll your eyes past the truly atrocious bits--or, as I found myself doing, appreciating just how unpleasant it is to be in one's early twenties, intellectual, and have a well-honed sense of the world's injustice (against yourself). Because Qiu captures this exceedingly well. Now my stern aesthetic philosophy voice kicks in with "well yes, but if the author is just *doing* something, rather than *reproducing it ironically*, how much praise can you give?" I have no answer for this. I did not enjoy the "this is how it feels to be 26, single, and aggrieved." I did not enjoy the sensation that, if our letter writer had been male, reviewers would all have pointed out that he was an incredibly creepy, borderline stalker, psychopath. I did not enjoy the boredom and pain induced by a book that harps constantly on some injustice, but never tells us what it is, and leaves me suspecting that there was no more injustice involved here than there is in the life of most young lovers.

And yet I was very happy to read the book. Qiu is exceptionally talented, which becomes obvious in one scene--a scene other reviewers have pointed to. An older woman picks up our letter writer, and they go to the Seine; the description of this scene, plus the eerie calm at the book's conclusion, make it well worth reading. And if nothing else, it's a great book to argue about: how much praise, after all, does someone deserve for doing what everyone does, and writing it down? And would this even be in print if Qiu were still alive?

[Kevin Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s unfortunate that we have no more of Qiu Miaojin words for us to read and be astonished by. The incredibly vulnerable Last Words From Montmartre is just that. Vulnerable and heart-rending. These letters show a side from a writer clearly saying something to us. Unfortunately this was released posthumously and she never could see/read/hear the brilliant results of her work. Notes of a Crocodile was exquisite, this may be better.

[ines]

i hope i never fall in love

[Raul · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book, one I can genuinely claim to have never read anything like it before. The book consists of letters documenting the loss of love, heartbreak in its raw pulpy form, and the mourning thereafter. It’s strange how one, me being the one in question, forgets how intensely these feelings are—were—at the younger periods of our lives, and it was a rush encountering it here because the helplessness, lovelessness, loathing, desperation, rationalizing, clinging, hopelessness, and hopefulness all rang true. I think this book perfectly captures the cycle of love mourning and that age of young queerness when the hurdle of self-acceptance is (seemingly) gotten through and one is trying to remap the world with new bolder eyes and is surprised to find there are more hurdles that need to be gotten through. It’s all terribly familiar despite the writer and the “I” of the story being Taiwanese lesbians living and studying in France. I tried not to be drawn into the death of the writer and the connections it might have with the book (the book begins with an allusion to suicide, the writer also died this way a short period after its completion) for fear of inaccuracy (mine as well as others'), or, worse, romanticizing or fixating whatever ideas that may arise as “intriguing” or “fascinating”, but what an incredible book which, among other things, has stirred my interest to watch Angelopoulos films.

[Misha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qiu Miaojin, an openly queer author, was only 26 when she committed suicide, either stabbing herself with an ice pick or with a kitchen knife, either because she was suffering from depression or heartbreak or both. The details of her death have been the source of so much literary fascination, yet remain vague.

Qiu finished writing Last Words just a week before her death. It's a series of letters that the narrator (Qiu?) writes to her friends, herself and her erstwhile lover, about her heartbreak at the loss of her relationship. Is this book a long suicide note, fiction, an auto-biography or all of them amalgamated together? It's almost impossible to talk about this book because it seems sacrilegious.

Last Words is exquisitely painful to read, mind-numbingly so. I was flitting between awe at the beauty of her writing and utter emotional exhaustion, an inability to go forward at times. I felt like I did while reading The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen, embarrassed and burdened to be the recipient of such raw, intimate, vulnerable exposure of self, just splitting oneself open to judgment and scrutiny. There is such deep, obsessive passion in this writing but also vulnerability, ugliness, selfishness. The narrator goes between victimizing herself, seeing herself as the selfless lover, and admitting to the worst of herself - the domestic violence and the emotional abuse.

There is death throughout the letters, but also her life. Her desperate attempts to resurrect her motivation to live, which she does through cinema, music, connecting with other queer women and friends, a last attempt to find beauty. All the while, the narrator seems to be spiralling, her emotions a whirlwind, detached and losing touch with reality. Throughout, even in her worst moments, the artist is still present. Her pursuit of death, therefore, doesn't exist in a silo, it's not just an act because of a singular reason. It's an artform itself or the culmination of her art.

Last Words From Montmartre is more than a tragedy. It's also a text for queer women, especially queer women artists who can find themselves in the hopelessness and also in the hope in this young writer's attempt to go on, as much as she could, one day at a time.

Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin (translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich).

[celia · Rating 4 out of 5]

some letters moved me more than others, the pieces of romance felt more disperse than the ones from notes of a crocodile. however, due to the format, this book felt even more personal and introspective. the author lets herself loose in certain parts and she just develops and links idea after idea. I’m very glad I’ve read both books by her and honestly I wished I could give her a big tight hug several times like my body could shield her from her own thoughts.

[Fay (inactive bc of exams) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.75

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

a devastating, unabashedly revealing look into heartbreak and betrayal, qiu miaojin's last words from montmartre is a wrenching, epistolary work of (somewhat autobiographical) fiction. qiu, at the young age of 26, committed suicide shortly after completing the book (but before it ever saw publication). now an icon of taiwanese queer culture, qiu's influence endures some two decades after her death.

composed of twenty letters (which, according to the author, can be read in any order), last words from montmartre speaks of both young love and emotional insight perhaps befitting someone far older than the author was at the time of the book's writing. qiu holds nothing back; discussing infidelity, domestic violence, and sexual awakening. as doleful a work as it is, last words also offers a simple beauty unadorned by pretense or literary construct. qiu's candor is, throughout the book, rather disarming. while difficult to read without drawing parallels to the author's own failed romances and eventual fate, last words from montmartre is, nonetheless, a tragic, but treasurable work of art.

i'm sorry i exhausted your patience, wasted away your love; but when you stopped giving me your focused attention, your unqualified benediction, the arrogance of the gods collapsed, and i could only keep silent.

*translated from the chinese by ari larissa heinrich, with an afterword that situates qiu, her life, and her work within the necessary historical, social, political, and sexual context.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Knowledge is a burden and a curse. It is knowledge that led me to this book and knowledge that forbids me from fully entering its gates. It is knowledge that lets me acknowledge the bullet point worth of this edition's translator's afterword as well as decry it as largely being fatuous, self-satisfied filth. It is knowledge that riddles off for me the mean and measure of Yourcenar, Mishima, and Dazai, as well as shames me for not being able to penetrate the 'Orientalist' political obscurity that this edition consigns Qiu Miaojin to until she submits to relocating to Europe. In other words, while I am not quite resigned to knowing that I will need to read this again when an edition that pays full credit to Qiu Miaojin's origins rather than shoving it all under a Eurocentric wunderkind comes out, I am rather infuriated by how glibly a piece like this was shoved out amidst the usual hipster dreck, for what exactly is the use of having "a master's in Chinese literature from Harvard and a PhD in Chinese studies from" UC Berkeley and being a "professor of Chinese literature and media" if you can't reference anything more recent than I Ching when it comes to citing literary heritage outside of the white straight and narrow. In other words, knowledge is what brought me to this wake of vultures, but unfortunately for those salivating whites pawing at the outskirts of their cancerous empire of academia for a thoroughly amputated, safely euthanized bag of fresh "exotic" blood, this suicidal queer is still alive and kicking, and I'll be damned if I see this book sloughed off like all the rest.

If there is ever another earthquake in Tokyo and identities are lost, I will not claim my own name during reconstruction. I won't speak until you lead me out from the crowd, for you will recognize me in my silence.

There's a scene in a psychological horror-thriller series put out in the last decade that showcases the cross sectional dissection of a heretofore crime scene investigator, each layer of her, a Korean American woman, body layered between vertical slices of glass. There's also a Japanese manga called Revolutionary Girl Utena that was first created by an artist collective in 1996, followed by a television adaptation into an anime in 1997 and a feature film in 1999. The latter would go on to heavily influence the making of the animated show Steven Universe and its bisexual, non-binary, and genderqueer creator, while the former is an attempt to portray my reading experience of this book. Looping back to the subject of knowledge, I once said in a review that politics is the first thing you learn about other countries and the last you know about your own. Fortunately for me, Qiu Miaojin is a much greater writer than the translator of this edition is, and her brief portrait of the systematic destruction of a woman loving woman's relationship in the face of rightwing France is as indispensable to this piece as is her methodical tallying of the stresses and strains in her seemingly "apolitical" sexual relationships. Much greater, and much more painful, for it is this ability to come out of herself and turn on her most secret desires and her most shameful outbursts that is ever so familiar to me, and the compassion and skill she wields in the face of heartbreak requires huge amounts of infrastructural support that I doubt she was getting, if the burgeoning government cancelation of her postgraduate program was anything to go by. To turn, and turn, and turn about, with US funded dictatorships as the devil and Occidental Obstinacy as the deep blue sea. Want to know why folks kill themselves? It's to forgo the mockery that calls itself the mental healthcare system and claim the dignity of life before there's no way left but compromise, and with conversion therapy/corrective rape still being pushed in 2022 in the good ol' USA as "compromise," can you blame them?

But how about we turn to the brighter things for a change. The revelation of a favorite professor, the realization of a communal soul, the fulfillment of a courteous lover, the intricate dance of a cross cultural companion. Folks talk about internet bullying and the suicidal sprees of the digital days, but where were you when queer youths all around the world flung their way into porn shops and police kennels in hopes of finding a form of human beyond what is peddled by the martial marital bed of both nationalism and colonialism? Where would Qiu Miaojin be if she hadn't had to stretch her brain to five times as many degrees, languages, and enculturated desires to match the sickly white boy who need only have a single chicken beheaded in front of him to enshrine him in immortal realm of stalwart psychology textbooks? For while I appreciate being able to match some of my favorite authors to hers and look forward in anticipation to others with her full approval, I appreciate more the scenes of ranging with a lover to buy a pet rabbit, witnessing the blooming of the erotic in the swimming of a river, the intricate dioramas she builds that do everything but present a socioeconomic analysis of love under transcontinental pressure, from the land of the rising sun to the city of love and a little island, last stronghold of the Republic of China, in between. It's a stratification of love/loss that certain types would love to shove under "postmodern" and call it a day, but I'll be refraining from any sort of genealogical presumption (especially the lazy ones) until I get through Notes of a Desolate Man and China's Avant-Garde Fiction: An Anthology (Stories of the Sahara is also promising), at the very least. I may not have a doctorate or the slightest bit of appropriate fluency, but with the state of translation being what it is today, I may as well do my part in providing a bit of monetary incentive to those wondering whether anyone cares once the hype from the tortured artist dies down and the survivors are left to pick up the scraps.

I lit a cigarette and asked myself how I could change to keep loving her.

Should you read this book? Who knows. It certainly demonstrates its technical chops in full when it comes to highfalutin literary references (the author studying with Hélène Cixous to boot), but it's also not full of itself, which will be disappointing to certain types who add works like these to their repertoire as a massive "first world" conglomerate adds impoverished "third world" animators to their audiovisual behemoths. Drowned as I am in real world mirroring when reading this text, I have no idea what the fine details of love, loss, and interpersonal negotiation are going to read to someone who has always taken the right to marriage/not be publicly harassed/not be forcibly institutionalized for granted and can barely find Tokyo on a map, let alone Taipei. Break off all that from the names and the motivations and the contortions exacted by geography and cultural convention and it all becomes another bout of dreary hysterics spouted by one too young to know any better, although I'd like to think some of it still stands up for itself here and there (one wonders at the degree in psychology and how much Qiu Miaojin saw herself in those in for treatment and those doing the treating). It's a five star work for me because it feels wrong to rate it anything else, but there's a good chance I won't call it a favorite until I get that second reading in. Certain things turn off, and then, turn on, and negotiating the pain of the reviving limb isn't something that can be done all at once.

There will often still be joy and beauty, I murmured to myself.

It's a piece of my own heart and soul that I say, oh yes, it is rather sad that the author ended her life the way she did. However, surely there are many who didn't kill themselves and are writing to this day. Why aren't you translating them?

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fate is something I refuse to believe in. Fate would have me as a cog alone. Fate would strip me bare. Strip me of me, & yet, as fate would have it, I read this book with the mountainous burden of Miaojin's heart which intertwined with mine so resolute. For I too had suffered a great loss, a love disintegrated, a soul betrayed, perhaps karma redeeming. I too felt the cold hands of suicide trembling around my vital organs, bleeding from my eyes, lips, ears. I felt the searing stab. I read her as I read my own heart to itself. As a reflection of immense loss, in the huddling darkness. Trying to escape the pit of deep wounds to view a future holding something faintly rational. I no longer want to gaze into the eyes of ghostly laughter, of the past smiles imbued with the originality of her heaven, of our heaven, things never before touched at least by me. My heart leapt when hers did. It sunk when hers sunk. It too was jovial. It too was cantankerous. It too longed with the hot deep stakes of pining. It drowned. It shivered in glee & near death. This work is deeply personal in an empathic way. I feel I share many of the same traits. The same qualities & flaws. We share the same qualms with society. Perhaps we share the same erratic romantic tendencies. The same passion whether possessing the world with beauty or destruction & it seems to take place against the will of the host. I take small solace in the fact that I am not alone cursed by this involuntary wretchedness. Small because she took her own life. She is gone. It brought me to tears. This truly was a traumatic reading experience because it held up this painful mirror of self & this particular moment in my life. It felt almost masochistic to finish this read but my love for her grew so much that I had to feel her last words as they were my very own. I bless her with the love she bestowed in her words. I feel her spirit as it has tightly gripped mine. The sincerity is brutal. I have wept for this book like no other. It resonates as two identical notes across the vastness of space time. It is indeed a crucifixion by way of a trinity. Crucified by her self, crucified by her lover or lack thereof, & crucified morbidly by love itself. & she is both a willing & reluctant martyr as are they all before coming to terms with the solace of death. In the end, so many tears were drawn & yet not one do I regret. I love her. Not till the end. There is no end. Only love. Outstretched. For eternity.

[melissabastaleggere · Rating 4 out of 5]

questo libro ha cancellato qualsiasi (scarsissimo e infimo) progresso avessi fatto a colpi di terapia e lamotrigina

[mark mendoza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rocked n' revived by Qiu Miaojin's devastating (literally) Last Words from Montmartre: part lesbian love letter, part fiction, part memoir, part suicide note, part sharp missal from a sweet sister sent straight to my heart.... “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.” (p.20) “Human nature has its fatal weaknesses, but 'love' means embracing the whole of human nature, the bad within the good, the benign within the malicious, the beautiful within within the tragic. 'Love' is the experience of this whole, its unfinished parts, including those of one's own in relation to those of the other.” (p. 141)

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Why bother writing to someone who doesn't deserve your love? Maybe it has nothing to do with the other person but is for my own love."

Love is always a fascinating thing, especially other people's love. It's as much a focal circus for our senses and wits as, I dunno, pro wrestling. In other words, it's amusing to look at, but you don't take it seriously, maybe because it just doesn't seem quite real.
These days, that's more 'shit-life syndrome' kind of speak, since folks seem largely ensconced in so much misery they don't need another's to wallow in.
Well, Qiu has laid all of her miseries out on the table, in a way that is both beautiful, confusing, and sometimes embarrassing. Last Words was her final "fictional" work, a collection of random letters meandering and musing over (and written to) the women that she loved and lost, the various shades of love, desire, and so on, and strident attempts to convince the lost loves that they are wrong.
Given that Qiu committed suicide soon after writing this thinly-fictionalized epistolary collection, the novel is given some frank and brutal poignancy, and that's where you feel almost dirty reading these secret, inner thoughts of someone brutalized and disappointed in love and life.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knowing the trajectory of the author’s life makes this all the more crushing. Extremely heavy and dark subject matter, but written with much sincerity

[June García · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es una historia muy muy intensa contada a través de cartas y otros textos. El formato va cambiando, quién escribe y a quién también, sin dejarlo muy claro. Amores muy obsesivos, vidas muy cargadas de tristeza, increíbles reflexiones sobre el deseo, el arte y el suicidio. Es un libro terrible en verdad, especialmente sabiendo el fin de vida de la autora. De todas maneras siempre es refrescante leer sobre romances entre mujeres, aunque sean así de catastróficos.
"Es la palabra exacta. Prendarse. Me he prendado de ti y de tu mundo, del amor intoxicado que me has traído, de cómo me ves, del carrusel en que hemos vivido para llegar a ese Edén del amor que nunca había creído poder abandonar, del amor visceral. Me he prendado de ti y me he hundido contigo"

[qamar⋆｡°✩ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5☆ — knowing the trajectory of qiu miaojin's life just makes the brutality of the emotion in this book hit a lot harder.

[your brilliant friend · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wholly offered you my two pure halves, only for you to trample them!

Oscar Wilde is said to have said that all bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. “To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic," he wrote. Qiu Miaojin's little novel (if that's what it is) is a case of very genuine, very sincere poetry. She has suffered great amorous disappointments, jilted, it seems, by a number of lovers whom she holds so dear to her heart that she writes them letter after letter telling them the same thing: I love you whether you love me back or not. She seems to think she's too good to be left; more than once she calls herself an artist, yet clearly she isn't much of one. Almost anyone who's been left, jilted, abandoned, could write letters such as she writes here. There are no artistic concerns here, we only have a case of the jilted lover who simply won't move on. And to be fair I'm quite sympathetic, for as she has been left so have I been, and look, we're both in our mid-twenties, and I'd be lying if I said I haven't been forced to write such letters as she writes, trying to prove my innocence, to complain to an unheeding lover; I have felt those pangs, even wrote poems about it. But to think of that as art, to think myself an artist for writing them, to go so far as to call myself an artist, that is where we part, Miss Miaojin. And I'll admit I do not know exactly what 'pure art' is, but this can't be it.

[Phoebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

i really, really enjoyed last words from montmartre and it's given me a lot to think about. it's a powerful look at the enormity of love, heartbreak, and death, one that doesn't shy away from the real ugly depths of it all.

it is an incredibly raw book, both emotionally but honestly technically as well—you can see the writer time would have made qiu into. that being said, the form mirrors the content: the writing is at times unrefined but the narrator's emotional state is raw; it can be repetitive, but that also speaks how the narrator is desperate to be heard and understood by someone who is shutting them out. i found many descriptive passages to be incredibly beautiful, particularly those in tokyo and the scene on the seine. i found myself struck by some of the insights and perspectives on love, passion, and death, and will carry many of these sentences/phrases around with me for a very long time.

(as a note, i use they/them throughout to refer to the narrator, who is a lesbian at times referred to as she/her and at others he/him.)

i felt a lot of sympathy for the narrator, and quite a lot more for their ex-girlfriend xu, the intended recipient of the letters, who is so shrouded by the narrative and the strength of the narrator's own emotions that she is not fully seen until the final letter. throughout, the narrator rails against the injustice xu committed against them, while only briefly mentioning the injustice they committed xu, including physical abuse. we have an incredibly unreliable narrator in last words, but not, i believe, a fully unsympathetic one despite that. i found the book to be an interesting and complex, if unpleasant at times, look at the way that when a person is in deep pain, they are only able to recognize the way people have hurt them and not the way they have hurt others.

there's at times a self-centeredness to the narrative that comes from the rawness, vulnerability, and intensity of the emotions on display. i felt, at different points, a deep, deep sympathy and a deep antipathy. overall, i was very moved. there's a realness and honesty to this novel. there was no artifice, which may sound odd when i say i was particularly struck by the depiction/exploration of the lies the narrator tells themself, but i found that to be real on a deeper level, that in periods of crisis people will tell themselves whatever they need to believe. there is an intense vulnerability to the text that is in part due to how laid bare the narrator/author makes themself. they lay out their admirable passion and their ugliest bits side by side, stripped bare. there is an undeniable desire to be fully understood before death.

i'm finding it difficult to put into words how i feel about the suicide note aspect of this book. i found it profoundly sad. at times it's on the surface and at times just below, shadowing every interaction with the knowledge of their (the narrator's and qiu's) impending, inevitable suicide. i felt this particularly in moments with two different lovers: with yong, the narrator spends their trip to tokyo with death over their head, knowing it will be the last time they see each other, and in a small, sad moment, thinks that all they desire is to live in the light of the sunset on a japanese highway with yong and they'd be okay; with laurence, the narrator reads out their manuscript in a language laurence doesn't speak, and afterward, laurence promises again to take them to greece after they finish their thesis, a trip they never go on. what i found very real and resonant about the book was the highs intermixed with the profound lows. there is normalcy in a deep, suicidal depressive period; there are bright spots and moments of hope and forward thinking. there's the rest of a life until there isn't. last words was a strong reminder too that depression isn't just sadness, it manifests as anger, mood swings, and a complex perspective on life that is at times broad and perceptive and at others self-contained and limited.

last words is both the raw, complex, and personal portrait of the months leading up to suicide and a very perceptive look at love and what people owe each other (and don't).

i assign this book the taylor swift lyrics "don't blame me, love made me crazy / if it doesn't, you ain't doing it right." a nice pairing with taylor swift's reputation era.

[Ren Mooney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masterclass on lesbian loneliness, heartbreak and depression.

[akacya ❦]

2025 reads: 274/300

this novel consists of a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator that tell the story of a passionate relationship between two young women, from their sexual awakening to their eventual demise.

though i’ve had notes of a crocodile on my tbr for much longer than this book, when i saw someone post about this one on twitter i was too intrigued to pass it up. before the letters begin, qiu miaojin tells readers that these letters can be read in any order. i chose to read them in the order presented in the ebook, but i can see how reading them in another order would still make sense, since the book is character-driven and doesn’t have a plot. the best way for me to describe this book would be “hauntingly beautiful.” there are so many quotes about love and sadness (sometimes both at the same time) that i found lovely. the ending of the narrator’s, and qiu’s, story is going to stick with me for a long time.