There is no escaping
the fact that this fictional work’s subject matter and Leve’s own suicide lurks
large as you read through the work. Although it is meant to be an homage to the
narrator’s friend who had committed suicide twenty years earlier you cannot
help to be constantly drawn to the tale of Leve’s own death at his own hands
less than two weeks after he delivered to manuscript to his editor.
It is a very similar story with Qiu Miaojin’s work, as our
translator, Ari Larissa Heinrich, eloquently says in her 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”.
In other words, I’m approaching the last words with a
predetermined thought pattern. And one cannot underestimate the powerfulness of
this work.
Qiu was a published author and celebrated lesbian icon in
Taiwan before her death, so our work is not attracting attention purely based
on her tragic final act.
Our story takes the form of twenty one letters and introduction
and conclusion, as our author points out “If this book should be published,
readers can begin anywhere. The only connection between the chapters is the
time frame in which they were written.” In fact the “letters” do not follow a
strict numerical sequence with “letter five” appearing after “letter seventeen”,
which in itself is repeated twice (as a heading) and appears after “letter ten”.
Please don’t feel burdened by
this. It’s just that I still have so much to give. I want to give you
everything there is to give. The sweet juice has yet to be completely squeezed
from the fruit. All the hurt has not yet severed the cord I’ve tied to your
body, so I’ve returned to your side to sing for you. You nearly severed it, but
a gossamer filament is still suspended there. I don’t know when you’ll make the
final, lethal cut, but before that happens I will cling to you and sing with
all my heart.
This is from “Letter One”, a love letter to her ex-girlfriend
Xu. And the letters about her love that will never waiver continue. The waves
from elation to depression, from obsession to rejection are presented to us as
raw as a French steak tartare. This is a work where you are watching a train
wreck about to happen and you simply do not have the power to look away:
If I told you the truth, Yong,
would I have to drown myself as Osamu Dazai chose to do upon finishing No Longer Human? Remember that time when
we went to the Institute of Modern Literature and saw photographs of the
recovery effort for Dazai’s body and you promised to take me to the river where
he drowned himself. I was thrilled by your suggestion. Yong, when will I die?
For a long time I’ve appreciated Dazai, as you know, in a different way than
other artists. He didn’t reach his potential, he died before he could become a
great name, and Yukio Mishima made fun of him for having “weak vitality.” But
this is irrelevant, really. People can make fun of him all they want, and yet
the ones who do are often the same ones trying to hide some sort of corruption
or hypocrisy, even Mishima. Dazai and I basically share the same nature. Yong,
I’d like to go to Tokyo to see the river where he drowned before I die. Will
you take me there, to the place you didn’t have time to take me last time?
Although twenty-one “letters” they are not all addressed,
some are to her ex Xu, others to Yong, some even appear to be simply noting
events in her own life as though self-addressed, this gives us the context of
her break down, of her current state of mind and builds the tension and
explains the events in her life. A country girl from Taiwan, who is exiled in
Paris for study, although fitting in, not being able to retain her own culture,
a girl who travels to Japan, a girl who loves the movies of Russian and Greek greats.
What is presented on the page is a melding of cultures of sexuality of being a
woman of simply being human.
Xu,
Maybe this letter doesn’t fit
with the book as a whole. When I’d written as far as the tenth letter the book
had already taken on a life of its own. It had its own aesthetic style, its own
themes, plus the content and ideas were already mapped in my head. I’ve written
nearly half of it and the prose has found its own style organically. It seems I
can’t speak honestly to you through the book anymore. IT now expresses more
than what I’d wanted to convey to you: it has grown denser, more beautiful, and
you won’t be able to appreciate its whole value until I’ve finished writing it.
It won’t be a great work of art, but it could be a book of true purity: the
detailed, thorough excavation of one very small field of a young person’s life.
This quote is from “Letter Five”, placed after “Letter
Seventeen” (as explained above) and until this stage of the work it didn’t read
like a “novel”, being engrossed in Qiu’s private thoughts and feelings as
though I was a “peeping Tom” on her world, this work is very voyeuristic in
style. And besides the inner machinations of Qiu’s mind, we also get an
understanding of her deep education and reverence for fine art, film,
sculpture, and writing.
If we revere and celebrate Karl Ove Knaugaard’s ramblings
through his “My Struggle” series, his examination of the minutiae, his self-indulgence,
then there is no reason why we shouldn’t indulge Qiu Miaojin and her ramblings.
It is not until page 89 of a 146 page work when suicide is
explicitly discussed, although there have been many many deep ruminations on
death itself, “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…”
Although “branded” as “queer literature” I personally feel
this could potentially restrict the readership of this work. Whilst the gay
references are startling in their obviousness, this book is more a celebration
of life, an examination of obsession, of love, of a broken heart, of a young
girl taken outside of her comfort zone and culture. Again, as our translator
points out in the Afterword:
Although Qiu was
celebrated in Taiwan as a national prodigy, she saw herself as part of an
international community of writers and artists both living and dead and, crucially,
as part of a community unconstrained by conventional labels and categories such
as “lesbian,” “Chinese,” or even “woman.” Like the Japanese and French writers
she revered, Qiu saw herself in dialogue with “classic, albeit mostly
avant-garde, world art and literature.
Personally this work was a revelation, one that I am
disappointed did not make the Best Translated Book Award shortlist. This leads
me to commit to a post once I’ve completed the reading of the longlist, announcing
my favourite ten works which I feel should have made up the shortlist, as I can
guarantee quite categorically this would make my final ten, at the expense of
at least four works which did feature.
If you want to be pushed into a rollercoaster world of love,
elation, depression, self-harm self-deprecating behaviour and then celebration
of life then get a copy of this novel. Quite simply (again) a revelation.
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