On loving madly
A review of Qiu Miaojin's Last Words from Montmartre
“Peut-être dans la foule, une âme que j’ignore
Aurait compris mon âme, et m’aurait répondu ?”
- Alphonse de Lamartine, « L’automne », Méditations poétiques, 1981
Yesterday I finished reading Last Words from Montmartre from Taiwanese author Qiu Miaojin and I don’t remember ever reading a novel that translates and encapsulates what it feels like to be as madly and irrevocably in love as this one.
This book is not a romance book, nor is it a love story. It is however a story of yearning, of maddening love, of someone caught under the spell of another person. The kind of love that is forever tangled up with hate, the kind you can’t escape no matter how much the other has wounded you, the kind of love that both kills you and makes you feel alive. I had yet to read a book that would encapsulate so perfectly how it feels like to love madly someone that has also hurt you. How it feels like to love someone who’s very person makes you want to set yourself on fire yet you cannot help but keep on loving them. When that person becomes the very air you breathe and the punctuation of every sentence you write or think.
Last Words from Montmartre is structured as a series of letters and diary entries addressed by the narrator (Zoe) to various lovers, friends, and family members, offering an intimate glimpse into the protagonist’s inner world. Zoe moved from Taiwan to Paris for her studies and “to find beauty”. Her 3 year relationship with Xu has just ended and her pet rabbit just died. She is spiraling, choking on the love that once made her feel so alive.
More than letters, they feel like a journal into the spiraling and maddening world of coping with a love that’s ended, loving someone that can’t love you back or at least not in the way that you love them. Sometimes repetitive and frustrating, these letters recall the exact emotions of someone drunk in love, who cannot and will not escape the undying love they have for someone. I do not recommend it if you are actively healing from such a love as this book will break your heart into tiny pieces for it achieves to word such an experience in the most accurate ways possible. (Yes I did find myself sobbing in my bed because of how relatable it all felt).
Sometimes love, pain, hurt, anger and hatred coexist within one relationship, sometimes you want to make it work so desperately despite all the hurt but you end up holding up grievances because after all you’re only human. But despite all the pain, the treason, the hurt, the agony, you find yourself unable to unlove this person, worse even, you love them even more in spite of that. Because at least now, you get the chance to feel things. Amanda Petrusich, a journalist at The New Yorker, wrote that “desire is often a catastrophic force, obliterating our best intentions for ourselves” and I cannot find better words to explain the desire to love someone fully and wholeheartedly. When passionate people, artists, love people, we tend to go over the top and love them so passionately that we end up losing a piece of ourselves - this book is exactly that.
This book is a love declaration to Love itself, the concept of it being eternal. It is a subject that the author brushes upon, talking about concepts of eternity when it comes to love but also sexuality, hatred, despair and madness. What do you do with all the love you have for a person once it is all over? How can something so pure and beautiful can be over? Who is there to blame when a relationship breathes its final breath? Is it ever really over? This novel not only reminded me of my own ability to love so fully but also, ironically, gave me a new hope when it comes to life. The main character is both suffering from heartbreak as well as growing closer to her friends. Through the meeting of her soul with another, she was able to be born alive, for her life to find purpose. And perhaps that is the most beautiful thing about this book, it doesn’t just break your heart, it reminds you that love is never a waste and that being broken open is what makes you capable of loving in the first place.
Qiu Miaojin, thank you, I will definitely be reading your other novel, your journals and watching all the movies you recommended. Thank you for making me feel a tiny bit less crazy about the way I love people - and especially that one person.