The Eng-Lite Program Lecture Series: Talk No 1
Time：2023.09.15（Fri.）13:20-15:20
Topic：Intertextuality in the Works of Qiu Miaojin: Focusing on the Notes of a Crocodile
Speaker：Tarumi Chie,Emeritus Professor, Yokohama National University
Host：Wen-Hsun Chang, Associate Professor and Institute Director, Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Taiwan University
Venue: R404, Xinsheng Lecture Bldg.
By Conrad C. Carl
This semester’s inaugural talk by Professor Chie Yomota-Tarumi is first and foremost concerned with Qiu Miaojin. Through the lens of intertextuality, specifically with regards to Qiu’s renowned novel Notes of a Crocodile, Professor Yomota-Tarumi shows how questions about lesbian personhood and identity are renegotiated.
Professor Yomota-Tarumi’s extensive research interests range from Taiwan’s literature during the Japanese occupation to queer literature of the last few decades which she regards as pivotal in shaping the literary landscape of post-martial law Taiwan. Choosing Qiu Miaojin—one of the trailblazers of LGBTQ literature in Taiwan—as her subject of today’s talk is naturally something we are all eager to learn more about.
Qiu Miaojin—1969 born in Changhua, Taiwan—graduated from Taipei’s renowned First Girls’ High School before enrolling in the psychology department at National Taiwan University. During her university days, Qiu wrote essays and novels which earned her several literary awards and through which she quickly made a name for herself. After graduation and a short intermezzo as a journalist, she moved to Paris in 1994 to further her studies. In 1995, Qiu took her own life.
What is the background of Qiu’s writing? If we take a look at the historical juncture that formed the backdrop against which Qiu was writing, Professor Yomota-Tarumi readily identifies the gay rights movement internationally and the lifting of martial law in Taiwan in 1987 as the two most crucial elements. The year 1987 was pivotal in the Taiwanese context because it allowed the Democratic Progressive Party to be officially formed after a long period of struggle and suppression. With this, we also see the rise of the lesbian and gay rights movement.
Notes of a Crocodile in 1994 is Qiu’s most famous work (its Japanese translation was published in 2008—this is an important detail for the discussion on intertextuality later on) and was awarded the Special Award of the China Times Literature Awards in 1995. Notes of a Crocodile is a novel with a first-person narrator. However, as Lucifer Hung once poignantly pointed out, the exceptionality of this work lies in the successive chain reactions it created as they pertain to the predicaments of being a lesbian. Life, death, love, the absolute, the impossible—these longings appear plenty throughout the text and the kind of lonesomeness and anxiety thus expressed establish it as something that goes far beyond the conventional restrictions of a first-person narrated novel. Or as Ta-wei Chi put it, Qiu’s writing often struck a balance between the shade of grief and the light of the hilarious. Lazi is the first-person narrator, the crocodile, though, is a third-person narrated perspective—here we see combined humor and wit with a social conscience and critique. After Qiu’s early death, the two names of these characters later on became synonyms for being a lesbian in both Taiwan and China. The similarities to Qiu herself are striking, for Lazi’s college period stretched from 1987 to 1991—just as Qiu’s. With this general information in mind, Professor Yomota-Tarumi now enters her discussion on intertextuality.
But what is intertextuality? Julia Kristeva—who prominently coined this term—understands every text as a product of assimilation and transformation of other texts. What are the direct and indirect references to other texts and sources? How does a text reinterpret previous authors and texts and how is this weaved into the larger discourse?
In Notes of a Crocodile, Professor Yomota-Tarumi points to the abundance of references ranging from film directors, artists and writers. One of the richest sources is undoubtedly Japanese literature. Qiu makes recourses to—among others—Osamu Dazai, Yukio Mishima, Kōbō Abe and Haruki Murakami. The last name is of particular interest. His novel Norwegian Wood is mentioned several times by Qiu’s narrating voice. And there is something that Norwegian Wood and Notes of a Crocodile have in common—the lesbian image. On the surface level, Murakami’s design of the relationship between Naoko and Reiko—two important female characters of Norwegian Wood—and their encounter in a mountain asylum is steered towards friendship. That being said, in Qiu’s reading there is a palpable homosexual connection between the two. After Qiu Miaojin’s death, one can argue that this thread was picked up again by Murakami with his book Sputnik Sweetheart (1999) where he explored the romantic facets of the two female characters Sumire and Miu. This dynamic is something that an intertextual lens helps us make explicit, Professor Yomota-Tarumi shows. What lied implicitly and vaguely in Murakami’s Norwegian Wood and received a clearer explication in Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile, was yet again picked up in Sputnik Sweetheart—assimilation and transformation. And Professor Yomota-Tarumi spins this thread even further. Li Kotomi is a Taiwanese fiction writer who received fame and recognition mostly for her works written in Japanese. In An Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom, LGBTQ motifs appear in abundance. And even Notes’s Lazi appears again as a specific reference. Qiu Miaojin’s character—and even herself—are absorbed into the fabric of Kotomi’s text where they enter hitherto unknown relations and, in this way, become markers of the discursive quality of her work. Concepts the likes of intertextuality can be hard to fathom in its application because of their abstract nature. Professor Yomota-Tarumi’s talk shed light on how a concrete intertextual perspective could actually look like. She explicated the dialogue between Murakami and other Japanese authors, to Qiu Miaojin’s writing and her lesbian identity and further to Li Kotomi’s LGBTQ awareness, showing strikingly how intertextuality also transcends languages—in this case Mandarin and Japanese.
For this enlightening presentation and the great insights it provided, we want to thank Professor Yomota-Taromi!