This article employs failure and mourning as central lenses to examine the aesthetic orientation and anti-modern sensibility of Ba Jin’s New Life. Chapter Two analyzes how the protagonist Li Leng’s memories of failure are articulated through the novel’s diary form. Li Leng is a survivor who carries the memory of Du Daxin‘s failed assassination and death. The diary’s first person narration renders these memories and their depressive affect with immediacy, positioning the diary as a site of reflection on the past. Chapter Three traces the intensification of Li Leng’s memories of failure within the urban space of Shanghai and the emergence of his bohemian consciousness. Chapter Four examines Li Leng’s process of mourning the dark past, the role of interpersonal encouragement, and solidarity in enabling him to move beyond them. Through the completion of mourning, Li Leng comes to envision an alternative form of life grounded in newly forged beliefs. Taken together, this study argues that mourning, as it emerges from memories of failure and death, reveals an anti-modern potential distinct from the logic of “victorious modernity.”