Venus in Furs · OmniClassics

Venus in Furs by Ritter von Leopold Sacher-Masoch Of this book, intended for private circulation, only 1225 copies have been printed, and type afterward distributed. Translated from the German By FERNANDA SAVAGE Contents INTRODUCTION VENUS IN FURS INTRODUCTION Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born in Lemberg, Austrian Galicia, on January 27, 1836. He studied jurisprudence at Prague and Graz, and in 1857 became a teacher at the latter university. He published several historical works, but soon gave up his academic career to devote himself wholly to literature. For a number of years he edited the international review, _Auf der Höhe_, at Leipzig, but later removed to Paris, for he was always strongly Francophile. His last years he spent at Lindheim in Hesse, Germany, where he died on March 9, 1895. In 1873 he married Aurora von Rumelin, who wrote a number of novels under the pseudonym of Wanda von Dunajew, which it is interesting to note is the name of the heroine of _Venus in Furs_. Her sensational memoirs which have been the cause of considerable controversy were published in 1906. During his career as writer an endless number of works poured from Sacher-Masoch’s pen. Many of these were works of ephemeral journalism, and some of them unfortunately pure sensationalism, for economic necessity forced him to turn his pen to unworthy ends. There is, however, a residue among his works which has a distinct literary and even greater psychological value. His principal literary ambition was never completely fulfilled. It was a somewhat programmatic plan to give a picture of contemporary life in all its various aspects and interrelations under the general title of the _Heritage of Cain_. This idea was probably derived from Balzac’s _Comedie Humaine_. The whole was to be divided into six subdivisions with the general titles _Love, Property, Money, The State, War,_ and _Death_. Each of these divisions in its turn consisted of six novels, of which the last was intended to summarize the author’s conclusions and to present his solution for the problems set in the others. This extensive plan remained unachieved, and only the first two parts, _Love_ and _Property_, were completed. Of the other sections only fragments remain. The present novel, _Venus in Furs_, forms the fifth in the series, _Love_. The best of Sacher-Masoch’s work is characterized by a swift narration and a graphic representation of character and scene and a rich humor. The latter has made many of his shorter stories dealing with his native Galicia little masterpieces of local color. There is, however, another element in his work which has caused his name to become as eponym for an entire series of phenomena at one end of the psycho-sexual scale. This gives his productions a peculiar psychological value, though it cannot be denied also a morbid tinge that makes them often repellent. However, it is well to remember that nature is neither good nor bad, neither altruistic nor egoistic, and that it operates through the human psyche as well as through crystals and plants and animals with the same inexorable laws. Sacher-Masoch was the poet of the anomaly now generally known as _masochism_. By this is meant the desire on the part of the individual affected of desiring himself completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex, and being treated by this person as by a master, to be humiliated, abused, and tormented, even to the verge of death. This motive is treated in all its innumerable variations. As a creative artist Sacher-Masoch was, of course, on the quest for the absolute, and sometimes, when impulses in the human being assume an abnormal or exaggerated form, there is just for a moment a flash that gives a glimpse of the thing in itself. If any defense were needed for the publication of work like Sacher-Masoch’s it is well to remember that artists are the historians of the human soul and one might recall the wise and tolerant Montaigne’s essay _On the Duty of Historians_ where he says, “One may cover over secret actions, but to be silent on what all the world knows, and things which have had effects which are public and of so much consequence is an inexcusable defect.” And the curious interrelation between cruelty and sex, again and again, creeps into literature. Sacher-Masoch has not created anything new in this. He has simply taken an ancient motive and developed it frankly and consciously, until, it seems, there is nothing further to say on the subject. To the violent attacks which his books met he replied in a polemical work, _Über den Wert der Kritik_. It would be interesting to trace the masochistic tendency as it occurs throughout literature, but no more can be done than just to allude to a few instances. The theme recurs continually in the _Confessions_ of Jean Jacques Rousseau; it explains the character of the chevalier in Prévost’s _Manon l’Escault_. Scenes of this nature are found in Zola’s _Nana_, in Thomas Otway’s _Venice Preserved_, in Albert Juhelle’s _Les Pecheurs d’Hommes_, in Dostojevski. In disguised and unrecognized form it constitutes the undercurrent of much of the sentimental literature of the present day, though in most cases the authors as well as the readers are unaware of the pathological elements out of which their characters are built. In all these strange and troubled waters of the human spirit one might wish for something of the serene and simple attitude of the ancient world. Laurent Tailhade has an admirable passage in his _Platres et Marbres_, which is well worth reproducing in this connection: “Toutefois, les Hellènes, dans, leurs cités de lumière, de douceur et d’harmonie, avaient une indulgence qu’on peut nommer scientifique pour les troubles amoureux de l’esprit. S’ils ne regardaient pas l’aliéné comme en proie a la visitation d’un dieu (idée orientale et fataliste), du moins ils savaient que l’amour est une sorte d’envoûtement, une folie où se manifeste l’animosité des puissances cosmiques. Plus tard, le christianisme enveloppa les âmes de ténèbres. Ce fut la grande nuit. L’Église condamna tout ce qui lui parût neuf ou menaçant pour les dogmes implaçable qui reduisaient le monde en esclavage.” Among Sacher-Masoch’s works, _Venus in Furs_ is one of the most typical and outstanding. In spite of melodramatic elements and other literary faults, it is unquestionably a sincere work, written without any idea of titillating morbid fancies. One feels that in the hero many subjective elements have been incorporated, which are a disadvantage to the work from the point of view of literature, but on the other hand raise the book beyond the sphere of art, pure and simple, and make it one of those appalling human documents which belong, part to science and part to psychology. It is the confession of a deeply unhappy man who could not master his personal tragedy of existence, and so sought to unburden his soul in writing down the things he felt and experienced. The reader who will approach the book from this angle and who will honestly put aside moral prejudices and prepossessions will come away from the perusal of this book with a deeper understanding of this poor miserable soul of ours and a light will be cast into dark places that lie latent in all of us. Sacher-Masoch’s works have held an established position in European letters for something like half a century, and the author himself was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French Government in 1883, on the occasion of his literary jubilee. When several years ago cheap reprints were brought out on the Continent and attempts were made by various guardians of morality—they exist in all countries —to have them suppressed, the judicial decisions were invariably against the plaintiff and in favor of the publisher. Are Americans children that they must be protected from books which any European school-boy can purchase whenever he wishes? However, such seems to be the case, and this translation, which has long been in preparation, consequently appears in a limited edition printed for subscribers only. In another connection Herbert Spencer once used these words: “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.” They have a very pointed application in the case of a work like _Venus in Furs_. F. S. Atlantic City April, 1921 VENUS IN FURS _“But the Almighty Lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman.”_ —The Vulgate, Judith, xvi. 7. My company was charming. Opposite me by the massive Renaissance fireplace sat Venus; she was not a casual woman of the half-world, who under this pseudonym wages war against the enemy sex, like Mademoiselle Cleopatra, but the real, true goddess of love. She sat in an armchair and had kindled a crackling fire, whose reflection ran in red flames over her pale face with its white eyes, and from time to time over her feet when she sought to warm them. Her head was wonderful in spite of the dead stony eyes; it was all I could see of her. She had wrapped her marble-like body in a huge fur, and rolled herself up trembling like a cat. “I don’t understand it,” I exclaimed, “It isn’t really cold any longer. For two weeks past we have had perfect spring weather. You must be nervous.” “Much obliged for your spring,” she replied with a low stony voice, and immediately afterwards sneezed divinely, twice in succession. “I really can’t stand it here much longer, and I am beginning to understand—” “What, dear lady?” “I am beginning to believe the unbelievable and to understand the un-understandable. All of a sudden I understand the Germanic virtue of woman, and German philosophy, and I am no longer surprised that you of the North do not know how to love, haven’t even an idea of what love is.” “But, madame,” I replied flaring up, “I surely haven’t given you any reason.” “Oh, you—” The divinity sneezed for the third time, and shrugged her shoulders with inimitable grace. “That’s why I have always been nice to you, and even come to see you now and then, although I catch a cold every time, in spite of all my furs. Do you remember the first time we met?” “How could I forget it,” I said. “You wore your abundant hair in brown curls, and you had brown eyes and a red mouth, but I recognized you immediately by the outline of your face and its marble-like pallor—you always wore a violet-blue velvet jacket edged with squirrel-skin.” “You were really in love with the costume, and awfully docile.” “You have taught me what love is. Your serene form of worship let me forget two thousand years.” “And my faithfulness to you was without equal!” “Well, as far as faithfulness goes—” “Ungrateful!” “I will not reproach you with anything. You are a divine woman, but nevertheless a woman, and like every woman cruel in love.” “What you call cruel,” the goddess of love replied eagerly, “is simply the element of passion and of natural love, which is woman’s nature and makes her give herself where she loves, and makes her love everything, that pleases her.” “Can there be any greater cruelty for a lover than the unfaithfulness of the woman he loves?” “Indeed!” she replied. “We are faithful as long as we love, but you demand faithfulness of a woman without love, and the giving of herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel there—woman or man? You of the North in general take love too soberly and seriously. You talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure.” “That is why our emotions are honorable and virtuous, and our relations permanent.” “And yet a restless, always unsatisfied craving for the nudity of