Venus in Furs
bed, and can’t go to sleep,” she said. “Now come and stay with me.”
“In a moment.”
As I entered Wanda was crouching by the fireplace where she had kindled
a small fire.
“Autumn is coming,” she began, “the nights are really quite cold
already. I am afraid you may not like it, but I can’t put off my furs
until the room is sufficiently warm.”
“Not like it—you are joking—you know—” I threw my arm around her, and
kissed her.
“Of course, I know, but why this great fondness for furs?”
“I was born with it,” I replied. “I already had it as a child.
Furthermore furs have a stimulating effect on all highly organized
natures. This is due both to general and natural laws. It is a physical
stimulus which sets you tingling, and no one can wholly escape it.
Science has recently shown a certain relationship between electricity
and warmth; at any rate, their effects upon the human organism are
related. The torrid zone produces more passionate characters, a heated
atmosphere stimulation. Likewise with electricity. This is the reason
why the presence of cats exercises such a magic influence upon
highly-organized men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces
of the animal kingdom, these adorable, scintillating electric batteries
have been the favorite animal of a Mahommed, Cardinal Richelieu,
Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland.”
“A woman wearing furs, then,” cried Wanda, “is nothing else than a
large cat, an augmented electric battery?”
“Certainly,” I replied. “That is my explanation of the symbolic meaning
which fur has acquired as the attribute of power and beauty. Monarchs
and the dominant higher nobility in former times used it in this sense
for their costume, exclusively; great painters used it only for queenly
beauty. The most beautiful frame, which Raphael could find for the
divine forms of Fornarina and Titian for the roseate body of his
beloved, was dark furs.”
“Thanks for the learned discourse on love,” said Wanda, “but you
haven’t told me everything. You associate something entirely individual
with furs.”
“Certainly,” I cried. “I have repeatedly told you that suffering has a
peculiar attraction for me. Nothing can intensify my passion more than
tyranny, cruelty, and especially the faithlessness of a beautiful
woman. And I cannot imagine this woman, this strange ideal derived from
an aesthetics of ugliness, this soul of Nero in the body of a Phryne,
except in furs.”
“I understand,” Wanda interrupted. “It gives a dominant and imposing
quality to a woman.”
“Not only that,” I continued. “You know I am _supersensual._ With me
everything has its roots in the imagination, and thence it receives its
nourishment. I was already pre-maturely developed and highly sensitive,
when at about the age of ten the legends of the martyrs fell into my
hands. I remember reading with a kind of horror, which really was
rapture, of how they pined in prisons, were laid on the gridiron,
pierced with arrows, boiled in pitch, thrown to wild animals, nailed to
the cross, and suffered the most horrible torment with a kind of joy.
To suffer and endure cruel torture from then on seemed to me exquisite
delight, especially when it was inflicted by a beautiful woman, for
ever since I can remember all poetry and everything demonic was for me
concentrated in woman. I literally carried the idea into a sort of
cult.
“I felt there was something sacred in sex; in fact, it was the only
sacred thing. In woman and her beauty I saw something divine, because
the most important function of existence—the continuation of the
species—is her vocation. To me woman represented a personification of
nature, _Isis_, and man was her priest, her slave. In contrast to him
she was cruel like nature herself who tosses aside whatever has served
her purposes as soon as she no longer has need for it. To him her
cruelties, even death itself, still were sensual raptures.
“I envied King Gunther whom the mighty Brunhilde fettered on the bridal
night, and the poor troubadour whom his capricious mistress had sewed
in the skins of wolves to have him hunted like game. I envied the
Knight Ctirad whom the daring Amazon Scharka craftily ensnared in a
forest near Prague, and carried to her castle Divin, where, after
having amused herself a while with him, she had him broken on the
wheel—”
“Disgusting,” cried Wanda. “I almost wish you might fall into the hands
of a woman of their savage race. In the wolf’s skin, under the teeth of
the dogs, or upon the wheel, you would lose the taste for your kind of
poetry.”
“Do you think so? I hardly do.”
“Have you actually lost your senses.”
“Possibly. But let me go on. I developed a perfect passion for reading
stories in which the extremest cruelties were described. I loved
especially to look at pictures and prints which represented them. All
the sanguinary tyrants that ever occupied a throne; the inquisitors who
had the heretics tortured, roasted, and butchered; all the woman whom
the pages of history have recorded as lustful, beautiful, and violent
women like Libussa, Lucretia Borgia, Agnes of Hungary, Queen Margot,
Isabeau, the Sultana Roxolane, the Russian Czarinas of last century—all
these I saw in furs or in robes bordered with ermine.”
“And so furs now rouse strange imaginings in you,” said Wanda, and
simultaneously she began to drape her magnificent fur-cloak
coquettishly about her, so that the dark shining sable played
beautifully around her bust and arms. “Well, how do you feel now, half
broken on the wheel?”
Her piercing green eyes rested on me with a peculiar mocking
satisfaction. Overcome by desire, I flung myself down before her, and
threw my arms about her.
“Yes—you have awakened my dearest dream,” I cried. “It has slept long
enough.”
“And this is?” She put her hand on my neck.
I was seized with a sweet intoxication under the influence of this warm
little hand and of her regard, which, tenderly searching, fell upon me
through her half-closed lids.
_“To be the slave of a woman, a beautiful woman, whom I love, whom I
worship.”_
“And who on that account maltreats you,” interrupted Wanda, laughing.
“Yes, who fetters me and whips me, treads me underfoot, the while she
gives herself to another.”
“And who in her wantonness will go so far as to make a present of you
to your successful rival when driven insane by jealousy you must meet
him face to face, who will turn you over to his absolute mercy. Why
not? This final tableau doesn’t please you so well?”
I looked at Wanda frightened.
“You surpass my dreams.”
“Yes, we women are inventive,” she said, “take heed, when you find your
ideal, it might easily happen, that she will treat you more cruelly
than you anticipate.”
“I am afraid that I have already found my ideal!” I exclaimed, burying
my burning face in her lap.
“Not I?” exclaimed Wanda, throwing off her furs and moving about the
room laughing. She was still laughing as I went downstairs, and when I
stood musing in the yard, I still heard her peals of laughter above.
* * * * *
“Do you really then expect me to embody your ideal?” Wanda asked
archly, when we met in the park to-day.
At first I could find no answer. The most antagonistic emotions were
battling within me. In the meantime she sat down on one of the
stone-benches, and played with a flower.
“Well—am I?”
I kneeled down and seized her hands.
“Once more I beg you to become my wife, my true and loyal wife; if you
can’t do that then become the embodiment of my ideal, absolutely,
without reservation, without softness.”
“You know I am ready at the end of a year to give you my hand, if you
prove to be the man I am seeking,” Wanda replied very seriously, “but I
think you would be more grateful to me if through me you realized your
imaginings. Well, which do you prefer?”
“I believe that everything my imagination has dreamed lies latent in
your personality.”
“You are mistaken.”
“I believe,” I continued, “that you enjoy having a man wholly in your
power, torturing him—”
“No, no,” she exclaimed quickly, “or perhaps—.” She pondered.
“I don’t understand myself any longer,” she continued, “but I have a
confession to make to you. You have corrupted my imagination and
inflamed my blood. I am beginning to like the things you speak of. The
enthusiasm with which you speak of a Pompadour, a Catherine the Second,
and all the other selfish, frivolous, cruel women, carries me away and
takes hold of my soul. It urges me on to become like those women, who
in spite of their vileness were slavishly adored during their lifetime
and still exert a miraculous power from their graves.
“You will end by making of me a despot in miniature, a domestic
Pompadour.”
“Well then,” I said in agitation, “if all this is inherent in you, give
way to this trend of your nature. Nothing half-way. If you can’t be a
true and loyal wife to me, be a demon.”
I was nervous from loss of sleep, and the proximity of the beautiful
woman affected me like a fever. I no longer recall what I said, but I
remember that I kissed her feet, and finally raised her foot and put my
neck under it. She withdrew it quickly, and rose almost angrily.
“If you love me, Severin,” she said quickly, and her voice sounded
sharp and commanding, “never speak to me of those things again.
Understand, never! Otherwise I might really—” She smiled and sat down
again.
“I am entirely serious,” I exclaimed, half-raving. “I adore you so
infinitely that I am willing to suffer anything from you, for the sake
of spending my whole life near you.”
“Severin, once more I warn you.”
“Your warning is vain. Do with me what you will, as long as you don’t
drive me away.”
“Severin,” replied Wanda, “I am a frivolous young woman; it is
dangerous for you to put yourself so completely in my power. You will
end by actually becoming a plaything to me. Who will give warrant that
I shall not abuse your insane desire?”
“Your own nobility of character.”
“Power makes people over-bearing.”
“Be it,” I cried, “tread me underfoot.”
Wanda threw her arms around my neck, looked into my eyes, and shook her
head.
“I am afraid I can’t, but I will try, for your sake, for I love you
Severin, as I have loved no other man.”
* * * * *
To-day she suddenly took her hat and shawl, and I had to go shopping
with her. She looked at whips, long whips with a short handle, the kind
that are used on dogs.
“Are these satisfactory?” said the shopkeeper.
“No, they are much too small,” replied Wanda, with a side-glance at me.
“I need a large—”
“For a bull-dog, I suppose?” opined the merchant.
“Yes,” she exclaimed, “of the kind that are used in Russia for
intractable slaves.”
She looked further and finally selected a whip, at whose sight I felt a
strange creeping sensation.
“Now good-by, Severin,” she said. “I have some other purchases to make,
but you can’t go along.”
I left her and took a walk. On the way back I saw Wanda coming out at a
furrier’s. She beckoned me.
“Consider it well,” she began in good spirits, “I have never made a
secret of how deeply your serious, dreamy character has fascinated me.
The idea of seeing this serious man wholly in my power, actually lying
enraptured at my feet, of course, stimulates me—but will this
attraction last? Woman loves a man; she maltreats a slave, and ends by
kicking him aside.”
“Very well then, kick me aside,” I replied, “when you are tired of me.
I want to be your slave.”
“Dangerous forces lie within me,” said Wanda, after we had gone a few
steps further. “You awaken them, and not to your advantage. You know
how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors. What would
you say should I try my hand at them, and make you the first object of