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Venus in Furs
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Table of Contents
Harper Perennial Forbidden Classics
But the Almighty Lord hath struck him,
Gogol, the Russian Molière, says – where? well,
(continued) I placed the furs about her,
…I am beginning to like the things you speak of. The enthusiasm with which you speak of a Pompadour, a Catherine the Great, 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.
Harper Perennial Forbidden Classics
I
Fanny Hill John Cleland
II
Justine Marquis de Sade
III
Venus in Furs Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
IV
The Pearl Anonymous
V
My Secret Life Walter
VI
The Way of a Man with a Maid Anonymous
VII
The Autobiography of a Flea Stanislas de Rhodes
VIII
Sadopaideia Anonymous
IX
Venus in India ‘Captain Charles Devereaux’
X
Emmanuelle Emmanuelle Arsan
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 ununderstandable. 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 recognised 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.
