[bapimporb]

Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Translated by Joachim Neugroschel


When young nobleman Severin von Kusiemski meets the beautiful young widow Wanda von Dunajew at a Carpathian resort, he believes he's found his perfect woman ? a veritable Venus, particularly when draped in her furs.

For the "suprasensual" Kusiemski has, since boyhood, nurtured an idea of idealised woman ? beautiful and powerful as the Greek gods. And fit for him to worship and serve.

As he and Wanda fall in love ? he pleads with her to fulfil his fantasies and use him as a slave, as cruelly as she cares. Eventually, she agrees.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's notorious 1870 novella, which inspired Austrian psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing to coin the word 'masochism' in his Psychopathia Sexualis 16 years later, is a fascinating read.

Krafft-Ebing regarded male masochism as a "sexual anomaly" ? the female version didn't even register on psychiatry's scale, since it was considered the normal and natural state for a woman, particularly in terms of relationships with men.

But Wanda is the most intriguing character here. As the story opens, she has no apparent inclination for dominance, but is looking for someone to, in effect, master her. Yet even at this point, she doesn't fit any traditional idea of female submission: she a liberal, liberated woman who wants to experience a particular variety of passionate relationship. What Kusiemski does is awaken another side of her sexual character ? introduce her to the possibility of a different type of passionate relationship.

It's a masterpiece of erotic fiction, but like the best literary porn, goes beyond a simple litany of fleshy pleasures.

Sacher-Masoch also uses his tale to appeal for equality of the sexes. Although he himself was submissive (he signed a contract with his mistress, Fanny Pistor, to be her slave in similar fashion to that in his book), the novella suggests that he himself ultimately saw such relationships as unnatural and a direct consequence of the inequality of the sexes.

He also uses the book to comment on differences between northern and southern Europe.

Having arrived in Florence, the suffering Kusiemski notes that: "Supposedly, dying is easier in the south".

And things become a little clearer a few pages later when he notes, of a besotted young German artist who is painting Wanda: "He began a Madonna, a Madonna with red hair and green eyes! He wanted to turn this fiery woman into the image of virginity: only the idealism of a German can do that".

The suppression of sensual pleasure beneath a neo-puritan idea has been a widespread symptom of Protestantism in many forms in northern Europe ? the 'Protestant work ethic' is one aspect of it. Another form is the ideal of a womanhood that desexualises women ? turning Wanda into a virgin here.

Sacher-Masoch contrasts this with the southern ? ancient, Classical ? ideal of voluptuous and strong woman.

There is an idea that Classical (pagan) ideas are more natural and enjoyable than those current at the time (ie Christian ones); a sense of human nature and life and relationships having been warped by Christianity.

It's little wonder that Sacher-Masoch was viewed as 'perverted', a 'perversion' that was a threat to the society of the time, to the 'order' of society and a challenge to the religious beliefs that helped maintain that order. And indeed, it harks back to the man with whom he is now eternally linked ? the Marquis de Sade, whose greatest 'crime' in terms of the state that imprisoned him for so long, was his blasphemy.

Entertaining and interesting.

[SusanSazzios]

A fascinating book. There are so many references to literary, legendary or historical figures peppered throughout, it was an education of sorts just tracking down who all the names belonged to.

>>Sacher-Masoch also uses his tale to appeal for equality of the sexes.

I'm glad I'm not just reading it into the book. I was quite surprised to read these words in what is often a somewhat misogynist work:

'...woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work.' I suppose the key divergence between my own views and the author's here are in the words 'as nature has created her'. Leave those words out and you have a veritable feminist manifesto.

This book certainly has many more depths to it than one would think. It also whetted an interest to read more on Sacher-Masoch's works; sadly most of them remain untranslated and unavailable.

[ehib8yPc]

Jayaprakash, you say:

It also whetted an interest to read more on Sacher-Masoch's works; sadly most of them remain untranslated and unavailable. This demonstrates that if you want to read about kinky sex, you have to learn languages: Sade and Sacher-Masoch show that the proof of the torte is in the whipping.

Excerpt from this "feminist" tract:

"As the slave of Mme. von Dunajew he is to bear the name Gregor, and he is unconditionally to comply with every one of her wishes, and to obey every one of her commands; he is always to be submissive to his mistress, and is to consider her every sign of favor as an extraordinary mercy.

"Mme. von Dunajew is entitled not only to punish her slave as she deems best, even for the slightest inadvertence or fault, but also is herewith given the right to torture him as the mood may seize her or merely for the sake of whiling away the time. Should she so desire, she may kill him whenever she wishes; in short, he is her
unrestricted property. Source: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8vnsf10.txt

So this is equality of the sexes, eh? More:

Wanda swiftly approached me. Her white satin dress flowed behind her in a long train, like silver, like moonlight; her hair flared like flames against the white fur of her jacket. Now she stood in front of me with her left hand firmly planted on her hips, in her right hand she held the whip. She uttered an abrupt laugh.

"Now play has come to an end between us," she said with heartless coldness. "Now we will begin in dead earnest. You fool, I laugh at you and despise you; you who in your insane infatuation have given yourself as a plaything to me, the frivolous and capricious woman. You are no longer the man I love, but my slave, at my mercy even unto life and death.

"You shall know me!

"First of all you shall have a taste of the whip in all seriousness, without having done anything to deserve it, so that you may understand what to expect, if you are awkward, disobedient, or refractory."

With a wild grace she rolled back her fur-lined sleeve, and struck me across the back. A fish called Wanda? Plenty of whips, black boots and bondage in the sex shops of Amsterdam. Colour photos, nowadays. Do you reckon Sacher-Torte would have won the Nobel? More:

"I no longer please you; I suppose I'll have to be cruel to you again, evidently I have been too kind to you to-day. Do you know, you little fool, what I shall do, I shall whip you for a while--"

"But child--"

"I want to."

"Wanda!"

"Come, let me bind you," she continued, and ran gaily through the room. "I want to see you very much in love, do you understand? Here are the ropes. I wonder if I can still do it?"

She began with fettering my feet and then she tied my hands behind my back, pinioning my arms like those of a prisoner.

"So," she said, with gay eagerness. "Can you still move?"

"No."

"Fine--"

She then tied a noose in a stout rope, threw it over my head, and let it slip down as far as the hips. She drew it tight, and bound me to a pillar.

A curious tremor seized me at that moment.

[SusanSazzios]

As I've said, the passage I quoted stood out because it seemed at odds with much of the other material in the book.

I think a smattering of Sanskrit will suffice in the pursuit of kinky sex texts.

[nannysuetle]

You've been reading some weird stuff lately: first Belle du Jour, now this

[ehib8yPc]

To put it bluntly, I think that too keen an interest in either Sacher-Masoch or Sade is mostly an excuse by people, students, and other beings to allow themselves to wallow in kinky sex without attracting the label of "sicko" or "perv".

Surely, the passages that I quoted in my last posting have no literary value whatsoever. They could have come out of one of those dirty novels they bought a hundred years ago from Paris bouquinistes, when Brits were so strait-laced (sorry!). In the days before you could watch whips and black boots orgies on DVD.

I have never actually done so, but as I have said, in liberal Amsterdam, where whole streets are filled with sex shops, and the brothels are partly owned by the east European mafia, you don't have to pretend to be literate to read, watch or indulge in this sort of stuff. And there's the internet. So Sacher-Sade is such old hat.

The passage that Jayapradash quotes is one of those pseudo-philosophical ones, added to justify the "profundity" of the book, hoping that potential censors would overlook the other hundred pages of flagellation and ejaculation.

Or maybe the translation from the French is crap. Maybe Sacher's trying to emulate Pig Male Eon". Or Educating Rita...

I studied everything in a jumble without system, without selection: chemistry, alchemy, history, astronomy, philosophy, law, anatomy, and literature; I read Homer, Virgil, Ossian, Schiller, Goethe, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Voltaire, Moliere, the Koran, the Kosmos, Casanova's Memoirs. I grew more confused each day, more fantastical, more supersensual. All the time a beautiful ideal woman hovered in my imagination. Every so and so often she appeared before me like a vision among my leather-bound books and dead bones, lying on a bed of roses, surrounded by cupids. Sometimes she appeared gowned like the Olympians with the stern white face of the plaster Venus; sometimes in braids of a rich brown, blue-eyes, in my aunt's red velvet kazabaika, trimmed with ermine. He just got randy, reading literature and philosophy.

[SusanSazzios]

Of course there's a great deal of prurient interest here. I'm interested in sex. It's fascinating. And so is the chocolate cake's weird mix of somewhat laughable roleplaying fantasies and the possibly gratuitously philsophical potshots he takes in this book. Both are fascinating to me, and I don't feel wary of admitting it. Even allowing for that other Viennese layer-cake, Freud's assertions of the importance of sex in human psychology being a bit exagerrated, there's nothing insignificant or shameful about randiness.

[bapimporb]

... I'm glad I'm not just reading it into the book. I was quite surprised to read these words in what is often a somewhat misogynist work ...

Hi Jayaprakash – thanks for the response. I haven't been able to get back earlier, because I'm having big problems with my broadband service at home.

Anyway, I think that this is at least partly Sacher-Masoch's idea that the situation betwen the sexes in his day was unequal and that that caused tensions – I think that he would include misogyny and misandry within that.

There's no inherent misogyny and misandry in BDSM though, any more than there is in 'vanilla' relationships.

Venus in Furs creates a female character who is sexual, who independent and who is capable of 'cruelty' in a form of play – and yet she isn't derided by the novel or made to suffer 'a bad end'. There is no moralistic judgment against her – and this is remarkable. Equally – as Krafft-Ebbing noticed – male submission was seen as perverted. So the book allows twists on the roles that both men and women were expected to dutifully accept and play out. That's a liberating approach.

Indeed, even removing the sexual aspect, the idea of a cruel woman is liberating too, since it is the antithesis of the simplistic idea of women as mothers and, therefore, 'good' (we're back to the Madonna thing again). Venus in Furs isn't an injunction for women to go out and be cruel, but it is a substantial step away from that aspect of the constricting and repressive prescription of what a woman is/should be.

Sade too was most egalitarian for similar reasons – his libertines were not just male: the pleasures of libertinage were allotted to female characters too.

So such writers were not merely 'dangerous' because they wrote about sex and sexual relationships openly, but because in doing so, they acknowledged and even celebrated and encouraged a female sexuality that diversified from the dutiful and faithful wife who mostly only had sex to keep hubby happy ('conjugal rights' – what a phrase) and to procreate (assuming she was a respectable woman). The 'English Rose', for instance, is a perfect example of the cultural realisation of this approach to women and sex, and was still visible in mainstream culture well into the second half of the 20th century.

The Wikipedia biog of Sacher-Masoch notes his views on women.

I'm just about to read Susan Sontag's essay, The Pornographic Imagination and may well follow it with Angela Carter's The Sadian Woman, so hopefully these will expand my thinking on the issue.

... I suppose the key divergence between my own views and the author's here are in the words 'as nature has created her'. Leave those words out and you have a veritable feminist manifesto..

I think that one has to allow for the period in which it was written on that.

... This book certainly has many more depths to it than one would think. It also whetted an interest to read more on Sacher-Masoch's works; sadly most of them remain untranslated and unavailable.

Agreed.

Of course there's a great deal of prurient interest here. I'm interested in sex. It's fascinating. And so is the chocolate cake's weird mix of somewhat laughable roleplaying fantasies and the possibly gratuitously philsophical potshots he takes in this book. Both are fascinating to me, and I don't feel wary of admitting it. Even allowing for that other Viennese layer-cake, Freud's assertions of the importance of sex in human psychology being a bit exagerrated, there's nothing insignificant or shameful about randiness.

~~applause~~

It's also worth asking why some people seem to have such a problem with the idea of books that explore sex and sexual relationships explicitly. Do they have similar problems with books that deal with murder and death or war? If it's possible to have literature that deals with those subjects, then why not sex? Are all books that take crime as their subject, for instance, good or are they all bad? Is there really a genre in the world that has not got some literary gems amid the dross? If not, why would porn (or erotica) be any different? Is what makes a good book not partly a question of whether it has anything to say; whether it leaves the reader with questions and an impression that lasts for longer than it takes them to pick up the next volume? Is the problem for some people that pornography is essentially material that sets out to arouse sexually? If so, why is that a problem? Do other types of books not arouse in different ways – repulse or attract us, or make us laugh or weep? It's difficult to avoid the feeling that some people are simply not comfortable with sex and regard it, as you said, as "insignificant or shameful", or even 'dirty'.

You've been reading some weird stuff lately: first Belle du Jour, now this

They have nothing on Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye that I'm reading now (the Sontag essay I mentioned earlier is in the edition I have, together with a very short article by Roland Barthes).

[ehib8yPc]

Jayapradash. Amazing though it may seem, I too am interested in sex. But I think that too much sex in a novel can soon become a mere excuse for pornography. Pornography is created for psycho-physical stimulus (i.e. mostly for wanking by those not lucky enough to have a fulfilling sex life otherwise).

My problem with too much sex in serious literature is that it takes over. If you're only longing for the next dirty or kinky bit, you are reading it as pornography.

Nowadays, I would rather not mix the two. When I read Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room I read it for the style, wit and atmosphere, not because I hope there'll be a bit of tribadic seduction on page 67.

I fear people intellectualise too much about "exploring sexuality" in a literary way. Sacher-Masoch may have been "dangerous" back in the olden days, but his whole dated novel doesn't really shock or enlighten, by modern standards of psychology and modern sexually permissive norms. And the passage I quoted earlier, where he lists all the things he's read is sheer Pseuds Corner.

(On another thread, we have Sologub, and I bet you that Sybarite would be more shocked by his kinky sexual imagination than she is regarding Sacher-Masoch.)

As I said above, if the sex takes the upper hand, and you're waiting for the next dirty (sorry, sexually arousing) bit - as I feel the Venus book is constructed - it becomes soft porn, rather than literature.

I think that hard-core porn is more honest and satisfying. But I do always have the thought at the back of my mind that these girls are being exploited. Because nowadays it's all photos and films, not "works of the imagination". Is it possible, I wonder, to create sexually stimulating pornography without a) exploiting young women; and b) pretending it's literature?

[bapimporb]

First, why can't "soft porn" be literature too?

Where is it written that literature is not allowed to be sexually arousing?

What is the ratio ? you know, the amount of actual depictions of sexual activities to pages ? that's 'allowed' before a piece ceases to become literature and becomes "soft porn".

... Is it possible, I wonder, to create sexually stimulating pornography without a) exploiting young women; and b) pretending it's literature?

Yes ? not least because not all porn features "young women". And if we're talking about books, then how are "young women" 'exploited' by books?

And, err, yes. But I'm not aware that anyone has pretended otherwise.

[meteeratymn]

I find a comment like 'the passages that I quoted in my last posting have no literary value whatsoever' very odd indeed. What does it mean? How can there be 'no literary value whatsoever'? These are written in grammatical English. What do sentences have to contain in order to have 'literary value'?

[Vigeommighica]

I find a comment like 'the passages that I quoted in my last posting have no literary value whatsoever' very odd indeed. What does it mean? How can there be 'no literary value whatsoever'? These are written in grammatical English. What do sentences have to contain in order to have 'literary value'?

you are correct, of course.

[favwebbb]

I find a comment like 'the passages that I quoted in my last posting have no literary value whatsoever' very odd indeed. What does it mean? How can there be 'no literary value whatsoever'? These are written in grammatical English. What do sentences have to contain in order to have 'literary value'?

I don't find it odd. The quotes don't do much for me, they could have been written by a third-grader so I don't see much "literary value" in them either. The English is correct, but it's not a pleasant read stylistically. It's hackneyed. And I would have expected Mirabell to agree. There's just one issue I have with the comment: it's Eric. And well, he just said Am?lie Nothomb should be considered for the Nobel, so I'm not really convinced on his authority on such matters. I mean, are we to believe she really writes better than that?

[Vigeommighica]

I don't find it odd. The quotes don't do much for me, they could have been written by a third-grader so I don't see much "literary value" in them either. The English is correct, but it's not a pleasant read stylistically. It's hackneyed. And I would have expected Mirabell to agree. There's just one issue I have with the comment: it's Eric. And well, he just said Am?lie Nothomb should be considered for the Nobel, so I'm not really convinced on his authority on such matters. I mean, are we to believe she really writes better than that?

Yes it's hackneyed. But in no way is this of "no literary value whatsoever". books are more than style. Yes, it's me saying that. There are books I like which are awfully, awfully written. As an old Fantasy and a recent SF conoisseur, and a fan of satire, I can name numerous works. So. Yes, it's badly written. BUt NO literary value? Even cookbooks have some. Bad cookbooks. Some.

I like to view it as a scale, not a yes/no decision.

Terry Goodkind? Veeeery low on the pole. Robert Coover? Veeeery high (I don't really care, at this point, what he writes about. That writing is so excellent that I don't care. At all.).

[meteeratymn]

OK, let's just say that the examples that we have above from Venus in Furs aren't exactly inspiring. But then, uninspiring extracts could probably be found in most (if not all) of the greatest novels ever written if we looked closely enough. This still doesn't make Venus in Furs a brilliant book, or even a good book, but it still cannot not have some literary value. And this is before we begin to look into its (undoubted) historical value.

[ehib8yPc]

To answer Sybarite in #10, as I have explained, a think that porn, whether hard or limp, is not literature because it is aimed at sexual arousal. If you feel urges in your genitalia you are surely not concentrating on the story, the style, the ambience.

Yes, I deliberately mentioned "young women", wondering whether anyone would point out that gays, children, crones and others are also exploited or dreamed about in sexual terms. I've already pointed out that modern soft porn has photos, for which you need real people. In the 19th century, they weren't so advanced technologically (except for people like the Reverend Charles Dodgson, who did a nice line in Sologub-style photography). So they wrote about sex instead.

Lionel: literary value is more than correct grammar. Many adverts, handbooks and newspaper articles have correct grammar, but aren't literature. I find the dialogue of Venus in Furs rather arch, and as I've said, that list of intellectual things that the protagonist has done is ludicrous.

Literary value means when you add something more than the mere grammatical correctness of the sentences. There must be style, characterisation, psychology, point-of-view, and / or a number of other things that you can read about in books about literature. I find Nothomb (pace Fausto!) very witty, swift-paced, humorous. Humour is an important ingredient. I don't see any in the Masoch book. He was so masochistic himself, that I doubt if he could stand back and laugh at himself. He was slavering.

The things listed above make Nothomb's books literature, in my opinion, while Sacher-Masoch hasn't really made it. The only reason, in my opinion, that people drool over his book is because of the kinky sex, not over any truly literary value.

[Vigeommighica]

There must be style, characterisation, psychology, point-of-view, and / or a number of other things that you can read about in books about literature. please excuse me, but I can't refrain from guffawing.

There are novels, hell, BOOKS without a pov? without a style? There are a few books around w/out characterization, I guess. Not on the low end of the pole, but at the high end there are a couple.

[SusanSazzios]

Erich, you're trying to read the minds of other people. And seeing only what you want to in there.

Also, you're not quite as close a reader as you think. Or you're purposely mangling my name.

[meteeratymn]

as I have explained, a think that porn, whether hard or limp, is not literature

[...]

Many adverts, handbooks and newspaper articles have correct grammar, but aren't literature.

There will never be universal agreement on a definition of 'literature'. Such pompous statements as these are meaningless.

[nannysuetle]

They have nothing on Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye that I'm reading now (the Sontag essay I mentioned earlier is in the edition I have, together with a very short article by Roland Barthes).

Oh Bataille: you'll have to write a review for that one too