Venus in Furs E-Book

Masoch

• Herausgeber: Perennial Press
• Kategorie: Erotik
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

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...

Leseprobe

VENUS IN FURS

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

PERENNIAL PRESS

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This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.

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Copyright © 2016 by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

VENUS IN FURS

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?”