Venus in Furs | Page 2

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, Uber 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 Prevost'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 Hellenes, dans, leurs cites de lumiere, 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'aliene comme en proie a la vistation d'un dieu (idee orientale et
fataliste), du moins ils savaient que l'amour est une sorte d'envoutement, une folie ou se
manifeste l'animosite des puissances cosmiques. Plus tard, le christianisme enveloppa les
ames de tenebres. Ce fut la grande nuite. L'Eglise condamna tout ce qui lui parut neuf ou
menacant pour les dogmes implacable ui 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