Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher Masoch : Introduction

Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Introduction of Venus in Furs. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Venus
in Furs by Leopold Vonsacker Massock, translated by Fernande Savage introduction.

(00:26):
Leopold Vonsacker Massock was born in Lemberg, Austrian Galicia, on
January twenty seventh, eighteen thirty six. He studied jurisprudence at
Prague in Graz, and in eighteen fifty seven became a
teacher at the latter university. He published several historical works,
but soon gave up his academic career to devote himself

(00:49):
wholly to literature. For a number of years he edited
the international review Ulfterhoe at Leipzig, but later removed to Paris,
for he was always strongly Francophile. His last years he
spent at Lindheim in Hess, Germany, where he died on
March ninth, eighteen ninety five. In eighteen seventy three he

(01:10):
married Aurora von Rumlin, who wrote a number of novels
under the pseudonym of Wanda von Dunaju, which it is
interesting to note is the name of the heroine of
Venus and Purse. Her sensational memoirs, which have been the
cause of considerable controversy, were published in nineteen o six.
During his career as writer, an endless number of works

(01:33):
poured from Soccermassack's pen. Many of these were works of
a funeral journalism, and some of them unfortunately pure sensationalism.
For economic necessity forced him to turn his pen to
unworthy ends. There is, however, a residue among his work
which has a distinct literary and even greater psychological value.

(01:54):
His principal literary ambition was never completely fulfilled. It was
a somewhat programmatic plan to give a picture of contemporary
life in all its various aspects and interrelations, under the
general title Heritage of Cain. This idea was probably derived
from Balzac's comedy Humane. The whole was to be divided

(02:15):
into six subdivisions with general titles Love, Property, Money, the State,
War and Death. Each of these divisions, in its turn,
consisted of six novels, of which the last was intended
to summarize the author's conclusion and to present his solution
for the problem set in the others. This extensive plan

(02:37):
remained unachieved, and only the first two parts, Love and Property,
were completed. Of the other sections, only fragments remain. The
present novel, Venus in Furs, forms the fifth in the
series Love. The best of Soccer Mosshawk's work is characterized
by a swift narration and a graphic representation of character

(02:59):
and scene, and a rich humor. The latter has made
many of his shorter stories dealing with his native Galicia,
little masterpieces of local color. There is, however, another element
in his work which has caused his name to become
an eponym for an entire series of phenomena at one
end of the psychosexual scale. This gives his productions a

(03:20):
peculiar psychological value, though it cannot be denied, also a
morbid tinge that makes them often repellent. However, it is
well to remember that nature is neither good nor bad,
neither altruistic nor egoistic, and that it operates through the
human psyche as well as through crystals and plants and
animals with the same inexorable laws. Soccer Massak was the

(03:45):
poet of the anomaly now generally known as masochism. By
this is meant the desire on the part of the
individual effected of desiring himself to be completely and unconditionally
subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex,
and being treated by this person as by a master,
to be humiliated, abused, and tormented, even to the verge

(04:08):
of death. This motive is treated in all its innumerable
variations as a creative artists. Sacermossoc was, of course, on
the quest for the absolute, and sometimes when impulses in
the human beings assume an abnormal or exaggerated form, there
is just for a moment of flash that gives a

(04:29):
glimpse of the thing in itself. If any defense were
needed for the publication of a work like Sacermossoc'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

(04:51):
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. Socramosok has
not created anything new in this He has simply taken

(05:11):
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 book has met,
he replied in a polemical work, Ubert and vert de critique,
it would be interesting to trace the mazochistic tendency as
it occurs throughout literature, but no more can be done

(05:33):
than just to allude to a few instances. The theme
recurs continually in the confessions of John Jacques Rousseau. It
explains the character of the chevalier in Provost Manon LESCo.
Scenes of this nature I found in Zola's Nana and
thomis Odways Venice Preserved, and Albert Duhayes Le Pechierdoon in

(05:56):
Dostoevsky in disguise, an unrecognized form at institutes the undercurrent
of much of the sentimental literature of the present day,
though in most cases the author 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

(06:18):
of the serene and simple attitude of the ancient world.
The reental head has an admirable passage in his plats
and marbs, which is well worth reproducing in this connection.
The following is a quote in French which I will
likely butcher. Toute fois dezelene don le cite de lumiere

(06:39):
de dusers d'armoni aves unindl Jon's compe nomeer scientifique, pulletrubel
amaru de l'spre siine brigade pa l allien come en
poil visitation don dieu i de orientali fetaliste du montl
save gillmort densonte den vutmin unfolli u semnefis la an

(07:00):
moncite de poussint comique plutard, le Cristianizema and villepas lesames
de denibre, souffut la grand nuit, le glis condemnat toussaus
quilouis peruneuf minoissent poulidomes and placable qui reduced le Monde
and esclavage. Among Sacramasac's work, Venus in Furs is one

(07:21):
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 tiltillating 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 literature, but on the other hand, raised the book

(07:43):
beyond the spear 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 unburdened his
soul in writing down the things he felt and experienced.

(08:04):
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. Soccermoassak's work have held

(08:24):
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
eighteen eighty three 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,

(08:47):
the judicial decisions were invariably against the plaintiff and in
favor of the publisher. Our Americans children that they must
be protected from books which any European schoolboy can purchase
whenever he wishes. However, such seems to be the case,
and this translation, which has long been in preparation, consequently

(09:08):
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 folly is
to fill the world with fools. They have a very
pointed application in the case of a work like Venus
and Firs f s. Atlantic City, April nineteen twenty one.

(09:34):
End of introduction,