“He published several historical works, but soon gave up his academic career to devote himself wholly to literature. For a number of years he edited the international review, Auf der Hohe, at Leipzig, but later removed to Paris, for he was always strongly Francophile. His last years he spent at Lindheim in Hesse, Germany, where he died on March 9, 1895. In 1873 he married Aurora von Rumelin, who wrote a number of novels under the pseudonym of Wanda von Dunajew, which it is interesting to note is the name of the heroine of Venus in Furs. Her sensational memoirs which have been the cause of considerable controversy were published in 1906.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.” Herbert Spencer
* * *
“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.”
“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.”
Antes de ler sobre o livro, jurava que “in furs” fosse uma metáfora para nua… Como no português “nua em pêlo”…
“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.”
-…you always wore a violet-blue velvet jacket edged with squirrel-skin.
– You were really in love with the costume, and awfully docile.
– 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.
“To you nature seems something hostile; you have made devils out of the smiling gods of Greece, and out of me a demon. You can only exorcise and curse me, or slay yourselves in bacchantic madness before my altar.”
“Through his passion nature has given man into woman’s hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise.”
“So it has always been, since the time of Helen and Delilah, down to Catherine the Second and Lola Montez.¹”
¹ A amante de imperadores, Alexandre Dumas e Franz Liszt!
“I cannot deny, I said, that nothing will attract a man more than the picture of a beautiful, passionate, cruel, and despotic woman who wantonly changes her favorites without scruple in accordance with her whim—”
“The divinity laughed.
You are dreaming, she cried, wake up! and she clasped my arm with her marble-white hand. Do wake up, she repeated raucously with the low register of her voice. I opened my eyes with difficulty.
I saw the hand which shook me, and suddenly it was brown as bronze; the voice was the thick alcoholic voice of my cossack servant who stood before me at his full height of nearly six feet.”
– What is disgraceful?
– To fall asleep in your clothes and with a book besides. He snuffed the candles which had burned down, and picked up the volume which had fallen from my hand, with a book by—he looked at the title page—by Hegel.
“The furs of the despot in which Titian’s fair model wrapped herself, probably more for fear of a cold than out of modesty, have become a symbol of the tyranny and cruelty that constitute woman’s essence and her beauty.”
– But Severin, I said placing my hand on his arm, how can you treat a pretty young woman thus?
– Look at the woman, he replied, blinking humorously with his eyes. Had I flattered her, she would have cast the noose around my neck, but now, when I bring her up with the kantchuk, she adores me.
– Nonsense!
– Nonsense, nothing, that is the way you have to break in women.
– Well, if you like it, live like a pasha in your harem, but don’t lay down theories for me—
“In the garden, in the tiny wilderness, there is a graceful little meadow on which a couple of deer graze peacefully. On this meadow is a stone statue of Venus, the original of which, I believe, is in Florence.”
“I often lie reading under the leafy covering of a young birch when the sun broods over the forest. Often I visit that cold, cruel mistress of mine by night and lie on my knees before her, with the face pressed against the cold pedestal on which her feet rest, and my prayers go up to her.”
“I was breakfasting in my honey-suckle arbor, and reading in the Book of Judith. I envied the hero Holofernes because of the regal woman who cut off his head with a sword, and because of his beautiful sanguinary end.”
“How ungallant these Jews are, I thought. And their God might choose more becoming expressions when he speaks of the fair sex.”
“Thus our acquaintance began.
The divinity asks for my name, and mentions her own.
Her name is Wanda von Dunajew.
And she is actually my Venus.”
“The idea of sharing a woman, even if it were an Aspasia, with another revolts us. We are jealous as is our God.”
“So you too are one of those who rave about modern women, those miserable hysterical feminine creatures who don’t appreciate a real man in their somnambulistic search for some dream-man and masculine ideal. Amid tears and convulsions they daily outrage their Christian duties; they cheat and are cheated; they always seek again and choose and reject; they are never happy, and never give happiness. They accuse fate instead of calmly confessing that they want to love and live as Helen and Aspasia lived. Nature admits of no permanence in the relation between man and woman.”
“All endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities.”
“The inventors of the Christian marriage have done well, simultaneously to invent immortality.”
“From my cradle onward I was surrounded by replicas of ancient art; at 10 years of age I read Gil Blas, at 12 La Pucelle.¹”
¹ Referência a Joana d’Arc. Novela desconhecida.
“I will give you a year’s time to win me, to convince me that we are suited to each other, that we might live together. If you succeed, I will become your wife, and a wife, Severin, who will conscientiously and strictly perform all her duties. During this year we will live as though we were married—”
“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.”
“Give me rather a woman who is honest enough to say to me: I am a Pompadour,¹ a Lucretia Borgia,² and I am ready to adore her.”
¹ Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, grande figura da côrte de Luís XV. Patrona e mecenas dos filósofos do Iluminismo, tal qual Voltaire. “Art historian Melissa Hyde argues that the critics of Pompadour were driven by fears over the overturning of social and gender hierarchies that Pompadour’s power and influence, as a woman who was not born into the aristocracy, represented.”
² “Lucrezia Borgia (Italian pronunciation: [luˈkrɛttsja ˈbɔrdʒa]; Valencian: Lucrècia Borja [luˈkrɛsia ˈbɔɾdʒa]; 18 April 1480 – 24 June 1519) was a Spanish-Italian noblewoman of the House of Borgia who was the daughter of Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattanei. She reigned as the Governor of Spoleto, a position usually held by cardinals, in her own right. (…) Rumors about her and her family cast Lucrezia as a femme fatale, a role in which she has been portrayed in many artworks, novels and films.”
“To suffer and endure cruel torture from then on seemed to me exquisite delight, especially when it was inflicted by a beautiful woman”
“I envied King Gunther whom the mighty Brunhilde fettered on the bridal night, and the poor troubadour whom his capricious mistress had sewed in the skins of wolves to have him hunted like game. I envied the Knight Ctirad whom the daring Amazon Scharka¹ craftily ensnared in a forest near Prague, and carried to her castle Divin, where, after having amused herself a while with him, she had him broken on the wheel—”
¹ Personagens lendários: “The Maidens’ War (Czech: Dívčí válka) is a tale in Bohemian tradition about an uprising of women against men. According to legend, it took place sometime in the 8th century. It first appeared in the 12th-century Chronica Boëmorum of Cosmas of Prague, and later in the 14th-century Dalimil’s Chronicle.”
“All the sanguinary tyrants that ever occupied a throne; the inquisitors who had the heretics tortured, roasted, and butchered; all the woman whom the pages of history have recorded as lustful, beautiful, and violent women like Libussa,¹ Lucretia Borgia, Agnes of Hungary, Queen Margot,² Isabeau,³ the Sultana Roxolane, the Russian Czarinas of last century4—all these I saw in furs or in robes bordered with ermine.”
¹ Outra personagem do folclore tcheco, principalmente.
² “Margaret of Valois (14 May 1553 – 27 March 1615) was a French princess of the Valois dynasty who became queen consort of Navarre and later also of France. By her marriage to Henry III of Navarre (later Henry IV of France), she was queen of Navarre and then France at her husband’s 1589 accession to the latter throne. § As Queen of Navarre, Margaret also played a pacifying role in the stormy relations between her husband and the French monarchy. Shuttled back and forth between the two courts, she endeavored to lead a happy conjugal life, but her infertility and the political tensions inherent in the civil conflict led to the end of her marriage. Mistreated by a brother quick to take offence and rejected by a fickle and opportunistic husband, she chose the path of opposition in 1585. She took the side of the Catholic League and was forced to live in Auvergne in an exile which lasted twenty years. In 1599, she consented to a ‘royal divorce’ – i.e. the annulment of the marriage – but only after the payment of a generous compensation. § (…) She was a vector of Neoplatonism, which preached the supremacy of platonic love over physical love. While imprisoned, she took advantage of the time to write her Memoirs. She was the first woman to have done so. (…) After her death the anecdotes and slanders circulated about her created a legend, which was consolidated around the nickname La Reine Margot invented by Alexandre Dumas père, handed down through the centuries the myth of a nymphomaniac and incestuous woman. At the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, historians have reviewed the extensive chronicles of her life, concluding that many elements of her scandalous reputation stemmed from anti-Valois propaganda and from a factionalism capable of denigrating the participation of women in politics, created by Bourbon dynasty court historians in the 17th century.”
³ “Isabeau of Bavaria (or Isabelle; also Elisabeth of Bavaria-Ingolstadt; c. 1370 – September 1435) was queen of France between 1385 and 1422. She was born into the House of Wittelsbach as the only daughter of Duke Stephen III of Bavaria-Ingolstadt and Taddea Visconti of Milan. At age 15 or 16, Isabeau was sent to the young King Charles VI of France; the couple wed three days after their first meeting. § Isabeau was honored in 1389 with a lavish coronation ceremony and entry into Paris. In 1392, Charles suffered the first attack of what was to become a lifelong and progressive mental illness, resulting in periodic withdrawal from government. The episodes occurred with increasing frequency, leaving a court both divided by political factions and steeped in social extravagances. A 1393 masque for one of Isabeau’s ladies-in-waiting—an event later known as Bal des Ardents—ended in disaster with the King almost burning to death. Although the King demanded Isabeau’s removal from his presence during his illness, he consistently allowed her to act on his behalf. In this way she became regent to the Dauphin of France (heir apparent), and sat on the regency council, allowing far more power than was usual for a medieval queen. § Charles’ illness created a power vacuum that eventually led to the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War between supporters of his brother, Duke Louis I of Orléans, and the royal dukes of Burgundy. Isabeau shifted allegiances as she chose the most favorable paths for the heir to the throne. When she followed the Armagnacs, the Burgundians accused her of adultery with Louis of Orléans; when she sided with the Burgundians, the Armagnacs removed her from Paris and she was imprisoned. In 1407, John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, assassinated Orléans, sparking hostilities between the factions. The war ended soon after Isabeau’s eldest son, Charles, had John the Fearless assassinated in 1419—an act that saw him disinherited. Isabeau attended the 1420 signing of the Treaty of Troyes, which decided that the English king should inherit the French crown after the death of her husband, Charles VI. She lived in English-occupied Paris until her death in 1435. § Isabeau was popularly seen as a spendthrift and irresponsible philanderess. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries historians re-examined the extensive chronicles of her lifetime, concluding that many unflattering elements of her reputation were unearned and stemmed from factionalism and propaganda.”
4 “Hurrem Sultan, c. 1502 – 15 April 1558, also known as Roxelana, was the chief consort and wife of the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. She became one of most powerful and influential women in Ottoman history as well as a prominent and controversial figure during the era known as the Sultanate of Women. § Born in Ruthenia (then an eastern region of the Kingdom of Poland, now Ukraine) to a Ruthenian Orthodox priest, Hurrem was captured by Crimean Tatars during a slave raid and eventually taken to Istanbul, the Ottoman capital. She entered the Imperial Harem, rose through the ranks and became the favourite of Sultan Suleiman. Breaking Ottoman tradition, he married Hurrem, making her his legal wife; sultans had previously married only foreign free noble ladies. She was the first imperial consort to receive the title Haseki Sultan. Hurrem remained in the sultan’s court for the rest of her life, having six children with him, including the future sultan, Selim II. She was the grandmother of Murad III.”
Ou seja: literalmente, Severin nutria fetiches por qualquer mulher de de relevância histórica!
– Severin, replied Wanda, I am a frivolous young woman; it is dangerous for you to put yourself so completely in my power. You will end by actually becoming a plaything to me. Who will give warrant that I shall not abuse your insane desire?
– Your own nobility of character.
– Power makes people over-bearing.
– Be it, I cried, tread me underfoot.
“You know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors. What would you say should I try my hand at them, and make you the first object of my experiments. I would be like Dionysius who had the inventor of the iron ox roasted within it in order to see whether his wails and groans really resembled the bellowing of an ox.”
“I wanted to numb my desire, my yearning, with the magnificent scenery of the Carpathians.” Listening to Carpathian Forest.
“My dream has become truth. How does it make me feel? Am I disappointed in the realization of my dream?
No, I am merely somewhat tired, but her cruelty has enraptured me. Oh, how I love her, adore her! All this cannot express in the remotest way my feeling for her, my complete devotion to her. What happiness to be her slave!”
– Please try to forget the ugly scene of yesterday, she said with quivering voice, I have fulfilled your mad wish, now let us be reasonable and happy and love each other, and in a year I will be your wife.
– My mistress, I exclaimed, and I your slave!
– Not another word of slavery, cruelty, or the whip, interrupted Wanda. I shall not grant you any of those favors, none except wearing my fur-jacket; come and help me into it.
“We spent marvellous days together; we visited the mountains and lakes, we read together, and I completed Wanda’s portrait. And how we loved one another, how beautiful her smiling face was!
Then a friend of hers arrived, a divorced woman somewhat older, more experienced, and less scrupulous than Wanda. Her influence is already making itself felt in every direction.
Wanda wrinkles her brows, and displays a certain impatience with me.
Has she ceased loving me?”
“For almost a fortnight this unbearable restraint has lain upon us. Her friend lives with her, and we are never alone. A circle of men surrounds the young women. With my seriousness and melancholy I am playing an absurd role as lover. Wanda treats me like a stranger.
To-day, while out walking, she staid behind with me. I saw that this was done intentionally, and I rejoiced. But what did she tell me?”
“But the world likewise demands it, Wanda interrupted. Look at this woman. She has a husband and a lover in Lemberg and has found a new admirer here. She deceives all three and yet is honored by all and respected by the world.”
“Never feel secure with the woman you love, for there are more dangers in woman’s nature than you imagine. Women are neither as good as their admirers and defenders maintain, nor as bad as their enemies make them out to be. Woman’s character is characterlessness.” “Man even when he is selfish or evil always follows principles, woman never follows anything but impulses.”
“Does it rob you of any of your joys, that I have belonged to another before I did to you, that others after you will possess me, and would you enjoy less if another were made happy simultaneously with you?” “I believe, she said, that to hold a man permanently, it is vitally important not to be faithful to him. What honest woman has ever been as devotedly loved as a hetaira?”
“Of course, she replied with great seriousness, you cease to be my lover, and consequently I am released from all duties and obligations towards you. You will have to look upon my favors as pure benevolence. You no longer have any rights, and no longer can lay claim to any. There can be no limit to my power over you. Remember, that you won’t be much better than a dog, or some inanimate object. You will be mine, my plaything, which I can break to pieces, whenever I want an hour’s amusement. You are nothing, I am everything. Do you understand? She laughed and kissed me again, and yet a sort of cold shiver ran through me.”
“No. I have thought things over. What special value would there be in owning a slave where everyone owns slaves. What I want is to have a slave, I alone, here in our civilized sober, Philistine world, and a slave who submits helplessly to my power solely on account of my beauty and personality, not because of law, of property rights, or compulsions. This attracts me. But at any rate we will go to a country where we are not known and where you can appear before the world as my servant without embarrassment. Perhaps to Italy, to Rome or Naples.”
“Well, then I would experience what has occupied my imagination since my childhood, what has always given me the feeling of seductive terror. A foolish apprehension! It will be a wanton game she will play with me, nothing more. She loves me, and she is good, a noble personality, incapable of a breach of faith. But it lies in her hands —if she wants to she can. What a temptation in this doubt, this fear!
Now I understand Manon l’Escault and the poor chevalier, who, even in the pillory, while she was another man’s mistress, still adored her.”
– You will find out immediately the prince’s name, residence, and circumstances, she continued. Do you understand?
– But—
– No argument, obey! exclaimed Wanda, more sternly than I would have thought possible for her, and don’t dare to enter my sight until you can answer my questions.
– How will this end? I asked sadly after a short pause.
She broke into playful laughter.
– Why things haven’t even begun yet.
– You are more heartless than I imagined, I replied, hurt.
– Severin, Wanda began earnestly. I haven’t done anything yet, not the slightest thing, and you are already calling me heartless. What will happen when I begin to carry your dreams to their realization, when I shall lead a gay, free life and have a circle of admirers about me, when I shall actually fulfil your ideal, tread you underfoot and apply the lash?
– You take my dreams too seriously.
– Too seriously? I can’t stop at make-believe, when once I begin, she replied. You know I hate all play-acting and comedy. You have wished it. Was it my idea or yours? Did I persuade you or did you inflame my imagination? I am taking things seriously now.
– Wanda, I replied, caressingly, listen quietly to me. We love each other infinitely, we are very happy, will you sacrifice our entire future to a whim?
– It is no longer a whim, she exclaimed.
– What is it? I asked frightened.
– Something that was probably latent in me, she said quietly and thoughtfully. Perhaps it would never have come to light, if you had not called it to life, and made it grow. Now that it has become a powerful impulse, fills my whole being, now that I enjoy it, now that I cannot and do not want to do otherwise, now you want to back out— you—are you a man?
“The odd part of my situation is that I am like the bear in Lily’s park. I can escape and don’t want to; I am ready to endure everything as soon as she threatens to set me free.”
“If only she would use the whip again. There is something uncanny in the kindness with which she treats me. I seem like a little captive mouse with which a beautiful cat prettily plays. She is ready at any moment to tear it to pieces, and my heart of a mouse threatens to burst.
What are her intentions? What does she purpose to do with me?”
“From now on your name is no longer Severin, but Gregor.”
“The most interesting drama of my life had reached a point of development whose denouement it was then impossible to foretell.”
“So far everything went well. I sat beside Wanda, and she chatted very graciously and intelligently with me, as with a good friend, concerning Italy, Pisemski’s new novel, and Wagner’s music.
– …Under the early emperors you would have been a martyr, at the time of the Reformation an anabaptist, during the French Revolution one of those inspired Girondists who mounted the guillotine with the marseillaise on their lips. But you are my slave, my—
“Life is really amazingly droll, I thought. A short time ago the most beautiful woman, Venus herself, rested against your breast, and now you have an opportunity for studying the Chinese hell. Unlike us, they don’t hurl the damned into flames, but they have devils chasing them out into fields of ice.
Very likely the founders of their religion also slept in unheated rooms.”
“Come, Gregor, have your breakfast quickly too, she said, then we will go house-hunting. I don’t want to stay in the hotel any longer than I have to. It is very embarrassing here. If I chat with you for more than a minute, people will immediately say: ‘The fair Russian is having an affair with her servant, you see, the race of Catherines isn’t extinct yet.’”
“It is only now I understand you, she exclaimed. It really is a joy to have someone so completely in one’s power, and a man at that, who loves you—you do love me?—No—Oh! I’ll tear you to shreds yet, and with each blow my pleasure will grow. Now, twist like a worm, scream, whine! You will find no mercy in me!”
“Now, you won’t lay eyes on me for an entire month, Gregor, she said seriously. I want to become a stranger to you, so you will more easily adjust yourself to our new relationship. In the meantime you will work in the garden, and await my orders. Now, off with you, slave!”
“However, I shall take a lover, otherwise things will be only half accomplished, and in the end you will yet reproach me with not having treated you cruelly enough, my dear beautiful slave! But to-day you shall be Severin again, the only one I love. I haven’t given away your clothes. They are here in the chest. Go and dress as you used to in the little Carpathian health-resort when our love was so intimate. Forget everything that has happened since; oh, you will forget it easily in my arms; I shall kiss away all your sorrows.”
“It is only now that I noticed her noble, almost European cast of countenance and her magnificent statuesque bust, which is as if hewn out of black marble. The black devil observes that she pleases me, and, grinning, shows her teeth. She has hardly left the room, before Wanda leaps up in a rage.
– What, you dare to look at another woman besides me! Perhaps you like her even better than you do me, she is even more demonic!”
“I am reading Manon l’Escault to her. She feels the association, she doesn’t say a word, but she smiles from time to time, and finally she shuts up the little book.”
“I feel sorry for him, she replies, but I do not love him. I love no one. I used to love you, as ardently, as passionately, as deeply as it was possible for me to love, but now I don’t love even you anymore; my heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.”
“Wanda looked at me with a curious pleasure. Consider well what you do, she said. I have loved you infinitely and have been despotic towards you so that I might fulfil your dream. Something of my old feeling, a sort of real sympathy for you, still trembles in my breast. When that too has gone who knows whether then I shall give you your liberty; whether I shall not then become really cruel, merciless, even brutal toward; whether I shall not take a diabolical pleasure in tormenting and putting on the rack the man who worships me idolatrously, the while I remain indifferent or love someone else; perhaps, I shall enjoy seeing him die of his love for me. Consider this well.”
“The young painter has established his studio in her villa; he is completely in her net. He has just begun a Madonna, a Madonna with red hair and green eyes! Only the idealism of a German would attempt to use this thorough-bred woman as a model for a picture of virginity. The poor fellow really is an almost bigger donkey than I am. Our misfortune is that our Titania has discovered our ass’s ears too soon.”
“and she placed one of her feet upon me; her right hand played with the whip. Look at me, she said, with your deep, fanatical look, that’s it.
The painter had turned terribly pale. He devoured the scene with his beautiful dreamy blue eyes; his lips opened, but he remained dumb.
– Well, how do you like the picture?
– Yes, that is how I want to paint you, said the German”
“The painter paints slowly, but his passion grows more and more rapidly. I am afraid he will end up by committing suicide. She plays with him and propounds riddles to him which he cannot solve, and he feels his blood congealing in the process, but it amuses her.
During the sitting she nibbles at candies, and rolls the paper-wrappers into little pellets with which she bombards him.
– I am glad you are in such good humor, said the painter, but your face has lost the expression which I need for my picture.
– The expression which you need for your picture, she replied, smiling. Wait a moment.
She rose, and dealt me a blow with the whip. The painter looked at her with stupefaction, and a child-like surprise showed on his face, mingled with disgust and admiration.”
– What? said Wanda, scornfully, perhaps I can help you?
– Yes—cried the German, as if taken with madness, whip me too.
– Oh! With pleasure, she replied, shrugging her shoulders, but if I am to whip you I want to do it in sober earnest.
– Whip me to death, cried the painter.
– Will you let me tie you? she asked, smiling.
– Yes—he moaned—
Wanda left the room for a moment, and returned with ropes.
– Well—are you still brave enough to put yourself into the power of Venus in Furs, the beautiful despot, for better or worse? she began ironically.
“They are talking. He has lowered his voice so that I cannot understand a word, and she replies in the same way. What is the meaning of this? Is there an understanding between them?
I suffer frightful torments; my heart seems about to burst.
He kneels down before her, embraces her, and presses his head against her breast, and she—in her heartlessness—laughs—and now I hear her saying aloud:
– Ah! You need another application of the whip.”
“The painting is marvelously successful. It is a portrait which as far as the likeness goes couldn’t be better, and at the same time it seems to have an ideal quality. The colors glow, are supernatural; almost diabolical, I would call them.
The painter has put all his sufferings, his adoration, and all his execration into the picture.”
“I now understand the masculine Eros, and I marvel at Socrates for having remained virtuous in view of an Alcibiades like this.”
“Under his icy glance I am again seized by a mortal fear. I have a presentiment that this man can enchain her, captivate her, subjugate her, and I feel inferior in contrast with his savage masculinity; I am filled with envy, with jealousy.
I feel that I am a queer weakly creature of brains, merely! And what is most humiliating, I want to hate him, but I can’t. Why is that among all the host of servants he has chosen me.
With an inimitably aristocratic nod of the head he calls me over to him, and I—I obey his call—against my own will.
– Take my furs, he quickly commands.
My entire body trembles with resentment, but I obey, abjectly like a slave.”
“He is a man who is like a woman; he knows that he is beautiful, and he acts accordingly. He changes his clothes four or five times a day, like a vain courtesan.
In Paris he appeared first in woman’s dress, and the men assailed him with love-letters. An Italian singer, famous equally for his art and his passionate intensity, even invaded his home, and lying on his knees before him threatened to commit suicide if he wouldn’t be his.”
– And what about the lioness?
– When the lion whom she has chosen and with whom she lives is attacked by another, the Greek went on with his narrative, the lioness quietly lies down and watches the battle. Even if her mate is worsted she does not go to his aid. She looks on indifferently as he bleeds to death under his opponent’s claws, and follows the victor, the stronger—that is the female’s nature.
“It is humiliating that I want to flee and I can’t. I turn back— whither?—to her, whom I abhor, and yet, at the same time, adore.
Again I pause. I cannot go back. I dare not.”
“She has my word of honor and my bond, that I shall remain her slave as long as she desires, until she herself gives me my freedom. But I might kill myself.”
“Woman demands that she can look up to a man, but one like you who voluntarily places his neck under her foot, she uses as a welcome plaything, only to toss it aside when she is tired of it.”
“Don’t offer any resistance, one who has gone as far as I have gone might easily go still further. I feel a sort of hatred for you, and would find a real joy in seeing him beat you to death; I am still restraining myself, but—”
“I am very serious, she gaily continued. I love you, only you, and you—you foolish, little man, didn’t know that everything was only make-believe and play-acting. How hard it often was for me to strike you with the whip, when I would have rather taken your head and covered it with kisses. But now we are through with that, aren’t we? I have played my cruel role better than you expected, and now you will be satisfied with my being a good, little wife who isn’t altogether unattractive. Isn’t that so? We will live like rational people—”
“I have a curious feeling when I now hold her in my arms and she lies silently against my breast and lets me kiss her and smiles. I feel like one who has suddenly awakened out of a feverish delirium, or like a shipwrecked man who has for many days battled with waves that momentarily threatened to devour him and finally has found a safe shore.”
– Do you remember the story of the ox of Dionysius? she asked.
– I remember it only vaguely, what about it? [Ele é que havia contado a estória primeiro.]
– A courtier invented a new implement of torture for the Tyrant of Syracuse. It was an iron ox in which those condemned to death were to be shut, and then pushed into a mighty furnace. § As soon as the iron ox began to get hot, and the condemned person began to cry out in his torment, his wails sounded like the bellowing of an ox.
– Very well, then you whip him! she called loudly.
At the same instant the beautiful Greek stuck his head of black curls through the curtains of her four-poster bed. At first I was speechless, petrified. There was a horribly comic element in the situation. I would have laughed aloud, had not my position been at the same time so terribly cruel and humiliating.”
“No one will hear you, replied Wanda, and no one will hinder me from abusing your most sacred emotions or playing a frivolous game with you, she continued, repeating with satanic mockery phrases from my letter to her.”
“All of a sudden I saw with horrible clarity whither blind passion and lust have led man, ever since Holofernes and Agamemnon—into a blind alley, into the net of woman’s treachery, into misery, slavery, and death.
It was as though I were awakening from a dream.
Blood was already flowing under the whip. I wound like a worm that is trodden on, but he whipped on without mercy, and she continued to laugh without mercy. In the meantime she locked her packed trunk and slipped into her travelling furs, and was still laughing, when she went downstairs on his arm and entered the carriage.
Then everything was silent for a moment.
I listened breathlessly.
The carriage door slammed, the horse began to pull—the rolling of the carriage for a short time—then all was over.”
Seclusão Anagógica 