Venus in Furs: An Essay

An Rudimentum



“Love knows no virtue, no profit; it loves and forgives and suffers everything, because it must. It is not our judgment that leads us; it is neither the advantages nor the faults we discover that make us abandon ourselves or that repels us. It is a sweet, soft, enigmatic power that drives us on. We cease to think, to feel, to will; we let ourselves be carried away by and ask not whither.” - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs.



I had gone through the book, worn spine and crinkled pages, underlining and bracketing quotes that struck me as lovely, odd, or interesting, but this one was above the rest. The almost magical words of Sacher-Masoch struck me like a blow, a heart strike of sorts. His words throughout the novel Venus in Furs have haunted me in the most wanton of ways. I’ve read this book over and over since April of this year, 2009, and I’ve only fallen deeper in love with it. It is one of the best works I’ve read in my life so far, an underrated underdog of literature, mainly because of it’s taboo content, but that is one reason why I adore it. Sacher-Masoch talks of love in it’s cruelest forms: a woman making a man her absolute love slave, him surrendering all he his to her because of his undying affection for her. This is also where the word masochism derives from, Sacher-Masoch’s name and his popularity from Venus in Furs. The fact this book does talk of such a pure energy love is and how it can destroy the people involved draws me to it. Though I can’t say I’ve experienced what the characters in the novel have, I can only imagine having my own icy Venus to love me cruelly.

Though it isn’t as long as War and Peace or as well known as Romeo and Juliet, Venus in Furs has nonetheless made a difference in my life as much as a book can; It awakened a poet in me, a lover, a daydreamer and a romancer. When my eyes met with words on the paper, a beautiful cataclysm was starting to develop in me. Before, I was simply a thinker, and reading Venus was something completely different than all the books past. It was comical, romantic, malicious, and sensual. Sacher-Masoch’s way with words can woo even the most senile audience with it’s plethora of quotes, dialogue and the essence that Sacher-Masoch put in from his own life. Sacher-Masoch was himself in his own life, the role of Severin, the man madly in love with his mistress. Perhaps that element makes it such a powerful book: the author knows exactly what he is writing about, because he himself has experienced such a sadistic fate.

This, above all, is the reason I adore this novel and it has impacted me: The author has taken a chunk of his life and intertwined it with his novel. According to Sylvere Lotringer, “Reality and fantasy aren’t just intertwined, they’re indistinguishable.”

Perhaps this is why it is such a powerful book, it is more an autobiography of Sacher-Masoch’s ‘suprasensualism’ than a fiction novel. The novel has touched me in the oddest of ways: it awakened something inside me, my own ‘suprasensualism.’ I can only hope that this flame, set a fire by Sacher-Masoch, will not be snuffed out by the winds of cold Venus.