Venus in Furs

Venus in Furs
Leopold Sacher-Masoch

First published in 1870, the author of ‘Venus in Furs’ defined – and unwittingly gave his own name to – that sexual proclivity we know as masochism in this understated, charged erotic classic.What woman could resist a trembling man handing her the whip?Severin is a young Galician nobleman with a secret; he can only love a woman with a ruthless heart, who will rain her whip upon him in a shower of bloody kisses. When he meets Wanda, the wealthy and beautiful widow living in the apartment upstairs, he wonders if she might be the one to help him realise his darkest desires. But Wanda is better than she ever dreamed possible at domination – and soon Severin realises he is powerless to escape what he has begun. Here, fantasy and reality writhe together in a ceaseless, fraught embrace…

Venus in Furs

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u1412deed-bdf5-5d0c-9c45-3317f87878b1)

Title Page (#uf8a92a93-e575-5da3-bdfd-6c0444dc8cd2)

Prologues (#uc7a769cd-853d-5c15-9056-4ad0c55f64f7)

Harper Perennial Forbidden Classics (#u8e768e7c-b7f6-578f-b314-bc79e258576a)

But the Almighty Lord hath struck him, (#u03dc9965-5f34-5062-be4b-843d3024a0cd)

Gogol, the Russian Molière, says – where? well, (#uc1d87915-1009-5da1-a2c6-da41ad9df5ce)

(continued) I placed the furs about her, (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologues (#ulink_852ad8e0-393e-5eb1-b106-40d50f41b161)

…I am beginning to like the things you speak of. The enthusiasm with which you speak of a Pompadour, a Catherine the Great, and all the other selfish, frivolous, cruel women, carries me away and takes hold of my soul. It urges me on to become like those women, who in spite of their vileness were slavishly adored during their lifetime and still exert a miraculous power from their graves.

Harper Perennial Forbidden Classics (#ulink_6829e9a4-4d47-573c-bcd3-cd7283fe09a4)

I

Fanny Hill John Cleland

II

Justine Marquis de Sade

III

Venus in Furs Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

IV

The Pearl Anonymous

V

My Secret Life Walter

VI

The Way of a Man with a Maid Anonymous

VII

The Autobiography of a Flea Stanislas de Rhodes

VIII

Sadopaideia Anonymous

IX

Venus in India ‘Captain Charles Devereaux’

X

Emmanuelle Emmanuelle Arsan

But the Almighty Lord hath struck him, (#ulink_65a1501e-dcd9-515d-8053-c9180335ca4b) 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 ununderstandable. 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?’

‘How could I forget it,’ I said. ‘You wore your abundant hair in brown curls, and you had brown eyes and a red mouth, but I recognised you immediately by the outline of your face and its marble-like pallor – you always wore a violet-blue velvet jacket edged with squirrel-skin.’