Venus in Furs

‘For heaven’s sake, here you are kneeling already,’ she said mockingly. ‘You are making a good beginning.’ When I had risen again she continued, ‘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 –’

My blood rose to my head.

In her eyes too there was a sudden flame –

‘We will live together,’ she continued, ‘share our daily life, so that we may find out whether we are really fitted for each other. I grant you all the rights of a husband, of a lover, of a friend. Are you satisfied?’

‘I suppose I’ll have to be!’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘Well then, I want to –’

‘Splendid. That is how man speaks. Here is my hand.’

For ten days I have been with her every hour, except at night. All the time I was allowed to look into her eyes, hold her hands, listen to what she said, accompany her wherever she went. My love seems to me like a deep, bottomless abyss, into which I subside deeper and deeper. There is nothing now which could save me from it.

This afternoon we were resting in the meadow at the foot of the Venus statue. I plucked flowers and tossed them into her lap; she wound them into wreaths with which we adorned our goddess.

Suddenly Wanda looked at me so strangely that my senses became confused and passion swept over my head like a conflagration. Losing command over myself, I threw my arms about her and clung to her lips, and she – she drew me close to her heaving breast.

‘Are you angry?’ I then asked her.

‘I am never angry at anything that is natural –’ she replied, ‘but I am afraid you suffer.’

‘Oh, I am suffering frightfully.’

‘Poor friend!’ she brushed my disordered hair back from my forehead. ‘I hope it isn’t through any fault of mine.’

‘No –’ I replied – ‘and yet my love for you has become a sort of madness. The thought that I might lose you, perhaps actually lose you, torments me day and night.’

‘But you don’t yet possess me,’ said Wanda, and again she looked at me with that vibrant, consuming expression, which had already once before carried me away. Then she rose, and with her small transparent hands placed a wreath of blue anemones upon the ringletted white head of Venus. Half against my will I threw my arm around her body.

‘I can no longer live without you, oh wonderful woman,’ I said. ‘Believe me, believe only this once, that this time it is not a phrase, not a thing of dreams. I feel deep down in my innermost soul, that my life belongs inseparably with yours. If you leave me, I shall perish, go to pieces.’

‘That will hardly be necessary, for I love you,’ she took hold of my chin, ‘you foolish man!’

‘But you will be mine only under conditions, while I belong to you unconditionally –’

‘That isn’t wise, Severin,’ she replied almost with a start. ‘Don’t you know me yet, do you absolutely refuse to know me? I am good when I am treated seriously and reasonably, but when you abandon yourself too absolutely to me, I grow arrogant –’

‘So be it, be arrogant, be despotic,’ I cried in the fullness of exaltation, ‘only be mine, mine forever.’ I lay at her feet, embracing her knees.

‘Things will end badly, my friend,’ she said soberly, without moving.

‘It shall never end,’ I cried excitedly, almost violently. ‘Only death shall part us. If you cannot be mine, all mine and for always, then I want to be your slave, serve you, suffer everything from you, if only you won’t drive me away.’

‘Calm yourself,’ she said, bending down and kissing my forehead, ‘I am really very fond of you, but your way is not the way to win and hold me.’

‘I want to do everything, absolutely everything, that you want, only not to lose you,’ I cried, ‘only not that, I cannot bear the thought.’

‘Do get up.’

I obeyed.

‘You are a strange person,’ continued Wanda. ‘You wish to possess me at any price?’

‘Yes, at any price.’

‘But of what value, for instance, would that be?’ – She pondered; a lurking uncanny expression entered her eyes – ‘If I no longer loved you, if I belonged to another.’

A shudder ran through me. I looked at her. She stood firmly and confident before me, and her eyes disclosed a cold gleam.

‘You see,’ she continued, ‘the very thought frightens you.’ A beautiful smile suddenly illuminated her face.

‘I feel a perfect horror when I imagine that the woman I love and who has responded to my love could give herself to another, regardless of me. But have I still a choice? If I love such a woman, even unto madness, shall I turn my back to her and lose everything for the sake of a bit of boastful strength; shall I send a bullet through my brains? I have two ideals of woman. If I cannot obtain the one that is noble and simple, the woman who will faithfully and truly share my life, well then I don’t want anything half-way or lukewarm. Then I would rather be subject to a woman without virtue, fidelity or pity. Such a woman in her magnificent selfishness is likewise an ideal. If I am not permitted to enjoy the happiness of love, fully and wholly, I want to taste its pains and torments to the very dregs; I want to be maltreated and betrayed by the woman I love, and the more cruelly the better. This too is a luxury.’

‘Have you lost your senses,’ cried Wanda.

‘I love you with all my soul,’ I continued, ‘with all my senses, and your presence and personality are absolutely essential to me, if I am to go on living. Choose between my ideals. Do with me what you will, make of me your husband or your slave.’

‘Very well,’ said Wanda, contracting her small but strongly arched brows, ‘it seems to me it would be rather entertaining to have a man, who interests me and loves me, completely in my power; at least I shall not lack pastime. You were imprudent enough to leave the choice to me. Therefore I choose; I want you to be my slave, I shall make a plaything for myself out of you!’

‘Oh, please do,’ I cried half-shuddering, half-enraptured. ‘If the foundation of marriage depends on equality and agreement, it is likewise true that the greatest passions rise out of opposites. We are such opposites, almost enemies. That is why my love is part hate, part fear. In such a relation only one can be hammer and the other anvil. I wish to be the anvil. I cannot be happy when I look down upon the woman I love. I want to adore a woman, and this I can only do when she is cruel towards me.’

‘But, Severin,’ replied Wanda, almost angrily, ‘do you believe me capable of maltreating a man who loves me as you do, and whom I love?’

‘Why not, if I adore you the more on this account? It is possible to love really only that which stands above us, a woman, who through her beauty, temperament, intelligence and strength of will subjugates us and becomes a despot over us.’

‘Then that which repels others, attracts you.’

‘Yes. That is the strange part of me.’

‘Perhaps, after all, there isn’t anything so very unique or strange in all your passions, for who doesn’t love beautiful furs? And everyone knows and feels how closely sexual love and cruelty are related.’

‘But in my case all these elements are raised to their highest degree,’ I replied.

‘In other words, reason has little power over you, and you are by nature, soft, sensual, yielding.’

‘Were the martyrs also soft and sensual by nature? On the contrary, they were supersensual men, who found enjoyment in suffering. They sought out the most frightful tortures, even death itself, as others seek joy, and as they were, so am I – supersensual.’

‘Have a care that in being such, you do not become a martyr to love, the martyr of a woman.’

We are sitting on Wanda’s little balcony in the mellow fragrant summer night. A twofold roof is above us, first the green ceiling of climbing-plants, and then the vault of heaven sown with innumerable stars. The low wailing love-call of a cat rises from the park. I am sitting on a footstool at the feet of my divinity and am telling her of my childhood.

‘And even then all these strange tendencies were distinctly marked in you?’ asked Wanda.

‘Of course, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have them. Even in my cradle, so mother has told me, I was supersensual. I scorned the healthy breast of my nurse, and had to be brought up on goat’s milk. As a little boy I was mysteriously shy before women, which really was only an expression of an inordinate interest in them. I was oppressed by the grey arches and half-darknesses of the church, and actually afraid of the glittering altars and images of the saints. Secretly, however, I sneaked as to a secret joy to a plaster Venus which stood in my father’s little library. I kneeled down before her, and to her I said the prayers I had been taught – the Paternoster, the Ave Maria and the Credo.