Of this book, intended for private circulation, only 1225 copies have beenprinted, and type afterward distributed.
Translated from the German
By
| INTRODUCTION |
| VENUS IN FURS |
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born in Lemberg, Austrian Galicia, on January 27,1836. He studied jurisprudence at Prague and Graz, and in 1857 became a teacherat the latter university. He published several historical works, but soon gaveup his academic career to devote himself wholly to literature. For a number ofyears he edited the international review, Auf der Höhe, at Leipzig, butlater removed to Paris, for he was always strongly Francophile. His last yearshe spent at Lindheim in Hesse, Germany, where he died on March 9, 1895. In 1873he married Aurora von Rumelin, who wrote a number of novels under the pseudonymof Wanda von Dunajew, which it is interesting to note is the name of theheroine of Venus in Furs. Her sensational memoirs which have been thecause of considerable controversy were published in 1906.
During his career as writer an endless number of works poured fromSacher-Masoch’s pen. Many of these were works of ephemeral journalism,and some of them unfortunately pure sensationalism, for economic necessityforced him to turn his pen to unworthy ends.
There is, however, a residue among his works which has a distinct literary andeven greater psychological value. His principal literary ambition was nevercompletely fulfilled. It was a somewhat programmatic plan to give a picture ofcontemporary life in all its various aspects and interrelations under thegeneral title of the Heritage of Cain. This idea was probably derivedfrom Balzac’s Comedie Humaine. The whole was to be divided intosix subdivisions with the general titles Love, Property, Money, The State,War, and Death. Each of these divisions in its turn consisted of sixnovels, of which the last was intended to summarize the author’sconclusions and to present his solution for the problems set in the others.
This extensive plan remained unachieved, and only the first two parts,Love and Property, were completed. Of the other sections onlyfragments remain. The present novel, Venus in Furs, forms the fifth inthe series, Love.
The best of Sacher-Masoch’s work is characterized by a swift narrationand a graphic representation of character and scene and a rich humor. Thelatter has made many of his shorter stories dealing with his native Galicialittle masterpieces of local color.
There is, however, another element in his work which has caused his name tobecome as eponym for an entire series of phenomena at one end of thepsycho-sexual scale. This gives his productions a 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, neitheraltruistic nor egoistic, and that it operates through the human psyche as wellas through crystals and plants and animals with the same inexorable laws.
Sacher-Masoch was the poet of the anomaly now generally known asmasochism. By this is meant the desire on the part of the individualaffected of desiring himself completely and unconditionally subject to the willof a person of the opposite sex, and being