Erotic Classics I

by Various Authors

  “Just see,” said Ralph to me, “with what astounding rapidity this kindly, fecund nature repairs its losses! Does it not seem as if it were ashamed of the time wasted, and were determined, by dint of a lavish expenditure of sap and vigor, to do over in a few days the work of a year?”

  “And it will succeed,” rejoined Madame Delmare. “I remember last year’s storms; at the end of a month there was no trace of them.”

  “It is the image of a heart broken by sorrow,” I said to her; “when happiness comes back, it renews its youth and blooms again very quickly.”

  Indiana gave me her hand and looked at Monsieur Brown with an indescribable expression of affection and joy.

  When night fell she went to her room, and Sir Ralph, bidding me sit beside him on a bench in the garden, told me his history to the point at which we dropped it in the last chapter.

  There he made a long pause and seemed to have forgotten my presence completely.

  Impelled by my interest in his narrative, I decided to interrupt his meditation by one last question.

  He started like a man suddenly awakened; then, smiling pleasantly, he said:

  “My young friend, there are memories which we rob of their bloom by putting them in words. Let it suffice you to know that I was fully determined to kill Indiana with myself. But doubtless the consummation of our sacrifice was still unrecorded in the archives of Heaven. A doctor would tell you perhaps that a very natural attack of vertigo took possession of my wits and led me astray as to the location of the path. For my own part, who am not a doctor at all in such matters, I prefer to believe that the angel of Abraham and Tobias, that beautiful white angel with the blue eyes and the girdle of gold, whom you often saw in your childish dreams, came down from Heaven on a moonbeam, and, as he hovered in the trembling vapor of the cataract, stretched his silvery wings over my gentle companion’s head. The only thing that I am able to tell you is that the moon sank behind the great peaks of the mountain and no ominous sound disturbed the peaceful murmur of the waterfall; the birds on the cliff did not take their flight until a white streak appeared on the horizon; and the first ruddy beam that fell upon the clump of orange trees found me on my knees blessing God.

  “Do not think, however, that I accepted instantly the unhoped-for happiness which gave a new turn to my destiny. I was afraid to sound the radiant future that was dawning for me; and when Indiana raised her eyes and smiled upon me, I pointed to the waterfall and talked of dying.

  “‘If you do not regret having lived until this morning,’ I said to her, ‘we can both declare that we have tasted happiness in all its plentitude; and it is an additional reason for ceasing to live, for perhaps my star would pale tomorrow. Who can say that, on leaving this spot, on coming forth from this intoxicating situation to which thoughts of death and love have brought me, I shall not become once more the detestable brute whom you despised yesterday? Will you not blush for yourself when you find me again as you have always known me? Oh! Indiana, spare me that horrible agony; it would be the complement of my destiny.’

  “‘Do you doubt your heart, Ralph?’ said Indiana with an adorable expression of love and confidence, ‘or does not mine offer you sufficient guarantee?’

  “Shall I tell you? I was not happy at first. I did not doubt Madame Delmare’s sincerity, but I was terrified by thought of the future. Having distrusted myself beyond measure for thirty years, I could not feel assured in a single day of my ability to please and to retain her love. I had moments of uncertainty, alarm and bitterness; I sometimes regretted that I had not jumped into the lake when a word from Indiana had made me so happy.

  “She too must have had attacks of melancholy. She found it difficult to break herself of the habit of suffering, for the heart becomes used to unhappiness, it takes root in it and cuts loose from it only with an effort. However, I must do her heart the justice to say that she never had a regret for Raymon; she did not even remember him enough to hate him.

  “At last, as always happens in deep and true attachments, time, instead of weakening our love, established it firmly and sealed it; each day gave it added intensity, because each day brought fresh obligations on both sides to esteem and to bless. All our fears vanished one by one; and when we saw how easy it was to destroy those causes of distrust, we smilingly confessed to each other that we took our happiness like cowards and that neither of us deserved it. From that moment we have loved each other in perfect security.”

  Ralph paused; then, after a few moments of profound meditation in which we were equally absorbed, he continued, pressing my hand:

  “I say nothing of my happiness; if there are griefs that never betray their existence and envelop the heart like a shroud, so there are joys that remain buried in the heart of a man because no earthly voice can describe them. Moreover, if some angel from heaven should light upon one of these flowering branches and describe those joys in the language of his native land, you would not understand them, young man, for the tempest has not bruised and shattered you. Alas! what can the heart that has not suffered understand of happiness? As to our crimes—” he added with a smile.

  “Oh!” I cried, my eyes wet with tears.

  “Listen, monsieur,” he continued, interrupting me; “you have lived but a few hours with the two outlaws of Bernica, but a single hour would suffice for you to learn their whole life. All our days resemble one another; they are all calm and lovely; they pass by as swiftly and as pure as those of our childhood. Every night we bless God; we pray to him every morning, we implore at his hands the sunshine and shade of the day before. The greater part of our income is devoted to the redemption of poor and infirm blacks. That is the principle cause of the evil that the colonists say of us. Would that we were rich enough to set free all those who live in slavery! Our servants are our friends; they share our joys, we nurse them in sickness. This is the way our life is spent, without vexations, without remorse. We rarely speak of the past, rarely of the future; but always of the former without bitterness, of the latter without alarm. If we sometimes surprise ourselves with tears in our eyes, it is because great joys always cause tears to flow; the eyes are dry in great misery.”

  “My friend,” I said after a long silence, “if the accusations of the world should reach your ears, your happiness would answer loudly enough.”

  “You are young,” he replied, “in your eyes, for your conscience is ingenuous and pure and unsoiled by the world, our happiness is the proof of our virtue; in the eyes of the world it is our crime. Solitude is sweet, I tell you, and men are not worth a regret.”

  “All do not accuse you,” I said; “but even those who appreciate your true character blame you for despising public opinion, and those who acknowledge your virtue say that you are arrogant and proud.”

  “Believe me,” replied Ralph, “there is more pride in that reproach than in any alleged scorn. As for public opinion, monsieur, judging from those whom it exalts, ought we not always to hold out our hand to those whom it tramples upon? It is said that its approval is necessary to happiness; they who think so should respect it. For my part, I sincerely pity any happiness that rises or falls with its capricious breath.”

  “Some moralists criticise your solitary life; they claim that every man belongs to society, which demands his presence. They add that you set an example which it is dangerous to follow.”

  “Society should demand nothing of the man who expects nothing from it,” Sir Ralph replied. “As for the contagion of example, I do not believe in it, monsieur; too much energy is required to break with the world, and too much suffering to acquire that energy. So let this unknown happiness flow on in peace, for it costs nobody anything, and conceals itself for fear of making others envious. Go, young man, follow the course of your destiny; have friends, a profession, a reputation, a fatherland. As for me, I have Indiana. Do not break the chains that bind you to society, respect its ju
dgments if they are fair to you: but if some day it calumniates you and spurns you, have pride enough to find a way to do without it.”

  “Yes,” said I, “a pure heart will enable us to endure exile; but, to make us love it, one must have such a companion as yours.”

  “Ah!” he said, “if you knew how I pity this world of yours, which looks down on me!”

  The next day I left Ralph and Indiana; one embraced me, the other shed a few tears.

  “Adieu,” they said to me; “return to the world; if some day it banishes you, remember our Indian cottage.”

  About the Author

  George Sand is the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, a nineteenth century French novelist and memoirist. Sand is best known for her novels Indiana, Lélia, and Consuelo, and for her memoir A Winter in Majorca, in which she reflects on her time on the island with Chopin in 1838–9. A champion of the poor and working classes, Sand was an early socialist, publishing her own newspaper using a workers’ co-operative, and scorned gender conventions by wearing men’s clothing and smoking tobacco in public. George Sand died in France in 1876.

  Venus in Furs

  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

  Translated from the German by Fernanda Savage

  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  Venus in Furs

  Afterword

  Notes

  About the Author

  Epigraph

  “But the Almighty Lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman...”

  —The Vulgate, Judith, xvi. 7

  Venus in Furs

  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 un-understandable. 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 recognized 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.”

  “You were really in love with the costume, and awfully docile.”

  “You have taught me what love is. Your serene form of worship let me forget two thousand years.”

  “And my faithfulness to you was without equal!”

  “Well, as far as faithfulness goes—”

  “Ungrateful!”

  “I will not reproach you with anything. You are a divine woman, but nevertheless a woman, and like every woman cruel in love.”

  “What you call cruel,” the goddess of love replied eagerly, “is simply the element of passion and of natural love, which is woman’s nature and makes her give herself where she loves, and makes her love everything, that pleases her.”

  “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. You talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure.”

  “That is why our emotions are honorable and virtuous, and our relations permanent.”

  “And yet a restless, always unsatisfied craving for the nudity of paganism,” she interrupted, “but that love, which is the highest joy, which is divine simplicity itself, is not for you moderns, you children of reflection. It works only evil in you. As soon as you wish to be natural, you become common. 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. And if ever one of you has had the courage to kiss my red mouth, he makes a barefoot pilgrimage to Rome in penitential robes and expects flowers to grow from his withered staff, while under my feet roses, violets, and myrtles spring up every hour, but their fragrance does not agree with you. Stay among your northern fogs and Christian incense; let us pagans remain under the debris, beneath the lava; do not disinter us. Pompeii was not built for you, nor our villas, our baths, our temples. You do not require gods. We are chilled in your world.”

  The beautiful marble woman coughed, and drew the dark sables still closer about her shoulders.

  “Much obliged for the classical lesson,” I replied, “but you cannot deny, that man and woman are mortal enemies, in your serene sunlit world as well as in our foggy one. In love there is union into a single being for a short time only, capable of only one thought, one sensation, one will, in order to be then further disunited. And you know this better than I; whichever of the two fails to subjugate will soon feel the feet of the other on his neck—”

  “And as a rule the man that of the woman,” cried Madame Venus with proud mockery, “which you know better than I.”

  “Of course, and that is why I don’t have any illusions.”

  “You mean you are now my slave without illusions, and for that reason you shall feel the weight of my foot without mercy.”

  “Madame!”

  “Don’t you know me yet? Yes, I am cruel—since you take so much delight in that word—and am I not entitled to be so? Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman’s entire but decisive advantage. 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.”

  “Exactly your principles,” I interrupted angrily.

  “They are based on the experience of thousands of years,” she replied ironically, while her white fingers played over the dark fur. “The more devoted a woman shows herself, the sooner the man sobers down and becomes domineering. The more cruelly she treats him and the more faithless she is, the worse she uses him, the more wantonly she plays with him, the less pity she shows him, by so much the more will she increase his desire, be loved, worshipped by him. So it has always been, since the time of Helen and Delilah, down to Catherine the Second and Lola Montez.”

  “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 h
er whim—”

  “And in addition wears furs,” exclaimed the divinity.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I know your predilection.”

  “Do you know,” I interrupted, “that since we last saw each other, you have grown very coquettish.”

  “In what way, may I ask?”

  “In that there is no way of accentuating your white body to greater advantage than by these dark furs, and that—”

  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.

  “Do get up,” continued the good fellow, “it is really disgraceful.”

  “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. Besides it is high time you were starting for Mr. Severin’s who is expecting us for tea.”