Venus in Furs | 
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Customer Reviews:
• Love It 21 October, 2007
well done the story line kept my attention the entire time i read it.you really start to understand why he was the way that he was.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3AUE9IEN2KOP0
• Classic Text With Richly Illustrated Ideals And A Complex Plot, Although Not Explicitly Realized. Recommended 11 June, 2008
Severin von Kusiemski is a European nobleman who has always fantasized about and found pleasure in pain and submission, a condition that he terms suprasensuality. In his memoir he recounts an affair with Wanda von Dunajew, a woman of voluptuous, cruel sexuality. He asks to become her slave and submits to increasingly degrading treatment--until Wanda meet a man to whom she wishes to submit. A classic text, Venus in Furs has a writing style that may not appeal to all readers: the narratives delves deeper into desires and relationships than action and sexual acts and has an airy, self-indulgent tone. This narrative voice, however, creates an intimate view of "suprasensuality"--a sort of masochism that predates (and originates) the term, and the ethereal style allows Sacher-Masoch to build up and break down the ideal of the cruel mistress. Worth reading for concept and significance alone, the text is softly seductive and swiftly readable. I recommend it.
To describe the sexual desire to receive pain, Krafft-Ebbing created the word "masochism" from Sacher-Masoch's name. Krafft-Ebbing's research is now out of date, but the word is still in use. Likewise a lot has changed since the book's publishing, but Venus in Furs remains an early exploration of masochistic desires and a sadomasochistic relationship, and is in some ways foundational and in some still relevant. Severin idealizes Wanda: replacing the statue of Venus, iconographed in a painting, she becomes the archetype of the merciless woman. Naming and describing his own suprasensuality, Severin creates an ideal also for the submissive man, who fetishizes the paraphernalia of powerful women, who falls in thrall at a women's feet, who submits to degradation and abuse--and finds pleasure in it all. The lovers often discuss the causes and boundaries of their relationship, and Severin's narrative pauses frequently for introspection and artistic descriptions. All told, Venus in Furs is both portrait and exploration of a sadomasochistic relationship. Some of these aspects are outdated and some may not ring true to the reader, but in Sacher-Masoch's text they are both archetypal and real, a strong fictional entrance into the topic which still readable, relevant, and thought-provoking today.
Two aspects, however, alter this view of the novel. First, the writing style sometimes glosses over the essential content of the relationship. Sacher-Masoch spends plenty of time on motivation and lead up, but little on actual action--sexual aspects, both intercourse and sadistic/masochistic scenes, are brief or absent. Although hardly surprising (especially given the content and publishing date), this deficiency restricts the text to the theoretical. The characters and desires--although well crafted--are rendered somewhat insubstantial. The writing becomes dreamlike, detouring often and only ghosting over action, and this style is somewhat inaccessible. Secondly, Wanda and Severin's relationship takes a dramatic turn in the second half of the book, changing the characters and also the sadomasochistic relationship. This change is more of a complication than a drawback. It muddies the idealized view of the characters and desires, but also creates a plot--granting the book a direction and purpose greater than simply illustrating ideals.
All of this in barely more than 100 pages: Venus in Furs moves swiftly through even its languorous introspection, and packs a lot into a very small space. The book is worth reading both for the early concept of masochism and a sadomasochistic relationship and for its characters, plot, and unusual narrative voice. The novel does read like a classic, but remains accessible to a modern audience. Personally, I wasn't blown away by this book but I was generally impressed and glad to return to one of the literary "sources," as it were, of the topic. On that basis I was pleased, and I recommend the book.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A11ON2OFCF6RTV
• Very Different From What I Expected 10 November, 2007
I wanted to read this book for years, and when it finally crossed my radar here at Amazon, I snapped it up with very high expectations. However, my reading experience was very different from my expectations of it.
Considering that Sacher-Masoch's name ended up being a synonym for an entire branch of sexuality, I was disappointed to discover that Venus in Furs is *not* a story about a masochistic relationship (except in a more dysfunctional meaning of the word).
While the main characters do enjoy some aspects of masochism/sadism, they mainly use it as a weapon against each other in an intense gender power struggle. People in the fetish community will recognize the term "topping from the bottom", (and others will be more familiar with "passive-aggressive"), where the submissive/masochistic partner tries to use his/her "sacrifice" to gain covert control over the relationship and the dominant partner, while avoiding actually taking responsibility for what happens. If you're looking for a genuine story about the sadistic/masochistic aspect of human sexuality, you will be disappointed by Venus in Furs.
On the other hand, this book is an intense historical document about the Western view of gender and relationships a hundred years ago, which is still very much present in today's Western countries. It's fascinating, funny, sad and horrifying at the same time, to be for a while steeped into an idea of the world in which relationships are a brute power struggle in which one side must always lose, and the only way a person can hope to keep both his/her self and his/her beloved is to "win" by deception, intimidation, domination, violence and mind-games. It's a story about wounded, neurotic, fearful and repressed love in a culture which applied Nitsche and Darwin very literally and simplistically to every aspect of human life.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AQYBCXYEW1UF8
• An Interesting Foray Into Relationship Ideas 28 May, 2007
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is the root for the term masochism and he portrays this in his novel 'Venus in Furs' by depicting the personal discovery of a young man whose relationship takes a turn when he realizes he wants to stay with his "venus" no matter the consequences. This devolves into his own urge to be treated badly by his lover, and results in his ultimately getting exactly what he wished for.
Told from the point of view of the man when he is older, he tells the story to another young man as a lesson to avoid suffering the pains he has suffered. Told with fascinating language and imagery, it is a book that offers an understanding of the source of the term "masochism" and provides a nice short story in and of itself.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A15F75YXETI2BG
• The Roots Of Masochism 04 September, 2008
The term "Masochism" was named for the author of Venus in Furs, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who wrote his own personal fantasies in a semi-autobiographical novella. I read this book in one night and could not put it down. The beginning and middle were entirely gripping as a young man, who has always feared women, is enveloped in his love and obsession for a woman he feels embodies Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. A sickly erotic relationship develops as the couple fall in love where the young man begs his Venus in furs to be his master and treat him like her slave. As the novella continues, the masochistic relationship develops to a point where I felt a little disinterested and somewhat turned off and frustrated by the loss of passion and affection in the name of self destruction. However, this tale tells of love in a way that many are curious about yet never glimpse. I study Art History, especially Symbolism, and having done a lot of research about Gustav Klimt, I have noticed many interested and fascinating parallels between Klimt and the narrator on their view of women as being a dangerous siren and overpowering being. "Venus in Furs" captured me with its type of twisted erotica meshed into deep love and powerful emotions. At the end I understood in a very impressing way the story behind the painting introduced at the beginning of the novella that subsequently was its close, the painting of a semi-nude Venus in furs with a whip standing over her pathetically devoted lover.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3QRHL90UNSRRX
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