#leopold von sacher masoch

[severin-photocopy]

I'm going insane.

I am still reading Aurora von Rümelin's biography because I am a slow reader and she just described how Sacher-Masoch wanted to get one of his teeth removed because it was aching. So he asks her to stay in front of him during the operation wearing a fur coat and looking all cruel. because obviously he does. and it turns out the tooth was actually healthy and he just goes "eeh fine, best orgasm of my life, anyways..."

I can't stop laughing I'm dying, I don't know how real this actually is but it's absurd and I love it. From Rümelin's biography Sacher-Masoch seems like a parody of himself but at the same time it's just so vaguely plausible it drives me mad.

proof under the cut cause I am going insane and can't believe I've read these words with my own two eyes

I'm sorry it's in Italian but google translate should be able to detect the text and translate it

[gregorsheart]

Venus in furs where everything is the same but there are fleas in Wanda's furs and she catches them so she's constantly itching her scalp

[asphyxiaandabsinthe]

Leopold Von-Sacher Masoch, the infamous novelist behind “Venus in Furs” and the namesake for “masochism”, explains masochism better than any psychiatrist. He calls masochism “supersensuality”, not a desire for pain itself. Masochism is the understanding that desire is inherently something unfulfilled, it is yearning. As well, we cannot understand pleasure, and how beautiful pleasure is, without the contrast of pain. Suffering shows us joy. The “supersensual”, or masochist, is a person who enjoys sensuality and love so much that they can find that love even in pain. He compares being a supersensual to being a religious martyr, as religious martyrs find euphoria and religious ecstasy through corporal mortification or even death. This is the motivation of the masochist. The masochist is not motivated by pure fantasy or psychiatric instability, but by a desire to maximize sensation and pleasure.

[alisfelia]

venus in furs by leopold von sacher-masoch

"you have corrupted my imagination and inflamed my blood..."

[chaoticdesertdweller]

Eva Hermine von Sacher-Masoch

December 4, 1912 – May 22, 1991

Grand niece of Leopold von Sacher Masoch and mother of Marianne Faithfull

[lazzarella]

“Until then I had lived as I had painted and versified - that is, I never got far beyond priming canvas, beyond penning an outline, a first act, a first stanza. There are simply people who start all sorts of things and yet never finish any of them. And that was the kind of person I was.”

Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

[slime-blossom]

if i were a time traveler it would be fun to get leopold von sacher-masoch and dominique aury into a room together and have them debate the relative merits of malesub vs. femsub

[argyrocratie]

turn out Sacher-Masoch recalled an anecdote about Bakunin at the time of the pan-Slavist congress of 1848 and funny enough the scene depicted still manage to be somewhat thematically what Sacher-Masoch is known for:

"The Baroness denied that the goal could be achieved through revolution.

“It was not the republic,” she cried, “that made the ideas of 1789 triumph, it was Napoleon. We need a man who is himself a power, and this man can only be the Tsar”

While she spoke thus with vivacity, as usual, and her large clear eyes shone, she looked, with her parafa and her gold brocade kazabaika trimmed with sable, like one of those intelligent and energetic tsarinas of the old Russia, accustomed to making the neck of any man who approached them a stool for their feet.

This witty woman developed her ideas with great sagacity and in a very brilliant way.

“Before long,” she said, among other things, “the political ideal will definitely be relegated to the background. All nations will no longer have but a single concern: achieving unity. This will result in the formation of large, very powerful States. This aspiration, the strongest because it is the most natural, will push all other interests into the shadows for a long time.

“The struggles of our time, almost all fought in the name of freedom, have little importance; in the very near future these struggles will become purely national struggles.

“The Slavs, like other nations, must aspire to unity and achieve it; but it must be recognized that they are less prepared for it than the Italians and Germans were. A number of small independent nations have been formed within the Slavic race, which will not easily give up their independence.”

“That is perfectly right,” said Bakunin: “‘a union of the Slavic rivers losing themselves in the Russian sea,’ in Pushkin’s sense, would seem desirable neither to the Czechs, nor to the Serbs, nor to the Croats, and it would be energetically refused by Polish. This is precisely why the autocratic government of the Tsar must fall. The only form of government capable of satisfying all parties is a large and free Slavic federation, on the model of the United States of North America, which would include the Hungarians and the Romanians.”

“No! Bakunin,” cried the superb baroness, “you are wrong. We will achieve nothing until we know how to subordinate our political ideal to our national ideal.

“All by the Tsar! nothing without the tsar!”

“You defend the monarchy of the tsars, because you yourself are a great despot,” said Bakunin, smiling and passionately raising his adversary’s little hand to his lips. “It would be an idea to make you sovereign of our pan-Slavist state. I would be the first to throw myself at your feet and make myself your humble slave.”

“Ah! If I were mistress of all these crazy disunited heads,” she cried, “I would unite you all with the knout; because you need the knout, everyone, without exception!”

-Sacher-Masoch, “Choses vécues,” Revue politique et littéraire 25 no. 8(25 août 1888): 250-252. (X)

[littlemermaidx]

I'm really enjoying Venus in furs. I like its simplicity and that it's written like a dairy. I can also very much relate to Severin and his neediness, desperation and passion. I admire his strength and courage to freely display a kind of behaviour that *majority* of people would most likely cringe upon. It's true what they say that it takes courage and strength to be *weak*. Reading the book already made me sad a few times and I wasn't sure was it due to hormones or the fact that I can relate to it so much or both, but I'm really enjoying it so far and I want to prolong reading it because it's, unfortunately, pretty short.

[s0uvlakii]

coldness and cruelty - gilles deleuze

[severin-photocopy]

I am the Laios of my friend group. Just that instead of monsters I have a weird austro-hungarian dude

[gregorsheart]

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

[asphyxiaandabsinthe]

“Were the martyrs soft and sensual by nature?”

“The martyrs?”

“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 in being such, you do become a martyr to love, the martyr of a woman.”

-Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

[mioritic]

Edward Loevy (Polish-French, 1857–1910)

Illustration for Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's Contes Juifs (Paris: Maison Quantin, 1888)

[atbussysparks]

The first of my series, "Venus in furs"