Leo Tolstoy: A Digital Bibliography

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910

Below is a list of links to the works of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) that are in the public domain. All of his major works are available for free including each of his novels, the vast majority of his short fiction and all of his plays. I’ve included a half dozen of the most famous and significant religious, philosophical and critical works and one volume of Tolstoy's journal. Many of the available texts were translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude with the author's official sanction, but you'll also find translations by the usual 19th century suspects (Constance Garnett, C. J. Hogarth, Nathan Haskell Doyle, et al.)

If you're not quite ready for the epic heft of War and Peace or Anna Karenina (both wonderful works that are well worth the effort to read), there are several smaller works that you might consider first, like The Cossacks (a love story set in the Caucasus), Sevastopol, (a gripping fictionalized account of the author's real life experiences in the Crimean War), The Death of Ivan Ilyich (a novella about the dying days of a high court judge) or just about any of the short stories. Chances are if you like any of those works, you might very well get hooked. If so, there are plenty of great books to explore.

I used Wikipedia’s Tolstoy bibliography page and a bibliography from the University of Adelaide to date the works listed below. Other than that, I relied on the bibliographical information in the various editions themselves when available. Novels are listed in the chronological order of first Russian publication.  Short fiction is ordered by the year in which the English translations appeared with the date of origin indicated for each story. I've tried to arrange the short fiction titles so that they're more or less in chronological order. The titles of the novels and novellas are italicized and the short story titles appear in quotes. (*) denotes key works.

Novels

Childhood (1852) tr. C.J. Hogarth

Boyhood (1854) tr. C.J. Hogarth

Youth (1856) tr. C. J. Hogarth

The Cossacks (1863)* tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude

War & Peace (1869)* tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude

Anna Karenina (1877)* tr. Constance Garnett

Resurrection (1899) tr. Louise Maude

Short Fiction

The Russian Proprietor & Other Stories (1887) tr. Nathan Haskell Doyle

                              “The Russian Proprietor” (1852)

                              “Lucerne” (1857)

                              “Recollections of a Scorer” (1855)*

                              “Albert” (1858)

                              “Two Hussars” (1856)

                              “Three Deaths” (1859)

                              “A Prisoner in the Caucasus” (1872)*

Sevastopol (1855)* tr. Isabel F. Hapgood

Family Happiness (1859) tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude

“Where Love Is, There God Is Also” (1885) tr. Nathan Haskell Doyle

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886)* tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude

The Kreutzer Sonata & Other Stories (1889) tr. uncredited

                              The Kreutzer Sonata (1889)* with Tolstoy’s postscript 

                              “Ivan the Fool” (1885)

                              “A Lost Opportunity” (1889)

                              “Polikushka” (1863)

                              “The Candle” (1885)

What Men Live By & Other Tales (unknown date) tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude

                              “What Men Live By” (1881)*

                              “Three Questions”  (1903)*

                              “The Coffee-House of Surat” (1893)*

                              “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”  (1886)*

“Master and Man” (1895) tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude

“Father Sergius” (1898) tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude  

The Forged Coupon & Other Stories (1911) tr. uncredited

                              The Forged Coupon (19??)*

                              “After the Dance” (1903) (a.k.a. “After the Ball”)

                              “Alyosha the Pot” (1905)

                              “My Dream” (1906)

                              “There Are No Guilty People” (1909)

                              “The Young Tsar” (1894)

Hadji Murad (1912)* tr. Aylmer Maude

Plays

Plays: Complete Ed., Including the Posthumous Plays (1919) tr. Louise & Aylmer Maude     
                              The Power of Darkness (1886)

                              The First Distiller (1886)

                              Fruits of Culture (1889)

                              The Live Corpse (1900)

                              The Cause of it All (1910)

                              The Light Shines in Darkness (1890)

Selected Religious, Philosophical & Critical Works

A Confession (1879)* tr. Leo Weiner

My Religion (1884)* tr. Huntington Smith

What Shall We Do? (1886)* tr. uncredited 

The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893)* tr. Constance Garnett

What is Art? (1897)* tr. Aylmer Maude

Letter to a Hindu (1908)* tr. uncredited, Introduction by M. K. Ghandi

Journal

The Journal of Leo Tolstoy: First Volume 1895-1899 (1911) tr. Rose Strunsky

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Fyodor Dostoevsky: A Digital Bibliography

Here is a list of links to digital editions of the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) that are in the public domain. If you just want to stick your toe in the water, The Gambler and The Eternal Husband are brisk reads. Notes from the Underground is a deceptively slim volume that packs a considerable existential wallop. The short story collections contain a few gems. Doorstoppers like Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov have rightly justified reputations as two of the greatest novels in world literature, and the latter among the most challenging. One of my personal favorites is Notes from the House of the Dead, a thinly-veiled novel about an inmate of a Siberian prison that draws much from Dostoevsky's real life experience and shuffles the chronology of events in a recognizably modern, non-linear way.

English translations of some of his earliest novels are not in the public domain, but all of his major works are available for free. Most of the works on this page were translated by Constance Garnett, whose translations of Dostoevsky are not without detractors as some critics believe that Garnett failed to successfully capture the author’s sometimes jagged and idiosyncratic style. For most of us, It’s difficult to truly evaluate the worth of a translation unless you speak both languages fluently. Garnett’s translations have endured and remained in print for over one hundred years and will serve very well to introduce you to Dostoevsky's works. If you want to dig deeper, there are plenty of translations out there to choose from.  

I consulted Wikipedia’s bibliography page to date the novels and stories (definitely one of their better pages). I found some useful bibliographical information about Constance Garnett’s translated works at Eldritch Press. Novels are listed in the chronological order of first Russian publication. The short story collections are ordered by the year in which the English translations first appeared (when available) with the date of original Russian publication indicated for each story. (*) denotes key works.

Novels

Poor Folk (1846)* tr. by C. J. Hogarth

The Double (1846)* tr. by Constance Garnett

The Insulted and the Injured (1861) tr. by Constance Garnett

Notes from the House of the Dead (1861)* tr. by H. S. Edwards

Notes from the Underground (1864)* tr. uncredited

Crime and Punishment (1866)* tr.Constance Garnett

The Gambler (1867) tr. C. J. Hogarth

The Idiot (1868)* tr. Eva Martin

The Eternal Husband (1869) tr. Constance Garnett

The Possessed (a.k.a. The Demons) (1871)* tr. Constance Garnett

A Raw Youth (1875) tr. Constance Garnett

The Brothers Karamazov (1880)* tr. Constance Garnett

Short Stories

Short Stories (unknown date) tr. uncredited

                              “An Honest Thief” (1848)

                              “A Novel in Nine Letters” (1847)  

                              “An Unpleasant Predicament” (1862)*

                              “Another Man's Wife” (1848)

                              “The Heavenly Christmas Tree” (1876)

                              “The Peasant Marey” (1876)

                              “The Crocodile” (1865)

                              “Bobok” (1873)

                              “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” (1877)*

You and read my post about Short Stories here.

White Nights & Other Stories (1918) tr. Constance Garnett

                              “White Nights” (1848)*

                              “Notes from Underground” (1864)* (complete)

                              “A Faint Heart” (1848)

                              “A Christmas Tree and a Wedding” (1848)

                              “Polzunkov” (1848)

                              “A Little Hero” (1849)

                              “Mr. Prohartchin” (1846)

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Ivan Turgenev: A Digital Bibliography

Ivan Turgenev in the 1850s

This will be the first of four digital bibliographies dedicated to Russian authors. We’ll begin with Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) who was the first Russian author to achieve international rock star status.

Below is a list of links where you can find and read the works of Ivan Turgenev for free. All of these titles were translated by Constance Garnett except where indicated. In fact, I think these links represent the entirety of her English translations of Turgenev’s prose (her 1934 translations of his plays are not in the public domain and thus not listed here). For reference, I used D. S. Mirsky’s classic History of Russian Literature from its Beginnings to 1900 (1958) to date some of the stories. Avrhahm Yarmolinsky’s Turgenev: The Man, His Art and His Age (1959) was also very helpful. 

Where to start? A Sportsman’s Sketches is a masterpiece of realist prose in easily digestible short stories about the plight of Russia’s serfs as seen through the eyes of a landowner sportsman on the hunt. Fathers and Children is Turgenev’s most famous and critically lauded novel about the generational and ideological divides in a Russian family on the eve of the abolition of serfdom. A House of Gentlefolk is a straight up, classic romance full of longing and nostalgia for the vanishing gilded age of the landed gentry. Anything you see marked as a key work is worth exploring. 

Novels are listed in the chronological order of first Russian publication. The short story collections are ordered by the year in which the English translations first appeared with the date of original Russian publication indicated for each story except A Sportsman’s Sketches, which consists of stories written and published from 1847 to 1851 and first appeared in book form in Russia in 1852. The novels and novellas are italicized, short stories appear in quotes. (*) denotes key works.

Novels

Rudin (1856)*

A House of Gentlefolk (1859)*

On the Eve (1860) 

Fathers and Children (1862)*

Smoke (1867) 

Virgin Soil (1877) tr. by R. S. Townsend

Short Fiction

A Sportsman’s Sketches Volume 1 (1852)* 

                              “Hor and Kalinitch”

                              “Yermolai and the Miller’s Wife”

                              “Raspberry Spring”

                              “The District Doctor”

                              “My Neighbour Radilov"

                              “The Peasant Proprietor Ovsyanikov”

                              “Lgov”

                              “Byezhin Prairie”

                              “Kassyan of Fair Springs”

                              “The Agent”

                              “The Counting House”

                              “Biryuk”

                              “Two Country Gentlemen”

                              “Lebedyan”

A Sportsman’s Sketches Volume 2 (1852)*

                              “Tatyana Borissovna and Her Nephew”

                              “Death” 

                              “The Singers”

                              “Piotr Petrovich Karataev”

                              “The Tryst”

                              “The Hamlet of the Shtchigri District” 

                              “Tchertop-Hanov and Nedopyushkin”

                              “The End of Tchertop-Hanov”

                              “A Living Relic”

                              “The Rattling of Wheels”

                              “Epilogue: The Forest and the Steppe”

The stories in both volumes first appeared between 1847-1851. You can read my post about A Sportsman's Sketches here.

The Torrents of Spring (1897) 

                              The Torrents of Spring (1872)* 

                              First Love (1860)*

                              “Mumu” (1854)*

Dream Tales & Prose Poems (1897)

                              “Clara Militch” (1882)

                              “Phantoms” (1865)

                              “The Song of Triumphant Love [MDXLII]” (1881)*

                              “The Dream” (1876)*

                              Poems in Prose (1878) (a series of short sketches)

                                                                               

A Lear of the Steppes (1898) 

                               A Lear of the Steppes (1870)*

                               "Faust" (1856)*

                               "Acia" (1858)

The Diary of a Superfluous Man & Other Stories (1899)

                              “The Diary of a Superfluous Man” (1850)*

                              “A Tour in the Forest” (1857)

                              "Yakov Pasinkov ' (1855) 

                              “Andrei Kolosov” (1846)

                              "A Correspondence" (1856)

A Desperate Character & Other Stories (1899) 

                              “A Desperate Character” (1881)

                              “A Strange Story” (1869)

                              “Punin and Baburin” (1874)

                              “Old Portraits” (1881)

                              “The Brigadier” (1867)

                              “Pyetushkov” (1847)

The Jew & Other Stories (1900)

                              “The Jew” (1847)

                              “An Unhappy Girl” (1869)

                              “The Duellist” (1847)

                              “Three Portraits” (1846)

                              “Enough” (1865)

Knock, Knock, Knock & Other Stories (1922) 

                              “Knock, Knock, Knock” (1871)

                              “The Inn” (1852)*

                              “Lieutenant Yergunov’s Story” (1868)

                              “The Dog” (1866)

                              “The Watch” (1874)

The Two Friends & Other Stories (1922) 

                              "The Two Friends" (1853)

                              “Father Alexey's Story" (1877)

                              ”Three Meetings” (1851)

                              "A Quiet Backwater" (1854)

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What Have We Learned? (Goodbye For Now)

Cincinnati Public Library in 1874

All good things must come to an end or at the very least postponed indefinitely. So it goes with The Overleaf.

The Internet and the advent of eReader devices have helped to bring the world’s vast libraries of knowledge and expression to the average person. I was driven to start this blog excited by the idea that tens of thousands of books were available to everyone free of charge via Project Gutenberg. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that some of the world’s greatest books and some lesser known but interesting gems all lay waiting for curious readers if they only knew they existed. In writing these essays, I attempted to make these works more accessible to casual readers who might otherwise have been intimidated by the academic pedigree and snob appeal attached to a given book. I did this because literature has been a lifelong passion that has brought me great enjoyment, stirred my soul, piqued my curiosity and deepened my understanding of the world. It continues to do so. I was also spurred by the belief that literature is not just for a select few; literature is for everyone.

Writing this blog made me a more attentive reader and a better writer. It was an exercise in discipline to post a new article twice a month without fail. This self-imposed obligation compelled me to scramble to get things done no matter what which caused a bit of chaos now and then as I also tried to dispatch the rest of life’s responsibilities. Everything got done, but things have changed. I have less time to devote to The Overleaf and, wonderful as the experience has been, I’m looking forward to going back to reading at my leisure. Writing about a book means reading it closely for content. It also means research and some time spent writing and posting. It’ll be nice to read as I have encouraged others to read—for enjoyment, at one’s own pace, savoring the words of a book for the very sake of it. 

So let these essays on literature stand, for now, as my contribution to the effort to bring literature into people’s lives. Someday, I may return. But for now I must turn my energies towards making music, which is my primary obsession. I want to thank all of the thousands of people who have stopped by The Overleaf during the first 58 weeks of its existence. I hope only that you’ll pass along some of the books you may have found here and that perhaps you were inspired to chart your own course for exploring literature. I had lots of fun and learned a great deal. Thank you for coming with me on this journey.

Please keep reading.

--kk

“The Devil’s Pool” by George Sand

Forest in Autumn, 1841 by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)

There are many wonderful books in the world. There are even more lousy ones and the number of books that are just mediocre would astound you. Even with the best of intentions, boundless curiosity and a life free from toil and obligation, one can never hope to read but a fraction of all the books you hope to read.  When I was a bright-eyed youth studying English lit, I thought my professors had read everything, but now I know it’s very likely that they hadn’t. At least it seemed a statistical improbability given the sheer number of works of literature versus the number of hours in a day. But you can relax. You don’t have to read absolutely everything in order to enjoy literature.

Look at this syllabus from a class taught by poet W. H. Auden in 1941. It is ridiculous—six thousand pages of reading for one class in the span of a single semester. It is a workload that sets the bar impossibly high. This kind of binging could potentially lead to serious mental health problems and feelings of intellectual inadequacy. But remember, one could spend a lifetime climbing that mountain of classics and still only scratch the surface of Western civilization. And that’s not counting time for reflection and meaningful analysis. I never received a syllabus quite like this one, but I have seen a few daunting ones in my time. It took me years not to be intimidated by other people’s expectations of what I was supposed to have read. I eventually learned to enjoy my journey through literature and history in my own way at my own pace—in essence, drafting my own syllabus. I often consult those with knowledge of literary criticism and the art of writing and their insight is often helpful, but I’m not beholden to anyone’s expectations but my own. That’s what The Overleaf is all about—crafting your own course of discovery. 

So far, I’ve kept to a self-imposed schedule of two blog entries per month. I’ve done that for a solid year and built up the blog, giving it a firm foundation. Time is now increasingly short and obligations demand more of my time, so I’m cutting back to monthly posts. But the literary journey continues. Rather than keep to the stringent demands of a bi-monthly binge and purge cycle, cutting back will allow me to spend more quality time with the books I share with you and still have time to work and buy food. This new arrangement is the epitome of a win-win.

Here is a book that may not be on your syllabus yet unless you’re enrolled in a class about rarely read nineteenth century French novels. The Devil’s Pool depicts rural French peasant life. It’s author, George Sand was actually a woman (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin), a renowned writer of novels and committed socialist whose unconventional lifestyle and numerous romantic flings with prominent writers and composers like Alfred de Musset and Frederic Chopin made her a bit of a celebrity. She was widely read throughout Europe and America and had vocal supporters from literary giants of her day like Walt Whitman and Ivan Turgenev. This novel is short and straightforward and provides a broader context to some of the stories we’ve read earlier this year about the Russian peasantry. The fact that she isn’t read as much these days is reason enough to give The Devil’s Pool a spin.

"The Ploughman" c. 1525
 by Hans Holbein the Younger
(1498-1543)

The Devil’s Pool (1846) by George Sand

This story was inspired by Dance of Death, a book of wood cut prints by Renaissance artist and printmaker Hans Holbein. One print in particular, “The Ploughman” (right) shows Death running along side an emaciated farmer and his team of oxen. George Sand was struck by how this grim depiction of peasant life in which the inevitability of hardship and toil are rewarded only by the promise of the reward of death contrasted sharply with the reality of peasant life as she witnessed it near her home in the French countryside. While out for a walk, she saw a healthy young man driving a team of newly yoked oxen goaded not by the spectre of Death, but by the farmer’s young son. She mused that perhaps depictions of peasants centuries ago overemphasized the omnipresence of suffering and barbarity. She saw that her peasant neighbors had a deeper, often more joyful connection to the natural world that eluded those who lived removed from nature. She set out to write a book that would right this wrong.

The tale she tells is a simple one. Germain is a widower with three children who lives with his in-laws, helping to run the family farm. He is twenty eight years old—an old man by peasant standards, but exceedingly strong and good looking. His father-in-law suggests to him that perhaps it’s time that he found a wife to help take care of his children—preferably one with a bit of money and property to help the family. Still mourning the death of his wife, Germain nevertheless concedes to travel to meet with a prospective match his father-in-law has in mind. Before setting out on his journey, Germain learns that his neighbor Marie, a virtuous, kind and beautiful sixteen year old shepherdess has secured as a position at a farm near to where Germain is headed and needs a ride to her new digs. You can probably already guess where this is leading.

Along the way, they spot Germain’s little boy, Petit Pierre, who insists on coming along. He joins them on the back of their grey mare and heads into the forest in the loving arms of Marie. Along the way, they become lost in the mists of the forest as night falls, settling along a small pond, revealed later to be the Devil’s pool—a place where it is believed that passers-by are bewitched into a state of confusion and fear. Marie proves herself to be resourceful, wise and a loving companion to Pierre, and Germain starts to fall in love with her, although she insists that he is too old for her and that she does not love him. Love sick but resigned to his fate, the next morning, Germain arranges for Marie to take care of his boy as he presents himself as a suitor to his perspective bride.

George Sand
(1804-1876)

Things don’t go well. Germain arrives to find the widow, vapid and vain, already being courted by a loser brigade of three suitors. He doesn’t stick around long and soon leaves to pick up his son at the nearby farm where Marie is staying, but neither she nor Pierre are anywhere to be found. He finds them frightened and hiding in the forest and learns that her new employer had something else in mind for her other than tending sheep. The three reunite and head home. 

I have a no spoiler policy when describing books, but the plot of this novel is so simple and predictable that it’s not a stretch to assume that you’ve already figured out that these two get together. The devil’s pool, believed to inspire fear and confusion, seems to have brought Germain and Marie to a moment of clarity. But plot is not the main attraction here. Rather, it’s how Sand depicts these rural characters as simple, virtuous people who experience life unfettered by vanity and artifice and who have close ties with nature and who embrace their ancient Gallic customs and traditions. The complicated rites and ceremonies of the wedding celebration are described in great detail, as is a fertility rite that takes place after the wedding.

Sand’s portrayal of France’s peasantry stands in contrast with similarly themed stories and novels by her Russian counterparts. Although her style is unmistakably realist, she has buffed the images of her characters to a glossy, sparkling, idealized spit shine to reveal an image that middle class readers could easily relate to. Sand’s peasants respond to the hardship of their lives with unyielding stoicism and are upright, moral, sensible and respectable—all attributes held dear by middle class readers. They struggle with hunger and labor for their livelihood, but there is none of the constant drunkenness, squalor and wretchedness found in Dostoyevsky’s peasants, nor is there a trace of the oppressive, inhumane treatment by landowners found in Turgenev. In fact, Russian peasants in the 1840s would be envious of their French cousins, who seem to be having an absolute blast by comparison. The Russian authors we’ve encountered depicted the realities of peasant life unflinchingly, not by portraying them as stoics with a sense of propriety that mirrored the world view of their readers, but as human beings with virtues and flaws who suffered at the mercy of a social and economic system run by allegedly “decent” people whose cruelty and deprivation robbed those in their charge of their very humanity. Nineteenth century rural France was certainly a world away from feudal Russia, but things seem a little too tidy in Sand’s world all the same. 

But yet, this novel has its charms. Sand’s is a compassionate voice. She really wants us to understand and identify with her characters and to see them in context with the natural world. She has a great feel and affinity for nature. Her imagination was stirred by the ancient Gallic marriage rites and rituals at a time when these traditions were dying out as industrialism spread, so on one level the novel serves as a little slice of fictionalized cultural anthropology. We see them not through a veil of tears, but through a halo of morning sunlight that shines down on a people closely linked with the traditions of their ancestors and on a way of life rapidly fading away. This novel is a snapshot, albeit airbrushed, of that time, but was written with the very best of intentions. It’s a pleasant read with some merit. In the pantheon of wonderful, lousy or mediocre books, The Devil’s Pool can easily be classified as “good”.

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Venus in Furs

                   "Venus in Furs" from the album The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)

On October 27th, Lou Reed, one of the twentieth century's most influential songwriters, passed away at the age of 71. One of his best known songs, "Venus in Furs" from the 1967 album The Velvet Underground & Nico, was inspired by an 1870 novel of the same name written by Ritter von Leopold Sacher-Masoch. I've long had this novel at the back of my mind as a contender for a piece for The Overleaf, and recent news of Reed's death moved it to the front of the line. 

Venus in Furs is a novel about a man and a woman involved in a consensual, female-dominant, sadomasochistic relationship. With the exception of a good, stimulating hot sauce, I'm not one to mix my pleasures with pain. While I've been curious about this book for a number of years, I wasn't sure if it would appeal to me. As it turns out, I actually enjoyed it and was surprised by the novel's depth. Sacher-Masoch (as in "masochism") was a reasonably good writer who managed to sustain a novel-length story of difficult subject matter with only two main characters. That's an achievement in and of itself, but the fact that this book was published in 1870, long before D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller and one hundred forty years before  E. L. James' Fifty Shades of Gray, makes it all the more intriguing. Lou Reed's recent passing and our culture's current obsession with BDSM-themed best sellers and films (with or without vampires) suggests to me that the time is right to explore this novel.

Ritter von Leopold Sacher-Masoch
1836-1895

Venus in Furs (1870) by Ritter von Leopold Sacher-Masoch

After dreaming of a dialogue about love and cruelty with Venus clad in furs, an unnamed narrator visits his friend, Severin von Kusiemski, to tell him about his dream. Severin hands him a manuscript to read entitled Memoirs of a Suprasensual Man in the hopes that his friend can benefit from his own experience with such visions and feelings.

The "book within the book" is the story of Severin, a self-described dilettante of no fixed profession who is vacationing at a resort in the Carpathian mountains. He is a lover of art, given to ruminating on the terrible beauty and power of woman in her ideal form as expressed in the classics, Goethe, the Bible and a stone statue of Venus in the garden which he often visits and silently worships. He purchases a photographic reproduction of Titian's Venus with a Mirror, a painting that depicts Venus wrapped in furs and attended by angels. On the photo, next to some scribbled quotes from literature, he writes

To love, to be loved, what happiness! And yet how the glamour of this pales in comparison with the tormenting bliss of worshipping a woman who makes a plaything out of us, of being the slave of a beautiful tyrant who treads us pitilessly underfoot.

Titian's "Venus with the Mirror" c. 1555

The photo finds its way into the hands of Wanda von Dunajew, the rich widow who lives upstairs, when it is accidentally left in a book that Severin has loaned to her. The photo and its strange inscriptions bring these two together. One day while in the garden, he is taken aback when he sees Wanda, resplendent in her furs and the very vision of his beloved Venus come to life. 

The first third of the novel depicts a negotiative process wherein these two twentysomethings get to know one another and come to agree on the nature of their relationship. We also get an inside look at the psychology of masochism as Severin describes his inner need to be emotionally and physically dominated by a woman. Wanda is reluctant to agree at first, but becomes more and more intrigued by the idea of being worshiped and served by a man who is utterly enslaved to her. However, she warns him very early on that her cruelty, once unleashed, would be difficult to contain and that Severin's course is one taken at his own peril. The dynamic having been established, the two start to play their respective roles. They even go whip shopping.

Before leaving on a trip to Florence, Wanda even draws up a contract in which Severin is to agree to be her slave until he is dismissed. Severin is to accompany her as her servant, Gregor. During their time in Florence, things really start to heat up. Wanda makes hints of imminent betrayal and subjects Severin to even greater physical and emotional abuse. The more abuse he suffers, the more humiliation he feels, the more physical agonies he is subjected to, the more he feels an unquenchable passion and desire for the woman he loves. No spoilers here, but it doesn't end well. After all, this is a cautionary tale.

This is a short, concise novel. The pacing is brisk and the story mostly told through dialogue, which he had a clear knack for writing. Sacher-Masoch, uses the novel as confessional to bare his innermost feelings while blurring the line between fiction and autobiography. Welts are raised and blood is spilled. The physical sensation of pain, coupled with chastisement and humiliation send Severin into raptures, but also propel him further and further into anguish. Severin's turmoil is so painful and personal as to make the reader uncomfortable at times, but above all. this is a work of brutal honesty that documents one man's obsession while speaking to the larger struggle that men and women play out in relationships, societal roles and politics. It is a prescient work.

"Venus in Furs" image from
the author's personal stationery.

Not surprisingly, Venus in Furs was widely misunderstood as just another dirty book to be banned for the public's own good (the introduction, which I recommend, touches on this). But reading through it one is struck by how blatantly unsexy it is. It does contain scenes of abject cruelty in the context of a sexual relationship, but always in service to a larger purpose; this is Freud before Freud, and an early reexamination of sexual politics after the industrial revolution redefined the roles that men and women would play both personally and politically. The questions raised in this novel are far more subversive than any titillating content ever could be. 

In fact, Sacher-Masoch shows great restraint. There is nothing too explicit here, and the language he uses and the things he omits are what gives the novel its real power. The author lets us experience the emotional turmoil of a man whose need to be maltreated and humiliated is inexorably bound with his need for love and validation. Even if you've never felt that way, chances are you'll feel for him. This sort of conflict is the very stuff of great literature and is a theme that has been explored countless times and in many art forms. But here, everything is laid bare. The relationship between Severin and Wanda is nothing if not honest; men and women play out their power struggles in subtle and sinister ways every day, but their relationship, puts all the cards on the table as their assumed roles become more and more real.

Of course, a grain of salt comes in handy. Severin's dilemma seems very much like a first world problem in light of the very real suffering that was going on in 1870 (the Franco-Prussian War springs to mind). After all, Severin and Wanda are rich, educated Northern Europeans not burdened by concerns like finding food and shelter or even dressing themselves. But this novel was much, much better than I had anticipated. It's influence was greatly bolstered by Lou Reed's song and I can clearly see why he was attracted to this book as good subject matter for song lyrics. The Velvet Underground's first album led many listeners--myself included--to a pretty good book. So thanks, Lou. I'm just sorry I couldn't thank you in person. Rest in peace.

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