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Venus In Furs This is section 2 of 8. = I was breakfasting in my honeysuckle
arbour and reading in the Book of Judith. I envied the grim hero Holofernes
because of the queenly woman who cut off his head with a sword, I envied him
his beautiful sanguinary end. "The Lord hath punished him, and delivered him
into the hands of a woman." The verse struck me. How ungallant these Jews are,
I thought. And their God might have chosen more becoming expressions when
speaking of the fair sex. "The Lord hath punished him, and delivered him into
the hands of a woman," I repeated to myself. What shall I do, that he may so
punish me? Heaven preserve us! Here comes the landlady, who has again
diminished somewhat in size overnight. And up above, among the twining
greenery and the garlands, the white gown is gleaming again. Is it Venus, or
the widow? This time it is the widow, for Madame Tartakovska makes a curtsey
and asks me, on her behalf, for something to read. I run to my room and pick
up a couple of books at random. Later I remember that my picture of Venus is
in one of them, and now both it and my effusions are in the hands of the lady
in white upstairs. What will she say? I can hear her laughing. Is she laughing
at me? A full moon. It is already peering over the tops of the low hemlocks
that fringe the park, and a silvery light fills the park, the clumps of trees,
the whole landscape as far as the eye can reach, fading gradually in the
distance like trembling waters. I cannot resist, I feel a strange impulse and
summons; I get dressed again and go out into the garden. Some power draws me
towards the meadow, towards her, my goddess and my beloved. The night is cool.
I feel a slight chill. The air is heavy with the odour of flowers and of the
forest, it is intoxicating. What solemnity! What music all around! A
nightingale is sobbing. The stars quiver faintly in the pale blue
transparency. The meadow seems smooth as a mirror, like a veil of ice on a
pond. The statue of Venus stands out, august and luminous. But -- what has
happened? From the goddess' marble shoulders a great dark fur flows down to
her heels. I stand dumbfounded and stare at her in amazement, and once again
an indescribable fear seizes me and I take flight. I quicken my steps, and
find I have missed the main path. As I am about to turn aside into one of the
green alleys I see Venus sitting before me on a stone bench: not the beautiful
woman of marble but the very Goddess of Love herself, with warm blood and
throbbing pulses! Yes, this is really my beloved, come to life like that
statue which drew breath for its creator. Indeed the miracle seems only half
accomplished: her white-powdered hair seems still to be of stone, and her
white gown shimmers like moonlight -- or is it only satin? From her shoulders
the dark fur is flowing now -- but her lips are surely red, her cheeks have
the hue of life. Two diabolical green rays from her eyes fall on me, and she
is laughing. Her laughter is so strange, so -- I cannot describe it, it takes
my breath away, and I run further, and every few steps I have to pause for
breath. And the mocking laughter pursues me through the dark leafy paths,
across the bright open spaces, through the thickets pierced by a single
moonbeam. I can no longer see my way, I wander about in utter confusion with
cold drops of sweat on my forehead. At last I come to a halt, and engage in a
short monologue. It runs -- well, one is either very polite to oneself or very
rude -- like this: I say to myself: "Donkey!" The word has a remarkable
effect, like a magic formula which frees me and restores my self-possession.
In a moment I become quite calm. With great pleasure I repeat: "Donkey!" Now
my surroundings are once more clear and distinct. There is the fountain, there
the alley of boxwood, there the house which I am approaching slowly. And all
at once the apparition is before me again. Behind the green hedge, shot
through by moonlight so that it seems fretted with silver, I see the white
figure again, the woman of stone whom I adore, whom I fear and flee from. With
two bounds I am inside the house, and I catch my breath and reflect. What am
I, after all -- a little dilettante or a big donkey? A sultry morning, the air
is languid, heavily laden with odours, yet exciting. Again I am sitting in my
arbour, reading in the Odyssey about the beautiful witch who turned her
worshippers into beasts. A splendid picture of antique love. There is a sort
rustling in the leaves and branches around me, the pages of my book are
rustling, and from the terrace beside me comes a rustling too. A woman's dress
-- There she is -- Venus -- but without her furs -- no, it is the widow -- and
yet -- Venus... Oh, what a woman! As she stands there in her light white
morning gown, looking at me, her slender figure seems full of poetry and
grace.
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She is neither large nor small; her head is alluring, piquant in the
style of a French marquise rather than beautiful -- but how enchanting, what
softness, what a wayward charm plays around her none too small mouth! Her skin
is so infinitely delicate that the blue veins show through, even through the
muslin covering her arms and splendid breasts. How luxuriant is her red hair
-- it is red, not blond or gold -- how diabolically and yet how tenderly it
curls around her neck! Now her eyes meet mine like green lightning -- yes,
they are green, these eyes of hers whose power is so indescribable -- green,
but like precious stones or unfathomable mountain lakes. She studies my
confusion, which has even made me forget myself, for I have remained seated
and still have my cap on my head. She smiles mockingly. At last I rise and
bow. She comes closer and bursts into loud, almost childlike laughter. I
stammer, as only a little dilettante or a big donkey would at such a moment.
That was how our acquaintance began. The goddess asks my name, and tells me
her own. Her name is Wanda von Dunaiev. And she is really my Venus. "But
madam, how did that strange fancy come to you?" "The little picture in one of
your books..." "I had forgotten it." "The curious notes on the back..."
"Curious? " She looked at me. "I have always wanted to know a real dreamer --
for the sake of novelty -- and you seemed one of the maddest of the species."
"Dear lady -- indeed --" Again I lapsed into a miserable asinine stammering,
and even blushed in a manner proper to a youth of sixteen but not a man fully
ten years older. "You were afraid of me last night." "Really -- well... but
won't you sit down?" She did so, obviously enjoying my embarrassment. And now,
in the light of day, I was still more afraid of her. A charming expression of
contempt played over her upper lip. "You seem to regard love, and particularly
woman," she said, "as something hostile, something to guard yourself against,
even unsuccessfully -- as if its power were a kind of pleasant torment, a
piquant cruelty. A truly modern attitude." "You do not share it?" "I do not,"
she said quickly and with decision, shaking her head so that her curls danced
like red flames. "To me the serene sensuousness of the Greeks -- pleasure
without pain -- is the ideal we should aim at. The kind of love preached by
Christianity, by the moderns, the Knights of the Spirit -- I don't believe in
it. Yes, look at me, I am worse than a heretic, I am a pagan. Dost thou
imagine long the goddess of love took counsel When in Ida's grove she was
pleased with the hero Anchises? Those lines of the Roman Elegy have always
pleased me. "In Nature there is only the same love as in the heroic age, 'when
gods and goddesses loved.' Then Desire followed love, and enjoyment desire.
Everything else is artificial, affected, lying. Christianity with its cruel
symbol of the cross has always had for me an element of the monstrous, it has
introduced something alien and hostile into Nature and her innocent impulses.
The contest of spirit with the world of sense is the gospel of modern man. I
will have none of it." "Yes, Mount Olympus would be the place for you, madam,"
I replied. But we moderns can no longer enjoy that antique serenity. Least of
all in love. The idea of sharing a woman repels us, even if she were an
Aspasia. We are jealous, like our God. For instance, we have made the name of
the glorious Phryne a term of reproach, even of abuse. We prefer one of
Holbein's meagre pallid virgins -- as long as she is wholly ours -- to an
antique Venus no matter how divinely beautiful, who loves Anchises today,
Paris tomorrow, Adonis the day after. And if our sensual nature so triumphs in
us that we give our complete, passionate, burning devotion to such a woman,
her serene joy in life seems to us something cruel and demonic, and we see in
our own bliss a sin we must expiate." She looked at me scornfully. "So you too
are one of the enthusiasts of modern women, of those wretched hysterical
females who in their somnambulistic search for an ideal man cannot appreciate
a real one, and in tears and spasms violate the Christian ethic, cheating and
being cheated, always hunting and choosing and rejecting, never happy
themselves nor giving happiness to others, and forever accusing fate instead
of quietly admitting they wish to love and live like Helen or Aspasia. Nature
knows no permanence in the tie between man and woman." "But, dear lady --"
"Let me finish. It is only man's egoism which seeks to bury woman like a
treasure in the earth. Every effort to impart some permanence to love, that
most fickle thing in our fickle humanity, has come to nothing
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