Venus im Pelz

Titian, Venus with a Mirror, ca. 1555

Venus in Furs receives her slave. I see that you are no ordinary dreamer. You at least don't lag behind your dreams. You are the sort of man who carries out whatever he imagines, no matter how insane. I must confess I like that, I am impressed. It shows strength, and only strength is respected. I even believe that in unusual circumsances, in an era of greatness, you would reveal your seeming weakness as a wonderful strength. Under the first emperors you would have been a martyr, at the time of the Reformation an Anabaptist, during the French Revoluations one of those inspired Girondists who mounted the guillotine with the Marseillaise on their lips.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, 1870

Upon recommendation, I just finished reading Venus in Furs, a novella written by von Sacher-Masoch as part of the larger work Testament of Cain (sometimes Legacy of Cain). It was a short, strong whirlwind of a narrative--utterly insane and passionate, a story that makes one believe that love is more important than going into work.

I find that I spend much of my time with friends who are immersed and believe fully in the complete, unquestionable nobility and truth of the sciences--in biology and physics, in chemistry and medicine, in the engineering of new technologies housed in aluminum, enlivened by electricity, powerful with their capacity of language and memory--commands and digits writing new worlds in mesmerizing high definition. They find ultimate meaning in prolonging life, in growing cells that will one day cure breast cancer, uncloud the brains of Alzheimer's patients, or bring back hearts that are intent on stopping.

Another large majority spends a good deal of time and zeal analyzing and reimagining society, laws, management, business-- they patiently and carefully pick apart the complicated mesh of a million-word world of contract and currency either in order to climb the structure or else to bring the whole thing down or else to make it more sustainable.

I often tell people, when they ask me how Harvard is, that there is one common characteristic of the students I meet here--it is as close as a generalization can get to encompassing everyone here--it's one that bores and saddens me at times and utterly fascinates and humbles me at others: everyone has something about which they are very, very serious. And I don't mean that everyone has a talent. Whether its music, or sports, or cooking, or academics, or romantic obsession, or just keeping a daily, disciplined routine, there is, hardwired into the system of almost every person, a very serious streak. It didn't exist in everyone I knew in San Diego. It doesn't exist in all the people I meet elsewhere. And so now I find myself writing, in the flowery way that I do when I've just read something very moving, and wondering where the dreamers have gone.

It's been a long time since I've read something about humans. I've taken to reading non-fiction about architecture, textbooks on engineering, and reports about army technology. Venus in Furs is recognized as one of the seminal literary expressions of sadomasochism (it contributed to the introduction of "masochism" as a clinical category in the book on sexual psychopathologies and is often cited in writings on the subject). But though it is fiction, von Sacher-Masoch himself subscribed to this sort of life--he and his lover played out the dramatized story in the novella, of a mistress and her love slave who live by alternately struggling against and riding on the throes of pain and love, both physical and emotional. There is little significant consideration or analysis of society and/or historical events of any kind, it is focused completely on two lovers, out of time, out of place.

I have met people here who dream about ways to save the world, ways to hike all the Presidentials in one day, ways to live their lives fully and well and maybe even recklessly, and yet, I don't think I've really heard anything or experienced anyone who lives life appealing completely and solely to emotion. I hear successful classmates poo-poo their black sheep younger siblings who smoke and drink and do stupid things. I hear rebels in blueblood clothing assert their repression by counting their inebriated and incapacitated nights. But that's disdain of recklessness and that's recklessness for the sake of rebellion or revenge. I know no one who is so completely true only to passion, who is obligated to no one but themselves, who cares always and only to dream and realize dreams--I don't miss recklessness or rebellion, I miss honesty to desire. I don't think it's that true dreamers don't exist in the world--I know they do, I've met at least one.

So now I suppose I am also wondering if that's the kind of life I care to live. It is hard to really, totally indulge and really be a hedonist. I just wonder if I could do it. It's an intriguing idea. I don't mean to drop out of school, or quit jobs or drop out of society, I just mean to live for myself. To be wild, and to be a lover, always. It's all crazytalk, I know. But I do wonder if I could live like that. I wonder how it would suit me to really live in furs.