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Coldness and Cruelty By Gilles Deleure Venus in Furs A, By Leopald von Sacher-Masoch Pete ne ee Coldness and Cruelty GILLES DELEUZE a a mao Pao Foreword Most of che information on the life of Sacher-Masoch comes ta us from his secretary, Schlichtegroll (Secher-Masoch und der Masochismus) and from his first wile, who took the name of the heroine of Venus in Fue, Wanda (Wanda von Sacher-Masoth, Car fessions af My Life). Wanda’s book is excellent, but it was severely judged by subsequent biographers, wha olten merely present us with subjective impressions of the work. In their opinion, the image she offers of herself is too innocent, and they assumed her to be a sadist, since Masoch was a masochist. But this may well be a misstatement of the problem. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born in 1635 in Lemberg, Galicia, He was of Slav, Spanish and Bohemian descent. His ances- tors held official positions in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Fs father was Chief of Police of Lemberg, and as a child he witnessed prison scenes and riots which were to have a profound effect on him. His work is deeply influenced by the problems of nation- alities, minority groups and revolutionary movements in the Empire, hence his Galician, Jewish, Hungarian, Prussian tales, etc. He often describes the organization of agricultural communes and the strugele of the peasants against the Austrian administration and especially against the landowners. He became invalved in the Panslavic movement. The men he admired, besides Goethe, COLOGNES S AO CRUERLT ¥ were Pushkin and Lermantoy, and he was known himself as the Turgeniey of Little Russia. He was appointed Professor of History at Grav and began his literary carcer by writing historical novels. He met with rapid suc- cress: ane of his first genre novels, The Divorced Woman (Le 70) aroused interest even in America: in France, Hachette, 7 a Levy and Flammarion published translations of his novels and

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