Posted by feitheachd on Fri 9 Feb 07, 3:23 PM to feitheachd's blog.
Stirred by Sardax's “Venus in Furs” project, I've been dipping into my favourite bits of the text.
I'm perfectly aware that much of the work is pretentious at best; but I can overlook that for the hints and shadows of my own longings that I often find in Sacher-Masoch's words.
Gregor too needs to inspire sadism, he longs to see that dark lust in the eyes of his Mistress; but for him it's not enough just to witness it in the moment that it transfixes him, he wants to capture it:
| "The very thought that this extra-ordinary beauty is to be lost to the world," I continued still watching her enthusiastically, "is horrible--all this glorious facial expression, this mysterious eye with its green fires, this demonic hair, this magnificence of body. The idea fills me with a horror of death, of annihilation. But the hand of an artist shall snatch you from this. You shall not like the rest of us disappear absolutely and forever, without leaving a trace of your having been. Your picture must live, even when you yourself have long fallen to dust; your beauty must triumph beyond death!" |
It's a delightful sentiment; a straight forward image is not sufficient, he needs to somehow preserve that essence of Wanda that makes her so extra-ordinarily beautiful to him: her cruelty.
