Venus in Furs | Page 9

the pages of my book rustle and on the
terrace likewise there is a rustling.
A woman's dress--

She is there--Venus--but without furs--No, this time it is merely the widow--and
yet--Venus-oh, what a woman!
As she stands there in her light white morning gown, looking at me, her slight figure
seems full of poetry and grace. She is neither large, nor small; her head is alluring,
piquant--in the sense of the period of the French marquises--rather than formally
beautiful. What enchantment and softness, what roguish charm play about her none too
small mouth! Her skin is so infinitely delicate, that the blue veins show through
everywhere; even through the muslin covering her arms and bosom. How abundant her
red hair-it is red, not blonde or golden- yellow--how diabolically and yet tenderly it plays
around her neck! Now her eyes meet mine like green lightnings--they are green, these
eyes of hers, whose power is so indescribable--green, but as are precious stones, or deep
unfathomable mountain lakes.
She observes my confusion, which has even made me discourteous, for I have remained
seated and still have my cap on my head.
She smiles roguishly.
Finally I rise and bow to her. She comes closer, and bursts out into a loud, almost
childlike laughter. I stammer, as only a little dilettante or great big donkey can do on such
an occasion.
Thus our acquaintance began.
The divinity asks for my name, and mentions her own.
Her name is Wanda von Dunajew.
And she is actually my Venus.
"But madame, what put the idea into your head?"
"The little picture in one of your books--"
"I had forgotten about it."
"The curious notes on its back--"
"Why curious?"
She looked at me.
"I have always wanted to know a real dreamer some time--for the sake of the change--and
you seem one of the maddest of the tribe."
"Dear lady--in fact--" Again I fell victim to an odious, asinine stammering, and in
addition blushed in a way that might have been appropriate for a youngster of sixteen, but
not for me, who was almost a full ten years older--

"You were afraid of me last night."
"Really--of course--but won't you sit down?"
She sat down, and enjoyed my embarrassment--for actually I was even more afraid of her
now in the full light of day. A delightful expression of contempt hovered about her upper
lip.
"You look at love, and especially woman," she began, "as something hostile, something
against which you put up a defense, even if unsuccessfully. You feel that their power
over you gives you a sensation of pleasurable torture, of pungent cruelty. This is a
genuinely modern point of view."
"You don't share it?"
"I do not share it," she said quickly and decisively, shaking her head, so that her curls
flew up like red flames.
"The ideal which I strive to realize in my life is the serene sensuousness of the
Greeks--pleasure without pain. I do not believe in the kind of love which is preached by
Christianity, by the moderns, by the knights of the spirit. Yes, look at me, I am worse
than a heretic, I am a pagan.
'Doest thou imagine long the goddess of love took counsel When in Ida's grove she was
pleased with the hero Achilles?'
"These lines from Goethe's Roman Elegy have always delighted me.
"In nature there is only the love of the heroic age, 'when gods and goddesses loved.' At
that time 'desire followed the glance, enjoyment desire.' All else is factitious, affected, a
lie. Christianity, whose cruel emblem, the cross, has always had for me an element of the
monstrous, brought something alien and hostile into nature and its innocent instincts.
"The battle of the spirit with the senses is the gospel of modern man. I do not care to have
a share in it."
"Yes, Mount Olympus would be the place for you, madame," I replied, "but we moderns
can no longer support the antique serenity, least of all in love. The idea of sharing a
woman, even if it were an Aspasia, with another revolts us. We are jealous as is our God.
For example, we have made a term abuse out of the name of the glorious Phryne.
"We prefer one of Holbein's meagre, pallid virgins, which is wholly ours to an antique
Venus, no matter how divinely beautiful she is, but who loves Anchises to-day, Paris
to-morrow, Adonis the day after. And if nature triumphs in us so that we give our whole
glowing, passionate devotion to such a woman, her serene joy of life appears to us as
something demonic and cruel, and we read into our happiness a sin which we must
expiate."

"So you too are one of those who rave about modern women, those miserable hysterical
feminine creatures