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A review by k3atr0g2608
Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
3.0
Ok, despite the fact that I’m giving it three stars, I really liked this book. It just isn’t for everybody.
The imagery was fantastic and sometimes spiritual. It relied mostly on pieces of art to express ideas. The image of Venus is used time and time again, for obvious reasons. As are the paintings of Martyrs. The characters feel like people you’d meet at the Warhol Factory.
Fetishism plays a big role in this book, as you’d expect. And that’s probably another reason it isn’t for everybody. But what this book does is normalize fetishism and sexual deviancy with examples from myth and history. For example, there are frequent mentions of Dionysus and the steel bull, numerous cruel queens who would whip their servants, and Apollo flaying Marsyas. So it makes sexual deviancy more profound and less deviant.
Now, the biggest reason many wouldn’t like this book so much is the weird moral. Basically, it’s the belief that “men and women can never be companions, and one (a man in this case) should always aim to dominate and stomp on the other completely.”. But as you know, books can reinterpreted in so many different ways, my interpretation was just the fact that sexual deviancy isn’t deviant and is in fact an embedded thing in almost everyone.
Also The Velvet Underground’s song “Venus in Furs” is inspired by the book so.
Ok yeah, that’s all.
The imagery was fantastic and sometimes spiritual. It relied mostly on pieces of art to express ideas. The image of Venus is used time and time again, for obvious reasons. As are the paintings of Martyrs. The characters feel like people you’d meet at the Warhol Factory.
Fetishism plays a big role in this book, as you’d expect. And that’s probably another reason it isn’t for everybody. But what this book does is normalize fetishism and sexual deviancy with examples from myth and history. For example, there are frequent mentions of Dionysus and the steel bull, numerous cruel queens who would whip their servants, and Apollo flaying Marsyas. So it makes sexual deviancy more profound and less deviant.
Now, the biggest reason many wouldn’t like this book so much is the weird moral. Basically, it’s the belief that “men and women can never be companions, and one (a man in this case) should always aim to dominate and stomp on the other completely.”. But as you know, books can reinterpreted in so many different ways, my interpretation was just the fact that sexual deviancy isn’t deviant and is in fact an embedded thing in almost everyone.
Also The Velvet Underground’s song “Venus in Furs” is inspired by the book so.
Ok yeah, that’s all.