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 Anchises?’
“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 who don’t appreciate a real man
in their somnambulistic search for some dream-man and masculine ideal.
Amid tears and convulsions they daily outrage their Christian duties;
they cheat and are cheated; they always seek again and choose and
reject; they are never happy, and never give happiness. They accuse
fate instead of calmly confessing that they want to love and live as
Helen and Aspasia lived. Nature admits of no permanence in the relation
between man and woman.”
“But, my dear lady—”
“Let me finish. It is only man’s egoism which wants to keep woman like
some buried treasure. All endeavors to introduce permanence in love,
the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone
shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities. Can
you deny that our Christian world has given itself over to corruption?”
“But—”
“But you are about to say, the individual who rebels against the
arrangements of society is ostracized, branded, stoned. So be it. I am
willing to take the risk; my principles are very pagan. I will live my
own life as it pleases me. I am willing to do without your hypocritical
respect; I prefer to be happy. The inventors of the Christian marriage
have done well, simultaneously to invent immortality. I, however, have
no wish to live eternally. When with my last breath everything as far
as Wanda von Dunajew is concerned comes to an end here below, what does
it profit me whether my pure spirit joins the choirs of angels, or
whether my dust goes into the formation of new beings? Shall I belong
to one man whom I don’t love, merely because I have once loved him? No,
I do not renounce; I love everyone who pleases me, and give happiness
to everyone who loves me. Is that ugly? No, it is more beautiful by
far, than if cruelly I enjoy the tortures, which my beauty excites, and
virtuously reject the poor fellow who is pining away for me. I am
young, rich, and beautiful, and I live serenely for the sake of
pleasure and enjoyment.”
While she was speaking her eyes sparkled roguishly, and I had taken
hold of her hands without exactly knowing what to do with them, but
being a genuine dilettante I hastily let go of them again.
“Your frankness,” I said, “delights me, and not it alone—”
My confounded dilettantism again throttled me as though there were a
rope around my neck.
“You were about to say—”
“I was about to say—I was—I am sorry—I interrupted you.”
“How, so?”
A long pause. She is doubtless engaging in a monologue, which
translated into my language would be comprised in the single word,
“donkey.”
“If I may ask,” I finally began, “how did you arrive at these—these
conclusions?”
“Quite simply, my father was an intelligent man. From my cradle onward
I was surrounded by replicas of ancient art; at ten years of age I read
_Gil Blas_, at twelve _La Pucelle_. Where others had Hop-o’-my-thumb,
Bluebeard, Cinderella, as childhood friends, mine were Venus and
Apollo, Hercules and Lackoon. My husband’s personality was filled with
serenity and sunlight. Not even the incurable illness which fell upon
him soon after our marriage could long cloud his brow. On the very
night of his death he took me in his arms, and during the many months
when he lay dying in his wheel chair, he often said jokingly to me:
‘Well, have you already picked out a lover?’ I blushed with shame.
‘Don’t deceive me,’ he added on one occasion, ‘that would seem ugly to
me, but pick out an attractive lover, or preferably several. You are a
splendid woman, but still half a child, and you need toys.’
“I suppose, I hardly need tell you that during his life time I had no
lover; but it was through him that I have become what I am, a woman of
Greece.”
“A goddess,” I interrupted.
“Which one,” she smiled.
“Venus.”
She threatened me with her finger and knitted her brows. “Perhaps, even
a ‘Venus in Furs.’ Watch out, I have a large, very large fur, with
which I could cover you up entirely, and I have a mind to catch you in
it as in a net.”
“Do you believe,” I said quickly, for an idea which seemed good, in
spite of its conventionality and triteness, flashed into my head, “do
you believe that your theories could be carried into execution at the
present time, that Venus would be permitted to stray with impunity
among our railroads and telegraphs in all her undraped beauty and
serenity?”
“_Undraped_, of course not, but in furs,” she replied smiling, “would
you care to see mine?”
“And then—”
“What then?”
“Beautiful, free, serene, and happy human beings, such as the Greeks
were, are only possible when it is permitted to have _slaves_ who will
perform the prosaic tasks of every day for them and above all else
labor for them.”
“Of course,” she replied playfully, “an Olympian divinity, such as I
am, requires a whole army of slaves. Beware of me!”
“Why?”
I myself was frightened at the hardiness with which I uttered this
“why”; it did not startle her in the least.
She drew back her lips a little so that her small white teeth became
visible, and then said lightly, as if she were discussing some trifling
matter, “Do you want to be my slave?”
“There is no equality in love,” I replied solemnly. “Whenever it is a
matter of choice for me of ruling or being ruled, it seems much more
satisfactory to me to be the slave of a beautiful woman. But where
shall I find the woman who knows how to rule, calmly, full of
self-confidence, even harshly, and not seek to gain her power by means
of petty nagging?”
“Oh, that might not be so difficult.”
“You think—”
“I—for instance—” she laughed and leaned far back—“I have a real talent
for despotism—I also have the necessary furs—but last night you were
really seriously afraid of me!”
“Quite seriously.”
“And now?”
“Now, I am more afraid of you than ever!”
We are together every day, I and—Venus; we are together a great deal.
We breakfast in my honey-suckle arbor, and have tea in her little
sitting-room. I have an opportunity to unfold all my small, very small
talents. Of what use would have been my study of all the various
sciences, my playing at all the arts, if I were unable in the case of a
pretty, little woman—
But this woman is by no means little; in fact she impresses me
tremendously. I made a drawing of her to-day, and felt particularly
clearly, how inappropriate the modern way of dressing is for a
cameo-head like hers. The configuration of her face has little of the
Roman, but much of the Greek.
Sometimes I should like to paint her as Psyche, and then again as
Astarte. It depends upon the expression in her eyes, whether it is
vaguely dreamy, or half-consuming, filled with tired desire. She,
however, insists that it be a portrait-likeness.