In his stunning essay, Coldness and Cruelty, Gilles Deleuze provides a rigorous and informed philosophical examination of the work of the late 19th-century German novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze's essay, certainly the most profound study yet produced on the relations between sadism and masochism, seeks to develop and explain Masoch's "peculiar way of 'desexualizing' love while at the same time sexualizing the entire history of humanity." He shows that masochism is something far more subtle and complex than the enjoyment of pain, that masochism has nothing to do with sadism; their worlds do not communicate, just as the genius of those who created them - Masoch and Sade - lie stylistically, philosophically, and politically poles a part.Venus in Furs, the most famous of all of Masoch's novels was written in 1870 and belongs to an unfinished cycle of works that Masoch entitled The Heritage of Cain. The cycle was to treat a series of themes including love, war, and death. The present work is about love. Although the entire constellation of symbols that has come to characterize the masochistic syndrome can be found here - fetishes, whips, disguises, fur-clad women, contracts, humiliations, punishment, and always the volatile presence of a terrible coldness - these do not eclipse the singular power of Masoch's eroticism.

'Venus in Furs' describes the obsessions of Severin von Kusiemski, a European nobleman who desires to be enslaved to a woman. Severin finds his ideal of voluptuous cruelty in the merciless Wanda von Dunajew. This is a passionate and powerful portrayal of one man's struggle to enlighten and instruct himself and others in the realm of desire. Published in 1870, the novel gained notoriety and a degree of immortality for its author when the word "masochism" - derived from his name - entered the vocabulary of psychiatry. This remains a classic literary statement on sexual submission and control.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch didn't invent the sexual practice that bears his name, but he did popularize it in this short novel. An example of the found-manuscript manner of storytelling, "Venus in Furs" is framed by an unnamed narrator telling his dreams to his friend Severin. In those dreams, the narrator discusses love with Venus while she wears furs.

Severin suggests the narrator can break this obsession by reading a manuscript called "Memoirs of a Suprasensual Man." That manuscript tells the story of a man who is so infatuated with a woman that he asks to be her slave.

At first, she doesn't understand the request, but after humoring him, she grows to accept and appreciate the idea, eventually embracing it enthusiastically. They travel to Florence, with the man assuming a generic servant's name as he falls completely into the role of her servant. In Florence, Wanda treats him brutally as a servant, and recruits a trio of women to dominate him.

The relationship comes to a crisis when she meets another man, to whom she would like to submit.

This is a passionate and powerful portrayal of one man's struggle to enlighten and instruct himself and others in the realm of desire. It remains a classic literary statement on sexual submission and control.