The Origin of Masochism, an Unfortunate Writer and Galicia

The Austro-Hungarian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing was the first one to use the term “masochism” to name what he considered a pathology. This made the name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch famous as a concept, but his work as a writer was forgotten. At the end of the 1960s, the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze became interested in Sacher-Masoch again. Since then, a large majority of his novels and short stories have been republished and many researchers have commented on them.

According to Deleuze, Masoch’s writings are important and unusual. Masoch’s idea was to write a series of cycles. The main one is entitled The Heritage of Cain and was supposed to be composed of six themes: love, property, money, the State, war and death. Only the first two parts were finished, but we still can find the other four themes in his writings. The second cycle regarded folktales and ethnic tales. They included in particular two sombre novels (The Fisher of Souls and The Mother of God) dealing with mystical sects in Galicia which are still according to Deleuze among the best of Masoch’s works. They ‘reach heights of anguish and tension rarely equalled elsewhere,’ he said.

In Deleuze’s opinion, no other writer has used to such effect the resources of fantasy and suspense. He stated that Masoch has a particular way of ’desexualising love and at the same time sexualising the entire history of humanity’.

When it comes to issues of love, Masoch’s inclinations are well known: his Venus in Furs was fictional but was inspired by his own experience. He enjoyed dressing up as a bear or a burglar, being tied up and subjected to various punishments, humiliations and intense physical pain by his mistress who was wearing fur and brandishing a whip. Given Sacher-Masoch’s tendencies, it’s plausible that the more sinister aspects of police work in Galicia – bondage, incarceration, punishment, and particularly flogging – left a lasting impression on his impressionable young mind which later on impacted his sexuality. But let’s leave that to the psychoanalysts.

Masoch has endured unjust treatment as a result of his name being connected to a perversion (associated with Sade’s name to form the term sadomasochism). His name was not wrongly linked to masochism; rather, his contributions were overlooked as his reputation grew. Though there is the rare exception, it is less frequent to see pieces about Sade that show little acquaintance with Sade’s work. The recognition of Sade’s work is growing; literary assessments of his writings contribute significantly to clinical studies of sadism and vice versa. But to Deleuze, even the best studies on Masoch demonstrate an astonishing lack of knowledge of his work. The fact that sadism and masochism are today synonymous, as well as the concept of a sadomasochistic being, have caused great harm to Masoch. In addition to being unfairly neglected, he has also been wrongly assumed to be in dialectical unity and complementarity with Sade. Deleuze claims there is no connection between Masoch’s reality and Sade’s. Their methods are dissimilar, and they have completely different issues, worries, and goals. If you want to learn more about the difference between Sade’s and Masoch’s work, we advise you to check out Deleuze’s essay Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty (1967).

In this article from RFE/RL, Lviv tour guide Andriy Maslyuk was asked about Masoch’s legacy. He explains that Masoch is hardly acknowledged in the city of his birth, because his work is taboo in a nation where religious morality is still revered. “Because of the Iron Curtain here, many local heroes that didn’t fit with Soviet mentality were not promoted, and they ended up simply being forgotten,” Maslyuk said.

Several French historians and authors tried to restore Masoch’s image by focusing on his literary talent. To Bernard Michel, historian, Kafka even paid homage to Masoch in The Metamorphosis and not only by using masochistic themes. When Masoch travelled to Italy with Fanny Pistor, he dressed up as a servant and used the name Gregor. In The Metamorphosis, the protagonist is named Gregor Samsa. Samsa could also be an anagram of SAcher-MASoch. Bernard Michel believes that Masoch has his place in the lineage of the greatest writers of Central Europe (Michel, 1989). As for Jean Dutourd, author and member of the French Academy, Sacher-Masoch was an “endearing and curious author who had the audacity to write some extreme forms of love, a brilliant caustic mind, a sort of perverse poet à la Baudelaire” (Dutourd, 1986). Jean-Paul Corsetti, author, added that erotism in Masoch’s work “fully integrates into this kind of human comedy where fiction is at the service of a political and cultural, philosophical, aesthetic and spiritual commitment” (Corsetti, 1991).