Free The Dedalus Book of German Decadence by Ray Furness

was being blinded at Delilah’s feet. The picture now seemed a symbol or eternal parable of passion, of lust, of the love of man for woman. ‘Each of us is essentially a Samson,’ I thought, ‘and will be betrayed by the woman he loves, whether she’s wearing a homespun bodice or sable.’
    ‘Now watch, Wanda, how I’m going to discipline him,’ said the Greek. He bared his teeth and his face assumed that bloodthirsty expression that had terrified me the first time I saw him.
    And he began to whip me, so ruthlessly, so dreadfully that I flinched at every blow, my whole body shuddering with pain, with tears pouring down my cheeks, whilst Wanda lay in her fur jacket on the ottoman, her head on her hand: she watched with cruel curiosity, her whole body shaking with laughter.
    The feeling of being ill treated by a rival before the woman one worships is indescribable: I almost expired with shame and desperation.
    And the most shameful thing was, that in my wretched helplessness, beneath Apollo’s whip and the laughter of Venus, I felt a kind of fantastic, supersensory titillation – but Apollo soon beat this out of me, blow by blow, until I finally bit my teeth in impotent rage and cursed myself, my lubricious fantasies, women and love.
    With a fearful clarity I suddenly saw where blind passion, where lust could lead a man, since the days of Holofernes and Agamemnon – into the sack, the net, the hands of a treacherous woman, into misery, subjection, death.
    It was as though I had woken from a dream.
    My blood was already spurting beneath his lashes, I was writhing like a worm which one stamps upon, but he continued to beat me, to whip me mercilessly, and she kept on laughing, mercilessly, as she closed the packed suitcases and slipped into her travelling furs; she was still laughing as she went down the stairs on his arm and got into the carriage.
    Then it was still for a moment.
    I listened, breathless.
    The carriage door slammed shut, the horses started, the wheels rolled – then all was silent.

    Extracts from Venus im Pelz. Mit einer Studie über
    den Masochismus von Gilles Deleuze..
    Insel Taschenbuch 469.

Hermann Bahr: The School of Love
The Dandy
    Rocking back and forward in his armchair while he manicured his fingernails, he found it pleasantly titillating to imagine the girl – she had not even told him her name – clinging to him under the blossoming apple trees as a gentle breeze wafted over them, or in the evening, gliding homewards over the water, her quivering body pressed against his in the narrow boat. ‘Tant pis pour elle’, he said as he stood up, throwing the nail-scissors in an arc towards the table. ‘I’m not running after her. There are plenty more like that.’
    In fact, it was a piece of luck. Good-natured as he was, and with his inability to resist any mood, the most that would have come of it would have been some banal entanglement. The one thing that was certain was that she was not his style
    No, she was not his ideal woman, not even a distant cousin a hundred times removed. Now, as he threw off his dressing gown and settled down in front of the mirror, legs spread-eagled over the cushion, to work on the masterpiece of his toilette, carefully twisting his locks into dreamy curls, drawing out the proud lance of his Vandyke, long, very long, with much brilliantine, and subjecting himself to a loving and satisfied scrutiny, now, once again, his ideal appeared before him with almost tangible clarity, so imperial and junoesque; and then this shy, innocent swallow beside her, the image of Gerard’s Psychè, yes, really, even – he remembered – the same ringlets in her hair, at the front, falling down over her forehead. No, there was no comparison; she might well be very sweet, for modest requirements, but he, unfortunately, was already spoken for, sorry and all that.
    He lingered for a long time among these pleasant images because, in accordance with his bad habit, he lingered for a