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Sacher-Masoch was the poet of the anoenerally known as masochism By this is meant the desire on the part of the individual affected of desiring himself completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex, and being treated by this person as by a master, to be hue of death This motive is treated in all its innumerable variations As a creative artist Sacher-Masoch was, of course, on the quest for the absolute, and so assuerated forli in itself

If any defense were needed for the publication of work like Sacher- Masoch's it is well to remember that artists are the historians of the hune's essay On the Duty of Historians where he says, "One may cover over secret actions, but to be silent on what all the world knows, and things which have had effects which are public and of so much consequence is an inexcusable defect"

And the curious interrelation between cruelty and sex, again and again, creeps into literature Sacher-Masoch has not created anything new in this He has simply taken an ancient motive and developed it frankly and consciously, until, it see further to say on the subject To the violent attacks which his books met he replied in a polemical work, &Uu to trace the hout literature, but no more can be done than just to allude to a few instances The theme recurs continually in the Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau; it explains the character of the chevalier in Prévost's Manon l'Escault Scenes of this nature are found in Zola's Nana, in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved, in Albert Juhelle's Les Pecheurs d'Honized form it constitutes the undercurrent of h in most cases the authors as well as the readers are unaware of the pathological elements out of which their characters are built

In all these strange and troubled waters of the hu of the serene and simple attitude of the ancient world Laurent Tailhade has an ade in his Platres et Marbres, which is orth reproducing in this connection: "Toutefois, les Hellènes, dans, leurs cités de luence qu'on peut nommer scientifique pour les troubles arave;ne comme en proie a la visitation d'un dieu (idée orientale et fataliste), du moins ils savaient que l'arave; se manifeste l'animosité des puissances cosmiques Plus tard, le christianisrave;bres Ce fut la grande nuite L'Église condamna tout ce qui lui parût neuf ou e"