In his stunning essay Coldness and Cruelty Gilles Deleuze provides a rigorous and informed philosophical examination of the work of late nineteenth-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 apart.
Venus in Furs, the most famous of Masoch-s novels, 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
