Compendium of two essays: "Venus in Furs," by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, along with appendices, and "Coldness and Cruelty," by Gilles Deleuze, an essay on the work of Sacher-Masoch and the relationship between Sadism and Masochism. "Deleuze's stunning essay is an attempt to restore to Masoch's work the rigorous and informed philosophical examination that is due it. It will also restore to literary history and to our own culture of ideas the systematic form of desire whose central mechanism of the "contract" poses a fundamental challenge to our psychoanalytic worldview. Thus the idea of Masochism presented here is something far more subtle and complex than the mere enjoyment of pain. What's more, Masochism is shown to have absolutely nothing to do with Sadism; their worlds simply do not communicate, just as the geniuses of those who created them - Masoch and the Marquis de Sade - lie stylistically, philosophically and politically poles apart. Deleuze's essay - 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.'"—publisher's statement