ZARKA LA DALMATE ET MELITZA LA MONTÉNÉGRINE, FIGURES INSOLITES DE L'IMAGINAIRE DE LEOPOLD SACHER-MASOCH – ENTRE HÉROÏNES MASOCHIENNES ET STÉRÉOTYPES ROMANTIQUES
ZARKA THE DALMATIAN AND MELITZA THE MONTENEGRIN, UNUSUAL FIGURES OF LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH’S IMAGINATION - BETWEEN MASOCHIAN HEROINES AND ROMANTIC STEREOTYPES

Summary/Abstract: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, a German-language writer, was a great star of French literary life. The famous Revue des deux mondes devoted considerable space to him by publishing ten short stories entitled Slavic Women (Femmes slaves) in the period from 1889 to 1891. Sacher-Masoch emphasized that French was hissecond mother tongue, and some sourcesindicate that he wrote and published his texts directly in French. We propose to analyze Zarka the Dalmatian from the short story of the same name and Melitza the Montenegrin from the short story “A Day in Gatzko” (La journée de Gatzko), two female characters from the literary world of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, presenting at the same time the atypical traits and stereotypes of the panoply of Slavic women placed at the center of the Masochian imagination. We will first introduce the author and consider his fluctuating and controversial literary notoriety, then identify the elements of his biography that have a decisive influence on his way of modeling female characters. We will then determine the central motifs of Sacher-Masoch's work and briefly present the two short stories concerned, which will allow us to define our two female characters according to the presence or absence of these motifs. Finally, on this basis, we will identify the similarities and differences between the images of the two Dinaric women studied and those of other Slavic women in the literary world of Sacher-Masoch. The name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, his life, and his work have been the subject of much controversy and prejudice. He was unfairly better known to a large public because his name was used to identify a sexual deviation than by the fact that he wasthe author ofsome forty varied titles whose distribution and reception had largely exceeded the limits of his mother tongue. The reception and the interpretation of his literary work were strongly marked by the decision of the psychiatrist Richard von Krafft Ebing to use literary references in illustrating sexual deviations in the study Psychopatia sexualis published in Stuttgart in 1886. In a similar way to the naming of the perverted sexual pleasure experienced by imposing pain and suffering on others sadism, a term inspired by the works of the Marquis de Sade, Sacher-Masoch's most famous novel Venus in Furs served as a reference to depict the perversion of satisfaction experienced in the submission to one's partner called masochism. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born in 1836 in the current Ukrainian city of Lviv, then Lemberg, the center of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, the easternmost province of the Austrian Empire. The variety of roots and moves conditioned by the profession of his father, the prefect of police, allowed the writer, from an early age, to acquire a deep understanding of the ethnic, religious, and social diversity of the Habsburg Empire. Two dominant female figures of the Slavic world marked the childhood of the writer – his Ukrainian nurse Handscha and his cousin Zenobia, whose behaviour, habits of dress, and mentality had a decisive influence on the construction of his romantic heroines. Handscha raised him with stories and legends of Slavic folk heritage, while her fascinating physical strength and local peasant clothes became an obsessive motif in his works. A cousin or friend of the family whom he called Aunt Zenobia, named after the queen of Palmyra, corpulent and authoritarian, draped in fur and wearing slippers embroidered with gold, fascinated the boy who followed and spied on her. Sacher-Masoch's childhood was marked by two major political events: the Krakow uprising of 1846 and the March 1848 revolution he witnessed in Prague. The many characters who lead national uprisings in Sacher-Masoch's novels reflect the writer's fascination with the revolt of the Polish peasants in particular. After he moved to Prague in 1848, a revolution broke out, marked by episodes of the erection of barricades, which was brutally suppressed by the Austrian army. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was particularly impressed by the courage of the women involved in street fights that he describes in the “Amazon of Prague,” one of the ten short stories of Slavic Women. Knowing that the works of Sacher-Masoch have long since been called “perverse,” it is important to point out that his texts are characterized by a complete absence of any scene in which sexual relations are described in detail. In other words, the reader of Slavic Women seeking explicit “masochism” in accordance with the modern concept of this term will be deeply disappointed. There often appears the strong and determined maternal figure of a Slavic woman, of imposing appearance and colorful clothes from the folklore characteristic of the Russian steppe, where the fairy talestold by Handcha show their influence. She alternates with the cruelty and the beauty of Countess Zenobia, the other ruthless and dominant female figure, who, like the opposite side of the coin, opposes the Slavic peasant’s kindness. In this respect, the characters of ten Slavic women represent interesting variations of these two types present in the author's novels. The depictions of feminine beauty, scenes of adultery, revenge, and humiliation are accompanied by an almost inescapable arsenal of objects that visually complement Sacher-Masoch's feminine fantasy: slippers, fur, and a whip are certainly the essential elements of the writer's fetishism. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's fascination with ancient art, particularly marble statues of women and depictions of ancient female figures in painting, is reflected in his works by the frequent appearance of Venus and Aphrodite, not only in the title of his famous novel but also in the texts of his short stories. Bernard Michel, Sacher-Masoch's biographer, indicates that the writer's feminine ideal is based on the ancient model of goddesses, empresses, and amazons, as well as on old Slavic legends,such asthat of the seductress Libussa. Finally, one of the main items of evidence of the modernity of Sacher-Masoch's work is his feminism. In an age of patriarchal social norms, a writer who boldly portrays the world of matriarchy and female domination certainly contributes to a different and more just social view of the “second sex.” The short stories in Slavic Women represent a successful blend of historical romance, Slavic exoticism, and female portraits of discreet eroticism. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch paints the ethnic and religious diversity of his subject in great detail, and his texts are a veritable catalogue of the costumes, traditions, and scenes of daily life of the women represented there. Slavic Women is illustrative in this respect – each story shows women and femalemale relations from a specific Slavic region while depicting their lifestyles and social relations in detail.The historical context of “A Day in Gatzko” is the conflicts with the Turks in Herzegovina in 1875. The narrator travels to Montenegro to put himself at the disposal of Prince Nikola I Petrović, who designates him assistant to a certain Karaditch. Although the story centres on the brilliant emergence from the shadows of the Montenegrin Melitza, with her portrayal presented in a different light from the usual image of a submissive wife, Sacher-Masoch does not fail to bring us closer to the Montenegrin war, the harshness of the landscape, but also the national poetic gift. Critics of this use of the natural and cultural landscape point out that Sacher-Masoch consciously produced a kind of colonial literature for his European readers, identifying in a hybrid way with both the occupied populations and the Habsburg authorities. In the two short stories studied, the dramatic natural setting between the steep mountains and the Adriatic serves as the perfect backdrop for the personal and collective dramastold, while the similarity of the landscapessuggeststhe similarity of two female figures. Regarding family relations, the short stories “A Day in Gatzko” and “Zarka” reflect the patriarchy’s cruelty that weighs on women in Montenegro and the Dalmatian hinterland. In some of the other short stories of the series, Sacher Masoch criticizes the class differences which cause the humiliation of peasant women and servants, who are punished for the immorality of their wealthy patrons. Wishing to remedy this social injustice, the writer allows his female characters to dominate later and often take cruel revenge on bullies. However, unlike naïve peasant women who turn into ruthless avengers, the Montenegrin Melitza and the Dalmatian Zarka are proud mountain folk who stoically accept their fate like the heroines of ancient theatre. At the beginning of the story, Melitza is the beautiful and modest wife of the Montenegrin hero Karaditch. However, Melitza is also a fighter whose self-confidence, courage, and strength shine in the battle against the Turks. She manages to save her husband, who, in the final scenes, steps out of the image of the dominant pater familias and places his wife at the centre of the celebration, decorating her with the confiscated treasures. Depicted as a submissive mother and wife in a family environment, Melitza becomes a dominant, self-confident, and independent warrior on the battlefield. Still, her belligerent behaviour does not affect the relationships in the family nucleus. The Masochian transformation occurs discreetly because, if the description of the couple's relations begins with the woman's submission, it ends with her triumph – Melitza becomes the centre of the victorious celebration. This scene, almost unknown in the travelogues of the time, is the fruit of the Masochian imagination and makes the character of Melitza doubly unusual. She is not only an atypical Masochian heroine for her lack of domination by her partner; she also escapes the image of the patriarchal stereotype of the submissive woman. “Zarka” is a Dinaric version of Romeo and Juliet: a young couple from conflicting families resort to suicide, unable to cast off the burden of tradition and realize their love. Besides the breath of exoticism that the story of bloody revenge brings to Western European readers, Sacher-Masoch emphasizes the subjugated position of women and their inability to make decisions and participate equally in male chivalry. Unlike the Masochian heroines humiliated by their partner, who then revolt against him, Zarka is subjugated by the tradition of the vendetta and is completely integrated into her milieu. Following her brother’s death, she is forced to return from the convent and accept the social position imposed by her environment. Her only rebellion against fate results in the decision to love a stranger and to continue to love him after discovering that he is the murderer of her brother. Her way of opposing the patriarchy, her form of resistance to the imposed yoke, is to face and choose death by suicide. As for the inevitable objects of Masochian fetishism – slippers, furs, and whips – present in the majority of the short stories in Slavic Women, we find two of them in “A Day in Gatzko” and only one in “Zarka.” These elements are discreetly introduced and go unnoticed by readers unfamiliar with the author's other works or literary obsessions. The characters of Melitza the Montenegrin and Zarka the Dalmatian embody the Slavic Women of the Masochian world adapted to the general framework of the series of short stories studied. Still, they deviate from the Masochian heroines by the absence of vengeful and destructive power towards their partners and their constraining masculine environment. Presenting an impressive Masochian physique that mixes his obsessions, ancient inspirations, and Slavic mythology, they are imbued with the contrasts of the surrounding Mediterranean landscapes. Zarka and Melitza mix submission and intimate revolt in an oppressive environment for women; they integrate into it and keep their individualism while accepting and playing their model social and family roles. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch does not deprive them of the eroticism or romantic stereotypes specific to histime, while granting them a physical and moral finesse which protectsthem from the humiliations or violent and passionate reactions of their northern Slavic sisters. Neither of the two short stories contains masochistic elements as such, but they represent an essential contribution to the knowledge of Montenegrin and Dalmatian society of the 19th century,so close to each other and so distant to the visitorsto the Parisian salons which constitute the privileged audience of Leopold von Sacher Masoch. Despite partially substantiated criticisms of its colonial exoticism, Sacher-Masoch's study of Slavic women opens interesting avenues for feminist literary criticism.

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