My years of school and University life were spent at St. Petersburg. Tempestuously I threw myself upon simple physical “love” (!), upon the orgies, upon all the varieties, of physical love. Bodily-sexual masochism, with all its artificial sensual charms, was a cup which I drained to the dregs; but I was never able to explain to myself why humanity was satisfied with so crude a definition of the idea of “masochism.” Sexual masochism is indeed one of the most obvious facts of life. But the same is true also of sexual love; and yet we do not maintain that love is only sexual impulse.
I passed beyond this physical masochism; it was for me a necessary phase of development. The spiritual element within me began to sway my existence. At this time I learned to love a girl of a wonderful character. She loved me to a similar degree of insanity.
Had I been a beggar or a tramp, she would have followed me through the streets. She would have accompanied me to forced labour in Kara, Kamtchatka, or Saghalien. For me she would also have mounted the scaffold; to save me she would even have become a prostitute. It was a blessedness to love her and to be loved by her.
How can we wonder that in conformity with this interminable love accompanying sorrows should also extend into infinity, and ultimately lead to a catastrophe?
Every night we slept together, although for months at a time we did not have sexual intercourse; we embraced one another so closely and slept so gently!...
To separate from one another only for a few hours was a torment. If I went out alone, I must tell her the precise moment at which she might expect me to return. If I remained away a quarter of an hour longer, Mascha at once pictured to herself that I had been run over by a tram, that I had fallen down in an epileptic fit, that I had suddenly become insane and jumped into the Neva, or that some other disaster had befallen to me. Thus she stood continually at the window, in order to see what was passing in the street. If anyone came up to our floor, she ran quickly to see who it was. If it was not I, then she felt horrible anxiety. When at length I came, she stood waiting for me in the doorway, laughing and crying at the same time. Then there followed embraces and kisses as if I had returned from a journey to the North Pole; but also reproaches, such as, “You do not love me at all; if you did you would not torture me so! You know how anxious I always am about you when you are away!”
Gradually I began to understand this condition, as an inevitable consequence of the masochistic principle of love.
This martyrdom of the soul, which lovers prepare for themselves in the unceasing dread of losing one another, or of losing one another’s love, is intimately connected with the very nature of love. Without anxiety of this kind, love would be unthinkable. He who loves must continually torment himself with this anxiety; and the stronger the love, the greater is this torment. When the torment is increased by the other’s participation in it, the mutual love is also increased thereby.
This necessity we also felt, and we resolved to procreate an illegitimate child.
What this step meant to us—members of leading families—can readily be understood; but we proudly resolved to defy society at large, in order to consecrate our love by the sorrows which this would entail.