The Mother of God
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The Mother of God is a novel, originally the work of the Austrian author, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836–1895) that was published in 1886 as "Die Gottesmutter" and then in French as La Mère de Dieu. The present English translation, released by William Holmes in January 2015, is the only known version in that language.
Von Sacher-Masoch was born in Lemberg, later named Lviv[1] which is now a city in Ukraine, though it was part of Austria as he was growing up. He was an academic in mathematics, law and history, eventually taking on the post of professor in the city of his birth. He wrote many books and short stories, often drawing their themes from the history and folklore of Galicia.
He was particularly fascinated by the various ethnic groups that were represented in his homeland and this comes through strongly in many of his works.
Masoch was a passionate opponent of, and campaigner against, Antisemitism, at the time a major scourge on the eastern European landscape, where its scars persist to this very day.
As he approached the age of sixty, though not quite reaching that milestone, he experienced increasing mental instability, and may well have died while under psychiatric care.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch has an interesting link to a prominent singer in the English 1960s pop scene in that one of his descendants is Marianne Faithfull,[2] who bears the (unused) title of Baroness Sacher-Masoch.
Contents
Plot
The novel features the story of Sabadil, a simple peasant farmer living in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century. After a chance encounter in a forest with a beautiful but mysterious woman, his life changes for ever. Driven by infatuation, he traces her to a village where it transpires that she heads a quasi-Christian cult, the members of which pay her unquestioning devotion. Blinded by unrequited love, the farmer is drawn into a web of manipulation, cruelty and violence from which there is no escape.
Notes
The translator, William Holmes, felt that Masoch's original text ended rather "up in the air", so he penned a further three chapters to bring the book to what he regards as a more satisfactory conclusion.
Other material has been added in the form of explanatory notes where the meanings of certain words or situations are obscure.
