The Marquis de Sade: the Romantic Libertine?

"Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change."-de Sade, from his "Last Will and Testament"

After the film "Quill", there was a renaissance of de Sade and his works. Although chiefly fiction, "Quill" managed to romanticize his scandalous lifestyle and deviant behavior for which he was imprisoned most of his adult life. The film painted the self-renowned libertine as a compassionate poet penning dirty verse. During his long imprisonment, de Sade recounted his crimes of rape and torture in graphic novels and plays that depicted sexual brutality, giving rise to the term "sadism"-"sexual satisfaction gained by the infliction of pain on others"-and securing his position as the most infamous author in the history of French literature. De Sade was anything but compassionate and his verse did not flaunt his skill with words, but was a form of expression that was used to narrate his philosophies of licentious freedom, with the pursuit of personal pleasure being the highest principle. During his imprisonment at the Bastille, de Sade wrote his most famous work, "The 120 Days of Sodom" in thirty-seven days on a twelve-metre roll of paper.

"There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship. . . One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater. . . Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil."-de Sade, from "The 120 Days of Sodom"

De Sade was imprisoned for numerous offenses including his scandalous writing that narrated some of his most heinous crimes of passion. One of those crimes was the molestation of Rose Keller, in which he "orders her to undress, threatens her with a knife, brutally flogs her and then locks her away in a room from which she shortly manages to escape. . ." Another, was the poisoning and sodomy of four young girls and a prostitute to which the girls refused his "unnatural advances". For this last offense he is "condemned to be decapitated. . . and to be burned and his ashes strewn to the wind" but manages to escape to Italy.

"It has, moreover, been proven that horror, nastiness, and the frightful are what give pleasure when one fornicates. Beauty is a simple thing; ugliness is the exceptional thing. And firey imaginations, no doubt, always prefer the extraordinary thing to the simple thing."-de Sade, from "The 120 Days of Sodom"

Later, de Sade is suspected of kidnapping young people from Lyons, then bringing them back to his estate, La Coste, "where he indulges in excesses of every kind." One young maid, Nanon escapes and "relates to the bailiff ‘a thousand horrors’”" In 1776, de Sade instructs Father Durand, a recollect monk to find a young girl (Catherine Trillet) in Montpellier and bring her back to La Coste to work as a cook. Catherine becomes known in the chateau as "Justine" and later her father comes to claim her back after he hears of several offenses and fires a pistol at de Sade, which he misses. Afterward, Catherine begs not to be sent back to Montpellier.

"If the objects who serve us feel ecstasy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired. The idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism."-de Sade, from "The 120 Days of Sodom"

His other novels include the infamous "Justine" (1787), a story of a young girl who is the victim of a variety of cruelties to which she causes her own suffering due to her "unnatural" innocent and virtuous nature; and "Juliette" (1798) a sequel of sorts about Justine’s worldly and corrupt sister who lives happily as a prostitute. These both portray de Sade's belief in man’s "incestuous relationship with nature", in which he has a fundamental need to inflict pain.

"Has not Nature proved, in giving us the strength necessary to submit them to our desires, that we have the right to do so?. . . We are no guiltier in following the primitive impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves."-de Sade, from "Aline and Valcour"

While imprisoned, de Sade is accused of "suffering from the most dangerous of insanities..." and is taken into seclusion to prevent his communication with others. There, he is deprived of pencils, pens, ink, or paper and all books because they "over-heated his head and led him to write unseemly things."

"I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt; I have vanquished, I have uprooted, I have destroyed everything in my heart that might have interfered with my pleasure."-de Sade, from "Aline and Valcour"

Later works consist of "Aline and Valcour" (1795), "Philosophy in the Boudoir" (1795), and "Crimes of Love" (1800). Many other manuscripts including "Les Journées de Florbelle", were seized by the police in his room at the Charenton lunatic asylum where he spent most of his remaining days until his death in 1814, after which they where "burned, pillaged, torn up and carried off." His works were considered obscene and banned well into the 20th century.

"Certain souls seem hard because they are capable of strong feelings, and they sometimes go to rather extreme lengths; their apparent unconcern and cruelty are but ways, known only to themselves, of feeling more strongly than others."-de Sade, from "Philosophy in the Bedroom"

Download and read de Sade free online: "Justine", "The 120 Days of Sodom", and "Philosophy in the Bedroom”. View illustrations from "Justine".