Marquis de Sade Donatien Alphonse F. de Sade Born: 2 JUN 1740 Paris, Hotel de Conde, FRANCE Sex: M Died: 2 DEC 1814 Paris, Charenton Asylum, FRANCE Occupation: writer
Relationship: 15. cousin 5+7 times removed, etc.
Ancestors:
Marriage(s) and Relationships:Notes: Source: Leo van de Pas.
The most infamous writer in the history of French literature, who
occasionally has been hailed as "the freest spirit who has ever
existed." Marquis de Sade published erotic writings, that gave rise to
the term sadism - enjoyment of cruelty, which first made it
into a dictionary in 1834. His works have been seen as exploration of
sexual and political freedom, and on the other hand he was a
multiple rapist, torturer, and proto-murderer. In his 'Idées sur les
romans' (1800) de Sade writes that the essence of novelistic
representation lies in the writer's incestuous relationship with nature.
To be true to this relationship is to eschew all limitations, and
exceed the bounds of convention and knowledge.
"But if there seems little reason for literary people to concern
themselves with Sade, he has found a new lease of life among
philosophers and anthropologists. Bored and uneasy with our little lives
we resort to the greater amplitude of symbols. Bardot,
Byron, Hitler, Hemingway, Monroe, Sade: we do not require our heroes to
be subtle, just to be big. Then we can depend on someone
to make them subtle." (D.J. Enright in 'The Marquis and the Madame', in
Conspirators and Poets, 1966)
Donatien Alphonse François de Sade was born in Paris into an aristocratic
family. He was the only surviving child of Jean-Baptiste
de Sade and his wife Marie-Eléonore de Maillé, a distant cousin of the
Prince de Conde. His family had been ennobled in the 12.
century and remained a major power-broker in the southern region of
Provence. Aged four, de Sade was sent to Avignon into the
care of his uncle, Abbe de Sade, whose sexual life was notoriously
irregular. After this period de Sade attended the Jesuit college
of Louis Le Grand.
From the age of 14 to 26 de Sade was in active military service, and
participated in the Seven Years War. He married in 1763
Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil, the daughter of a high-ranking bourgeois
family, but also began an affair with an actress and invited
prostitutes to his house. In 1768 he held a prostitute called Rose Keller
captive and abused her. The chief of the Paris vice squad
warned brothels of de Sade - he was considered a mortal threat to
prostitutes. In the following years de Sade was found guilty of
all kinds of sexual crimes, and he managed to anger Mme. de Montreuil,
his mother-in-law by seducting her younger daughter,
Anne-Prospre, when she was visiting his medieval fortress at La Coste in
Provence. The unabated de Sade had an orgy.
At Aix in 1772 de Sade received the penalty of death for an unnatural
crime and poisoning, but escaped to Italy with his valet
Latour. After arrest he was excluded from Paris and sent to his wife's
family home in Normandy. At La Coste de Sade continued
to arrange orgies from 1773 to 1777 - he had hired a harem of young girls
as sexual slaves. After continuous scandals and charges
1777. Propably his impisonment had been arranged by Mme. de Montreuil,
whom he remembered in his writings: "Oh, powers from
Hell, grant me Nero’s wish, that all women have but one head and that
this head belong to the shrew who tyrannizes me; then grant me the
standards and wrote in a letter: "Send me a little prune-colored
redingote, with suede vest and trousers, something fresh and light but
most
specifically not made out of linen; as for the other costume, make it
Paris Mud in hue with a few silver trimmings, but definitely not silver
braid."
To overcome boredom he started to write sexually graphic novels and plays.
After escape de Sade was transferred in 1784 to Bastille in Paris, where
he had a large room sixteen feet in diameter. In the new
surroundings he wrote LES JOURNÉES DE SODOME, an underground classic
over a hundred years. He was released from
insane asylum at Charenton on April 2, 1790. Renée-Pélagie obtained a
divorce. Next year, at the age of 51, de Sade published
JUSTINE. Somehow de Sade survived through the years of the French
Revolution, although many other aristocrats were
executed. Perhaps the rage of the Revolution saw only itself in the
activities of de Sade. To secure his freedom and property he
wrote a eulogy of Marat, and got elected secretary of his district in
Paris. In 1801 he was again arrested and sent to Charenton,
where he began to work a 10-volume novel, Crimes of Passion. During this
period he also stage plays in the asylum. His last days
de Sade spent under the control of an ex-abbé. After his death on
December 2, 1814 his elder son burned his last and other
manuscripts. de Sade's grave was later desecrated when his skull was
taken for pseudo-scientific measurements.
Justine (1791) - de Sade's most famous work, depicting graphically sexual
encounters of a young girl. He wrote an early version of
the novel in the Bastille and completed it in 1791 while free. In de
Sade's philosophy God is evil and the misfortunes suffered by
Justine is a result from denying this truth. In the sequel, Juliette
(1798) the heroine was Justine's sister, who enjoyed the delights of
evil. de Sade boldly addressed a copy of the novel to Napoleon in 1803. -
See also Voitaire's Candide (1759); Charles Baudelaire's
fascination in evil and abnormal in Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of
Evil, 1857). de Sade himself declared Justine a work 'capable of
corrupting the devil' and denied his authorship. D.J. Enright
chracterizes de Sade's philosophy very simple: "if you enjoy
wickedness, it shows that Nature intended you to be wicked, and it would
be wicked not to be." Some 19.-century writers were
inspired by de Sade's belief that people should act on their instincts.
"Irrités de ce premier crime, les monstres ne s'en tinrent pas
là; ils l'étendirent ensuite nue, à plat ventre sur une grande table, ils
allumèrent des cierges, ils placèrent l'image de notre
sauveur à sa tête et osèrent consommer sur les reins de cette malheureuse
le plus redoutable de nos mystères." (from Les
Infortunes de la Vertu, 1787)
For further reading: The Marquis De Sade: A Life by Neil Schaeffer
(1999); At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life by Francine
du Plessix Gray (1999); Sade: A Biographical Essay by Laurence L. Bongie;
(1999); The Philosophy of the Marquis de Sade by Timo
Airaksinen (1995); Sade’s Wife: The Woman Behind the Marquis by Margaret
Crosland (1995); Marquis de Sade: A Biography by
Maurice Lever (1993); Sade: A Sudden Abyss by Annie Le Brun (1990); Le
Mariage du marquis de Sade by Alice M. Laborde (1988);
Intersections by Jane Gallop (1981); The Sadeian Woman by Angela Carter
(1979); DeSade: A Critical Biography by Ronald
Hayman (1978); Lectures de Sade by Francoise Laugaa-Traut (1973); Sade,
Fourier, Loyola by Roland Barthes (1971), La Passion
de la marquise de Sade by Jeanine Delpech (1970); Sade mon prochain by
Pierre Klossowski (1947) - For further information:
Donatien Alphonse François de Sade - See also: French poet Guillaume
Apollinaire claimed the the writing of de Sade would
dominate the 20.-century. - Note: Philip Kaufman's film Quills (2000),
starring Kate Winslet, Geoffrey Rush, Joaquin Phoenix, and
Michael Caine, depicted Marquis de Sade's stay at the Charenton insane
asylum. The film was based Doug Wright's play from 1995.
Selected works:
DIALOGUE ENTRE UN PRÊTRE ET UN MORIBOND, 1782 - Dialogue Between a Priest
and a Dying Man .
LES JOURNÉES DE SODOME, 1782-85 - The 120 Days of Sodom - Sodoman 120
päivää - film adaptation in 1975, dir.
by Pier Paolo Pasolini .
LES INFORTUNES DE LA VERTU, 1787.
JUSTINE OU LES MALHEURS DE LA VERTU, 1791 - Justine eli hyveellisen
neidon kovat kokemukset.
ALINE ET VALVOUR, 1795 .
LA PHILOSOPHIE DANS LE BOUDOIR, 1795 - Philosophy in the Bedroom .
JULIETTE, OU LA SUITE DE JUSTINE, 1798 .
LES CRIMES DE L'AMOUR, 1800 - Crimes of Passion .
LA MARQUISE DE GANGES, 1813 .
unfinished, manuscript burned .
EUVRES, 1907 .
CORRESPONDANCE, 1929 .
CAHIERS PERSONNELS, 1953 .
EUVRES COMPLÈTES DU MARQUIS DE SADE, 1966 (16 vols. edited by Gilbert
Lely) .
JOURNAL IDÉNIT, 1970 .
EUVRES, 1990 .
CORRESPONDANCES DU MARQUIS DE SADE ET DE SES PROCHES ENRICHIES DE
DOCUMENTS,
NOTES ET COMMENTARIES, 1991-1997 (ed. by Alice M. Laborde) .
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