Marquis De Sade

Was the Marquis de Sade a great writer, proto-freudean psychologist, and genius or simply a pornographer, as some claim?

I think he was a genius, although his work is quite dark and disturbing, it is literature of great merit.

 

I don't know for sure, having never actually read his work.

Have seen Quills though. It's a great black comedy/tragic drama about Sade. That's my only real source of info on him. Not sure how accurate it is (probably not very)

TTFN
Sage

 

I find him to be long-winded and repetitive.

 

I adore his work, I am re-reading At Home with The Marquis de Sade right now... Justine was my favorite, although 120 days of Sodomy was good as well...

 

he was interesting for his time well in fact interesting for anytime I liked justine too didnt like 120 days as much found it repetitive .
hes not a writer I want to read over again and again to often , but think his work has merit if a bit dark

 

Justine is his best I think - I agree it's not the sort of thing you'd want to read over and over - in fact, I found it swung between amusement and being quite harrowing in places. I once heard it described as 'like a dose of brimstone'.
I saw the film of 120 days - and I found that equally nasty, but compelling.
But - I do also think the Marquis had something to say.

If anyone's wondered - the image of the Marquis de Sade in the original post is by Man Ray.

 

He was a genius.

 

justine is a prime example of de sade's work .........i read it in english and i read it in it's original french text ..the english translated one i read loses a lot in the translation

 

I would not call Sade a pornographer, there was nothing titillating in his work, unless you were John Wayne Gacy; an evil psuedo-philosopher, maybe. Of all the books I've owned, "The 120 Days Of Sodom" was the only one I loaned with instructions to never return--I didn't want it in my home. There's a damn good reason he was imprisoned most of his life--he was insane, evil and dangerous.

 

If you're interested in Sade, you'd dig Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch (I think that's his name). Read, uh, Venus in Furs. It directly proceeds Sade's genius. Masochism? The writing itself is extremely poetic and beautiful. It's about this man, Severin, who is absolutely infatuated with this woman, Wanda, and would do absolutely anything to be with her. He becomes her slave. I can't give away the ending.

Also, as the real story goes, a woman, after reading his book, sent him a letter signed 'wanda', and eventually became his wife. I think they did a great deal of whipping and dominating sexual acts, not sure. That's just what I have heard.

Interesting, though.

Great book.

A friend was talking to me about Sade and that he was one of the major proponents of the advent of Existentialism.. not to be confused with kierkegaard... Probably read a few of Sade's works this summer or sooner.

 

Well, Top Hat, I've read(And own) VENUS IN FURS. It's overated--boring.


Read Henry Miller-- SEXUS or THE TROPIC OF CANCER. Funny, intelligent, literary porn.

Did I say it's funny?

 

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I will check into Henry Miller, though. thanks for the recommendation

 

He was perverted but he had erotic ideals. He wasn't a romantic, faithful, or passionate. He just like to humilate women. That's just my opinion though.

 

I agree with this.
I've read some of his work & I think he was one of history's first male chauvenist pigs.
He got away with his shenanigans because it was during the French Revolution when total disruption was everywhere in France.He spent most of his later life in Prison.
His writing is artisic in a pornographic sort of way.

 

He was imprisioned well before the revolution. Read "The 120 Days of Sodom" and then, talk about "erotic ideas", etc. The man was insane and should have been shot.

 

Didyou know that there are still some of his writings that the French has band from the public lol. Now that's Lewd!

 

The impression I got from reading some of De Sade's work was a feeling of revulsion, shock, and guilt, for not putting the book down straight away (120 Days of Sodom).

I think that if I had read it now for the first time, I would be as shocked as I am of some of the contents I read on the internet, and would probably dismiss it more out of boredom rather than controversial theme.

Having said that, it is an essential book that needed to have been written. We cannot comprehend the range of evil that humankind are capable of if we don't even try to explore it, never mind rationalize it.

Would Nazis have ever commited their hineous crimes if De Sade had never been published? Would genocide never occur? Would the detainees of Guantanamo or the Iraqi prisoners have had more humane treatment? Would rapists and child molesters never have existed?

I am neither condoning or condemning this book. As a work of literature I find it scatological, profane and, frankly, too repetitive to be a worthy read. As an insight to the conscience of the unsociable mind I find it the most resourceful encyclopaedia available.

 

Sensible comments at last.
I agree in general - only thing I'd add is that whether DeSade had been published or not wouldn't have made any difference to Nazi or other atrocities. I feel that the Marquis is simply a commentator on reality - he didn't invent sadism etc. he just documents it in his own inimitable manner.
That's why, as I mentioned in the first post, he is considered by some as a kind of proto-freudian, because he explored the dark underbelly of the human psyche in a way no-one had done previously, and went into areas that were later explored in a different way by psycho-analysis and so on.
Without DeSade would we have had Salvador Dali?

- I haven't actually read 120 days - I have seen the movie, which is pretty grim. My opinion that DeSade was a great stylist is based on 'Justine'.
In that novel, he juxtaposes a kind of high, pre-revolutionary style of aristocratic French prose with the shocking and disturbing nature of the material, in a way perhaps intended to heighten its impact. So from an artistic point of view he was years ahead of his time, in that the technique of juxtaposing conflicting images has been much used since by others.
Without DeSade, would we have had William Burroughs?

Overall, I find DeSade's work disturbing and horrible - but at the same time, I can also appreciate that a certain mastery of literary technique, along with an extremely incisive insight into the dark side of sexuality certainly do have to be attributed to the Marquis in order for the book to produce such an effect. Its certainly not the sort of stuff many people will feel neutral about.

 

DeSade was imprisoned prior to the revolution in the Bastille, obstensibly for whipping a prostitute, but more realistically for political ends, as such imprisonment of minor aristos who wouldn't toe the line was common under the French absolutist monarchy.
With the revolution, as an ex-Bastille prisoner, DeSade enjoyed a brief period of celebrity.
It was at this time that 'Justine' was published, which soon resulted in DeSade being committed permanantly to an insane asylum where he spent the remainder of his life, once again, mainly on a political basis. He wouldn't have been shot, but guillotined (it was thought to be a more humane method) - and it was his ex-Bastille status that probably saved him from just that end.

 

there are many geniouses that were wrongly acused of being mad. de sade is not one of them. de sad was insane. he used to abduct, abuse and whip children and used to keep getting arrested for it. that didnt lead him to stop doing it because he was sick. his madness drove him to do these terrible things against his will. he actually used to write obsene stories to keep himslef from acting out such things. he also wrote stories out of boredome, but not out of artistic creativity or something.


however de sad is a good writer. he is the wrong person to read if you are just trieng to get a boner. i liked the prose that he wrote about an imaginary tribe in the south american forests, called the butua. the main character of this story is a westerner that was captured by this tribe. there is a funny part were the westerner is served some pieces of tender meat and then finds out that it came from the thighs of a teenage girl.