MARQUIS DE SADE N O B L E M A N O F F R E E W I L L A N D E V I L

A D L I G E R D E S F R E I E N ( U N ) W I L L E N S

P L E M I Ć S L O B O D N E ( N E ) VO L J E 2 J U N E 1 7 4 0 – 2 D E C E M B E R 1 8 1 4

Vortrag von Konstanza

Tage der Tantrischen Gruppen, Ližnjan, April 2012

MARQUIS DE SADE

His Life: sacandals – imprisonments – sentence to

death – political engagements

His Writings: fascinating and repellent

Reception and Key Philosophical Ideas

„satanic” or „divine” de Sade?

Why should we deal with de Sade?

MARQUIS DE SADE‘S LIFE

Yes, I am a libertine, I admit it freely. I have dreamed of doing

everything that it is possible to dream of in that line. But I have

certainly not done all the things I have dreamt of and never shall.

Libertine I may be, but I am not a criminal, I am not a murderer.

-- The Marquis de Sade

M ARQU IS DE SADE‘S LIFE

32 years of the 74 of his life spent in prison

Born in Paris, educated Christian, aristrocrat familly

1763 married: 2 sons, 1 daughter

His own familly condemned him

Not until 1940 – Comte Xavier de Sade initiated investigation

SCANDAL S AND IM P RISONM ENTS I

1763 (23) – several short imprisonments because of sexual

mistreatment of prostitutes

1768 (28) – exiled to his chateau at Lacoste

1768 – first major scandal; case „Rose Keller”

Sade‘s mother in law obtained a lettre de cachet from the king

1772 (32) – sentenced to death in absentia for sodomy and

poisoning – flight to Italy

Imprisoned and ecaped

SCANDAL S AND IM P RISONM ENTS I I

1776 - returned to Lacoste

1777 – imprisoned in the Chateau de Vincennes

1778 – successfully appealed his death sentence but

remained imprisoned – escaping and being recaptured

1784 – transferred to the Bastille

1786 – transferred to the insane asylum at Charenton

1790 (50) – released and divorced

IMPRISOMENT

Vincenne

LA BASTILLE

SHORT F REEDOM AND P OL ITICS

1790 – 1803: time of „freedom”

Published several books

1790 – until death 1814: relationship with Constance

Quesent

1790 – elected to the National Convention

1793 – removed and imprisoned because critics to

Robespierre

1794 – released after the execution of Robespierre

I M P R I S O N M E N T S F O R H I S W R I T I N G S

1801 (61) – Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the arrest

1803 – declared insane and transferred to the asylum at

Charenton (Constance lived there with him until his

death)

Staged several plays with inmates as actors

1809 – deprivation of pens and paper (!)

Sexual relationship with Madeleine Leclerc (13)

NAOPLEON BONAPARTE

Throwing into fire

Marquis des Sades

„Justine”

PORTRAIT IMAGINAIRE

DU XIXE SIÈCLE

Sade soumis aux

quatre vents des

suggestions

diaboliques

PSYCHIATRY

Hospital de Charenton

PORTRAIT IMAGINAIRE

Sade prisonnier

M ARQU IS DE SADE‘S WR IT INGS

Tagged under many different titles

Gothic novel?

Stunning issues of sexual violence, sadomasochism and

pedophilia

Focus on dark side of human nature: With 120 Days, for

example, Sade wished to present "the most impure tale that has

ever been written since the world exists."

PROSE ( C H O I C E )

Dialogue between a priest and a dying man (1782 / 1926)

The 120 Days of Sodom or the School of Licentiousness (1785 / 1904)

Justine – Les Infortunes de la vertu (1787 /1930)

Aline and valcour or philosophical roman (1788 / 1791)

Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)

Juliette or vice Amply Rewarded (1797)

The Crimes of Love (1800)

OTHERS

Hitoriettes

Essays

Plays

Political pamphlets

Letters and personal notes posthumously published

JUSTINE O R T H E M I S F O R T U N E S O F V I R T U E

Classic novel, no standard version

Napoleon called Justine "the most abominable book

ever engendered by the most depraved imagination"

Destruction of the book ordered 1815

Offenders: monks, judges, bankers – raping, tortuing

the virtuous Justine, who never gives up in being

virtuous

BOOK ILLUSTRATION

BOOK ILLUSTRATION

Justine

BOOK ILLUSTRATION

Juliette

THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM O R T H E S C H O O L O F L I B E R T I N I S M

Novel

The work remained unpublished until the 20th century – 1904 by

the Berlin psychiatrist Iwan Bloch: equated it with Krafft-Ebbings

Psychopathia Sexualis (1886)

Due to its topics of sexual violence and extreme cruelty it has

often been banned; 1955 still French authorities wanted to destroy it

Written in the Bastille

THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM

Offenders: aristocrat, bishop, judge, banker

Victims: daughters of the offenders; 8 boys and girls 12-15

years old; 4 elderly women; 4 studs

Simple passions – complex passions – criminal passions –

murderous passions

The manner in which sexual fetishes are developed;

number of recurring figures

Film adaptations

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT

Les 120 Journees de Sodome

12m long

11cm wide

Partially readable only with lupe

Lost in the Bastille...

...and found again in the Bastille

R E C E P T I O N A N D K E Y P H I L O S O P H I C A L I D E A S

„ S A T A N I C ” O R „ D I V I N E ” D E S A D E ?

Man is governed by his nature

Man can only exhibit and enjoy to the full his true nature

when he is freed from all moral and social restraints

Man's artificial laws dictate what was right and wrong

The crime of the Marquis de Sade was not what he did,

but that he spoke of it publicly.

P H I L O S O P H I C A L I D E A S I N „ J U S T I N E ”

going against accepted tradition

the subjectivity of virtue and vice

the pursuit of desire and the consequences of it

the evils of absolutism for either the purposes of good or evil

Nature, as being the only true ruler of man

the pursuit of virtue, as well as that of vice, are both for the sake

of pleasure

The will to power is the will to pleasure

P O L I T I C A L I D E A S I N „ J U S T I N E ”

the hierarchy and inequalities within a class system

the corruption of the church, the justice system and most

major institutions

the respective roles of the sexes

the necessity of reliance upon others (appropriate as De Sade

advocated a form of utopian socialism, at least later in life)

M O D E R N R E C E P T I O N

Geoffrey Gorer – the first reasoned socialist

Simone de Beauvoir – radical philosophy of freedom; focus on sexuality

as motive force

Guillaume Apollinaire – „the freest spirit that has ever existed”

Pierre Klossowski – precursor of nihilism

Jacques Lacan – „Kant avec Sade”

Camille Paglia – Sade is responding to Rousseau

Feminist reading of Sade

E R I C H KÖHLER – P R O F E S S O R O F F R E N C H

L I T E R A T U R E

Sade´s occupation with MORALITY

Sade´s negative teodicy = justification of an „evil God“

THEODICY: attempt to resolve the evidential problem of evil by

reconciling God's traditional characteristics of all-loving, all-powerful, and

all-knowing with the occurrence of evil in the world.

Justine – an apothesis of virtue and innocence

If he had written philosophical essays he would not have been

condemned

The GOD of the religions cannot exist

Contradictory positions:

individual joy is based on the joy of others

the biggest misery of others causes the biggest individual

pleasure

Idee du Mal

To derive „sadism“ from Sade was a mistake

S TA T E A N D S O C I E T Y

Central problem: the evil

Moralty of the atheists is superior to the religious one´s

Negative utopia: tyranny, despotism, fanatic priests, all

historic defects of mankind united

Positiv utopia for whole Europe: no class-system, no

property, no religion, no prisons, no death-sentence; autarcic

economy, no money – only barter trade; no luxery; equality

of men and women.

120 Days of Sodom is the Metaphora for the

tortuing and burning of witches through Chatholic

church and the state

1885 still burning of witches in France

SURREALISM

JEAN-JACQUES

ROUSSEAU

W H Y S H O U L D W E D E A L W I T H

D E S A D E ?

The tyrann, the raper, the murderer in each of us

Sade articulated the dark side of humanity and also the

worst fears; he visualised „hell“

You can only transcendend what you know

Absolute evil – and by implication – absolute innocence:

some readers write about the religious experience of reading

de Sade

TA N T R I C - S P I R I T UA L I N T E R P R E TA T I O N

B Y M A K A J A ( 1 2 0 D a y s o f S o d o m )

Sex-hate - desintegration of the Ego through Pain and Destruction

- (short) feeling of unity through destroying the other being and melting

with the liberating life force

in contrary to:

Love - desintegration of the Ego through Love and Creation

- (long-lasting) feeling of unity through giving oneself to the other being

and melting with the all-pervading life force

TA N T R I C - S P I R I T UA L I N T E R P R E TA T I O N

B Y M A K A J A ( J u s t i n e )

Demon of ascetizm and demon of hedonizm =

2 faces of destruction and death

Demon of ascetizm: breaking the flow of Holy

Spirit through the physical body – human gets weak

Demon of hedonizm: taking so much as possible

energy and puting out through sexual organ – human

kills oneself