Marquis de Sade, 120 Days of Sodom and others
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), is one of history’s most notorious sexual perverts and criminals; the term ‘sadism’, of course, derives from his surname. His scandalous antics and sexual appetite, along with his aristocratic lineage in Revolutionary France, led him to spend 32 years of his life in prisons and lunatic asylums. He was a prolific writer, and spent much of his time in prison pursuing his literary aspirations. For de Sade, erotic writing was a necessary substitute for actual sexual crimes when he was incarcerated and thus prevented from acting out his twisted fantasies.
De Sade was born a wealthy aristocrat, received a fine education, and joined the military at the age of just 15, rising to the rank of colonel. Shortly after returning to Paris from the Seven Years’ War in 1763, de Sade was placed under observation by the police after complaints of brutality from various prostitutes. After several short imprisonments for his crimes, de Sade (by now a Marquis) was exiled to his castle in Lacoste in 1768, but this did not curb his behaviour, and a chambermaid he tortured had to be handsomely compensated by the de Sade family.
In the following years, de Sade’s crimes (whipping, drugging prostitutes, and homosexual sodomy) led to his fleeing to Italy after the death sentence was pronounced upon him. He was eventually caught in Paris, but the death penalty was dropped, and he instead was imprisoned on-and-off until his death, serving for a time as an official in Napoleon’s government until he was sacked for, surprisingly, voicing criticism for Robespierre’s brutality. He was imprisoned without trial for the indecent content of the novellas Justine and Juliette in 1801, and spent the rest of his life in mental asylums.
De Sade wrote much of his large body of work whilst in prison. In the words of Simone de Beauvoir, ‘it is neither as author nor as sexual pervert that [de] Sade compels us; it is by virtue of the relationship which he created between these two aspects of himself’. Essentially, de Sade’s works, including the notorious 120 Days of Sodom, were written to explain his sexual aberrations and love for erotic cruelty. Sodom, written during his stay in the Bastille, tells the story of 4 aristocratic libertines indulging in appalling sexual acts and debating the nature of vice.
‘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’. So de Sade described himself in a 1783 letter to his wife, but the warning still applies today. For those of a strong stomach and tolerance for immorality, de Sade’s writings are ponderous and obfuscatory, but nonetheless intellectually-stimulating and rewarding for those willing to accept a challenge. You have been warned, brave reader.