The soul assumes a kind of apathy which is soon metamorphosed into pleasures a thousand times more exquisite than those which weakness and self-indulgence would procure for them.
It is understandable that, in this world, principles play a major role. The libertine is “pensive, deeply introspective, incapable of being moved by anything whatsoever.” He keeps to himself, cannot tolerate either noise or laughter; nothing must divert his attention; “apathy, unconcern, stoicism, solitude within oneself—these are the conditions he requires in order to attain a proper state of the soul.” A transformation such as this, involving a labor of self-destruction, is not accomplished without the most extreme difficulty. Juliette is a kind of Bildungsroman, an apprentice’s manual in which we gradually learn to recognize the slow transformation of an energetic soul. On the surface, Juliette is thoroughly depraved from the very start. But in reality, at that stage, she is only equipped with a few penchants, and her mind is yet intact; she has a tremendous effort yet to make, for, as Balzac once remarked: n’est pas détruit qui veut. Sade notes that there are extremely dangerous moments in this effort to achieve apathy. It may happen, for example, that insensibility can put the libertine into such a state of prostration that he may at any moment revert to morality: he believes himself hardened, while actually he is only weakened, a perfect prey for remorse. Now, a single gesture of virtue, by revalorizing the universe of man and God, is enough to bring down his entire power structure; however lofty he may be, that universe crumbles and, generally, this fall is his death. If, however, while in this state of prostration wherein he feels nothing more than a tasteless repugnance for the worst excesses, he finds one final increment of strength with which to augment this insensibility by dreaming up new excesses which repel him even more, then he will evolve from a state of prostration and dereliction to one of omnipotence, from induration and indifference to the most extreme voluptuousness and, “shaken to the very fiber of his being,” the supreme enjoyment of the self will transport him a sovereign, beyond all imaginable limits.
One of the most surprising aspects of Sade and his fate is that, although scandal has no better symbol than he, all that is daring and scandalous in his thinking has for so long remained unknown. There is no need to list and classify the themes he discovered—themes which the most adventurous minds of future centuries will apply themselves to developing and reaffirming. We have touched upon them in passing, and even so we have limited ourselves to depicting the main elements of his thought by stressing the basic doctrine. We could just as easily have discussed his concept of dreams, which he views as the work of the mind restored to instinct and thus delivered from the influences of waking morality. Or we might have dwelled upon all that part of his thinking in which he proves himself the precursor of Freud, as for example when he writes:
It is in the mother’s womb that are fashioned the organs which must render us susceptible of this or that fantasy; the first objects which we encounter, the first conversations we overhear, determine the pattern; do what it will, education is incapable of altering the pattern.
In Sade there is also something of the traditional moralist, and it would be a simple matter to make a collection of his maxims which would make those of La Rochefoucauld seem weak and hesitant by comparison. Sade is often accused of having written badly, and, in fact, he often did write in extreme haste and with a prolixity that tries the patience. But he is also capable of a strange humor, his style reveals an icy joviality and, in its extravagance, a kind of cold innocence which one may find preferable to the full range of Voltaire’s irony and which, in fact, is not to be found in the work of any other French writer. All these are exceptional merits, but they were in vain. Until the day when Apollinaire and Maurice Heine—and when André Breton, with his sixth, divinatory sense of the hidden forces of history—opened the way toward him, and even later, until the recent studies of Georges Bataille, Jean Paulhan, and Pierre Klossowski, Sade—the master of the great themes of modern thought and sensibility—continued to glitter like an empty name. Why? Because this thought is the work of madness, because it was molded by a depravity which the world was incapable of facing squarely. What is more, Sade’s doctrine is presented as the theory of that depravity, a blueprint of his personal penchant, a doctrine which attempts to transpose the most repugnant anomaly into a complete Weltanschauung. For the first time, philosophy is openly conceived of as being the product of an illness,3 and it has the effrontery to present as a logical and universal theory a system the sole guarantee for which is the personal preferences of an aberrant individual.
This again is one of Sade’s most important and original contributions. One may safely say that Sade performed his own psychoanalysis by writing a text wherein he consigns everything which relates to his obsessions and wherein, too, he seeks to discover what logic and what coherence his remarks reveal. But, what is more, he was the first to demonstrate, and demonstrate proudly, that from a certain personal and even monstrous form of behavior there could rightfully be derived a world view significant enough so that some eminent thinkers concerned only with the human condition were to do nothing more than to reaffirm its chief perspectives and provide added proof of its validity. Sade had the courage to assert that by fearlessly accepting the singular tastes that were his and by taking them as the point of departure and the very principle of all reason, he provided philosophy with the solidest foundation it could hope to have, and advanced himself as the means to a profound interpretation of human destiny taken in its entirety. Such pretension is doubtless no longer of a sort to terrify us, but, in all fairness, we are only beginning to take it seriously, and for a long while this pretension was enough to turn away from Sade’s thinking even those who were interested in Sade.
First of all, what was he exactly? A monstrous exception, absolutely outside the pale of humanity. “The unique thing about Sade,” Nodier once remarked, “is his having committed a crime so monstrous that one could not characterize it without danger.” (In a sense, this was one of Sade’s ambitions: to be innocent by dint of culpability; to smash what is normal, once and for all, and smash the laws by which he could have been judged.) Another contemporary, Pitou, writes in a rather terrifying manner: “Justice had relegated him to a corner of the prison and offered every prisoner a free hand to rid the world of this burden.” When, later, there was recognized in Sade an anomaly to be found in certain other people too, he was quickly and carefully sealed up inside this unnamable aberration to which, indeed, no other than this unique name could be applied. Even later, when this anomaly was held to reflect credit on Sade, when he was seen as a man free enough to have invented a new science and, in any event, as an exceptional man both by his destiny and his preoccupations, and when, finally, sadism was seen as a possibility of interest to all humanity—even then Sade’s own thought continued to be neglected, as if there could be no doubt that there was more originality and authenticity in sadism than in the way in which Sade himself had been able to interpret it. Examining it more closely, however, we see that it is not negligible and that, amidst all its teeming contradictions, there emerges, on the problem which Sade’s name illustrates, insights more significant than anything the most learned and illuminated minds have come up with on the subject to this day. We do not say that this philosophy is viable. But it does show that between the normal man who imprisons the sadistic man in an impasse, and the sadist who turns the impasse into a way out, it is the latter who is closer to the truth, who knows more about the logic of his situation and has the more profound understanding of it, and it is he who is in a position to be able to help the normal man to self-understanding, by helping him to modify the bases of all comprehension.
Chronology
1740
June 2—In the Condé mansion on the rue de Condé,1 in Paris, the Countess de Sade, nee (1712) Marie-Eléonore de Maillé de Carman, lady-in-waiting to the Princess de Condé, gives birth to a son, during the seventh year of her marriage to Jean-B
aptiste-Joseph-François (born 1702), Count de Sade, lord of the manors of Saumane and La Coste and co-lord of Mazan, Lieutenant-General of the provinces of Bresse, Bugey, Valromey, and Gex, then Ambassador from Louis XV to the Elector of Cologne.2
June 3—In the absence of both his godparents (his godfather being his maternal grandfather Donatien de Maillé, Marquis de Carmen, and his godmother Louise-Aldonse d’Astoaud de Murs, his paternal grandmother), the infant is held out over the baptismal font in the parish church of Saint-Sulpice by two retainers of the Sade household. For Christian names he is given Donatien-Alphonse-François instead of those apparently intended for him, Louis-Aldonse-Donatien, a mishap which is to plague him with the authorities throughout his life, and especially under the Republic.
1744. Aet. 4
August 16—The municipal council of Saumane sends its consuls and secretary to Avignon “to compliment My Lord the Marquis de Sade, son of the Lord Count of this place, on his happy arrival at Avignon and to wish him long and happy years as heir apparent. . . .”
1745. Aet. 5
January 24—A paternal uncle of the Marquis, Jacques-François-Paul-Aldonse (born at the château de Mazan on September 21, 1705), moves to the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Léger d’Ebreuil, to which he has been named abbot. Entrusted with the education of his nephew, he shares with him two homes, his residence at d’Ebreuil and another at Saumane, a seigneury of which he has life-long tenure.
1750. Aet. 10
. . . .—The Marquis returns to Paris to enter Louis le Grand Collège, a Jesuit school. He is given a personal tutor, Abbé Jacques-François Amblet.3
1754. Aet. 14
May 24—Young Sade obtains from the genealogist Clairambault a certificate of nobility in order to be received into the training school attached to the Light Horse Regiment of the Royal Guards.
1755. Aet. 15
December 14—He is appointed sub-lieutenant without pay in the King’s Own Infantry Regiment.
1757. Aet. 17
January 14—The Marquis de Sade is granted a commission as Cornet (Standard Bearer) in the Carbine Regiment, Saint-André Brigade, and participates in the war against Prussia.4
April 1—He is transferred, with the same rank, to the Malvoisin Brigade.
1759. Aet. 19
April 21—He is promoted to the rank of captain in the Burgundy Horse.
1763. Aet. 23
Late February—Sade, it would appear, is engaged to two young ladies simultaneously: Mademoiselle Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil and Mademoiselle Laure de Lauris. Of the two, Sade prefers the latter, with whom he is wildly in love, but his father is intent on arranging an alliance between his son and the wealthy Montreuil family, doubtless because of the seemingly delicate financial situation in which he then finds himself.5
March 15—Sade is discharged with the rank of cavalry captain, the Paris Treaty having to all intents and purposes ended the Seven Years’ War.
Late April—Only a scant two weeks before the date set for his marriage to Mlle. de Montreuil, Sade is still in Avignon, trying to win the hand of Laure de Lauris, despite the fact that she apparently has broken off the engagement. Sade’s father is angry and concerned by the Marquis’ conduct, which is compromising the proposed alliance with the Montreuil family; nonetheless, young Sade appears to have been so persuasive or eloquent that the Count at one point consents to his marrying Lady Laure.6
May 1—The King, the Queen, and the royal family give their consent to the proposed marriage between the Marquis de Sade, allied through the Maillé family to the royal blood of the Condés, and Renée-Pélagie Cordier de Launay de Montreuil (born in Paris December 3, 1741), eldest daughter of the President Claude-René de Montreuil and of Marie-Madeleine Masson de Plissay (married August 22, 1740).
May 15—The marriage contract is signed by the parties in the town house of the President, situated rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg. The future husband signs it Louis-Aldonse-Donatien.
May 17—The marriage is celebrated in the church of Saint-Roch.
October 29—By order of the King, the Marquis de Sade is committed to Vincennes fortress for excesses committed in a brothel which he has been frequenting for a month.
November 13—The order to free the Marquis is delivered, but the King commands him to withdraw to Échauffour Manor, a property owned by the Montreuils, and to remain there.
1764. Aet. 24
May 4—The King authorizes Sade to go to Dijon, with the provision that he remain there only long enough to address the Burgundy Parliament in his capacity of Lt.-General of the King for the provinces of Bresse, Bugey, Valromey, and Gex.
September 11—The King completely revokes the order restricting Sade’s residence to Échauffour Manor.
December 7—In a report, Police Inspector Marais notes that M. de Sade is in Paris and adds that he (Marais) has asked La Brissualt7 “to refrain from providing the Marquis with girls to go to any private chambers with him.”
1765. Aet. 25
. . . .—Sade has taken as mistress an actress-prostitute who is the toast of all the young fops in Paris, Mlle. Beauvoisin.
June—July—Sade is at La Coste with Mlle. Beauvoisin, passing her off as his wife’s relative or at times even as his wife. Sade’s mother-in-law, Lady Montreuil, has had wind of the affair, but apparently it has been kept from his wife.
September—Sade is back in Paris, but spending more time at La Beauvoisin’s house than at his own. His alleged reason for remaining in Paris is that he must settle his debts, which amount to 4500 livres.
1766. Aet. 26
November 4—Sade pays a M. Lestarjette the sum of two hundred livres as four and a half months’ rent on a furnished cottage in the suburb of Arcueil. This little retreat is to be associated with important events in Sade’s life.
1767. Aet. 27
January 24—Jean-Baptiste-François-Joseph, Count de Sade, dies at Montreuil, near Versailles, at the age of sixty-five, leaving his son the Marquis de Sade as his sole heir.
April 16—The Marquis de Sade is promoted to Captain Commander in the du Mestre Cavalry Regiment, with orders to assemble his company without delay. Lady Montreuil’s reaction is one of delight, for, as she notes, “it means at least a short period of peace.”
April 20—Sade leaves for Lyons to rejoin Mlle. de Beauvoisin, leaving his wife, who is five months pregnant, in Paris.
June 21—Debate and deliberation by the community of La Coste, which results in a favorable reply to the demands of the Marquis for due recognition of his rank and for a memorial service for his deceased father in the church.
August 27—In the parish of the Madeleine de la Ville-l’Evêque in Paris, Louis-Marie, Count de Sade, the Marquis’ first son is born.
October 16—Inspector Marais reports on M. de Sade’s unsuccessful attempts to induce Mlle. Rivière of the Opéra—where she is a member of the ballet—to live with him. He “has offered her 25 louis a month on condition that whenever she is not performing she will spend her time with him at his maisonette in Arcueil. The young lady has refused, but M. Sade is still pursuing her.”
1768. Aet. 28
January 24—Louis-Marie de Sade is baptized in the private chapel of the Condé mansion, the Prince de Condé and the Princess de Conti being his godparents.
April 3—On Easter Sunday, at about nine o’clock in the morning on the Place des Victoires, the Marquis de Sade accosts Rose Keller, the widow of one Valentin, a pastry cook’s assistant. A cotton spinner by trade, out of work for a month and now reduced to begging alms, she accepts to accompany Sade in a cab to Arcueil. There, in his rented cottage, he orders her to undress, threatens her with a knife, and flogs her. He then locks her in a room from which, however, she shortly manages to escape. Reaching the village—it now being about four in the afternoon—Rose Keller encounters three local women to whom she recounts her adventure and exhibits her wounds. The women take her to the authorities. Her statement is recorded8 and she is examined at onc
e by the village doctor, Pierre Paul Le Comte.
April 7—Madame de Sade summons Abbé Amblet and M. Claude Antoine Sohier to her residence at the rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg and dispatches them to Arcueil to determine whether Rose Keller can be prevailed upon to drop the charge she has made to the local magistrate. The emissaries obtain her agreement in return for 2400 livres, plus a payment of seven gold louis for dressings and medication.
April 12—Sade sets out for Saumur castle in the company of Abbé Amblet, having been granted the privilege of not being conducted there under police escort.
April 15–23—Concerned by the rumors circulating, the Paris Council orders the case taken out of the hands of the local magistrate and transferred to those of the criminal court of La Tournelle, which proceeds to a thorough examination of the evidence and declares the accused under arrest.
April 30—Inspector Marais appears at Saumur castle to transfer the Marquis to Pierre-Encise prison near Lyons, where discipline is not so lax.
June 2—The King signs two Royal Orders, one authorizing the transfer of the Marquis to the Conciergerie du Palais where the High Court is to ratify the previously issued Royal Letters of Annulment, the other ordering his transfer back to Pierre-Encise.
June 10—The accused is interrogated and admits to the principal allegations, but insists that Rose Keller was fully aware of what would be expected of her at Arcueil. He presents the Letters of Annulment granted him by the King. That same day, the High Court of Paris, meeting in pleno, pronounces for ratification of the annulment and directs the Marquis “to refund the sum of one hundred livres relative to the board of prisoners in the Conciergerie du Palais prison.”
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings Page 10