de Sade’s work

 

de Sade published most of his books under pseudonyms, his work was forbidden in his time, it was kept as pornographic literature, hidden in the shadows, until it was rediscovered by the French leftist intellectuals at mid 20th century. As he wrote not only against the Catholic Church (of which he had learned too much from the Jesuits and from his own uncle), but about religion and God, and as he showed the dissolute ways of the Monarchy’s ruling class, he was considered one of the first socialists, materialistic, atheistic and against the bourgeoisie values. He is supposed to have had a clever insight into the dark side of the human sexuality, as opposed to the spiritual side of love. He defied his time’s society by showing how virtue, representing the predominant and invalid values of the prevalent morals, was defeated by evil, more adjusted to the human nature. 

 

We find difficult buying that. We can’t separate the man from his writings. He didn’t denounce the vices of the aristocracy but he lived and enjoyed them. He used is position as an aristocrat in his own benefit, and if he was sour for being imprisoned for doing the same things that many of his contemporaries did without problems, he was not imprisoned for political reasons, but for his criminal deeds. Even when he was not judged for his misdeeds and he was sent to prison by her mother-in-law’s whim, it was for abusing women (blemishing the Montreuil’s name in the process).

 

Many intellectuals think that if somebody is against the bad ones, that somebody must be glorified as one of the good ones. Not us. The Monarchy and the aristocracy could have been wrong, but he was wrong also, a criminal under the laws of his times, and under our own laws also.

 

Many writers denounce society’s problems by showing with strong and even favorable colors its defects. de Sade didn’t denounce vice by showing it in good light, he believed that vice was the right way of living, as he lived that way every time he could indulge in it. Or perhaps he was trying to create with his writings an ethics for excusing or explaining his “sadistic” inclinations.

 

Of course we have most of the middle class values he despised, so you could say we are actually part of the denounced. True. In our view, he was no more than  a pervert that enjoyed abusing people and all sexual excesses. We can’t approve that, as most people won’t.

 

Maybe he had a special insight in the dark areas of human sexuality, but the fact is that he wrote only on those. And we're not so sure that everybody has those dark areas, even if the psychoanalysts give them for granted. We can’t feel those dark areas in us, and even if we play games that can superficially look like the ones that de Sade enjoyed in real life, we don’t feel they are dark, they are just fantasy games that we would not enjoy if they were for real. We don't believe the man has brutal tendencies that are only controlled because of society and its pressures. 

 

As for his writings, even when many were lost, in part because his own son burned them at his death, what is left is large enough.  We can’t talk about all his writings. We've read only his main books on the area of “sadism”, “The History of Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue, and of Juliette Her Sister, or The Prosperities of Vice” (We've read it as two separate books, “Justine” and “Juliette”, as they were originally published) and “The 120 days of Sodom”.

 

We’ve read Justine in English and Spanish, and the other two in English. We find them incredibly boring, no matter the language and the translator. He intermix scenes on perversions we don’t find arousing, with long tirades promoting vice and criticizing virtue.  We find the combination disgusting and revolting. And he comes back to the same concepts again and again. “The 120 days”, which he considered one of his greatest books, is just a revolting and not too creative checklist of perversions. And his “stories” are always the same. The “dialog”, was a dialog between a dying man and his confessor, in which the dying man instead of repenting for his immoral life, tried to corrupt the confessor, eventually wining the discussion with the help of some dissolute women. The scheme is repeated: somebody good (Justine) being corrupted by everybody she met and being debased just for being good, or a corrupt (Juliette) corrupting everybody around her, and wining money and recognition in the way. The corruption scenes, narrated in a detached way that makes them just disgusting and not even pornographic, alternate with boring pseudo philosophical tirades explaining why society values are wrong, and why corruption is better.

 

So, we don't believe that his work has some literary, philosophical o social value, and it  is not even good pornography. One book would have been enough for his supposed purpose. The rest is redundant.

 

Sorry, but we are not among his fans, as you can see.

 

 

Published: 10/12/05