The noble pornographer

Last night I was re-reading some passages from the works of an interesting author; Marquis the Sade. You know, the guy who got his name immortalized in the word sadism (or sadist).

Marquis de Sade was born in 1740 and died in 1814. He was a gifted writer, but with a somewhat twisted mind. He spent one third of his life in jail (10 years in the Bastille), due to his scandalous lifestyle, and because of the texts he wrote; a mixture of philosophy, pornography and blasphemy.

In the humoristic play Philosophy of the Bedroom, written in 1795, Madame the Saint Ange and Dolmance are introducing the young Eugenie to certain adventures. Here’s an excerpt from the dialogue:

MADAME THE SAINT ANGE: Come Eugenie, let’s not tarry. There’s the pump’s nozzle in the air; it won’t be long before we’re flooded.
EUGENIE: Oh, dearest friend, what a monstrous member! I can scarcely get my hand around it! Dear God, are they all as big as this?
DOLMANCE: Eugenie, you know that mine is inferior in size; such engines are redoubtable for a youngster; you are fully aware such as this could not without danger perforate you.
EUGENIE (already being frigged by Madame de Saint Ange): I’d brave anything to enjoy it!

The most famous work of Sade is the novel Justine, with subtitle The Misfortunes of Virtue, written in 1787. The unlucky girl Justine works as a housekeeper in a house where she is being abused. She escapes and seeks protection in a Benedictine monastery, which turns out to be a change from bad to worse. Here are excerpts from a scene where Justine is in the hands of the superior of the monastery, Dom Severino:

“And placing me upon a couch in the posture expected by his execrable projects and causing me to be held by two of his monks, the infamous man attempts to satisfy himself in that criminal and perverse fashion which makes us resemble none but the sex we do not possess while degrading the one we have … “

When reading the works of de Sade, it’s important to remember that his works were written right before the French revolution, when the lifestyle of the French upper class was at the peak of decadence. In my bookshelf, I have both the English and Winterlandic translations of Justine. One of the translations has an introduction by a wellknown anarchist and author, who writes that “de Sade was imprisoned because he wrote what the upper class did”. And the story about Justine suggests that the recent revelations of abuse in the Catholic Church may have a long history too ... >:)