INTRODUCTION
The Marquis de Sade,[1] that extraordinary writer of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, was born in Paris in 1740. He came of good stock and his male ancestors were nearly always outstanding soldiers or priests. With but a short education in the hands of a religious uncle and a priest, at the age of fourteen he entered the army. Soon, the Seven Years' War was raging and the young marquis took an active part in many of the battles.
In 1763, the handsome young soldier was released from the army, and losing no time rushed to Paris to have a good time. A small house was rented in the outskirts of Paris, and became the scene of some of the wildest parties that can be imagined. The marquis' father began to worry about the large sums being spent and decided that marriage was the only thing to make his son settle down. An engagement was arranged for him to marry Renée de Montreuil, a very rich girl, and while the details of the wedding were being arranged, the young marquis was sent to the south of France to see the family estates and, incidentally, to get him away from the temptations of Paris. While there, he fell in love with another girl, but was forced to marry Renée de Montreuil.
Shortly after his marriage, the parties in his suburban hideaway were resumed. He was interested in all types of unusual activities, and it was probably at this time that he first gave expression to the streak of cruelty which was to have so much influence in his life. Five months after his marriage he was arrested and sent to the Chateau of Vincennes. There is no record of his crime, but it seems certain that some of the young women who had been entertained in his forest retreat complained to the police about the cruel treatment they had received.
As a result of this escapade, the marquis was banned from Paris. He and his bride went to live with her mother in Normandy. This was at a chateau far from any town and the marquis' mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil, had dismissed all the young woman servants and replaced them with old and unattractive women. The indifferent husband was forced to be attentive to his wife.
The only incidents of interest to the marquis were occasional plays which were given at the chateau and invitations to attend festivals given in nearby estates.
After a year in Normandy, the marquis was able to convince the king that he was a changed man and was allowed to return to Paris. He became much more discreet about his activities, and, instead of having wild parties, he limited himself to entertaining young actresses and dancers from the Opera.
At Easter time, in 1768, de Sade met a woman named Rose Keller who was begging in the street. He took her to his little house in the suburbs and after forcing her to undress, beat her with a whip. The woman escaped from his house and went to complain to the police. She made up a fantastic story in which she claimed that Sade had beat her, cut her, and threatened several times to kill her and bury her in the garden, and had poured hot sealing wax on her bruises and cuts. Her story was believed, but Madame de Montreuil paid the woman, and she withdrew her charges.
The marquis was obliged to leave Paris again. He spent most of the next three years in Normandy and then took his family, which now consisted of his wife and three children, to his chateau of La Coste in southern France. Soon his sister-in-law came to live with them, and it seems fairly certain that the amorous advances of the marquis were successful.
In June 1772, another great scandal occurred in the life of the marquis. He and his valet went to Marseilles, some miles to the south of his chateau, and a party was arranged in which he gave several women some drugged candy. He also beat the women and had them beat him. Other perversions made the party even more lively.
The marquis and his valet were condemned to death and had to flee to Italy. The marquis persuaded his sister-in-law to go along with them.
After a few months, Sade brought her back to France and went to Savoy. Madame de Montreuil was furious at the way the marquis had treated her two daughters, and she used her influence to have him imprisoned in Savoy. After about five months, a daring escape was planned and executed by Madame de Sade, and the two of them fled to Italy.
In spite of the sentence hanging over his head, the marquis soon returned to his chateau where he was to lead a hunted existence for several years. On several occasions armed posses penetrated into the confines of the chateau at night to try to arrest him, but he was either out of town, or had been warned of their coming.
In the year 1774-1775, Sade, tiring of this continual state of worry, decided to have a little entertainment at the chateau. Madame de Sade was in Paris and the marquis engaged young women to be his servants. In the resulting orgies, several of the girls were badly injured by his sadistic attacks and had to be sent off to relatives and hospitals for treatment. This time, Madame de Montreuil was able to keep the matter quiet by the use of large sums of money.
Madame de Montreuil, by now, had become convinced that her son-in-law must be put behind bars for his own good. Finally, in 1777, she was successful and at the same time arranged for a retrial of the Marseilles scandal. This took place in the summer of 1778, and the marquis was declared innocent. However, instead of being freed, he was sent back to prison. It was decided that it was better to keep him out of circulation.
The Marquis de Sade was to stay in prison until 1790. During these years he spent most of his time studying and writing, and it is probably due to this imprisonment that he started a career which has provided the literary world with some of the most amazing books ever written.
It was during this period that he wrote a book called 120 Days of Sodom. This book was almost certainly the first complete study of sexual behavior. It was written a hundred years before the Psychopathia Sexualis by Krafft-Ebing, which is considered to be the first serious study of sex. Although Krafft-Ebing did not know the 120 Days of Sodom, he used some of the other books by the marquis in preparing his monumental study.
The Marquis de Sade was very busy writing, but he was also interested in getting out of the Bastille where he had been a prisoner for a long time. He knew all of Paris was in an uproar, and on July 2, 1789, he noticed a group of people in the street near the prison. He grabbed a large pipe and, using it as a megaphone, he shouted to the crowd that the prisoners were being mistreated and were being slain. He begged the people to storm the Bastille and to release the unfortunate wretches who were there. Twelve days later the Bastille was taken, but Sade, who had caused the attack, did not benefit from it since he had already been transferred to another prison where he was to remain until April of the following year.
The marquis lost most of his manuscripts at the fall of the Bastille, but this did not discourage him. Once out of prison, he started writing again, and in 1791 he published his first important novel, which was called Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue. This book was the story of a young woman who tried to remain pure in spite of all the attacks on her virtue. She also tried to remain a good Christian, but was unsuccessful. At the end of the book she was killed by a bolt of lightning, a circumstance which would seem to show the disapproval of God for her conduct. This book, which went through many editions, was later followed by Juliette or the Benefits of Vice in which the marquis attempted to show that a life of vice was destined to be much happier than a life of virtue. Juliette, who was as immoral and vicious as Justine had been moral and kind, was entirely happy and all the blessings of life came her way.
These two companion novels have done much to establish Sade as an original thinker and an unusual writer. Through most of the nineteenth century many of the great French writers read these books avidly and did not hesitate to use some of the ideas of the Marquis de Sade in their writings.
In the early revolutionary years, the marquis took an active part in the more radical groups. Paris was divided into sections, and Sade soon became the leader of the Section des Piques. It was he who made most of the speeches and he was usually the representative of his section in the general meetings. It was while he was president of his section that his mother-in-law was brought before him and accused of helping the forces of the nobles. Here was the chance the marquis had been waiting for; it was his chance to get even with the woman who had been responsible for keeping him in prison for so many years. He got his revenge by allowing her to go free! If he had said a word against her, she would have been guillotined.
The marquis continued to serve in his section until the Reign of Terror. At that time the members of his group became so sadistic, that Sade was appalled and did his best to try to get them to be more lenient towards the nobles. As a result, he was not only forced to resign as president of the section, but was sent to prison where he expected to be guillotined at any moment.
After nearly a year, the Reign of Terror suddenly ended and the marquis was released. He started writing again and published Aline and Valcour, a long and tedious novel which contained the plots of three novels. It was popular, however, and he was always proud of this literary production.
In 1795 appeared the book which some have called his most significant contribution to eighteenth century thinking. It was called Philosophy in the Boudoir. Here all the fantastic ideas of the marquis were presented in a more condensed form. Just a few of them will suffice to give an idea of this daring book.
"There is no act which is really criminal. Everything depends on where and when we live. What was a crime in a certain place a hundred years ago might be a virtue somewhere else today."
"Children should love their parents only if they act in such a way as to merit love; a child owes nothing to his parents."
"The destiny of a woman is to be like the she-wolf; she should belong to any man who wants her."
"Adultery in marriage is not only right, but natural."
"Theft represents energy, courage, force and skill. Would it not be better to punish the man who was negligent enough to let himself be robbed?"
"Murder is natural and should not be punished by the state. A murderer should have to watch out for the friends and relatives of the victim."
Naturally we cannot accept the absurd ideas expressed above; most of them were written to shock the reader. But in the Philosophy in the Boudoir the Marquis de Sade applied his fertile mind to other problems which he solved in a fashion which gives him a place among the great thinkers of his time. He expressed, before Malthus, the theories on population which still appear to apply. Before Darwin was born he had worked out all the theories of the natural man. Perhaps his most astounding discovery was that there is some element in the body (hormones) which, when disturbed, causes perversion. He recommended that people not be punished for perversion unless physical violence were perpetrated.
In spite of the success of his books, Sade did not make any money from them. He almost starved at one time, and had to take a job as an usher in a theatre where one of his plays was shown.
In 1800, the marquis heard some stories about Josephine, wife of Napoleon. Without investigating these stories, he wrote a little book, hardly more than a pamphlet, called Zoloé and her Two Acolytes. This book treated Josephine as though she were a character in Juliette, and was so insulting that Napoleon swore to get his revenge if he ever found the author. After a few months, the secret police of Bonaparte arrested Sade. He was declared insane, and, in 1801, was sent to an asylum. In spite of the fact that his mind was extremely good, he was never able to establish his sanity.
During the last thirteen years of his life, spent in three asylums, Sade was very much interested in the production of plays. He had the theory that getting the insane interested in plays might help them to recover. These plays became very popular in Paris, and the highest society was always present when the "crazy people" gave a show.
During this time, the marquis was still writing. He wrote a long novel something like Justine and Juliette, but the manuscript was destroyed by his son. He also wrote two historical novels Isabelle of Bavaria, (published in 1952) and Adelaide of Brunswick, which has remained unpublished even in France until this edition appears.
The Marquis de Sade died in December, 1814, and was buried in the graveyard of the insane asylum.
If Sade had lived in modern times, he might have been as famous as André Gide, the Nobel Prize winner, or Oscar Wilde, the great English writer, who have both been as outspoken on the subject of perversion in our time as the marquis was in the eighteenth century. Or, perhaps he might have been another Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis or Kinsey if his fertile mind had been guided towards the more scientific aspects of the question. Instead, he was a hunted man, a pariah, who had to flee into exile on various occasions and who paid very dearly for his unfortunate tastes by spending twenty-eight years of his life behind bars.
- ↑ The term "sadism" came into general use about 1890, and was based on the name Sade, and was inspired by the cruel acts of the Marquis and by the cruelty depicted in his books.