Madame de Sade and Other Problems Madame de Sa de and Other Problems M arg aret Crosland The c omplex eq uation of the M arq uis de Sade, h is persona and his messag e , may never be solve d , for even as the bicentenary of h is death -20 1 4approaches , some of its terms are not yet avai lable to us. However, we have continued evidence of the other, his p assion for the theatre which caused h im to dramatize al l the situations in h is l i fe , his obsessional pre occupation with sexu al ity (at least in h is books) , his relat ionships with women , real or fict ion a l , and his devotion to 10 philosophie, i . e . a deep , as it were, intuitive d istrust of accepted i d eas, l inked with an exc lusive rel iance on the authority of reason. These three obsessions are hard to separate , for they overlo o k Sade early in l ife. The man who led 10 philosophie into the boudoi r i n 1 795 was not one of the philosophes, but he had been hearing or reading about them with enthusiasm ever since he had been a young man. His father, Le Comte de Sad e , h a d in the past known Voltaire a n d even exchanged verses with h im; this was virtual ly the only s ign of cultural life in a devious man who became l azy and depressed as he g rew older, a man who made no att empt to understand h is son and was preoccupied with marrying h im off as soon as he cou ld , h i s on ly hope of solving his own desp erate but unexplained fi nancial problems. When the young M arquis was supervised by a better educated m a n , the C omte 's brother, the Abbe spent several years writ ing a long book about Petrarch , inspi red no doubt by the fami ly 's best known anc estor, Laure de Sad e , who had made such an i mpression on the poet in the fourteenth century. The Abbe, who l ived at one of the family chateaux in Provence, set his young n ephew an example of a worldly l i fe with much female companionsh i p , but also a l i fe of reading and studying . As far as women were concerned , at least three were important to Sade d uring his early years , but not his mother, who, as lady in wait ing to the Princess de Conde, was usu al ly absent. Sade h imself became devoted to his paternal gran dmother, and later said of her (speaking through the h ero of his Aline et Valcour, ou Le Roman Philosophique) that she spoi lt him, but he l oved her deeply. He also acknowledged the 95 Margaref Crosland help of another woman about whom c o mparatively l i ttle is k nownMadame de SaintGermain , h is g overness when he was a boy; she does not a ppear to have been an intel l ectual , but she h a d obviously read widely and l ater i n l i fe he sti l l respected her l iterary judgement. H e a lso knew fro m c h i l dhood M ar ie-Doroth ee de Rousset, with whom he l ater exchanged l etters , m ainly l iterary in nature. H is father at l east sent h im to the wel l organized J esuit C o l l e g e LouisIe-Grand , where Voltaire had been before h im. It was here that he first heard discuss ion on the history of thought and saw teachers and students tak ing p art i n various theatrical performances. No d oubt he too k part h imself . In Aline et Va/cour a g a i n , writ ing surely about his own youth , he regretted that he had had to leave the Col lege in o rder to go to mi l itary school : he was fourteen at the t ime a n d he ind icated, sti l l speaking throu g h h is hero , that he would surely have made a better army officer i f he could have continued h is general education longer. Little is known about his l i fe i n the army, which lasted until the end of the Seven Years' War in 1 763 , but from his surviving l etters we learn that he sl ept a l ot and read a l ot . We learn too that throu g h his first experiences with wome n , he had some notion that in a ddit ion to sex there could possib ly be something morle in such re lationsh ips : 'A las ' , h e wrote to his previous tutor, the Abbe Amblet, ' d oes one ever real ly enjoy happiness that is bought, and can love without del icacy ever be real ly affectionate ? ' He had begun to think about the whole problem: ' My amour propre is h urt now at the tho u g ht that I was loved only bec ause I probably paid b etter than the next man ' . At the same tim e , army l i fe c o u l d not h ave b een too demanding , for the young Sade somehow managed to put on a p lay at Hesdin in the Pas de Cala is . Did he write the p lay? Did he produce it or act i n it? We do not know, but we do know that the performances were i nterrupted bec ause h is much l oved grand mother had d i e d . He did not compla in that his favour ite past ime was curtai led by fami ly duty, and i n fact he never seems to have compla ined ab out a ny event or behaviour within h is own fami ly . He ac cepted everyth ing they d i d . Perhaps it was the awareness that the family of de Sade , with its long history and its m any branches , especia l ly in Provence, condit ioned his entire l i fe and p rovided a permanent 96 Madame de Sade and Other Problems decor. He d id not have to search for his p lace i n society. He knew that he was the only male hei r to the Co mte and that he would one day i nherit the titl e , the chateaux and estates . He was not aware that he would inherit l ittl e beyo nd problems and debts , for h is father had barely tr ied to cope with them . Although Sade was not born until twenty five years after the death of Louis XIV in 1 7 1 5 , he grew up against the confused political moves that fol lowed the Regency and the succeeding reign of the Sun King's great-grandson Louis XV, which lasted from 1 723 until 1 774, controlled for the most part by Madame de Pompadour. In French intellectual l ife there were two important developments: the growth of salons, organized of course by women , and the compilation of the Encyc/opedie. I f the salons did not interest al l intel l igent people Diderot, for instance, did not enjoy these fashionable, elitist gatherings those who attended them were all potential subscribers to the Encyclopedie, if not actual contributors. By the late 1 740's there had been several incidents proving that writers showing any tendency to criticism of polit ical or social conditions were dangerous: in 1 734 Voltai re's Lettres Philosophique, or Lettres Anglaises, were burnt by the public executioner. Montesquieu's L 'Esprit des Lois caused no such trouble, but Diderot, in 1 749, was not so lucky, for his controversial L ettres sur les Aveugles sent him to the prison at Vincennes, where he was kept for over three months. He might have been sent to the Basti l le , but that famous jai l was already ful l . The young Marquis de Sade was sti l l a schoolboy, but he was soon to hear these stories and to hear too of other books which challenged accepted beli efs in other fields , such as Buffon's Histoire Naturelle which appeared from 1 749 onwards . There had been other works too , equal ly calcu lated to upset the world which conventi onal people thought would never change . Some time before Diderot found himself i n Vincennes there had been other persecutions. Ju l ien Offray La M ettri e , born in J 709 and educated by the J ansenists , abandoned the pr iesthood for medic ine and worked as an army surgeon . He embodied much of his phys io logical knowledge and observati on in the material istic Histoire Naturelle de /' ame ( 1 746) , causing such outrage that he left France for Leyden. Three years later came his best known work , L 'Homme machine, convincing read ers that he was an atheist and forcing him to leave France for good . Fortunately 97 Margaret Crosland he was given shelter by his admirer, Frederick the Great. Other works fol lowe d , al l equal ly admired by the King who prefaced La Mettr i e ' s c omplete works ( 1 774) long after the author, aged only 42, d ied fo l l owing a copi ous meal . La M ettrie ' s material istic thought devel oped with in the l o ng and honourable tradition of Lucretius , Locke, Descartes and th e Ital ian Vanin i ( 1 5851 6 1 9) , whose l ives and fates were some of the most melodramati c , t ragic eve n , of the previ ous century. Sade knew and q uoted al l these thinkers and those who fol l owed La M ettri e ; such as the encyclopediste Helvetius, whose best known work De I 'esprit ( 1 758) aimed to show that sensatio n is at the or ig in of a l l inte l lectual activity . It was immediately suc cessful with those i ntel lectuals who were able to read i t b efore i t too was publ icly burnt by order of the Parlement de Paris . Another far-s ighted philosophe was of course the Baron d ' Holbach , whose Systeme de la Nature appeared in 1 7 70. Perhaps it was th e Abbe de Sade's influence, combined with that of h is tutor at the Col lege LouisIe-Gran d , the Abbe Amblet, which h ad l e d the young Sa de to seek the ' c onso lation of ph i losophy' . It was the intel lectual fashion and the young man enjoyed it as much as he enjoyed the company of young actresses, esp e c i a l ly after his marr ia g e . Before the ' affa i r of the poisoned sweets ' ( M arse i l le , 1 7 72) , Sade had had time and money to bui ld up a l ibrary at the C h ate au d e La C oste; it included a l l these authors writing in th e modern vers ion of the material istic traditi o n , c l assified as philosophie nouvelle and special ly bound , for Sade entit led this col l ection as Recueil necessaire. A letter he wrote in 1 7 83 , when he had been i mpriso ned for the fifth tim e , after two esc apes , i l l ustrated how much the philosophes meant to h i m , how far he was reg arded as a d anger to the publ i c , and possibly even to the state. H is reading was c ensore d . At the same t ime, it becomes c lear that if he was in p rison bec ause of his behaviour towards women, and bec ause of h is mother-in-I aw's interventi on in h is affairs , he was now enti rely dependent for contact with the world outs i d e , on one w o m a n : h i s wife . I n November of that y e a r he wanted her to borrow fro m a cabinet de lecture a copy of D ' H olbach's Systeme de la Nature, four works by Helveti us , and an other by 98 Madame de Sade and Other Problems the philosophe Freret. But his wife had no l u c k : ' I 've been tol d ' , she wrote, 'that they are al l forbi d den books and they would not get through ' . The censors seemed to be in a state of co nfusi o n , for Sade had been al lowed to receive L a Refutation du Sys teme de la Nature, and enjoyed it . He wrote that he knew these books by heart but needed D ' H olbach's or iginal work in order to appreciate the later one more ful ly. His wife , Renee-Pelagie de Montreui l , had become the k ey to h is existence. H e had vi rtu ally no men fri ends, apart from a few who were in Provence and unl i kely to visit the prisoner, ever i f they had been al lowed t o do so . Maybe some men had been alarmed by the vario us c ourt proceedings and the d etails of Sade 's behaviour although probably not very different from their own and obviously Sade had never been a man for the salons. H is 'fr iends ' were the men who wrote the textbo o ks of the new philosophie; he had l ittle chance of ever meeting them and now he could not even read their books. His co ntacts with the a uthorit ies were mostly bad , usually destroyed by bureaucrati c regulations about letter-writi ng , vis its which were denied and prison condit ions g eneral ly. The prisoner Sade was not a l lowed to see his wife for three years . He had not complained about the marr iage which had been arranged for h im in 1 763 , although h e had been hoping to marry another g i r l from Provence; he was sti l l writing e m otional letters to her whi le h is anxious father was negoti ati ng the marr iage arrangements with the future i nlaws , the Mo ntreu i l s . He had poss ibly even tr ied to acquire a fiancee during his theatri cal inter lude in H esdin and wrote later that he wanted marriage in order to avoid a lonely o ld age. The results of his marr iage may have surprised everyone. The o l d Comte had not paid much attention to Ren ee-Pelag ie beforeha n d , he was only i nterested in her parents ' money , but he eventu al ly noticed that she was not ' u gly' : ' E l le est fort b ien faite. La gorge fort jo l ie ' . Her arms and hands were very white , ' r ien de choquant . r ien , caractere charmant ( " . ) ' . It was too early for h im to real ize that his son was m arrying the woman who i n some ways was perfect for him; for the new menage was very happy. the young people were even good friends as wel l as satisfactory sexual partners . N obody knew, but Sade himself probably foresaw , i f unc onsciously, that he had married the k ind of person who , much l ater, would be label led a masochist . 99 Margaret Crosland F or a t ime the o l d C omte kept an eye o n them and the bri d e was lucky enough to avoid a mother in law, f o r the Comtesse de Sade , who l ived separately in a convent it was cheaper th an m a intain ing a town house a deux ' remained aloof, refused to give her d i amonds as part of the sett lement, and d i d n o t attend t h e s ign ing of t h e contract. S ad e ' s mother was almost always a bsent from h is l i fe . B ut Sade h i mself , as i s wel l k nown , acqui red a mother-in-law who was to influence , in one way or another, the rest of his l ife a n d , i n directly, his writi n g . M adame d e M o ntreui l was sti l l in her early forti es , a woman whose charm no doubt served her socia l ambitions to some extent. She was del ighted by her new 'son ' , ca l led him ' un drole d ' enfant ' , too k part in the amateur th eatric als he arranged and p oss ib ly ' fancied ' h i m , as the p hrase goes . I f much was forgiven to young a ristocrats at th e tim e , it was h ard to i gnore Sade 's first q u asi-cr iminal sexual offence i n the autumn of 1 763, a few months after his marr iage, and the Rose Kel ler affair of 1 768. Yet his m other-inlaw paid off the women involved and his wife contin u e d to forgive and love h im. Wo men forme d an essenti a l part of his l ife at all levels and if the nature of these relationsh ips was to change , they never came to an end. H ow soon d i d S a d e , the happi ly marr ied womaniser, begin writing? He had written p lays for the a ctresses h e pursued during the mi d-60s , for he had a theatre bui lt at La C oste and took at l e ast one o f the actresses there . The modern school o'f Sade biography and critic i sm, notably J ea n-J acq ues Pauvert, refuses to accept that Sade became a writer because of his long imprisonment. J ust as he had read widely when young , he a lso began to write , and not only plays for h is current favourites among the actresses . B efore 1 777 some of his p l ays were known in Bordeaux , a lthough they may not h ave been actual ly performed. H e had found time to travel i n the autumn of 1 769 , spending a month i n Belg ium and Ho l land a n d was able to finance h is journey through his writing : w h at writing? N ot th e acc ount of h is jou rney, which remained un publ ished unti l the twentieth century , but somethi ng he wrote in the style of Aret ino, to use his oWn words. This has b een l ost, but i t seems to have been a succ essful piece of eroticism , for it paid for ' mes menus p la is i rs dans une des premieres v i l les du roya u m e , et m ' ont fait voyager d eux mois en Hol lande sans y d ep enser un 1 00 Madame de Sade and Other Problems sol de mien ' . Did he take his p leasure in Bordeaux, or in Lyon or M arsei l le? No body, not even Pauvert, knows, but apparently Sade had at least found a helpful printer in Hol land where a great deal of erot ic l iteratu re was p ubl ish e d . It i s n o t known e ither whether Sade ' s loving wife or his watchful motherinlaw knew about this early and successful erotic writi ng , but if they d i d , they would no doubt have preferred it to the beating of a widow (Rose Keller) on Easter Day. There was even some unsolved mystery about a ' book ' wh ich mig ht have been l ost in h i s petite maison at the t ime o f h i s very first offence . Perhaps it h a d been eroti c t o o , or contained erotic drawings . Sade and Renee-Pelagie continued in their marital partnersh ip , their el dest son had been born in 1 767 , their. second d uring the year of the t r ip to Hol land . and their daughter i n 1 77 1 . Yet in 1 7 7 1 another woman began to play an unexpected part in Sade's l ife , and this was his sister-inlaw, Anne-Prospere de Launay. Evidence of their rel ationship is on the whole c i rcumstanti a l , and although it may not have been incestuous , it might be said to prefig ure some of the endless group sex episodes in the major works . The g i rl was a ch anoinesse, apparently destined for a rel ig ious l i fe , by not yet ready to take her vows. She was obviously intel l igent and at one point conducted a correspondence with the Abbe de Sad e . which seemed to indicate emoti onal fencing of some k ind . If Renee-Pelagie objected to this new family situation , no evide nce has survived; but it is obvious that Sade was not satisfi ed by relationships with a faithfu l wife and an intel l igent sisterinlaw. 1 7 72 was the year of the muchpubl icised ' affa ir of the p oisoned sweets ' in Marse i l le and the start of Sad e 's e ighteen 'b lack ' years . The t ime between this year and 1 790, a mel o drama in fact, can be summarized bri efly as fo l lows : i n autumn 1 7 72 , S a d e was sentenced t o d eath in h i s absence but fled to Italy, a l legedly with his sister-in-law. Rearrest , i mprisonment, escap e . After two quiet years at La C oste , sti l l preoccupied with th e theatre , Sade org anised mysterious sexual orgies with young gir ls and at least one young man at the Chatea u , apparently invo lvi ng h is compl aisant wife . Second fl ig ht to Italy . In 1 777 , re-arrest in Par is , a l legedly due to the machinati ons of his mother-in-l aw. Th e fo l lowing year the death sentence was quashed. but Sade was sti l l a prisoner and after 1 0 1 Margaret Crosland o n e more esc a p e , h e was back in the Vinc ennes pr ison until his transfer to the Basti l l e in 1 7 84. In the crucial year 1 789, he was tra nsferred to C harenton but was rel eased a year l ater. He was to see Charenton again . These b i o graphical i nsertions are not as i rre levant as they mi g ht seem , for his readers profit from knowing how he had spent the t ime before his serious writ ing began. He had read the philosophes, n otably the material i sts; h e had written plays and possibly porno graphy; his l ife was dominated by women wife, motherinlaw, s ister-in-law; Madame d e * Saint-Germain , M ar ieDorothee de Rousset, a n d the young women , always now in groups, always working c l ass , profess ional or amateur prostitutes . Men? Few, for his father-in-law, the President de M ontreu i l . was an eminent robinocrate who left family manag ement to his wife. Those he knew included the staff who, attempted to manage his affairs i n Provenc e, at least one l awyer soon to be in the pay of M adame de M ontreui l . visit ing actors, whose company Sade enjoyed, and two valets , often important partic ipants in the violent episodes of the Marquis 's extra-marital sex-l ife . The m a l e c om pany Sa de enjoyed by proxy was that of the philosophes, denied to h im in pr ison . Although not in sol itary confinement , his early years in Vincennes left him in an obvious state of an gry gloom; his l etters show a l oss of confidenc e , personal a n d intellectual isolati o n , many health problems. I t i s easy t o understand h o w t h e uncertai nty of h i s situ ation affected h i m : he was detained under a lettre de cachet, which meant i m prisonment without tria l and for an und efined term . 'The cry g oes up , how long?' It app ears to have been in 1 782 , soon after he h a d been eventually al lowed to see his wife, that he fin ished the first surviving piece from his m i d d l e age he was 42 when he wrote Dialogue entre un pretre et un moribund. The re seemed no . point in writi n g p l ays now, but the d i alogue was a popu l a r l iterary form which Sade was to use i ntermittently in much of h i s l ater work . All the concepts p ut forward by the material ist th i nkers are there: th ere is no God, no l i fe after death , and no reason for fa i l ing to indulge in one's ' natural ' i nsti ncts , for i f anyo ne went wrong , in the c onventional sense, Nature would punish you . Al l Sad e ' s role-model th inkers had attacked the church and th e priesthood , and Sa de did th e same, but h e took his attack one stage furth er by m aking his 1 02 Madame de Sade and Other Problems priest a near-actor. (This d ia logue has in fact been produced on the sta ge in both Franc e and Englan d . ) The conclus ion embodies the Sad ean messag e : ' Renounce the idea of another world there is none . Do not renounce the pleasure of enjoyi ng a n d causing happiness in this worl d . That is the only chance that nature offers you of doubl ing or extending your existence' . ' M y fr i e n d , sensual p leasure was always the dearest of my possessions. I have worsh ipped it a l l my l ife ( . . . ) ' . The p ri est is told that with the he lp of s ix women, he can ' forget ( . . . ) al l the vain sophistries of superstiti o n , a l l the rid i c ulous errors of hypocrisy ' . At the very end Sade twists the k nife: ' the preacher became a man corrupted by nature because he had not known how to explain what corrupt nature was ' . In Le Sys teme de 10 nature, D ' Holbach had stated with some i rony that if man could not understand God was i t not possible that pri ests also wo uld fa i l to und erstand H i m ? 'With t h e help o f women ' : this is o n e o f t h e d imensions that Sade the writer adds to the philosophes. The thinkers who made up his Receuil necessaire had not said much about women, apart from indicating the obvious need to p rovide them with educat ion . The women in Sade's l i fe who had not received a ny educ ation at al l had received it in the convents or fro m private tutors . AnneProspere de Launay might have h ad the makings of an intel l ectual or even a feminist, but s ince she died suddenly, possibly o f smal lpox , at the age of 3 7 . she had l itt l e c hance to deve l o p . Seventeenth century writers had not neglected the problems of women, and Mol iere h imself . although attacking the precieuses and the femmes savan tes, sti l l protested against enforced and arrang ed marr iages . Bossuet and Boi leau were no fri ends of women , but in 1 673 Poula in de l a Barre publ ished De J 'egalite des deux sexes. In Le Deuxieme Sexe, Simone de Beauvoir pointed out that the eig hteenth century was ' divide d ' in this matter and 'some writers tri e d to prove that women had no i m mortal sou l . Rousseau dedicated woman to husband and matern ity , thus speaking fo r the middle c lass . ( . . . ) The democrati c and i ndividual ist ideal of the e ighteenth century, however, was favo urable to women; to most ph i losophers they seemed to be human bei ngs eq ual to those belonging to the stronger 1 03 Margaret Crosland sex . Voltai re denounced th e injustic e o f woman 's lot . D iderot felt that h er infer iority had been l argely made by society. M ontesq uieu bel i eved paradoxical ly that ' i t is against reason and nature that women be in control of the home ( . . . J not at al l that they g overn an empire " . LouisSebastien Merci er, in h i s Tableau de Paris ( 1 7 6 1 1 7 90) , exposed the horrors of cheap female labour, whi le ' Condorcet wanted women to enter po l it ical l i fe, consideri n g them equal to man if equal ly edu c ated . 'The m ore women have b een ensl aved by the laws ' , h e s a i d , "the more dangerous has been their empire . ( . . . J I t would decl ine if it were less to wome n ' s interest to maintain it , if it c e ased to be their sole m eans of defending themselves and escaping from oppression" . 1 There was no escape for women in Les Cent Vingt Journees de Sodom, which Sade presumably began to write in 1 782. The girls he included fulfi l led the traditional role of sexual objects , but the remarkably detai led portraits of four older women, the story- tellers, seem to show how the author, now in his early forties , was taking his revenge on the society which had committed him to prison largely through the efforts of one r ich woman. As for the four l adies in waiting , all old and ugly, no naturalist novelist of one or two centuries later ever p rovided such revolting creatures . Yet the author's explanations as to why his principal characters wanted these creatures are of more interest to us: Natures 's ' disorder ' , expressed through ' ol d , disgusting and fi lthy' objects , is more attractive than beauty. It had not taken Sade very long to develop a total pessimism about Nature , his vision and interpretation of N ature's l aws are the very opposite of the calm optimism expressed by La Mettrie and D' Holbach: ' B eauty is a simple thing; ugl iness is the exceptional thing. And fiery imaginations, no doubt, always prefer the extraordinary thing to the simple thin g ' . On the same p age Sade took care to point out that 'a l l these things depend upon our constructions and organs and on the manner in which they affect one another, and we are no more able to change our tastes for these things than to vary the shapes of our bodies ' .2 Beauty and health , he thought, analysing the attitudes of his characters , were s imple, while ugl i ness and degradation create a m uch stronger ' c ommotion ' , causing a more lively 'agitatio n ' . These much quoted statements, a ppearing on early pages of L es Cent Vingt Journees, show how q ui c kly and total ly Sade ' s 1 04 Madame de Sade and Other Problems thought had developed. I n this vast, if incomplete work , he co ntents himself with adapting the theories of the m aterial ists and taking them to the furthest extent poss ib le , without actually quoting his sources, as he did in his l ater ficti o n . Surely it was that unchangeable ' constructi on ' that led him and al l his characters into the d arkness : that was the way he s aw the worl d . Would his vis ion have b een different i f l i fe had been different? Any such speculati o n is a waste of t ime , but why, in this first book , d i d Sade progress no further than the 'simple ' passions and the thirti eth day? Perhaps he had not yet develo ped the i ntel l ectual and moral strength necessary for the ' complex ' , the ' c rim inal ' , and the ' murderous' passions. His notes at the end are proof of his ambitious and mathematical approach to his work : ' Under no circumstances d eviate from this p lan, everyth ing has been worked o ut , the enti rety several times re-examined with the greatest care and thoroughness ' . Perhaps h e wanted unconsciously to preserve his own l i fe , for only sixteen people survived out of the or ig inal forty-six wh o spent the winter i n the Chateau de Sil l i n g . On a ' m ateria listi c ' note . three o f t h e survivors were cooks , otherwise nobody would h ave survived . Readers of Les Cent Vingt Journees have to tolerate pass i m , c oprophi l i a , coprophagy, indiv idual sexual perversions and group sex acrobatics , but they wi l l be fascinated by Sade's undoubted ski l l in story te l l ing : he had surely remembered Marg uerite de Navarre and Boccacci o , with their stories with i n stor ies . However, h e set t o work on most of the Sadean themes, taki ng the ideas of the material ist philosophes downhi l l so to speak, to the edge of some unexplored moral d arkness. Cr ime and destruction produce sexual excitement , for one's own p l easure is the m ost imp ortant thing in life . Nature, far from benign, can unfortunately cause frustrati o n , and Durcet, for exampl e , is aware that he cannot achieve the ult imate in crime: ' I must declare ' , he sa id , ' that my imag ination h as always outdistanced my facult ies; I lack the means to do what I would do, I have conceived of a thousand times more and b etter than I have done and I h ave ever had complaint against Nature, who , whi le g iv ing me the des i re to outrage her, has always deprived me of the m eans ' . In this work , and indeed in his work as a who l e , Sade seems to be reaching out for the infinite . He had read H obbes on the subject, and D ' H o lbach had quoted h i m : ' Wh atso ever we i magin e . is F in ite. Therefore we can have no idea. or co nception of any thing we cal l infi nite. No man can have in his 1 05 Margaret Crosland mind an Image of infinite magnitude; nor conceive infinite swiftness , i nfi nite ti m e , or infi nite forc e , or i nfinite power ' . 3 I f Sade was unwi l l ing to g ive up his search for the i nfinite, h e compensated b y his l i fe long efforts to justify a l l those a cts whi c h man-made l aws had decreed to be c ri mes, and therefore punishable . The Bish o p , for instance , explains the rewards of homosexual behaviour, and in th is c ontext it sho u l d be remembered that sodomy, a t t h e time , w a s a capita-I offenc e . ' Cons ider the problem from the p oint o f view of evi l , evi l a l mo st a lways being p leasure 's tru e a n d major charm; c onsidered thus, th e cr ime must appear greater when perpetrated upon a being of your i d entical sort than when inf l icted upon one which is not, and this once establ ished , th e del ight a utomat i cal ly doubles ' . Sade e njoyed arguments of this sort, specious but * inevitably stimulating in ci sin ister way beca use one is presumably too naive to h ave thought of them before . There must surely be unconsci o us l inks between t h e fasc ination of ug l iness or depravity a n d what S a d e c al l s ' dishonou r ' o r 'turpitud e ' . H e dwells on this a n d , in q uoting (through Curval) a n example of how m asoch ism , l ike crime, can cause pleasure , he see ms to be q uoting an enhanced vers ion of his own story: even punish ment produces enthusiasm , and publ ic disgrace has been known to produce sexu al exc itement . ' Everyone kn ows the story o f the b rave Marquis d e S * " who , when informed of the magistrates ' d ecis ion to have h im burnt i n effi gy' (the precise definitio n o f the c ourt a t Aix i n 1 7 72) was s o thr i l led b y t h e ' opprobr ium a n d infamy' that he immediately exper ienced orgasm. Al l that Curval has to say about ' N atur e ' and ' ph i losophy' is worth studying beca use , although a Pres ident ( i . e . a pres id ing magistrate) , he c ontinual ly speaks as a d efense lawyer prepared to turn every argument on its head on behalf of some unspecified pr isoner who is either h imself or the whole of humanity. H e was much g iven to what h e cal led phi losophy and bel ieved that it should not b e affected by passions : i t should remain constant. N o d oubt he rep resented the attitude of h is creator. By the t ime he reached the 29th day , Sade bravely quoted the proverb / 'appetit vient en mangeant, adding that the more horrors one commits , the more one wants 1 06 Madame de Sade and Other Problems to commit. But he only added the d eeds and discussions of one more day, b e c a use even he may h ave real ized that he had a l ready e laborated his bas ic ' p h i losophi c a l ' i d eas , mostly centred in the unalterable will of N ature; and even he may have real ized that the sexual elucub rations he described were beginning to exhaust his possib le readers. The part ic ipants were never exhausted . B efore 1 789 he has h idden his manuscr ipt in the pr ison wal l a n d it was not publ ished unti l 1 904, some twenty years after Krafft-Ebbing had brought out his c lass Psychopathia Sexualis. Was there a ny further development i n Sade's thought? By the summer of 1 787 h e had completed the first vers ion of the J ustine storythere were to be two or three moreand just two years l ater, he was transferred to Charento n , the hospic e for the insane . At this point Renee-Pelagi e d e Sade again p l ays a vital ro le i n the story, for if . on July 1 4th , 1 789, Sa de h imself was safely out of the Basti l l e , his possessions , and most important of a l l to h im, his manuscr ipts , were not. H is wife was understandably anxio us to leave the c ity and merely de leg ate d , and although someone fortunately found the h id d en manuscr ipt , i t was n ot returned to the author and he assumed it was lost . It has been general ly thought that he attempted to re-write it , but in a different m o d e . He would develo p the J usti ne story as a vehicle for h is bel i efs and would add the story of her sister, J u l iette . Krafft-Ebbing apparently bel ieved the two sisters were model led o n the two Montreui l g i r ls , Renee-Pelagie and Anne-Prospere, but it seems more l i kely that Sade d e c i d e d , no d oubt unconsciously, to base them o n th e two s ides of h i s own nature. 1 79 1 . the year after Sade's rel ease from Ch arenton , brought the fi rst publ icati on of the J ustine story , but the author remained anonymous. I n 1 795 the long work Aline et Valcour, ou Le Roman Philosophique, was publ ish e d , this t ime s igned , but the same year saw La Philosophie dans Ie Boudoir, unsi gned. M u c h philosophie, and in the l atter work a m ixture of p ornography and pol it ics , the former no doubt intended to 'sel l ' the l atter, for Sade was now sh ort of money. Again Renee-Pelagie was involved, for n o sooner was her husband free , no longer dependent solely on her, than she went to l ive in a convent and demanded a separati o n . Th is m eant that Sade had to repay the dowry that had been the or ig inal reason for 1 07 Margaret Crosland his m arri a g e . So once again h e felt rejected , isolate d . i mpoveris h e d . M erciful ly he m e t M a rieConstance Quesnet. who seems to have loved h i m . whi le the theatre . his first p assi on . a l lowed him to earn a miserdble l iving . At l e ast one of his plays was performed and he worked , for pittance, as a k ind of sta ge-hand . ' The story of Justin e . the g ir l who constantly trust e d everyon e and seemed to invite cruelty, bears o ut t h e theory t h a t beauty. moral beauty. is s imple . for this virtuous creature never learns anyth i n g . However, l i k e nearly al l *, Sade's women characters . she i s m o r e i n terestin g than t h e m e n w h o c onstantly i l l-treat her, b e c a us e she someti m es makes her own d ecis ions. always the wrong o n es . She is s i l ly enough to fal l in love with the homosexual Bressac o n e is reminded of V io lette Leduc and M aurice Sachsand she helps a m a n whose l i fe is i n danger. al lowing hers elf to b e tortured and nearly k i l l e d b e c ause she trusted h i m . Sade uses B ressac as he had used c haracters in L es Cent Vingt Journees; the young man justifies the non-existence of God a n d the murder of his mother . Why should fami ly t ies be respected? We d o n ot ask to be born and each of us is a lone. J u l i ette b ears out Sade ' s theory that th e ugl iness of v ice is more fascinating than virtue , i nevitably remi n d i n g us of Swinburn e ' s e cstatic evocatio n of the same theme. J u l iette was no small -t ime cr iminal ; she organized crime on a m assive scale and she exper ienced sexual ecstasy through poisoning , murder and utter degradatio n , choosing at one po int to l et a servant d rag her onto a dunghi l l before sex could be real ly e njoyable for her. When very young she made the m istak e of showing p ity , \ but soon l earnt the error of her ways . Although s h e woUld , \1 natural ly seduce men by feminine m ethods. her one aim was to acqui re wealth and p ower and she soon behaved l i ke a man herself . No d oubt this is why Sade portrayed her as lovi n g . or at l east desir ing s o m any women . before she enjoyed herself total ly by destroying them, H owever. she was open to educatio n and she rel ished d iscuss ion of m a ny p hi losophical problems , usual ly with men or women o ccupying re l ig io us posts . Although it was a g reed there was no God. these people who were so-cal led i n H is serv ice were at least e d u cate d . even learne d . S a d e enjoyed i ntroducing r e a l people a m o n g h i s c l erics . as though to prove th at they were cr iminals or hypocrites . even if . l i k e C ardinal Bern is . they discuss free 1 08 Madame de Sade and Other Problems wi l l . which we do not possess . The mater ia l ist bel iefs are sti l l a l l imp ortant: ' A l l o u r ideas owe their o r i g i n t o p hysical and material causes wh ich l ead us in spite of ourselves ' . Archbishop Fenelon is q uote d : ' I mod ify myself with God . ( . . ; ) I am the real cause of my own wi l l ' . ' But ' , says Sade , ' Fenelon has not c o nsidered in saying this that s ince God is the stronger he has made H im the real c ause of al l cr imes . . . ' . And in ad dition to its discussi on of abstractions , this extraordinary book completes the ' murderous' and ' cr iminal ' passions that were missing from L es Cent Vingt Journees. Juliette, ou les Prosperites du Vice, is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand Sad e , although l ike everything e lse h e wrote , it c ontains repetition and longueurs . H owever, once one has read one or two e piso des from J ustin e , t h e story o f t h e poor vi rtuous g i rl tel ls u s no m o r e about Sade's think ing than L es Cent Vingt Journees had done. Aline et Va/cow must be read too , for Sade was immensely proud of it and it reveals a less angry man , a frustrated travel ler who tried to examine the customs of other c ountries as a kind of a m ateur anthropologist, a potential democrat who looked for Utopia and c l aimed that he had a ntic ipated the i deals of the Revolution . Although n ature is sti l l supreme , she is not necessa ri ly destructive , but i f Al ine's father c an sti l l cast incestuous eyes upon his daughter, he does not win . The same theme of incest i f also explored in Eugenie de Franval, where the father utters highly speci ous arguments in favour of i t , again supported by N atur e . However, he does not win either, and sto ry has a trag ic end. M a ny of Sade ' s stories might seem to be typical moral tales of the e ighteenth c entury, and again th e gir ls and women i l l ustrate the author ' s apparent wi l l ing ness to repent in a strange way for the d estructive erotic ism which has caused h im so muc h trouble . The most memorable are named after thei r heroines : Eugenie de Fran val, Emilie de Tourville, Henrietta Stralson, La Chatelaine de L ongevil/e, Ernestine. I n the last two the men are outwitted. It is worth noting that in one story at l east , Le Cocu de vie-meme, Sade reminds men that if women behave badly towards the m , is that not the fault of the men themselves? By the t ime he reached early middle a g e , Sade i ns isted 1 09 Margaret Crosland that he would never change, telling his wife and other correspondents that this was his situation, In a long letter to Marie Dorothee de Rousset (January 26th, 1 782), he reiterated en passant to God: 'Enjoy life, my friend, enjoy life and judge not, I say; leave it to Nature to move you as she will and to the Eternal One that of punishing you (" , J ', In his books he had insisted that N ature would punish the criminal . He sounded in some ways as though he had had a change of heart: 'accepted fancies, I grant you, do more for happiness than the dismal truths of * philosophy', He sounded also resigned, but more constructive than in his major works: 'Remember, in short, that it is to make your fellow-man happy, to care fOf them, help them, love them that Nature puts you in their midst, not to judge and punish them'; and here he remembered his own case, ' and above all not to shut them away in prison ' .4 . If Sade did not actually change as life and imprisonment went on, he revealed himself as a writer with many facets. Aline et Va/cour was written as far as we know concurrently with that harsh final versio n of the Justine story; the Historiettes. Contes et Fab/iaux, Les Crimes de I'Amour were the main moral tales, condemning incest, arranged marriages and marital dishonesty, while alternating themes contain effective if crude humour. In other stories women outwit their husbands, in some they suffer. Yukio Mishima, in his moving drama Madame de Sade, concentrated o n her refusal to see her husband upon his release from prison. He was no longer suffering. so she had no need to suffer on his behalf. She evaded any more suffering by retiring to a convent and demanding a separation. Since that entailed the repayment of her dowry, Sade was forced to add 'spice' to his latest work in order to ' sell it. His three l ate historical novels all with real-l ife heroines are confused and barely readable, but while in Charenton. after 1 803; he could truthfully have said 'in my end is my beginning' . for the plays he wrote and produced for the patients in this hospice for the insane helped to al leviate their suffering , drew an admiring audience from the fashionable world and gave him some comfort. He saw a priest not long before he died and asked to have an unmarked grave . but was given a religious funeral . His separated wife had not arranged 1 1 0 Madame de Sade and Other Problems to pay the C harenton expens es and his son asked the pol ice to burn any surviving manuscr ipts . If he himself refused to chang e , his messages have acquired constantly changing l iste ners : free-thi n k ers , revo l utionaries , ' li b ertines ' , l i be rtar ians , surrealists , e xiste nti alists , have a l l taken Sade to their hearts , they have i d entified with h i m , they have needed h i m . The perceptive Apol l i naire was r ight in one way, for he forecast that Sade wou l d d ominate the twentieth centu ry. Unfortunately, too many readers , but more esp ecia l ly non-rea ders, th ink only of the Sade who c o mmitted a few acts of gratuitous violenc e , mainly d i rected against women, and accept his books , where these horr ifying deeds are magnified into monstrosities , at their face v a l u e . The Sade who carr ies the rewarding message for the end o f this century is the man who was ready to back the ' system of nature' and refuse any other, applying his own method of uncompromising l o g i c . He was prepared to fac e , imagine and d escr ibe the entire potential within human behaviour which o n ly latter-day psychiatrists and medical researchers h ave been able to envisage. Forg ive his l og orrhea; accept, with M aur ice B lanchot, that he achieved something un ique, un veritable abso/u. But what of his pol it ical ph i losophy? Did it exist? The l egend has spread that Sade's experience of the jud ic iary and the autocratic use of the lettre de cachet caused him to emerge from the Basti l le in J uly 1 789 as a mi l itant revolutionary. N ot so. It is true that he cal led h imself C itizen Sade and in 1 792 became secretary of the Section des Piques, one of the administrative districts of Paris; yet he never cast off his aristocratic backgroun d , h e frequented former a risto cratic acquai ntances with moderate vi ews . These inc luded the Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre , whose wife was one of Sode 's cousins . The new Citizen was sometimes regarded as suspect, h e escaped trouble more than once through l u c k or pol iti c , ne ar-devi ous behaviour. I n December 1 79 1 , h e had written to his lawyer express ing his own k ind of royal ism which seems surpr is ingly l i beral : ' I am anti-Jacobin , I hate them; I ad ore the King , but I detest the old abuses; I l ike a great m a ny artic les in the Constitut ion , oth ers revolt me ' . H e wanted the nobi l ity to regain th eir ' lustre ' , he wanted the King to lead the nati o n . H owever, he wanted no N ational Assembly, ' but two chambers as in England, which gives the King a modified authority' . The 1 1 1 Margaret Crosland clergy, who were useless, should not be given any power. 'That is my profession of faith . What am I at the moment? Aristocrat or democrat? Tel l me please , lawyer. for I myself have no idea ' . H� tried to convince himself, perhaps . in Aline et Va/cour, and i n that stage of h is thinking, that he was surely a p otenti al democrat. In oth er, sometimes related ways , he was a m oderate: the man who had rai led against the M o ntreuil fami ly for d ec ades could have sent them to the g u i l l ot ine dur ing his period of admin istrative power. But he said nothing and they were spare d . The author who had trampled o n God h elped i n th e s ervin g of M ass at Charenton i n 1 805, and the man whose major boo ks are fu l l of s laughter was opposed t o the d eath penalty. He had p ro bably c aught up with the i d e as of Beccari a . H e bel ieved that p unishment could not b e d iscarde d . b ut h e s incerely thought that pr ison was n o soluti o n . But w h o could fai l t o b e fasc inated by that famous pamph let Fran c;: ais , encore un effort. inserted into L a Phi/osophie dans / e Boudoir? D i d Sade c om pose t h e c orrupt ing sexual e d uc ati on of the innocent Eugenie s imply to 'sel l ' h i s polit ical i de a through c heerful p ornography . l ink ing personal i mmorta l i ty to th e anarchy of an i m m o r al state? The p iece recaptures a l l the v io lent energy and topsy-turvy logic of Sade's l on g e r books . although JeanJ a c q u es Pauvert has seen i n it a possible echo of th e c o m m u nism developed by Franyois-N oel C Gracchus ') Babeuf. wh o was unsurpris ingly exec uted i n 1 797 . There is not one moderate l ine i n L a PhiJosophie dans /e Boudoir. p u bl ished anonymously i n 1 79 5 , al legedly a posth u m ous work by the author of Justine . I t has a theatr ical qual ity which reflects Sad e 's c urrent efforts to h ave h is plays pro d u c e d . H e tr ied hard. but he d id not have much l u c k : h e was thought to be old-fash ione d . B u t there i s noth i n g ol d-fash ioned today about t h e ' freest s p i r it w h o ever l ived ' . He may not have invented a phi losophical system but he create d . out of h is omnivorous reading and h i s woman-dominated l ife . a un ique a d a ption of tradit ional and current trends in thought. creat ing a h istr i o n i c . c ontroversial oeuvre which h as come i nto its own two h undred years after it was written. 1 1 2 Madame de Sade and Other Problems NOTES 1 . The Second Sex, Part I I , IV. 2 . Translation (adapted by Grove Press, 1 954) b y Annette Michelson, quoted by Simone de Beauvo i r, Faut-i/ bru/er Sade? See b ib l iography. 3. Leviathan, Part I , C hapter 3. 4. Selected Letters, The Marquis de Sade, (transl ated by w.J . Strachan) , edited by M argaret C rosl and , Londo n , 1 965. 5. Madame de Sa de was staged by Ingmar Bergman at the Broo klyn Academy of Music in May, 1 993 . 1 1 3 Margaret Crosland SELECT B IBL IOGRAPHY Apoll inai r e , Gu i l laum e , L es Diables Amoureux, Paris , 1 964. d e Beauvoir, S imone , ' Faut-i l brOler Sade? ' , i n Privileges, Paris , 1 955. ------------------- , Le Deuxieme Sexe, Paris , 1 949. ( The Second Sex, trans . by H . M . Parshley, London, 1 953) . B l anchot, Maur ice, L autreamont e t Sade, P aris , 1 963. C arter, Angela, The Sadeian Woman, London , 1 979 . Gorer, Goeffrey, The Life and Idea o f the Marquis de Sade, Lon d o n , 1 953 (revised and enlarged e dit ion of The Revolufionary Ideas of the Marquis de Sade, Lond o n , 1934) . H ayman , Ronald , De Sade : A Critical Biography, Lond o n , 1 97 8 . H e i n e , M auri c e , L e Marquis de Sade, Par is , 1 950. d ' Ho lbach , B aron , Le Systeme de 10 Nature, new ed . , Par is , 1 82 1 . Kl ossowski , Pierre , Sade, man prochain, Par is , 1 96 7 . Labord e , Al ice M . , Le Mariage d u Marquis d e S o de , Paris/Geneva, 1 988 . La M ettr ie , L 'Homme Machine, e d . by P-L Assoun, Par is , 1 98 1 . Le. Brun , Annie, Soudain un bloc d 'abime, Par is , 1 986. Lely , Gi lbert, Vie du Marquis de Sade, 2 vols . , Paris , 1 9527 . M ish ima , Yuk i o , Madame de Sade, London , 1 968 . Pa uvert , Jean-Jacques, Sade Vivant, 3 vols . , Paris, 1 986-90. Praz, M ari o , The Romantic Agony, 2nd ed . , Oxford, 1 95 1 . de Sade , M arquis , Oeuvres Completes, 1 6 vols . , Par is , 1 986-9 1 . Thomas , Donald , Th e Marquis de Sade, 2nd e d . , Lon d o n , 1 988 . ' Sade ecriva i n : in Magazine Utteraire, N o . 284, 1 1 4 J a n uary 1 99 1 . (Artic l es by M i che l Del on, Annie Le Brun, Pascal Pi a , Ph i l ippe Sol lers and others . ) I I i I I I I \ I i I CO NT R I B UT O RS Kathy Acker is the a uthor of Bloo d and Guts in High School, Empire of the Senseless, Great Expectations and My Death, My Ufe , by Pier Paolo Passo lin i. She is current ly wo rki ng on a new novel and teaches at the San Francisco Art I nstitute. David All ison i s a Professor of Phi losophy at the State U n ivers ity of New York, Stony Bro o k . He is the e d it o r of The New Nietzsche (Delta , 1 977) and is c u rrently co-edit ing a vo lume (with M a rk Ro berts and Al len Weiss) e nt it led Sa de Beyond Measure: Categories of Reading, which wi l l be publ ished i n t h e spring of 1 994. Justin Barton has been a m e m ber of PL/ 's editor ia l board s ince 1 99 1 a n d is a g ra duate student i n the P hi lo sophy department at t he U n iversity of Warw i c k . H e is c u rrently workin g on his PhD thesis about the role of the fut u re in N ietzschean and Dele uzian genealogies . Margaret C rosland i s the edito r of The Passionate Philosopher: A Marquis de Sade Reader (Minerv a , 1 993) , The Mystified Magistrate (Peter Owe n , 1 986) and The Gothic Tales of the Marquis de Sa de ( 1 990). She has written b iographies O n C o l ette , Coctea u , E d ith P iaf a nd S i m o n e de Beauvoir. Catherine Cusset is an Assistant Professor of Fre n c h at Ya le U n ivers ity . She h as published a novel entit led La Blouse Roumaine (Gal l imard , 1 990) and severa l art ic les on Sad e , earl ier l ibert ine noveli sts, a n d Rococo painters, i n L 'lnfini, French Forum, and Eighteenth-Century Fiction. Lucienne FrappierMazur is a Professo r of French Lite rature at the U n ive rs ity of Pennsylva nia. She is the auth o r of a book o n Ba lzac ' s Come die humaine, o f Sade et I 'ecriture d e I 'orgie. Pouvoir et parodie dans 'L 'Histoire de Juliette ' ( 1 99 1 ) and of many artic les o n Balza c , Stendhal , Nodier, Sand a n d the e ig hteenth century e rotic nove l . 1 75 Amy Hanson h as been a m e m ber of PLI 's e ditorial board s ince 1 99 2 . She received her Master of Arts i n E n g l ish fro m the U n ivers ity of Wa rwick special iz ing i n Fau lkner, M od e rnism , Post-Colo n i a l Lite rat u re , a n d Crit ical The o ry . She is c u rrently writ ing her first screenplay. Annie Le Brun i s one of her generat i o n ' s forem ost a ut h orities on Sad e . After a study on the late e ig hteenth century E uropean black novel entit led Les Chateaux de la Subversion (98 2) , she pro d u c e d two works on the Marquis de Sad e : Soudain u n bloc d 'abime, Sa d e ( 1 98 6) and Sade, aller e t deto urs ( 1 989) . She is a l s o the c o editor of Sad e ' s Oeuvres Completes. Oeepak N arang Sawhney has been a member of PL/ 's editorial board s ince 1 992 . H e received his M aster of Arts i n Conti nent a l P h i l oso phy fro m t he U n iversity o f Warwic k spec ia l iz ing i n N ietzsche a n d Bata i l l e . H e i s currently c o m plet ing his PhD t hesis o n fascism and technology in Dele uze . Stephen Pfohl is a writer, perform ing a rtist video maker and P rofesso r of Sociology at Boston Col leg e , where he teaches courses in social theory , social psychoqnalys is , c u lt ura l st ud ies and t h e socio logy of devi ance and soCial c o ntrol . Stephen ' s rec e nt w rit ings inc lud e Death a t the Parasite Cafe: Social Science (Fictions) and the Postm o dern (St . M a rt i n ' s Press/MacMi l lan , 1 992); Images of Deviance and Social Con trol: a Sociological History, 2nd E d . (McGrawH i l I . 1 993) and the forth c o m i n g Venus in Video: Male Mas(s)ochism and Ultramo dern Power. Stephen was also the 1 99 1 -92 p ' res ident of the Soc iety for the Study of Social Problems. Phil ippe Sollers i s an author and intel lectual who has been writ ing fo r fo rty years . H is wo rks include Sur Ie m aterialisme ( 1 9 74) , Femmes ( 1 983) , and Le Secre t ( 1 993) . In 1 992, h e received t h e G ra n d P rix d e Litterature from the Acad e m ie Fran<;aise for h is l ife 's work. 1 76 Pli Warwick Journal of Philosophy Back issues: Deleuze and the Transcendental Unconscious inc lud ing a rt ic les by Alphonso l ingis and Brian Massumi Kant: Trials of Judgment i nc lud ing art icles by Jean-Luc Nancy and H oward Cayghi l l Feminist P h i losophy i nc lud ing art ic les by M a rgaret Whitford and Luce I rigaray Forthcoming i ssues: The Responsibi l ities of Deconstruction Cyberotics Jean -Luc Nancy: Com m u n ity, Myth and the Polit ical I f you wo uld l i ke to subscribe to PLI o r c o ntr ibute an a rt ic le , p lease contact us at the fo l lowing address : PLI Department of Ph i loso phy U niversity of Warwic k Coventry CV4 7 AL ENGLAN D 1 77 r I

, '. fJ1ie 'lJi'lline S acCe eaitea 6y t])eepaf(9{p,rang Sawliney PLI Warwic�Journa{ of Pliifosopliy The Divine Sade, the first compilation of essays on the Marquis de Sa de (1740-1814) published in Great Britain, is a ground breaking and innovative volume, With contributors ranging from Kathy Acker to Philippe Sollers, The Divine Sade presents an expansive philosophical exploration of this compelling figure. Furthermore, The Divine Sade examines the historical, literary, religious and theatrical framework of Sade's work, and includes translations of Annie Le Brun and Philippes Sollers' essays produced specifically for this issue. Kathy Acker Reading the Lack of the Bpdy: The Writing of the Marquis de Sade David Allison Sade's Itinerary of Transgression Margaret Crosland Madame de Sade and Other Problems Catherine Cusset Sade: Critique of Pure Fiction Lucienne Frappier-Mazur A Turning Point in the Sadean Novel: The Terror Annie Le Brun Sade and the Theatre Stephen Pfohl Seven Mirrors of Sade: Sex, Death, CAPITAL and the Language of Monsters Philippe Sollers Sade Contra the Supreme Being ISBN 1-897646-01-