Marquis de Sade

French writer

• Born: June 2, 1740
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: December 2, 1814
• Place of death: Charenton, near Paris, France

Sade wrote erotic fiction and drama that some readers consider brilliant expressions of personal freedom and others call pornography. His name has become synonymous with cruelty and with pleasure in the suffering of others.

Early Life

Born into an aristocratic family, the marquis de Sade (mahr-kee duh sahd) spent his first four years in the opulent Palace de Condé in Paris, where his mother, Marie-Eléonore, attended Princess de Condé as a lady-in-waiting. His father, Jean-Baptiste-Françoise-Joseph, was away serving as a diplomat to the court of Cologne, in Germany. After the princess died, Sade’s mother took over the rearing of the young prince. Marie Eléonore’s intentions to make her son the prince’s playmate went awry when, at age four, Sade picked a fight with his eight-year-old companion. As a consequence, Sade was sent to Avignon to live with his paternal grandfather. A year later he was dispatched to his uncle’s estate near Saumane.

In 1750, Sade returned to Paris, where he attended the noted Jesuit school Louis-le-Grand. Reportedly an undistinguished student, Sade did not live with his mother but shared an apartment with his mentor and tutor. At age fourteen, he enrolled in the academy at Versailles to train for the elite King’s Light Cavalry. At the start of the Seven Years’ War (1756), he received a commission as a second lieutenant in the King’s Foot Guard. Although he served valiantly in battle, he complained in letters to his father that he disliked the military, found it difficult to respect the officers in charge, and lacked friends. The war’s end in 1763 brought about Sade’s demobilization and his return to Paris.

Sade’s early life was marked by upheaval. Prior to the departure from his mother at age four, he undoubtedly resented her attention to the Prince de Condé and felt that he was being overshadowed. Passed from household to household, he confronted a variety of women, including an unpleasant grandmother and his uncle’s mistresses. Sade’s mother, noted for her melancholy nature, entered a convent after separating from her husband. Long absent, the elder Sade exerted little influence on his son’s development into manhood.

Life’s Work

Sade’s obsession with sexual pleasure in varied forms shaped his tempestuous life, which was marked by debauchery, arrests, escapes, money problems, and troubled personal relationships. At the same time, he produced an impressive body of literature that remains highly regarded. Considered a libertine and a pornographer by the authorities of his time, he spent years in prison and died in an asylum. Sade’s problems did not stem from his sexual excess, for the French aristocracy was generally decadent. What turned Sade into a criminal were his lack of discretion and, even worse, his determination to write about his sexual exploits and fantasies.

After leaving the military, Sade reveled in the delights of Paris—the theater, dances, and the attention of actresses and prostitutes. The elder Sade disapproved of his son’s dissolute ways and hurriedly arranged a marriage with Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil, which took place on May 17, 1763, just two days after the couple met for the first time. Because the Sade family faced financial difficulties, the bride’s dowry played an important role in the marriage.

Marriage failed to tame Sade’s desire for prostitutes, and a few months later, his angry mother-in-law arranged for his arrest through a lettre de cachet. This document, signed by the king, countersigned by a minister in the court, and bearing an official cachet or seal, could be obtained easily for a fee. The person named in the letter was sentenced to prison or sent into exile indefinitely without a trial. The lettre de cachet in one form or another would haunt Sade for many years to come.

Spending less than a year in exile, Sade returned to Paris in 1764. His father died three years later and left immense debts for his son to pay. After a brief period of exile as punishment for whipping a prostitute, Sade found himself in debtors’ prison. He was released in 1771 and moved with his wife to the family château at La Costé. There, he staged plays and initiated an affair with his wife’s younger sister, Anne-Prospère. A year later Sade’s irate mother-in-law produced another lettre de cachet, which sent Sade to prison again. He escaped and settled at La Costé with five servant girls and a male secretary. When the servants’ relatives complained of sexual misconduct at the château, Sade fled to Italy, then returned to La Costé a year later.

In 1777, Sade received news that his mother was fatally ill. He rushed to the convent in Paris to see her, only to learn that she had already died. The trip turned out to be unfortunate in more ways than one. Sade was immediately arrested under his mother-in-law’s earlier lettre de cachet and spent the next thirteen years in prison, first in a château, then in the Bastille. Settled in prison, Sade wrote plays, stories, and novels—all with an erotic bent. He also wrote hundreds of letters, many of which have been preserved. During this period he completed the novel considered his masterpiece, Les 120 journées de Sodome (wr. 1785, pb. 1904; The 120 Days of Sodom, 1954).

When the French Revolution got under way in 1789, many of the prisoners in the Bastille were freed, but Sade was moved to an insane asylum at Charenton. A year later, the national assembly abolished the lettre de cachet, and Sade at last was free. Calling himself Citizen Louis Sade, he joined a radical group and wrote political pamphlets. He also saw his sado-sexual play Oxtiern: Ou, Les Malheurs du libertinage (pr. 1791; Oxtiern: Or, The Misfortunes of Libertinage, 1966) performed in a Paris theater. For the next ten years, Sade was caught up in the country’s political chaos and fell in and out of favor. At one point, he barely escaped the guillotine. Facing poverty, he even resorted to working as a prompter in a theater. He continued to write, producing some of his best-known novels, Les Crimes de l’amour (wr. 1788, pb. 1800; partial translation as The Crimes of Love, 1964), Justine (1791; English translation, 1889), and Juliette (1798; English translation, 1958-1960).

Sade’s freedom ended in 1801, when authorities arrested him at his publisher’s office in Paris after controversy had erupted concerning his erotic novels. Although no formal charges were brought, he was sent to prison. After being accused of attempting to molest young prisoners, Sade was transferred to the asylum at Charenton. His estranged wife, daughter, and two sons agreed to pay for his care. Forming a friendship with the asylum’s director, Sade persuaded him to test his theory that participating in plays would be therapeutic for patients. The project proved successful until dubious authorities intervened. Often indulged and at other times mistreated during his lengthy tenure in the asylum, he continued to pursue sexual relations and to write until his death at age seventy-four.

Significance

In some respects, the marquis de Sade emerges as a legendary figure—condemned as a sex addict, labeled a pornographer, identified as the archetype of evil, and considered totally mad. The German neurologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), in his groundbreaking book, Psychopathia sexualis (1886; English translation, 1892), helped to perpetuate the conventional view of Sade by borrowing his name to signify sexual pleasure through the infliction of pain and subjection.

In the nineteenth century, French writer Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) acknowledged the importance of Sade’s writing, which Baudelaire interpreted as an elucidation of the nature of evil. Another century passed, however, before Sade came into his own as a significant literary figure. Not until the 1960’s was his work published, except in clandestine editions, even in France. The books have now been translated into numerous languages and are generally available. French writers and critics Albert Camus (1913-1960), Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), and Roland Barthes (1915-1980) defended Sade’s long-suppressed work and championed it as a precursor to modernism. Although this assessment of the marquis and his writing is widely accepted, the controversy Sade generated during his life has not altogether disappeared. The questions remain: Is he a pervert or a prophet? Is he a charlatan or a genius? Is he a pornographer or a writer who brilliantly captures the erotic imagination? Is he a lunatic or a man far ahead of his time?

Bibliography

Bloch, Iwan. Marquis de Sade. Amsterdam: Fredonia Books, 2002. Reprint of the 1931 detailed and seminal study that initiated the resuscitation of Sade’s reputation and stressed his contemporary significance. Written by a distinguished German physician who specialized in sexology.

Bongie, Laurence L. Sade: A Biographical Essay. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Considers Sade an obnoxious, opportunistic, egotistical, self-absorbed, hollow man whose writing does not deserve recognition.

Crowley, Graham, Richard Appignanesi, and Stuart Hood. Introducing Marquis de Sade. London: Totem Books, 1999. Places Sade’s work in the mainstream of contemporary thinking and discusses its influence on subsequent writers.

Gray, Francine du Plessix. At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Focuses on Sade’s relationship with his wife and mother-in-law.

Laws, Robert Antony. The Marquis de Sade: Madman or Martyr? London: Pauper’s Press, 2002. Examines and questions the contradictory views that dominate past and current attitudes toward Sade.

Sawhney, Deepak Marang, ed. Must We Burn Sade? Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 1999. Collection of essays that examine the literary, political, philosophical, theatrical, and social aspects of Sade’s writing.

Schaeffer, Neil. The Marquis de Sade: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Depicts the unsadistic side of Sade by focusing on his charm and ability to love. Argues that Sade is one of the great writers of the eighteenth century.