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While the Marquis de Sade had an unusual penchant for buggery (which was illegal at the time) and blasphemy (also illegal), he himself was certainly not "diseas
by Renaud 14y ago
While the Marquis de Sade had an unusual penchant for buggery (which was illegal at the time) and blasphemy (also illegal), he himself was certainly not "diseased of the mind".
You could consider him an early Libertarian, fighting for freedom above anything else. He was a humanist opposed to the death penalty (very much used at the time).
His writings are provocative, and his mind was certainly unusual, but you also have to consider that he wrote most of his work while imprisoned (32 years of his life!) and frustration certainly played a big part in the excesses that haunted him.
By the way, the word 'sadism' comes from his name, but he himself never actually physically hurt anyone.
He was very much perceived as a threat by the successive governments of the time as he had no respect for authority and didn't hesitate to put himself in danger for speaking his mind and denouncing the hypocrisy of the society he lived in.
He would be very much at home here today.
A larger than life hero.
- jpatokal 14y agoHe never physically hurt anyone?! His first scandal was for imprisoning and assaulting a woman, and plenty more of that followed. See Wikipedia for a quick overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade#Scandals_and_imprisonment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade#Scandals_and_im... Also, if 120 Days in Sodom is not a work of a diseased mind, I'd be curious to find out what you think is. I'm sure 32 years in prison sucks, but would most people get relief by graphically daydreaming about torturing their own children to death?
- corin_ 14y agoWow, I knew about the story of a man who shouted at passers by and was thus moved from the Bastille to a different prison just two weeks (slightly less) before it was stormed and all prisoners were released (all being seven if I remember correctly), and that he was then terrified that his writing had been lost, but never realised it was Sade before. Given his personal life it certainly doesn't seem impossible that he was fantasising about what he wrote, but isn't it always a possibility that he wasn't too? It's possible to write fiction that you wouldn't want to happen in real life, after all.
- dkarl 14y agoThere's no standard definition of having a "diseased mind," but I think a case can be made that his sexual compulsions were pathological. He was hardly unique in having enemies in eighteenth century France, but he couldn't stop himself from handing his enemies one excuse after another to lock him up, often for crimes that we still find repugnant today. (I don't know what your source is for the idea that he never hurt anybody.) It isn't like eighteenth century aristocrats were held to high standards in their treatment of servants and prostitutes. A man who couldn't live within those limitations would have found the twenty-first century even less hospitable to his compulsions.