The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings

by Marquis de Sade, Simone de Beauvoir (Introduction), Pierre Klossowski (Introduction)

G TRADE-PAPERBACK. VERY-GOOD EXCEPT SPECKLING OR FOXING TO PAGE TIPS.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Erotica, Philosophy, France, Literature, Sexuality

800 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1785

About the author

A preoccupation with sexual violence characterizes novels, plays, and short stories that Donatien Alphonse François, comte de Sade but known as marquis de Sade, of France wrote. After this writer derives the word sadism, the deriving of sexual gratification from fantasies or acts that involve causing other persons to suffer physical or mental pain.

This aristocrat, revolutionary politician, and philosopher exhibited famous libertine lifestyle.

His works include dialogues and political tracts; in his lifetime, he published some works under his own name and denied authorship of apparently anonymous other works. His best erotic works combined philosophical discourse with pornography and depicted fantasies with an emphasis on criminality and blasphemy against the Catholic Church. Morality, religion or law restrained not his "extreme freedom." Various prisons and an insane asylum incarcerated the aristocrat for 32 years of his life: ten years in the Bastile, another year elsewhere in Paris, a month in Conciergerie, two years in a fortress, a year in Madelonnettes, three years in Bicêtre, a year in Sainte-Pélagie, and 13 years in the Charenton asylum. During the French revolution, people elected this criminal as delegate to the National Convention. He wrote many of his works in prison.

Reviews

[Fabian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not one for everyone. I am not sure if it is intended for ANYONE actually.

Here are the ravings of a lunatic. Explicit, alluring, majestic: Just a bunch of adjectives that contradict each other. A man imprisoned does his damn hardest to escape his jail by writing about what he knows & likes best: SEX. There is just sooo much detail upon detail that you know that in the 36 days it took the Marquis de Sade to concoct such a phantasmagoria of gore he rested not too much. This is marathon writing, and therefore it conveys much of someone's inherent (plus nasty) id though here, thankfully, the superego is likewise preserved & alive & kicking.

The setup is this: 4 rich deviates plan and then have a 120-day orgy at Chateau Silling in the outskirts of Paris. They take young boys, young girls, their wives, four experienced whores & eight sodomites (picked because of... well, you can imagine [*cough* size *cough:]). The acts of sex become acts of impassioned violence (fecal matter, urine, blood, dismemberment, incest, torture devices all make full appearances!), and even the taboos you once thought as the most awful and heinous are here, & they are shattered at once by the ones that follow, as the list grows & grows to 600 total acts of "passion." This is one impressive catalog; one that dares you to keep going because you know very damn well that this will end SUPER BAD for the innocents. & there is always this lingering thought: Will the psychotic villains get away with it?

Characters are interchangeable and the titular act is practiced everyday. There is wit and fantasy and some truly sadistic (.....DUH!!!!!) occurrences that make you sick to your stomach. (Like I said--this is not for everybody.)

Call it: Sadomasochism's bible.

This is true horror: that someone had the ingenuity to make an encyclopedic list of sexual terrors and deadly taboos. That a man such as the Marquis actually existed and made lovers embrace each other in love or in terror...

This is a MUST READ & A TRUE EXPERIENCE. You simply won't find anything that comes anywhere near its baffling insanity and TRUE psychotic intelligence.

[Emily May · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, what's to like? The part where a grown man shoots his load over a "little girl's" face? Or the bits where people urinate on each other? And those are the nicer parts.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have to say that when I say this book was an amazing read, I am attempting to indicate that I was amazed in the real sense of the word - I was astounded by the gravity of the text I was engulfed in; darkly enthralled by the sheer disgust I felt. I have never in my life been more horrified and strangely captivated by a book and although it was not a pleasure read I feel it was an important book to explore, although not one I would rush to read again.

[mark monday · Rating 1 out of 5]

'tis the season...

13 TALES OF TERROR: BOOK 1



yes i know that Mr. Donatien-Alphonse-Francois de Sade was all about the freedom of the spirit and the power of the mind to free itself from all fetters, and that those are the underlying themes of all of his works... ugh, who cares? too much genital mutilation and too much shit-eating does not make me want to embrace freedom, it makes me want to lock people up!

i loathed the Pasolini adaptation, Salo. pictured above.

on the other hand, the Peter Brook film of The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (otherwise known as Marat/Sade) is pretty nifty, if you like that kind of thing. a musical set in an insane asylum. it was a childhood favorite. great songs!

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 1 out of 5]

A long disgusting book. Granted that this is well-written and the author wrote this for patriotic reason, I still don't like this book.

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) wrote 120 Days of Sodom to disgust the French people against the corruption in the government of King Louis XIV. Sade was an French aristocrat, revolutionary, writer and a libertine, i.e., one that devoid of moral restraints. This book, 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings is an erotic book with his philosophical musings and lots of disgusting sex, violence, bizarre sexual fantasies, murder, mutilations and blasphemy against Catholic religion. Sade, being a self-declared popular libertine and a proponent of "extreme freedom", puts in all those negative thoughts in this novel to despise the French people, take up their arms and revolt against their king. This was during the French Revolution (1789-1799). Writing was his way to fight for freedom. He was 45 years (about my age now) old, imprisoned in Bastille, when he wrote this. This time of his life was made into a movie, the 2000 period film starring Geoffrey Rush, Quill.

It is about these 4 extremely wealthy libertines (middle-age men) who troop into a far-flung medieval castle in rural France. They invited 4 aging female prostitutes with the intent of listening to their sexual experiences so they can get inspired to engage on similar sexual acts. After each story, the four libertines put the those stories, fact or fantasies, into action with their victims that include their own daughters, good-looking virgin boys and girls (aged from 12-15), ugly women (to provide contrast) and men with big penises.

I have two older brothers. While I was reading this book, Brother 1 told me to stop. He said he Googled this and he said that the devil lurks inside books like this. You will gain nothing from that book. Brother 2 told me to continue (he has read and liked this book. He says that Sade was a freedom fighter. It is like Mel Gibson shouting "Freeeeeedom!" at the ending scene when he is supposed to be decapitated in the 1995 Oscar Best Picture, Braveheart.

Obviously, I agree with Brother 2. I also agree what he wrote in his review: truly a memorable read. I even agree with Simone de Beauvoir's essay (first part of this book) Must We Burn Sade? defending the beauty and intent of Sade's mind. But I still don't like this book. It is so disgusting and makes me want to puke every after 10 pages or so. It is the reason why it took me more than a month to finish this. In between, I had to read The Holy Bible and happy children's books.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

(This was not exactly new reading for me, but I just wrote an essay largely on it, hence the 'date read' above.

Also, trigger warning. I quote from Sade, albeit briefly. Quote is in italics, so you can skip it if you so choose.)

Sometimes I think of myself in opposition to Sade.

This is too simple, of course. I can and have defended Sade on a variety of occasions, in a variety of different contexts; I don't think he should be censored, and in fact am quite glad that his works have been published and made accessible. I agree with most of what Angela Carter says in The Sadeian Woman. As a person, I find him contemptible and not a little bit pathetic (he was an aristocrat! In pre-revolutionary France! He owned a castle! And he wasn't intelligent or cautious enough to get away with his crimes?). I read his books and know that he's trying to shock me, and I would like to be able to dismiss him for that reason, as I do with Lautreamont, to tell him, with gentle malice, "You can't shock me," and close the book. But, with Sade, I cannot do that.

As I write this, the hot, early summer day breaks, crashes into a torrent of rain, and I remember the first time I read 120 Days of Sodom, as a very young teenager, with the door to my bedroom furtively closed. I took the reading of it as a serious task, an unpleasant but necessary obligation. It took some time to get through. It made me cry.

Sade stands against much of what I believe in. He stands against the gods, against humanity, and, most of all, against compassion. In his novels he sets up a dichotomy of libertine and victim, offering no other moral poles, nowhere else for the reader to identify. He tries to force us into complicity with him, to participate in the dehumanization of his victims, or, if he cannot succeed in that, he tries at least to make us vomit.

It's all extremely adolescent. Critics who dignify his treatises on hypocrisy and corruption by analyzing them as serious works of philosophy anger me, as do those who enshrine him as a martyr to the cause of sexual freedom, imprisoned for the sake of his society's prudishness, forgetting, perhaps, that the acts he committed were crimes because they were nonconsensual (seriously, the amount of victim blaming that goes on in Sade biographies is utterly obscene). So why do I bother with him?

Because he does me the service of showing me what I am fighting against. He lays it out for me, story after story, passion after passion, unsoftened and adorned only with his vulgar, repetitive euphemisms. He shows me all these different ways that people can degrade, can hurt one another, and, moreover, how those stories can be told in such a way that they cut out the humanity of the victim, turn them into a gothic paper doll, an instrument of gratification.

"She was still breathing when she fell, and the Duc encunted her in this sorry state; he discharged and came away only the more enraged. They split open her belly and applied fire to her entrails; scalpel in hand the Duc burrows in her chest and harasses her heart, puncturing it in several places. 'Twas only then her soul fled her body; at the age of fifteen years and eight months perished one of the most heavenly creatures ever formed by Nature's skillful hand, Etc. Her eulogy." - the death of Augustine, 120 Days of Sodom.

There's a reason why it's 120 Days that I keep going back to, not the relatively inoffensive Philosophy in the Bedroom, which is easy to agree with in principle at least until the ending, or sly, parodic Justine, which encourages its reader to laugh along with the narrator - for didn't we think Pamela was ridiculous too? Even the massively long and extravagant Juliette, which I read for the first time last month, is partly a rollicking, bawdy fairy tale, complete with an evil ogre. But 120 Days, largely due to its unfinished nature (as you can see from the excerpt above, the final three quarters of the titular stay in the Castle of Silling are written in abbreviated sketch form), doesn't do any of that. You can see the hard iron inner workings in Sade's fantasias of totalitarian atrocity, sharp and hard through the lacy frills of the Duc de Blangis' massive monologues and the narrator's sickening invocations of "Apollo, that god, somewhat a libertine himself, [who] mounted his azure chariot..."

I realized long ago that, when I read 120 Days, I am reading a different book than most people who pick it up, and certainly a different book from the one its author intended to write. I cry at it, not vomit. For me, it's the story of brave Constance, with her unending fortitude, principled Adelaide, who holds true to her values despite unbelievable hardship. It's the tragedy of Aline and Zelmire, and of Celadon and Sophie, who manage to find love under the most atrocious circumstances, only to have that love turned into another tool to humiliate and torment them. And it's the story of Julie, Julie with her loud raucous laugh; Julie who believes the libertines because they're her father and her husband and she has no one else to listen to; Julie who may only be pretending to believe them; Julie who, against all the odds, survives.

I've cried with relief that Julie survives. She's the only one of the 'victims' who does.

Most critics never even call the victims by their names.

So here is Sade and here am I. We look at one another. We are separated not only by time, but by the fact that we have been placed on the opposite ends of several dichotomies, dichotomies which can be more permeable than many like to suspect, but which should widen the gulf between us until it is uncrossable. He is a perpetrator and I am a victim; by society, he has been deemed mad and I (for the most part) sane. But we both understand about imprisonment, and we both have written to save ourselves from it, written as though our words and our stories are the only things keeping us alive. And with my words, I've found, I can fight him, I can combat his vision of the world and substitute my own. His power, even though he can trigger me, even though he can make me cry, is no greater than my own. This is what reading Sade has taught me. And this is why he matters to me, why it matters to say I am in opposition to him.

One day, I plan to rewrite 120 Days to tell the stories that I see in it, the stories of Constance and Adelaide and Aline and Julie. And that will be more of a victory than closing the book ever could be.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chances are, if you own this book, you've never finished it. And the reason why isn't because you were disturbed or offended or shocked, but that by about Day 35, you had become so completely deadened, you just quit. Reading this book is a litmus test that proves how quickly you become inured to graphic violence and once you do, how tedious it becomes. The effect is kind of like watching a "A Clockwork Orange" backwards. Or listening to adolescent boys trying to one-up each other with gross-out threats.

De Sade is an undeniably important figure in western literature and philosophy. I get that. And you're going to buy this book anyway and read it, because you think you will be titillated no matter what I say. But if you want to understand De Sade, read "Philosophy of the Bedroom" and "Justine" and the reams of theory that has been written about him.

If you want weird shit that will probably freak you out, try "Story of The Eye," or "The Torture Garden" or, hell, "American Psycho."

[Jonfaith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only one essential is missing from our happiness--pleasure through comparison, a pleasure which can only be born from the sight of the unhappy, and we see none of that breed here It's at the sight of the man who isn't enjoying what I have and who is suffering that I know the charm of being able to say: I am happier than he is. Wherever men are equal and differences do not exist, happiness will never exist.

Following such ill-found advice I am left unable to rate or compare 120 Days of Sodom with anything. I support the publication of all ideas. That said, this is a vacuum, one absolutely bereft of pleasure or value. Steven Moore notes, "the 500 foam flecked pages that survive are admirable only for their balls-out daring." Reading this is the most uncomfortable experience. There is a philosophical undercurrent at play but one obscured by the buggery, shit-eating and torture. As noted in the introduction, the novel was written on a scroll while Sade was imprisoned and presumed lost in the storming of the Bastille. The project is only a third completed, the remaining sections exist only as notes punctuated by horribly explicit accounts. Based on the completed text, I think it fair to not shed any tears over the unwritten detail.

[Sud666 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Donatien Alphonse François, the Marquis de Sade, was a French nobleman and philosopher who lived during the time of the French Revolution. He was also a sexual libertine. Quite a famous one. It is from his name we get the words "sadist and "sadism". On a historical sidenote- I am not too sure about the "Marquis" part of the de Sade family claim. In fact, historical research shows the de Sade family using both the title of Marquis AND Comte (Count) at various times, since a Marquis consists of multiple counties (hence the term "counts", just as a county is made up of baronies hence "baron") I, personally, find it odd they would use a "lesser" title.

For some time-frame reference- when Donatien was a boy, during the 1740's, the title "Marquis" was supposed to be awarded to the highest quality of blooded noble. This would be the "noblesse d'épée" (Nobility of the Sword) were the original knightly families that had served France since the Middle Ages. This "type" of noble was synonymous with "noblesse de race" (Nobility of the Family) and the "noblesse ancienne" (Old Nobility). This is important because these three types of Nobles held precedence over the other types of the Nobles such as "noblesse de chancellerie" (Nobility of the Chancery) or "noblesse de robe " (Nobility of the Gown). The Nobility of the Sword had won the right to wear their swords as a sign of their knightly duties. Generally, this was proven by 4 generations of holding said title. So as you can see, a Marquis title is quite high and quite important. Not likely to be mistaken for a Comte. But there was a great deal of oddity with this family, since in paperwork they also refer to themselves as "Marquis de Mazan". Anyways- the title was viewed with somewhat disrepute by the other families.

Anyways, the father leaves and the mother joined a convent. Donatien was raised by uncles and became a spoiled brat in the way only a French noble of the late 1700's could. Then he embarked on a journey of sex and indulging in sexual mores. Frequently jailed by both the Kings government and then the later Revolutionary Government. De Sade wrote his books in prison and they were a combination of atheist thought shown in his contempt for the Church and of the sexual mores of this period amongst that class. Due to his activities, he is looked at as one of the first "researchers" of sexuality. Well by some.

His first book "Florville and Courval, or The Works of Fate (1788)" was rather clever. I enjoyed that one- a tale of a woman who is about to get married and tells her soon-to-be husband her backstory. This has many interesting motifs and has a clever ending.

His far more famous "120 Days of Sodom" is essentially him doing soft core porn for the masses and then wrapping it (like bacon) with some atheism and a questioning of society and their own hypocritical views on things like sex. Considering the time period this must have been shocking. But I didn't find it as interesting as the first book.

So now I've read the famous De Sade. Meh. I must not be sufficiently French to appreciate it. It was a unique book written by a sexually perverted French nobleman who wanted to shock the world. A strange addition to my library..but hey...I am open to read anything that has lasted this long. It was worth reading but I would not recommend it.

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hands down the most disgusting thing I have ever read. I can't even relate some of the things that are described in here because they are beyond gross. They are horrendous. Had to put the book down so many times because I just couldn't stand it. Couldn't read it whilst I was eating/was about to eat.

I've given it two stars but might drop it down to one. I don't even know if I can see any literary merit to this. Honestly, most of this book was really boring. If you want to read 700 straight pages of people having sex in the most gruesome and awful ways then be my guest, but it's BORING. Because nothing else happens - there's no plot or narrative hooks or anything. The Marquis has literally sat in a cell by himself and written down his deepest sexual fantasies because he's got nothing else to do, and in my opinion he's just a sick human being. There's not even any remorse, emotion or empathy to this novel - it's just an expression of his own fucked up desires in a way that will cause the most uproar.

The best part of this was the beginning before the 120 days had started, when he was describing the four 'heroes' and their backgrounds, and then going on to write about how they captured their victims and created the house, etc. This was quite interesting but as I've said, slowly descended into nothing but scene after scene after scene of grotesque sexual violence. The only bit of this that I liked was the scene which obviously inspired the rat episode in American Psycho.

Usually, I love fucked up books, but there was nothing else to this than how fucked up it was. The story surrounding this text and the context of which it was written, as well as it's aftermath, is more interesting and rewarding to read about than the book itself.

[Justin Fraxi · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Marquis de Sade was an extraordinarily interesting historical figure, but as far as I can tell, he wasn't actually a very good writer. Admittedly, this is the only one of his books I've read, so maybe I'm missing out on something, but if this is how he always writes, he makes Stephenie Meyer look like Shakespeare. I managed to get through the entire thing, but only because I made myself. I was probably unconsciously punishing myself for something, because NO ONE should ever do that. Not only is this book disgusting, it is also boring. Yes, that's right. By the time you get a quarter of the way through, you will be bored with poop.

This book may, however, answer some questions for you. Maybe you've been around the Internet a bit and seen some of the more "interesting" porn it has to offer. Maybe you've said to yourself, "I've seen a lot of sites with scat porn, golden showers, and girls puking on each other, but I wonder: does anyone have a snot fetish?" If you are that person, this book will answer that question for you, and many others. But did you REALLY need to know that badly?

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book presents one of the many ways men imagine heaven to be.

Four wealthy men (the "heroes") assemble a cast of former prostitutes (who'll serve as their storytellers and supervisors to their sex slaves), cooks (to prepare their meals), servants (to attend their other needs), beautiful boys/men and girls/women (some of them their very own daughters/wives, a majority kidnapped from various places), for the sole purpose of giving themselves pleasure.

Heaven for 120 days. Marquis de Sade wrote this while in prison, and completed it in 37 days. Only the first 30 days were completed (although unedited and with many errors), days 31 to 120 were only outlined. Then he lost the manuscript. He cried. It was found and published long after his death.

If the reader can only concentrate on what the four "heroes" have enjoyed here, then this novel may avoid being condemned as a black hole among the constellation of bright stars which compose the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (Not that anyone has categorized it that way yet. That was only what I thought this book might be if the others may be considered as stars in this constellation of books.). The four "heroes" discharge (ejaculate) in almost every page, and you men know what heaven there is in an ejaculation. They fulfill any and all fantasies they have whenever they want them except in some instances where they deliberately delay there gratification but only to make the later experience more pleasurable.

But is this how this book should be read? I think so. Ignore the sufferings inflicted upon the other characters here. The basic premise was laid down at the very start: there is no God, only the observable nature; Nature decrees that the strong shall rule the weak; Pleasure is the only sure and perceivable meaning of life. So devote yourself to the pursuit of pleasure, your kind of pleasure, to the hilt. If you get pleasure from the suffering of others, then pursue it without any qualms or hesitation. The "heroes" precisely did that. There were a lot of sex here, unnatural sex (including those involving animals), orgies, sodomy, turd-eating, incest, mutilation, sacrilege (crucifixes and the host used in sexual acts), torture (both physical and mental) and even murder. A truly memorable read.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is disgusting, perverted, horrific, and violent. I love it. Sadly, de Sade only completed the first few chapters, and the majority of the work is in note-form.

The plot overview is simple. For five months, from November till March, four wealthy perverts and a host of other characters, including eight boys and eight girls (aged 12 to 15), eight studs, who are chosen by the size of their genitalia, the daughters of the four main characters, and four old, ugly women.

From month to month, the acts committed by the four main characters become more and more twisted. You go from relatively calm acts in November, such as the consumption of urine and feces, to full-fledged erotic-murder in February. You've got people who pleasure themselves while watching young girls are tortured and mutilated and killed in the bloodiest, stomach-churning ways. The acts described include sodomy, pedophilia, whipping, consumption of urine/feces, incest, homosexuality, rape, prostitution, torture, and murder.

This novel is an interesting trip into de Sade's mind. One theme of note is de Sade's treatment of religion. de Sade, himself an atheist, enjoyed to show priests and bishops as perverted. One act in 120 Days tells of a man who has sex with nuns during Mass.

If you enjoyed/where disgusted by the novel, try watching Salò, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini (who also directed The Gospel According to St. Matthew). It is a disgusting movie (in a good-ish, de Sade-kind of way) and is banned in tons of countries. In fact, the film barley even scratches the surface of the novel, and is considered one of the most gruesome and unconformable films ever made. In fact, it's on NetFlix, so get it. A hilarious practical joke. "Hey Jane, honey, come watch this movie I got from NetFlix. I'll just start it right here and I'll be right back, I gotta get some popcorn."

[Todd Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

What's more shocking than the exploits of the novel's libertine protagonists is Sade's philosophy which precedes his time with musings to make Freud jealous long before his term. This book is not written for the casual reader, or many people at all, but rather the cancers on the face of the planet such as de Sade himself, who live Nietzsche's laws to the fullest, and expect nothing of life but to usurp it and its inhabitants of all pleasure. Although it is a book that I thoroughly enjoyed, it is not one which I can recommend for many, if anyone. If I must, however, I would place the book in the hands of one either flayed of all society's prejudice, and locked in the cell of their own mind as Sade was whilst writing such a text, or those bled and scabbed to the point of nihilism.

[E. G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Foreword

Critical

--Must We Burn Sade?, Simone de Beauvoir
--Nature as Destructive Principle, Pierre Klossowski

from Les Crimes de l'Amour
--Reflections on the Novel (1800)
--Villeterque's Review of 'Les Crimes de l'Amour' (1800)
--The Author of Les Crimes de l'Amour to Villeterque, Hack Writer (1803)
--Florville and Courval, or The Works of Fate (1788)

--The 120 Days of Sodom (1785)

Theater

--Oxtiern, or The Misfortunes of Libertinage (1800)
--Ernestine, A Swedish Tale (1788)

Bibliography

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

What does it mean for the manuscript of 120 Days to be seized (or rather, bought at gunpoint) as a national treasure? Sade wrote as an absolute enemy of the emerging French liberal order—and was certainly punished as one in his time. Not too long ago it would not have been legal for me to even own this book. What changed? How was Sade domesticated, neutralised? Whatever explosive charge this book once possessed, it no longer does now. That our society has become tolerant of its all-annihilating libidinal economy is certainly something strange, but it has nonetheless happened, and the modern moralising around this novel is truly uncanny. What is present in Sade that is not present in a much worse form in modern hyperviolent horror films and video games, or a sizeable portion of smut fanfiction for that matter? And yet, there is still something significantly disturbing about this book.

Whilst reading 120 Days of Sodom, I was repeatedly reminded of another book which concerns itself with the wretchedness of the early years of the long 19th century: Les Misérables. It's fair enough if that comparison seems a little weird. After all, the Hugo of Les Miserables is the moraliser par excellence—he recounts the Battle of Waterloo simply to browbeat the reader with his thoughts on God. Sade is often seen as the great anti-moraliser, who wrote only to inflame and provoke, but this is not exactly correct. Sade merely proceeds by a different method, wielding a radicalised Kantianism as a hammer, making reason say treasonous and poisonous things. From the inside of his cell, Sade wrote to remind us that what we call reason is nothing more than an evolutionary adaptation designed to generate conformity of behaviour and opinion, to exclude dissent, and justify the outrages of power, despite the best hopes of the Enlightenment thinkers. In Sodom, the truth of diseased and violent egoism is hinted at by anecdote, demonstrated by reason, then glorified in execution—over and over again.

But what does that all mean? How is it possible for Sodom to be anything other than a lengthy exercise in trolling? After all, this is the book where four psychopaths take off into the wilderness with a group of abducted children and perform every conceivable horror on them before murdering them all. What's the point in that? Who would try to teach a lesson in this way? It's a good question, but it is worth remembering: Sade feverishly drafted Sodom during a 13 year period of imprisonment at the Bastille. If Sodom uncritically and unironically preaches the right of power to do as it wants and take pleasure while doing it, then it doesn’t glorify its author, it glorifies his jailers.

Let’s take another look at the story: Sodom tells the tale of an aristocrat, a bishop, a judge, and a banker—they use their wealth and power to kidnap 16 children (many snatched from the depths of poverty) and disappear into the Black Forest, where they spend the next 120 days listening to the stories of four middle-aged prostitutes—most of which concern wealthy and powerful men exploiting vulnerable and poor women. The four libertines then act out what they’ve heard on their victims. The satire barely needs to be spelled out: what else is Sodom but a mirror held up to a society that refuses to acknowledge its own profound moral corruption even as it congratulates itself on its progressive, rational ethical development? What else is Sodom but the story of how the vices and excesses of the rich and powerful spread through social contagion, of how little it matters when a few poor girls and boys disappear from the streets, of how social asymmetry distributes suffering and shame to the bottom, pleasure and honour to the top? It is not a question of right, it is never a question of right, but of might, and of reason's collaboration with might, of reason being only a mode of might in the Spinozist sense. One of the recurring images in Sodom is the judge who condemns a criminal to death and masturbates to the spectacle. More than the acts described, what offends in Sade is the force of the argument that says: “Reason is not democratic. Reason is power in monologue, justifying itself to itself.“

None of this is to say that Sade wrote Sodom to condemn. There’s no way to know if he did, but I suspect it’s unlikely. He was a “libertine” after all. Sodom’s premise was inspired by Sade’s own repeated excursions to his own chateau with young boys and girls whom he kidnapped and abused. More likely is that Sodom is a text that tells us to be “honest” with ourselves about what reason is, what the powerful do, and stop trying to make life into something it’s not; that is, meaningful, purposeful, and worth living. Sade shatters the illusions of morality and virtue and the loving God, but the exaltation of unrestrained power as good is ironic: Sodom’s protagonists are miserable and pathetic, they are never and can never be content or at peace; their tempers are constantly flared and their bodies are worn out by their "libertinage". Sodom's protagonists seem to have truly gained nothing from their power. Defined entirely by their negativity, they nonetheless are contingent, dependent beings. Under the surface, vice, hatred, violent misanthropy, is felt as a burden—life is felt as a burden, a tremendous weight, a terrible dream. “I would, thank God," says Madame Duclos as she recounts the tale of her sister's death, "watch the universe perish without shedding a tear.” The grim rants of the Sadean protagonist are attempts to infect the hopeful with pessimism. It often fails. If there are any victors in Sade’s universe, it is the dead, not the living who, wretched or rich, can never know peace.

And that brings us back to the question of comparison. Hugo teaches us to love God, to hate injustice, to cultivate virtue, to be charitable. Sade claims these teachings are all plasters on the festering wound of nature. People “see the better but follow the worse”, as Spinoza said, and since it is Nature that made us this way, endowing us with the capacity for vice, to condemn vice is to condemn Nature, to condemn the very universe itself. What good can come of this condemnation? Nothing at all, for there is no good. Sade invites us to recognise that there is truly nothing to be gained from vice or virtue. Decaying even as we live and breathe, rotting from the moment we come into the world, we drift irreversibly towards zero.

[hajin yoo · Rating 2 out of 5]

- finally freeeeeeee
- i kept thinking of that expanding brain meme where i kept circling through “sade delivers an incisive critique on power and humanity’s complacency in the face of injustice” and just “oh he’s a pervert” back to the former and so on
(i think he’s a pervert - send him to jail a fourth time)
- i wanted dennis cooper / batailles but i got ao3 fanfic im sorry

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Viewed as a critical introduction to a historically significant thinker, this is at least a four-star book. It places the Marquis within his literary, philosophical, and political context well, and gives several viewpoints (including his own) on his importance and originality. As a work of literature, the main work “The 120 Days of Sodom,” is probably one of the most difficult pieces of “narrative” (and I use that term loosely) to read that one could choose. In terms of enjoyment, I could probably only give it two stars – but, I didn’t necessarily read it for enjoyment.

I began this book in my last year of college, and finished it on my honeymoon, which took place partly in France (appropriately). It was a daunting volume to read “for pleasure” (meaning, not as an assignment) and foreboded the future of my reading habits. I had been introduced to the idea that de Sade was an important radical thinker by authors who tended to overlook his autocratic and anti-Nature views and uphold him as someone willing to go to extremes. It had also been suggested that he was perhaps the most accurate advocate for the kind of untrammeled capitalism that was ruining the world at the time – thus, he was presented both as hero and villain, somewhat uncritically.

In truth, he was neither, and both. From reading his own defenses of his work (which include disavowal of some of the most controversial works), one gets the impression of a man who was driven by forces he did not completely appreciate himself. It has always seemed to me that, for all of his attempts to break absolutely with the morality of his times, de Sade was still trapped by the trick of deciding that anything disapproved of by the morality of his times must, perforce, be a virtue. Thus, he winds up an anti-moralist, who celebrates all of evil without establishing a truly original ethical re-valuation.

The “120 Days” (which is the bulk of this volume) was to have been his master-work, but it was lost with the destruction of the Bastille. De Sade believed it had been destroyed forever, and his later writings were largely devoted to the task of reinventing it. It is the sort of thing a man with a lot of time on his hands would undertake – a more or less encyclopedic erotic fantasy, intended to cover every possible perversion. The basic plot is that of a group of four extremely debauched libertines holding a variety of victims hostage in a chateau and indulging themselves in sensuality, beginning with minor interests and building towards the most corrupt imaginable. It was not truly finished, although in outline form all 120 days had been covered.

From his description of the characters, one aspect of de Sade’s perspective becomes clear – beauty is bound up in innocence, and this beauty is lost as experience and indulgence are enjoyed. His libertines are described in the most disgusting manner possible, none of them could be remotely attractive, while the victims described as the most beautiful are virginal (and often, children). I see this as part of the holdover from Catholic morality – for some reason de Sade found it impossible to imagine a healthy sexuality which did not debilitate the indulger. As an interesting note, however, I found almost nothing in this book erotic when I read it as a younger man, while in preparing this review, I found several passages that stimulated me. Evidently I am now more “debauched” by de Sade’s definition, and perhaps a more receptive audience to his views than I was at the time.

Still, I cannot imagine anyone short of a psychopath who would not find something in this book objectionable and horrifying. That is really the point, I think. It is something of a trial to read, but it may be the sort of trial that allows one to understand one’s own sexuality and internalized morality more honestly. In that, it is perhaps a worthwhile undertaking, as in the process of coming to understand the concept of “sadism” in its original context.

[Ihsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

120 Days of Sodom was devised as a literary encyclopedia of aberrant sexual practices, but it was never finished. De Sade, imprisoned in the Bastille, wrote the first of four parts, but was removed from prison before he could finish the remaining three-fourths, which survive only as an outline.

Unfortunately, most of what he completed focuses on coprophagy. Unless you're heavily into handling and eating feces, this quickly gets monotonous, since no one enjoys hearing other people drone on about their sexual fetishes. And like any fetishist indulging himself, De Sade (who in real life liked to have girls fart in his mouth) never tires of repetition.

Had it been finished, 120 Days might have been the most evil book ever written, since the outline sketches a climax of murder and sex-torture that makes John Wayne Gacy look like a piker. De Sade invented torture porn, but no modern movie has gone as far in dovetailing sex and sadism.

His scenario is fiendishly provocative: four aristocrats gather at an isolated mansion on a mountaintop, accompanied by a harem of pubescent girls and boys, four quondam whores, four ugly duennas, and eight well-hung buggers. They have a 120 day-orgy, divided by month into four parts. During each of these, one of the ex-prostitutes tells 150 stories, which inspire the aristocrats to get up to misdeeds of their own. Structurally, the book is a sort of pornographic Decameron, but unlike Boccaccio, Sade cares far less for characterization.

That said, the book devotes much less space to the lengthy passages of tiresome philosophical justification that clog Juliette and Sade's other libertine novels. De Sade's philosophy is basically "I should do whatever I want because other people don't count"--his concept of sexuality is as nihilistic as it is solipsistic. The victims of his libertines do not exist as people--they are there to be used, fucked, and destroyed. Destruction is what most turns on his antiheroes--the power to inflict cruelty and death upon one's inferiors is a turn-on. Keep that in mind the next time a fawning reviewer acclaims De Sade as a profound thinker.

Nasty as it is, 120 Days makes no case for censorship--it is tedious enough to deflect most people from reading or finishing it. Whether in search of porn or wisdom, you'll be disappointed. But if you're in search of a book that shows off the worst of mankind, one written with an indefatigable, demonically fertile imagination, this will open your eyes.

The Seaver/Wainhouse translation is the only reliable one in English. It's comprehensive but irritating, with an overuse of fustian words like “‘tis” and “fustigate.”

[Becky · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eww.

I bought this book a while ago, and a couple weeks ago I decided to pick it up and read it... I did, but with much skippage for sanity's sake.

Now, I will admit that I have a bit of a morbid fascination with someone who has a term for a deviant trait named after them. I picked up this book thinking that, yes, it would be unconventional and probably not exactly pleasant reading material, but also that it would be something of a look into the man himself, even if it is fiction... Oh, let us hope this is fiction.

Instead, I found myself reading something more along the lines of a grocery list or a how-to manual for everything inconceivably nasty to everyone except the messed up dude that wrote it.

Now, I'm no wimp. Blood and guts do not bother me. I do have a "thing" about broken bones, but only if I can see it or hear it, or if it's described in detail with bone chips flying, etc. Mutilations and the like aren't an issue for me. Sexual "adventures" aren't an issue for me. I have a pretty strong stomach when it comes to most things, but this book is disgusting.

This book somehow manages to combine all the nastiness in the world into one book. The things that these men ate and drank alone was enough to have me puking. But they'd probably like that. If it comes out of your body, the people in this book would eat it. This includes such delicacies as: Shit, menstrual blood, vomit, urine, semen... Tasty! And that's just what they voluntarily ingest; I had no idea some of the other fun stuff that could be done with a nice firm turd. *shudder*

As fun as that first section was, the middle and the last sections got exponentially more entertaining, until we enter the realm of "One Upmanship, Sexual Mutilation and Torture Style". A laundry list of atrocities that I could have done without.

I'm against book-banning on general principles... But wow. Not a bad "For" argument here.

Edit to add:
Whoops! Allison reminded me that I forgot to add in my measurement for the disgusticity of this book. New word, too. Cool. Anyway, so I told her this book is "Off the map disgusting" and now I'm including it in the review, per her request.

Here's the map:

{---------------}


Map


{---------------}



.................................... Here's 120 Days of Sodom: X

[Michaela Lugo · Rating 2 out of 5]

After Watching Quills I was engulfed in the character Geoffry Rush played, the character being the Marquis De Sade. After some quick IMDB research I learned the Marquis De Sade was in fact real and wrote many stories. I knew I had to read them. I ran to the library and picked up 120 Days of Sodom. First, I read a few essays preceding the story, all focusing on the Marquis from different angles, one being biographical and psychological, another focusing on him from a religious perspective another looking at him only through his writings and so on. Being naturally curious I couldn't wait to get to the actual story, I was dying to know what 18th century porn looked like (or read like). Once I reached 120 of Sodom, I was disappointed. It was raunchy and vulgar (not that I didn't expect it) but repetitive. Every other sentence described an old man's blessed endowments or a woman's protruding clitoris and the Marquis' clear obsession with sodomy was unbearable(of course I didn't pay attention to the title). All in all, it wasn't terrible, just not very fresh.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

All this book really made me feel was jaded... it's very repetitive and once you get the idea that Sade is kinda obsessed with shit and animal sex and all that jazz, it gets a bit boring. To be fair, it's mostly in unfinished note form, so maybe it would have been a bit more exciting in full? Maybe I should have been sickened, but surely in this internet age it's not really that shocking anymore? People like weird shit, we get it! If anything I was a bit disappointed at the lack of actual sex in it hahaha - far more words are spent describing things to do with chamber pots. Snore (but stars for historical daring and significance, and a mildly amusing evening of reading).

I'm looking forward to reading Angela Carter's take on The Sadeian Woman, however :D

[Santiago Mesa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una aclaración preliminar: este NO es un libro para todas las personas. Es un libro altamente ofensivo para la moral y la suceptibilidad que las personas en general sentimos frente al sufrimiento humano. Precisamente ahí radica su «atractivo». Fue escrito expresamente para ofender, no para incentivar a imitar las conductas que describe. NO lea este libro si se ofende fácilmente o encuentra repugnante las siguientes: pedofilia, cropofilia, necrofilia, zoofilia y mil filias más...

Le doy una calificación baja porque siento que este libro es inferior narrativamente a otros de Sade, como «Los crímenes del amor», el cual leí recientemente y me pareció una verdadera obra de arte.

También le doy una calificación baja porque, hablando con sinceridad, muchas de las «pasiones» que se cuentan en el libro me repugnaron por completo. Otras que se supone deberían ser aterradoras sólo me dieron risa por lo exageradas que son.

«Las 120 jornadas de Sodoma» se basa en una serie de aberraciones sexuales protagonizadas por cuatro personajes principales, cuatro amigos que conforman una especia de sociedad libertina, dedicada a los placeres más macabros que uno pueda imaginar. Estos pintorescos personajes deciden un buen día hacer un viaje especial a un castillo escondido entre las montañas de Suiza y se llevan consigo a más de 30 sujetos que serán las víctimas de sus pasiones, entre ellos varios muchachos y muchachas que han sido secuestrados específicamente para este fin. Allí estarán durante 4 meses (de ahí el número 120), y al final la mayoría de los sujetos serán inmolados de forma cruel.

Más allá de este argumento, el libro no ofrece casi nada en lo narrativo. Se me hizo monótono y pesado después de la primera parte. Puede deberse a que fue la primera obra de Sade y nunca la terminó. La versión que existe publicada es una construcción revisada a partir del manuscrito y muchas notas sueltas dejadas por el autor.

Por el momento histórico que vivió Sade, y la leyenda negra que se creó a su alrededor, se entiende un poco el motivo que lo llevó a escribir algo así. Se trata de un escupitajo (mayúsculo) en la cara de la moral y la religión. Fue un libro escrito expresamente para horrorizar y ofender a toda la sociedad, para quitarle la careta a todos esos buenos samaritanos que se regocijan de su bondad pero en el fondo son perversos hasta más no poder. Se trata de un tema recurrente en la literatura de la época, asociado a una función general de la escritura que se podría denominar «sátira social», y especialmente en Francia, donde se dieron un montón de fenómenos sociológicos muy complejos entre el siglo XVIII y XIX que llevaron a que estos temas plagaran la literatura de la época, en mayor o menor medida.

Fuera del interés histórico que pueda tener en el marco de la obra de Sade, honestamente considero que es un libro que no vale mucho por sí mismo. Mil veces más recomendado «Los crímenes del amor». Ahí Sade sí demostró un dominio notable de la literatura.

[Brandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took a long time to digest this book, but I must say it was worth it. Marquis de Sade never fails to disappoint when it comes to pushing the limits and not giving a damn. I did have an idea of what I was getting myself into since I had seen the 1975 film based on the novel and read some of this other works. I had heard from other readers that was like a list of sexual fetishes and, like the film, some of the stories I had heard retold by the "storytellers" but Pier Paolo Pasolini (the film's director) had left much of it out. The film had more of a political agenda whereas the book was more or less along the lines of doing what gives you pleasure where the possibilities are endless. To a libertine, what makes you feel good can't be wrong and must be enjoyed fully and often. Religion is not allowed and punished severely if practiced. Asses are worshiped and "fronts" of women/girls should not be seen (but two of the four friends enjoy those "fronts" but the other two are more butt-friendly.)


There was plenty of teasing by the narrator saying that he cannot say what happens until the moment when it is most necessary for the reader to know what is happening fully. The book also has waaaaaaaaaay more shitting, shit-eating, stuffing shit in many other orifices, rubbing shit all over their bodies, taking a bath in shit, eating shit then vomiting out that shit into the shit giver's mouth and back again, ect. than the film ever had. Also many farts, fart sniffing, and farting in another person's mouth. The duennas did not even appear in the film. If they had, they would likely cause the viewer to vomit for their gross appearance (which appeased the four friends.) In the film, they had the four aged prostitutes take over the role of governesses of the children as well as their intended role of storytellers for the afore mentioned time periods. The further the reading, the more disgusting it becomes. The next to the last bit, in February was to feature the murderous passions. Needless to say, the film doesn't even come close to the depravity mentioned in the novel.


I gave this book five stars because it takes a lot to disgust me. I was surprised that after having read it all, there was no mention of what I had figured would be included. I guess in some things the Serbians who made the movie, A Serbian Film, knew how to step it up a notch with introducing what de Sade never mentioned. He did have some scenes dealing with infanticide, but never anything as close as what was in A Serbian Film. Everything else except that. Go figure. I'm not complaining though. It was pretty sick.

[Libby · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The 120 Days of Sodom," boasts the broadest collection of disgusting sexual practices and perversions that I have ever read. However, that's exactly what de Sade set out to write, so that's hardly a damning statement. The gist is simple- four powerful, dissolute men abduct a group of beautiful children, hire various male and female prostitutes, and lock themselves and their daughters in a citadel where they, guided by the day's prostitute-storyteller, ritualistically perform as many outrages as humanly possible on the children and their own daughters.

De Sade wrote this book while mouldering away in the Bastille, and it shows, given the prevalence of blasphemy, corruption, sodomy, and vociferous disdain for the laws of man (and decency, for that matter). While this book is largely the product of de Sade's frustrated libido and imagination- indeed, there are more than a few sexual acts that are physically impossible and/or potentially deadly to the practitioner- it's fair to say that he was not entirely inexperienced in criminal passions, given that by the time of his imprisonment, de Sade had been banned from every brothel in town.

What made this book interesting to me is de Sade's philosophically slippery, ironic narrator, but also the humor inherent in a bunch of libertines so devoted to the idea of complete freedom that they have to impose strict rules and schedules in order to experience it. I get the feeling that while de Sade was writing things that turned him on in concept, he also took great pleasure in dragging the institutions his protagonists represent into the mud- the judge, the bishop, the aristocrat, and the banker, only two of which can abide the sight of lady bits and all of whom are enthusiastic sodomites. It's a scathing indictment of those whose social mores and laws led to his imprisonment.

The other pieces in the book are milder examples of awful things being done, almost exclusively to women, either by fate or by libertines, which exemplifies the biggest problem I have with de Sade. While he appeals to the mind with calls for freedom, in the greater scope of his life, it comes across as semantic justification for getting off on exploitation and cruelty. I don't think we need to burn de Sade, as the title of Simone de Beauvoir's seminal essay asks (printed as an introduction to the edition), but we do need to take his philosophical arguments with a very large grain of salt.

[Nick Mather]

Having read this book, in its entirety, is probably what will get me sent to hell. This is the only book I have ever read which made me reconsider my stance on censorship. It is definitely not for the faint at heart. It begins with sexual perversions that go beyond what most of us would even consider as titilating. It ends with descriptions of what is nothing short of sadistic torture. So where's the merit? I would say that resides in form, not content, as well as historical curiosity. De Sade wrote this while being held prisoner in the Bastaille (he was freed during the Revolution). There are more interesting works by De Sade, who really was a master of irony - and perversion.

[Vince Darcangelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://transgressmagazine.com/2015/07...

Until recently, I’d never given much thought to 120 Days. It was one of those books that remains a cultural point of reference, and as a classic of transgressive fiction, I knew it was something I should peruse someday. But, well, it didn’t really strike me as a must-read.
Certainly, nothing penned in the 1700s could still be shocking today.
Then two years ago I read Georges Bataille’s essay on de Sade in Literature and Evil. Then I watched the film translation, Salò, which, despite its reputation, is like a PG-13 version of the book. This is not because Salò is tame (it is one of the most troubling films ever made), but because 120 Days is so beyond anything that could be recreated on screen.
So where to begin when discussing this notorious tome?

Tell-Tale Transgressions
Bataille may have said it best, “Nobody, unless he is totally deaf to it, can finish Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome without feeling sick.”
This, from the author of The Story of the Eye (which, if you haven’t read it, do so ASAP). The Story of the Eye is an absurd tale of ovular fixation, blasphemy and transgressive eroticism. In it, the narrator and his teenage lover embark on a journey of extreme sexual awakenings. There are blood orgies, spree murders, gratuitous body fluids and a gleeful desecration of the eucharist.
But in both content and exhaustiveness, it’s a viral kitten video compared to de Sade.
Bataille is right. There are some brutally sickening moments in 120 Days. I recoiled more than a few times, and might have even thrown up in my mouth a little. This is not good reading before dinner, as the book’s “heroes” have an insatiable taste for excrement.
However, though it can be thoroughly unsettling at times, for the most part my response was laughter while reading 120 Days. I was enthralled with the prose, appalled by the brutality and intellectually challenged by the philosophy, yet laughing out loud throughout. What other response is there to a purported sexual fantasy of screwing a goat via the nostrils in order that its tongue can work the undercarriage?
You have to laugh, because you just can’t take an anecdote like that at face value. It is these moments that temper the more gruesome scenes. The outrageousness of it creates a buffer for the reader. It’s like that groan-moment in a horror film when the monster is finally revealed in all its plastic-prop foolishness.
In her essay “Must We Burn Sade?” Simone de Beauvoir offers a more sophisticated analysis: “Not only does he tell tall stories, but most of the time he tells them badly.”
Agreed. Does de Sade really expect us to suspend disbelief when a local aristocrat pays a hooker to be dipped in shit so he can lick her clean, head to toe? I was much more disturbed by transgressive classics like Lolita and Evan S. Connell’s The Diary of a Rapist, both of which employ a rational tone that is far more upsetting than the description of their exploits.
But let’s return to de Sade.
What about 120 Days’ plot and characters? It was surprising to me that, despite the book being a cultural touchstone, despite the author having an entire genre of sex and a commonly used adjective named for him, I had no idea what 120 Days was actually about.
Consider it the Winter of Disquiet. In a remote castle, a quartet of wealthy, powerful men indulge their darkest Libertine desires. To assist them are four experienced prostitutes/brothel madames, a handful of servants, hired studs (selected for their endowment) and a harem of kidnapped children, elderly women and the Libertine’s own daughters.
It does not end well for most of them.
Each day, one of the prostitutes tells five tales of her most interesting clients, in ascending levels of depravity. Afterward, the Libertines act out the stories on their captives, each page more horrifying than the last. Think you’ve got a dirty mind because you read 50 Shades of Grey? Please. 120 Days makes 50 Shades look like a Disney picture book.
By the way, what’s with all the numbers? De Sade was methodical in outlining the book, and the numbers are very important here. The 120 days are divided into four 30-day sections, each showcasing one of the prostitute story-tellers. They tell 150 stories apiece, so altogether there are 600 sexual acts performed in the book. However, only the first 30 days were actually drafted (the tales of Madame Duclos). The unfinished manuscript was lost when the Bastille was stormed in 1789. (While the remaining 90 days and 450 sex acts were never fleshed out in narrative, de Sade meticulously outlined the entire book, so each of the sex acts, as well as the full plotline and character arcs, are described.)
Supposedly, de Sade’s obsession with numbers played out in his real-world rendezvous as much as in his fiction, and, according to Bataille, “His own stories are also full of measurements.” In a story told by one of the many prostitutes he frequented, he savored the lashings of the whip, but hurried to record how many blows he had received when it was finished.
De Beauvoir weighed in on this anecdote: “What was peculiar in his case was the tension of a will bent on fulfilling the flesh without losing itself in it.
“He never for an instant loses himself in his animal nature,” she adds, “he remains so lucid, so cerebral, that philosophic discourse, far from dampening his ardor, acts as an aphrodisiac.”
Despite its occasional absurdity, the book has a very serious side to be reckoned with.

Marquis de Moralist
Let’s begin the reckoning with de Beauvoir, whose essay, “Must We Burn Sade?”, is arguably the greatest critical account of 120 Days. She writes of de Sade, “...though not a consummate artist or a coherent philosopher, he deserves to be hailed as a great moralist.”
There’s a lot to unpack in that conclusion. De Sade’s enduring legacy is having sexual cruelty named in his honor. His definitive work is an epic of non-stop debasement, dismemberment, torture, rape and murder. De Sade was imprisoned more than once for acting out some of these fantasies on prostitutes.
How does he make the leap from monster to moralist?
There is something in de Sade’s philosophy that predicts Nietzsche. Human nature has a cruel streak, but rather than dividing us, it creates a de facto relationship between sadist and victim. This relationship exists prior to and outside of moral or utilitarian judgements. Opinions may be imposed a posteriori, but de Sade is more concerned with the relationship itself — the moment the whip kisses flesh, without the labels of good and evil, in what Sartre would call the unreflective consciousness.
This is where we must consider the Marquis.
He developed his philosophy, de Beauvoir writes, in his youth, when the young aristocrat realized that his sexual appetites deviated from the norm. But he did not wish to be an outsider. “The immensity of his literary effort shows how passionately he wished to be accepted by the human community,” she writes.
I won’t pretend to fully grasp all of de Beauvoir’s reasoning (and recommend you read the source material for yourself), but my takeaway from her essay is that the body limits freedom of the mind and prevents connections between people (what Bataille would call discontinuous beings). This distance robs others of their individuality and leaves us indifferent to one another.
To accept this indifference would be lazy. And it must be said that though the kill count in 120 Days is high, each death itself is singular. The uniqueness of each murder gives meaning to the flesh of its victim.
This sets up a curious tension within de Sade’s narrative. Curval, a judge whose greatest pleasure came from sending innocent men to the gallows (and one of the novel’s four “heroes”), makes the following observation: “What the devil difference can it make to Nature whether there are one, ten, twenty, five hundred more or fewer human beings on earth?”
This sets him at odds with the prostitute-storyteller, Duclos, who, though she dutifully relates her 150 tales, says, “...there is an almost unavoidable monotony in the recital of such anecdotes; all compounded, fitted into the same framework, they lose the luster that is theirs as independent happenings.”
This is a philosophy that would evolve through de Sade’s later writings. Though he wrote 120 Days prior to the Reign of Terror, seminal works such as Juliette, Philosophy in the Bedroom, The Crimes of Love and the third and final version of Justine were written following the Terror. In these books, de Sade revolted against the depersonalization of mass murder.
As de Beauvoir explains, “It is by such wholesale slaughters that the body politic shows only too clearly that it considers men as a mere collection of objects, whereas Sade demanded a universe peopled with individual beings.”
Rationalized or self-righteous murder, particularly in large, indiscriminate quantities, was not to be tolerated. Neither would the neutrality that left one’s conscience clean whilst atrocities took place.
“Is it not better to assume the burden of evil than to subscribe to this abstract good which drags in its wake abstract slaughters?” de Beauvoir writes.
The key phrase here is “burden of evil.” It’s not enough to act good or to avoid doing “evil.” It would be irresponsible to deny the dark side of our nature, and the consequences of willful ignorance are bloody. She adds, “He was sure, in any case, that a man who was content with whipping a prostitute every now and then was less harmful to society than a farmer-general.”
This is the brilliance of de Beauvoir writ large. Whether or not you agree with de Sade’s philosophy, de Beauvoir cuts through the complexity and offers coherence the narrative lacked. In one of philosophy’s more mind-blowing, yet erudite passages, she concludes that de Sade was a moralist for the simple fact that, “He chose cruelty rather than indifference.”

Voice of the Victim
Bataille takes a particular interest in de Sade’s use of language. What is the Marquis really saying with his fiction? What is he truly revealing about himself?
On the one hand, 120 Days is about logical consequences. In a subversive twist on Kant’s categorical imperative, his characters strictly pursue Libertine philosophy to its logical end. This is the place where all dogmas and ideologies fail. Belief systems (be they moral, religious or political) belie their logic when strictly enforced and universally applied. The Libertine philosophy of living by no moral constraints, in particular, is on shaky ground.
“One can see how the excesses of pleasure lead to the denial of the rights of other people which is, as far as man is concerned, an excessive denial of the principle upon which his life is based,” Bataille writes in Eroticism.
Libertinism is a self-defeating philosophy. De Sade revels in its fictitious excesses, which Bataille views as paradoxical: “...de Sade’s sovereign man has no actual sovereignty; he is a fictitious personage whose power is limited by no obligations.”
(Without going too far into the weeds, he means the sovereign man is dependent on the subjects who consent to his rule. Absolute power requires no consent, which negates its sovereignty. I think. It’s complicated.)
Let’s bring this philosophy back to the level of language. Bataille observes something curious in de Sade’s narrative, which I missed in my read. Despite appearances, when his “heroes” speak, de Sade’s protagonists use the language of the victim.
“In this way they fall short of the profound silence peculiar to violence, for violence never declares either its own existence or its right to exist; it simply exists,” he writes. “If such people had really lived, they would probably have lived in silence.”
Violence is deed, not words. Words are the realm of the victim, “the ground of the moral man to whom language belongs.” (The song goes “Give peace a chance.” Nobody’s ever had to make a PSA to promote violence. It propagates itself.)
As a result, de Sade is not writing about violence, but rather “a reflecting and rationalized will to violence.”
Bataille admits that reading de Sade is no easy task, both because of the content and the layers of complexity. His preference, he writes, is not to converse with de Sade’s champions, but rather with “people who are revolted by him.”
Enlightenment is not all puppies and rainbows, in other words. To confront reality is to assume de Beauvoir’s “burden of evil.” It is accepting the full spectrum of human capability.
“And if today the average man has a profound insight into what transgression means for him, de Sade was the one who made ready the path,” Bataille writes. “Now the average man knows that he must become aware of the things which repel him most violently — those things which repel us most violently are part of our own nature.”
De Sade shed light on our violent impulses and how they can become tangled up with sexuality and liberation. He posed a moral challenge that continues to trouble anyone confronted with his work.
I cede the final word on that to de Beauvoir, who nails the legacy of de Sade and why his work is still relevant today.
“The supreme value of his testimony lies in its ability to disturb us,” she writes. “It forces us to re-examine thoroughly the basic problem which haunts our age in different forms: the true relation between man and man.”

[Stephanie]

........

[Dominique Perregaux · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book around 15 years ago. It is a compelling and frightening book as it list most of sexual deviance. If someone is interested in core SM, then this is the book to read instead of 50 shade of...

The history of the book is fascinating. Sade wrote it while jailed at the Bastille, on a long scroll. When the French revolution broke, Sade was freed with all other prisoners. His liberation was so chaotic, confused and fast that he could not take his scroll (it took him years to write the manuscript) and it was subsequently lost during almost 3 centuries! Sade emotionally never recovered from this loss. The manuscript reappeared in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century and shocked the world when it was published. Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts were fascinated by Sade's account of these perversions and considered it as an exhaustive account of human's sexual deviance.

Beside the extremely modern voice of Sade, what fascinated me the most with this book is the crescendo way that Sade explains the horrible things that are taking place in the castle (during 120 days). Every now and then he will tell readers that he can't tell us what is taking place behind this door as we are not ready yet to bear the unbearable. And indeed, at the end of the book (Sade actually never finished it, so the end is like a draft) we can ready some of the most horrific scenes every been written, without battling an eyelid!

Besides the informative nature of the book, what indeed impressed me the most is the way we end up understanding that human assimilate and eventually adapt to any kind of situation. When horror becomes our every day life, then the only way to survive is to accept it. And we have this strength in ourselves.

At the beginning of the book Sade tell us the story of a young girl working in a monastery. She is asked one day to bring some soup to a monk who is ill. When she come to his room, he asks her to do something that we consider, at the beginning of the book, disgusting and shocking. Yet it does not involves sex or violence. At the end of the book, Sade confronts us with some absolutely brutal and revolting scenes mixing sex and torture, a million time more repulsive and revolting, yet, as through out the book he makes up, page after page, assimilate the unacceptable, we go through this last unbearable scene unarmed. If we had not been prepared, we would probably have nightmares about it.

Again, a great teaching about human nature. In all forms!

[Adrian Colesberry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know if this is the version I read. I read, I think, the Project Guttenberg version, whichever one that is.
This is not the Sade to read if you want to get turned on. (Unless you get turned on by poop, in which case, stop reading this and get to it.)
The frame of the book is a moral outrage against war profiteers, which seems quite apropos in our time. (The four libertines who drive the plot, kidnap women and children and take them into a mountain retreat where four harlots tell stories every night for a month and in between various sex acts are committed.) I considered mounting a reading of it as a war protest, but as most people don't want to read about poop much less hear about it...
Sade apparently thought this MS was lost. He'd never been able to finish it and I think he would have had to rework significantly to do so. Any writer could immediately see how ambitious his project is from the outline he's left. The 120 days are supposed to increase in sexual violence from day 1 to day 120. This is the literary version of building an aquaduct with a slight but steady slope... a difficult feat for engineers and for writers. I don't, frankly, think Sade had the discipline or skill to do this. In the first 30 days, he describes such depravities that he has virtually no room to move and according to his plan he has 90 days left. Finished or unfinished, he just wasn't going to make it.
He has written out the end scenario and describes the last day at the castle where pretty much everybody dies. His outline between day 30 and day 119 is pretty funny. Impossible to prove, but I think he might well have just abandoned it, realizing that it required more work than he wanted to put into it.
Again, not the best Sade if you want to get turned on. That's Justine if you ask me.