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Augustine de Villeblanche ou O estratagema do amor
"De todos os desvios da natureza, o que fez mais pensar, o que pareceu mais estranho a estes meio-filósofos que querem analisar tudo sem nada compreender, dizia um dia a uma das suas melhores amigas a Menina de Villebranche de quem vamos ter ocasião de nos ocuparmos em seguida, é este gosto estranho que mulheres duma certa construção, ou dum certo temperamento, conceberam por pessoas do seu sexo."
"De tous les écarts de la nature, celui qui a fait le plus raisonner, qui a paru le plus étrange à ces demi-philosophes qui veulent tout analyser sans jamais rien comprendre, disait un jour à une de ses meilleures amies Mlle de Villeblanche dont nous allons avoir occasion de nous entretenir tout à l’heure, c’est ce goût bizarre que des femmes d’une certaine construction, ou d’un certain tempérament, ont conçu pour des personnes de leur sexe.""
"De tous les écarts de la nature, celui qui a fait le plus raisonner, qui a paru le plus étrange à ces demi-philosophes qui veulent tout analyser sans jamais rien comprendre, disait un jour à une de ses meilleures amies Mlle de Villeblanche dont nous allons avoir occasion de nous entretenir tout à l’heure, c’est ce goût bizarre que des femmes d’une certaine construction, ou d’un certain tempérament, ont conçu pour des personnes de leur sexe.""
53 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1787
1 person is currently reading
22 people want to read
About the author
Marquis de Sade
627 books2,281 followersA 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 21, 2019
Disguise, I see thou art wickedness
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
(Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)
Influential and inspiring the writings of Marquis de Sade might have been to a multitude of artists and philosophers, I presumed he would forever stay untrodden territory to me, shunning what I thought could only be of repelling violence. I read this story because it is part of the Perlouses series (20 slender volumes distilled from French literature) and I sometimes have a strange desire for comprehensiveness.
I do not think this rather innocuous story is representative for his other work, reminding me more of a Mozart opera scene – be it a little more barbed – than of an expression of unadulterated perversion or a depiction of the dark nature of humankind. Augustine de Villeblanche or love’s stratagem is a quite comic tale of seduction, an illustration of all’s fair in love and war, pivoting around the emblematic errors arising from cross-dressing and gender inversion and transgression, be it with a twist as the bet concerns a young nobleman, Franville, who will dress as a girl to seduce a young noblewoman he is in love with, Augustine de Villefranche, renown for her Sapphic penchants and strong aversion for the opposite sex – which leads to some quite amusing scenes, like when on a masquerade ball Augustine lures who she thinks is a refined and naive young girl into a boudoir:
However the story comes across as peaceful in the sense of not containing graphic violence, the realm of love and lust is represented as a ludicrous battlefield, the comical cross-dressing leading to a mildly puzzling shift of power and the submission of the conquered heart. Augustine’s philosophical justification for her ‘deviant’ desires, the indifference of Nature towards pleasure and its maybe beneficial effects on Nature as damming overpopulation is challenged by the assumption that no woman can resist to try to seduce a man who pretends himself immune to her artful ruses and charming spells and that she will gybe once in the hands of and tamed by a man shrewdly outwitting her.
With this short tale I have just been dipping my toes in to feel the temperature. However it felt like water instead of the lake of fire and fry I had imagined, I still didn’t conquer my trepidation and probably will leave his notorious libertine novel unopened.
An English translation of the story can be found in the collection The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales or in The Mystified Magistrate And Other Tales. Illustrations from a series by Salvador Dalí.
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
(Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)
Influential and inspiring the writings of Marquis de Sade might have been to a multitude of artists and philosophers, I presumed he would forever stay untrodden territory to me, shunning what I thought could only be of repelling violence. I read this story because it is part of the Perlouses series (20 slender volumes distilled from French literature) and I sometimes have a strange desire for comprehensiveness.
I do not think this rather innocuous story is representative for his other work, reminding me more of a Mozart opera scene – be it a little more barbed – than of an expression of unadulterated perversion or a depiction of the dark nature of humankind. Augustine de Villeblanche or love’s stratagem is a quite comic tale of seduction, an illustration of all’s fair in love and war, pivoting around the emblematic errors arising from cross-dressing and gender inversion and transgression, be it with a twist as the bet concerns a young nobleman, Franville, who will dress as a girl to seduce a young noblewoman he is in love with, Augustine de Villefranche, renown for her Sapphic penchants and strong aversion for the opposite sex – which leads to some quite amusing scenes, like when on a masquerade ball Augustine lures who she thinks is a refined and naive young girl into a boudoir:
“Suitably encouraged, Augustine returned more vigorously to the attack, going to it with the zest peculiar to delicious women of her persuasion. Soon hands began to stray and Franville, counterfeiting the melting female, allowed his to roam too. Clothes were flung off and fingers and fingers ventured almost simultaneously to places where both parties hoped to find what they were seeking.”
However the story comes across as peaceful in the sense of not containing graphic violence, the realm of love and lust is represented as a ludicrous battlefield, the comical cross-dressing leading to a mildly puzzling shift of power and the submission of the conquered heart. Augustine’s philosophical justification for her ‘deviant’ desires, the indifference of Nature towards pleasure and its maybe beneficial effects on Nature as damming overpopulation is challenged by the assumption that no woman can resist to try to seduce a man who pretends himself immune to her artful ruses and charming spells and that she will gybe once in the hands of and tamed by a man shrewdly outwitting her.
With this short tale I have just been dipping my toes in to feel the temperature. However it felt like water instead of the lake of fire and fry I had imagined, I still didn’t conquer my trepidation and probably will leave his notorious libertine novel unopened.
An English translation of the story can be found in the collection The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales or in The Mystified Magistrate And Other Tales. Illustrations from a series by Salvador Dalí.
May 18, 2016
Naar de geldende de Sade-normen een braaf en kuis liefdesverhaal over de zwakke rechten, diepe verlangens en onuitgesproken wetten van iedere kunne. Een korte ode, in dialoog vorm en lange zinnen, aan de vrouwen- alsook de herenliefde.
November 10, 2022
O material mais light do Sade… achei divertido.
July 15, 2024
Wow! This story has been utterly and irrevocably successful in the game of deception! It held my honour and trust until the very end, where I then had to abandon all hope of salvation completely! What I first believed to be a strongly subversive piece of feminism turned into every heterosexual male’s depraved fantasy: to turn a lesbian woman straight. This story has such poignant pull-quotes that it is such a disappointment for it to stick the landing that it did. Here, I thought it was refreshing to have such an unconventional yet empathetic take on feminine restraint and sapphic leanings. I was infinitely misguided!
How humorous it is for titular character Mademoiselle Augustine de Villeblanche to describe one of the reasons for preferential singularity in feminine romance to be “fear of surrendering to a sex which never seduces us except to master us”. Well that is exactly how this story ended, with the last line boasting of Monsieur Franville’s “adroit” ability to “turn the most dissolute of girls into the most virtuous and respectable of women”. As if she was not already a woman of that calibre previously, respectable in my eyes for articulating the sentiment that sapphism is not an error, but a product of Nature; and that those of this alignment should be spared ridicule and instead left to their own pleasures.
“With very different prejudices you cannot feel the same fears. Your victory lies in our defeat. The more conquests you obtain, the greater your glory, and you cannot resist the feelings we arouse in you except by vice or depravity”. Pardon me for after reading these apt and feeling words, I was genuinely deluded into thinking Marquise de Sade a sympathetic partisan of womanhood and the feminine experience! It disgusts me to consider that now! I was waiting for the punchline, the plot twist to correct its course, but alas! It never came and the page ran empty. Leaving the moral of the story to be that any woman can be deceived into love, turned into a housewife, and saved by a man!
“I have brought back to the path of virtue the heart over which I shall reign for ever”. Are these the truly the tender and affectionate words of a man in love? Or a victorious exclamation from a deceptive mercenary! As if heterosexuality and home-making servitude are the only singular paths to virtue! I could not contain my incredulity, for my jaw surely had to be helped shut. Surely a story of such breadth and body of discernment and insight cannot be just another silly show of antiquated ignorance! But I should’ve known to not expect anything else from a libertine and political male writer.
Even if he was French and philosophical.
How humorous it is for titular character Mademoiselle Augustine de Villeblanche to describe one of the reasons for preferential singularity in feminine romance to be “fear of surrendering to a sex which never seduces us except to master us”. Well that is exactly how this story ended, with the last line boasting of Monsieur Franville’s “adroit” ability to “turn the most dissolute of girls into the most virtuous and respectable of women”. As if she was not already a woman of that calibre previously, respectable in my eyes for articulating the sentiment that sapphism is not an error, but a product of Nature; and that those of this alignment should be spared ridicule and instead left to their own pleasures.
“With very different prejudices you cannot feel the same fears. Your victory lies in our defeat. The more conquests you obtain, the greater your glory, and you cannot resist the feelings we arouse in you except by vice or depravity”. Pardon me for after reading these apt and feeling words, I was genuinely deluded into thinking Marquise de Sade a sympathetic partisan of womanhood and the feminine experience! It disgusts me to consider that now! I was waiting for the punchline, the plot twist to correct its course, but alas! It never came and the page ran empty. Leaving the moral of the story to be that any woman can be deceived into love, turned into a housewife, and saved by a man!
“I have brought back to the path of virtue the heart over which I shall reign for ever”. Are these the truly the tender and affectionate words of a man in love? Or a victorious exclamation from a deceptive mercenary! As if heterosexuality and home-making servitude are the only singular paths to virtue! I could not contain my incredulity, for my jaw surely had to be helped shut. Surely a story of such breadth and body of discernment and insight cannot be just another silly show of antiquated ignorance! But I should’ve known to not expect anything else from a libertine and political male writer.
Even if he was French and philosophical.
October 31, 2021
Decepcionada. Básicamente es la historia de una lesbiana que se casa con un señoro travesti 🤷
November 16, 2016
Menos acertado que divertido
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews