The Ghosts of Sodom: The Charenton Journals

by John Phillips (Translator), Marquis de Sade

The secret journal which the Marquis de Sade worked hard at maintaining, even when ill and ageing at Charenton asylum, reveals the shadowy life of an exceptional, strange man whose abuses are often legendary. The book takes use beyond the prisoner who once fled the Vincennes fortress; it also takes us beyond the prisoner of the Bastille whose imagination tortured him, both deliciously and cruelly, and who projected onto paper the burning and pitiable ghosts of his imagination with a desperate sensuality. This book contains the living, everyday presence of the old man, almost 67 years old when the "first notebook" begins of this one-lost journal.
He had seven years left to live in the "hospital-prison" of Charenton, where his days were slow and grim, full of everyday preoccupations, worries about money, nasty quarrels with the people around him - but were also lit up by the sordid, squalid episodes of a final erotic the last flames of his senile passion. At the Charenton asylum, where he was under a liberal regime of surveillance, Sade's death approached, darkening the colours of his life and tearing apart his feelings.
Only the first (1807-8) and fourth (1814) of these notebooks have been rediscovered, out of a series of four.
The Ghosts of Sodom also includes a selection of Sade's letters from Charenton, as well as the working notes for his terminal novel "The Days At Florbelle" - a huge work deemed so pornographic that the only manuscript was burned by the police at the behest of Sade's own son.

Genres: France, 18th Century

138 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2003

Reviews

[Deb O rah · Rating 3 out of 5]

enjoyed the few complete letters included but this collection is more for someone who studies sade than those interested in his writing.

[Signor Mambrino · Rating 1 out of 5]

Personal diaries of de Sade in his final years. There's little insight on offer here. Felt like reading a collection of post-it notes that were found in a desk drawer. Little cohesion or context given to anything. Quite pathetic image of the Marquis.

[Paddy O'callaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An expose of Sade's beautiful mind.