Sade: A Sudden Abyss

by Annie Le Brun, Camille Naish (Translation)

The literary adventure of D.A.F. (1740-1814) is unique and paradoxical. He was widely read in the nineteenth century, but his books disappeared almost completely from circulation in the century. Meanwhile the exegesis of Sade poured from the presses of the Western world in a flood of words in which the writer, the novelist, and the exceptional pet disappeared. In France today, J. J. Pauvert, who considers Sade “the greatest French writer,” is publishing a new edition of the complete works with a new introduction by Annie Le Brun. A Sudden Abyss is the translation of this introduction, which shows Sade as the inventor of an entirely new language through which he fathoms human nature, desire, and relationships of power. In this fresh and authoritative survey of Sade’s work as a whole, Le Brun frees it from such critics as Bataille, Blanchot, Klossowski, and Barthes (who see Sade’s language as a metaphor for history, society, or writing itself). She asks, Where is Sade himself in these texts? What exactly does Sade tell us? What is obscured when Sade’s writing is placed in a “universe of discourse” rather than understood as a manifestation of a life spent in eleven prisons over twenty-seven years? Like a powerful laser beam, her reflections cut through two centuries of intellectual hide-and-seek and let Sade for the first time be seen and read in his own light. Annie Le Brun is a French poet and literary theorist. Her books include Lâchez tout, a critique of the French neofeminist movement; A distance; and Les chateaux de la subversion, a study of the Gothic tradition.

Genres: Literature, Cultural, Art

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Annie Le Brun a participé aux dernières années du mouvement surréaliste. Parallèlement à des poèmes réunis dans Ombre pour ombre, elle a publié des essais, dont Les Châteaux de la subversion (1982) et Soudain un bloc d’abîme, Sade (1986) en introduction à l’oeuvre de celui-ci, avant de concevoir l’exposition « Sade, Attaquer le soleil » au musée d’Orsay (2014). Menant une réfl exion sur la poésie à travers Appel d’air (1988) ou Si rien avait une forme, ce serait cela (2010), elle s’est livrée à une analyse critique de ce temps dans Du trop de réalité (Stock, 2000). Ce qui n’a pas de prix peut en être considéré comme la suite.

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I'm very happy I read this, and it makes a nice counterpoint to The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography. Not that the books work at cross purposes, but they tackle different ideas from different directions (Le Brun would probably scoff at Carter's Freudian take on Philosophy in the Boudoir: Or, The Immoral Mentors as reductionist, I'm sure).

Le Brun has her own fish to fry, though. A French poet and literary Theorist (the combination makes for some fresh angles on Sade, as she has the mental chops to know what she's looking for but has the aesthetic instincts to appreciate the beauty), this book is a long-form essay that accompanied one of the volumes in Jean-Jacques Pauvert's printing of the complete Sade. Le Brun comes to the work as someone already familiar with, and fascinated by, the power of Sade's writings and ready to wrangle over some of the previous interpretations by other thinkers (Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Blanchot, etc.). Usually, she identifies the problem as the thinker/philosopher's projection, when faced with enormity and span of Sade's thought, of their own particular obsession onto just one part of Sade's thought. Georges Battaille comes in for the worst, with Le Brun arguing that his principal understanding of Sade is faulty, and based on a misreading of his text and overt projection. "Most attempts to comprehend Sade's thought", she says "end up parodying it or immobilizing it."

But, that's really just a sub-theme in the book. Le Brun couldn't be making these arguments unless she had some ideas of her own and boy does she! There's so much interesting thought here that it's hard to absorb it all (I should mention that, like Angela Carter's book, Le Brun generally shies away from too much inscrutable theory jargon, although it does crop up near the end - I'm not really sure I grasp the concept of the "machine" as she uses it in her analysis of Philosophy In The Boudoir, for example).

So, what does she have to say? The book initially focuses on The 120 Days of Sodom, that ground zero of Sade, examining aspects that, Le Brun claims, are usually not looked at (the book tends to be dismissed as nothing more than an obsessive catalog of perversity, which it is, but there does seem to be an end to its means). Why is the book almost always referred to as a culmination of Sade's thought when it is, in fact, one of the first things he wrote? Why does it still hold such jarring power even when we have contended with and adjusted for its intense perversity and sexual violence? Le Brun takes apart the formulation of The Castle of Silling as presented in the book, showing how Sade's use of language to create the isolated, laboratory conditions (and unnerve and unbalance the reader's understanding of place - geographically, morally and psychically) is deployed from the very first sentence. The acts at Silling are even officially "observed" by four hand-picked experts, worldly prostitutes who are left to go forth into the world, telling what they have seen. Le Brun then uses this blueprint of Silling as she ranges into and around Juliette, Philosophy in the Boudoir: Or, The Immoral Mentors, Sade's works for the stage (almost universally ignored as trite and unrewarding, she points out), and Aline et Valcour.

She stunningly argues that Sade had read and absorbed the atheistic thought of his time and, while agreeing with its intentions, found it wanting in intellectual honesty - and so replied to its failings with his fiction (roping in Sade's Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribond). "Silling rises from the spot where historical atheism turns faint, founding its own solidity on the weakness of its contemporaries", Le Brun says, "It is the first, if not the only, atheistic monument." With the current rise of a new interest in Atheistic thought, it might be worth observing if Sade's warning markers will now be noted and discussed.

Le Brun also shows how Sade undermines the structural assumption of language and culture that privilege the general over the particular, and how he inverts it to further his argument (and how this approach challenges the foundation of reason itself). She has some interesting takes on widely picked over works. For example, while it is generally understood that Justine; Or Good Conduct Well-Chastised and Juliette are "twinned" books, the adventures of the sister's lives being inversions of each other, Le Brun points out that the "philosophical novel" structure of Aline et Valcour can be readily seen as an inversion of The 120 Days of Sodom. In the latter (Sade's ur-text) isolation, stasis and increasing detachment are used to play-up the dissection of morality that occurs, whereas Alcine features characters who all represent one system of thought (the standard for the philosophical novel of the time, interested more in characters as vehicles to deploy world-views than as "people") rushing around from place to place, constantly moving and clashing their viewpoints together in endless conflict.

Even Juliette comes in for some interesting examination, touching on angles not noted or explored by Carter. Le Brun argues that Juliette is the first modern fairy tale, and a fairy tale in which the "fairy" is the main character. She also points out the interesting fact that while all of Juliette's tutors provide her with more and more corrupt ways of surviving in a corrupt world, all of which are successful as long as they are rigorously enacted, Juliette herself embodies a characteristic all of them lack, and thus they eventually fail and fall by the wayside (putting paid to the infallibility of their worldview) as she continues on (Le Brun would not agree with Carter's take that Juliette is as much a prisoner of her world as Justine, I think).

I could go on and on, but I just suggest you read this work. Dense, challenging (but not too long or exhaustive), it ends with a personal, rather moving reflection by Le Brun on the experiment at Silling's unending power to wound and disorient us. I'm sure Sade would have been proud.

[Moises Crespo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always ask yourself if you want to be immersed in literature that will demand you to question and surprise any previous belief you may have about morals, religion and personal convictions. I approached Sade with the same attitude. Maurice Blanchot tries to understand and describes Sade writings as follows: "we can admit now that not many literature of any period contains such an scandalous thinking, no other writing has hurt so deeply the feelings of man."
For some, words live independently of actions and beings live independently of their words. The life and thought of Sade will show us exactly the opposite.
His knowledge is viewed on a different light on these eye opener perspective from Annie Le Brun.

[Zoé · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lecture assez éclairante sur l'œuvre de Sade. J'y ai trouvé globalement ce que je cherchais même si la plume de l'autrice était assez désagréable par moment

Disons que j'ai bien fait d'aller lire la page wikipedia de la dame avant de commencer ce livre, histoire de comprendre un peu le personnage

[Aymerrick’s Ilimbou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Une autre lecture de Sade. Annie Le Brun nous parle de Sade après sa lecture qui a été organique avant d’être pensée. Puis elle a décidé de nous rendre son ressenti dans une préface à l’œuvre complète qui est devenu ce livre. Elle revient en détail sur toute la pensée de Sade. Il n’est pas que l’écrivain pornographique et pervers qui nous a été décrit pendant longtemps. Il est plus que ça. Elle nous le montre !