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El Marqués de Sade: Una vida
El Marqués de Sade está ahora tan suspendido en el limbo entre la leyenda y el mito, que el mundo casi ha olvidado que alguna vez fue un hombre, un noble, un soldado, un marido, un padre y, por supuesto, también un pornógrafo genial en un tiempo y en un lugar reales, la Francia prerrevolucionaria. Francine du Plessix Gray ha tenido una idea brillante al recrear no tanto al "monstruo" en que se convertiría, sino al hombre real, que pasó gran parte de su vida en prisión a causa de sus transgresiones sexuales. Éste es un estudio esclarecedor acerca de una poderosa imaginación sexual atrapada en un solo cuerpo, un prisionero de la Bastilla, al que sólo una revolución pudo liberar... A él y a nosotros, sus futuros lectores." Gore Vidal
758 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
22 people are currently reading
771 people want to read
About the author
Francine du Plessix Gray
32 books55 followersFrancine du Plessix Gray, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and literary critic, was born in Warsaw, Poland, where her father, Vicomte Bertrand Jochaud du Plessix, was a French diplomat - the commercial attaché. She spent her early years in Paris, where a milieu of mixed cultures and a multilingual family (French father and Russian émigré mother) influenced her.
Widowed when her father died in battle, in 1940 du Plessix Gray's mother escaped France to New York with Francine. In 1942, her mother married Alexander Liberman, another White émigré from Russia, whom she had known in Paris as a child. He was a noted artist and later longtime editorial director of Vogue Magazine and then of Condé Nast Publications. The Libermans were socially prominent in media, art, and fashion circles.
Francine du Plessix Gray then grew up in New York City, and was naturalized a U.S. citizen in 1952. She was a scholarship student at Spence School. She attended Bryn Mawr College for two years, and in 1952 received her B.A. in philosophy from Barnard College, NY.
In 1957 she married painter Cleve Gray (1918-2004) with whom she had two sons.
Du Plessix Gray had a long and varied career, in the 1950s as reporter for several French magazines; book editor for Art in America New York City; staff writer for The New Yorker; several professorships, including at Columbia University.
Her most well-known book is Them: A Memory of Parents (2005). Her novels included Lovers and Tyrants (1976).
Widowed when her father died in battle, in 1940 du Plessix Gray's mother escaped France to New York with Francine. In 1942, her mother married Alexander Liberman, another White émigré from Russia, whom she had known in Paris as a child. He was a noted artist and later longtime editorial director of Vogue Magazine and then of Condé Nast Publications. The Libermans were socially prominent in media, art, and fashion circles.
Francine du Plessix Gray then grew up in New York City, and was naturalized a U.S. citizen in 1952. She was a scholarship student at Spence School. She attended Bryn Mawr College for two years, and in 1952 received her B.A. in philosophy from Barnard College, NY.
In 1957 she married painter Cleve Gray (1918-2004) with whom she had two sons.
Du Plessix Gray had a long and varied career, in the 1950s as reporter for several French magazines; book editor for Art in America New York City; staff writer for The New Yorker; several professorships, including at Columbia University.
Her most well-known book is Them: A Memory of Parents (2005). Her novels included Lovers and Tyrants (1976).
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October 30, 2025dnf
who knew that the life of a notorious libertine would be so boring.
who knew that the life of a notorious libertine would be so boring.
January 4, 2016
Having just read Geoffrey Gorer's The Life and Times of the Marquis de Sade, I picked up this alternative, more recent biography. While Gorer's approach is primarily intellectual, Gray's is more a traditional biography. It is also better written and pays far more attention to the primary women in Sade's life. Both Gorer and Gray share the opinion, however, that Sade was much less extreme in his personal life than one might infer from his pornographic novels. Gorer's angle is to point out how little was actually proven as regard's the Marquis' crimes. Gray emphasizes how his outrages were rather typical for his generation and his class.
March 11, 2009
The first thing I thought when I finished reading about the Marquis De Sade was, "He kinda reminds me of my father." That can't be a healthy response, can it?
It's mostly because Sade came from a background of wealth and privilege and spent his life wasting all his good connections, burning up his money on indulgences, and generally being a caustic difficulty to everyone around him. The main reason this worked was his charm. The man could apparently talk his way in and out of many things.
Except for the Bastille of course.
Some pages could have been cut from the beginning of the book, as it concerns his youth and his misbehavior during his twenties. It could all best be summed up as, "He had mommy issues."
What surprised me is most of Sade's early prison stays had nothing to do with writing. He didn't even write until his mid-thirties. The first couple prison stays were provoked by abusing women he hired for sex. His prison stays were extended by a mother-in-law who was sick of his carousing and "outrageous libertinage" as they put it.
So prior to his thirties Sade was essentially just rich pervert who liked to party.
The book focuses on the women of his life because the author has a strong case that without his wife Pelagie and several others he probably would have only been remembered for his excesses if at all. Pelagie supplied him with all of his writing supplies while in the Bastille and encouraged him to write.
From the Bastille onward the book was much more interesting, since it discussed his writing, his social and political manuevering during the revolution, and the way he was essentially "lost" in an insane asylum by Napoleon, the only major stay that seemed to have been influenced by his writing.
What amused me most is that Sade wanted to be remembered as a playwright, but his plays generally received poor response. He wrote much of his pornographic writing for money, and did so anonymously, denying he wrote several to his grave.
"At Home with the Marquis de Sade" was a dense, sometimes difficult read, but the story it tells is rich and worthwhile, making suffering through its thoroughness ultimately worthwhile.
Also, it makes the movie "Quills" appear even more ridiculous than I thought possible.
It's mostly because Sade came from a background of wealth and privilege and spent his life wasting all his good connections, burning up his money on indulgences, and generally being a caustic difficulty to everyone around him. The main reason this worked was his charm. The man could apparently talk his way in and out of many things.
Except for the Bastille of course.
Some pages could have been cut from the beginning of the book, as it concerns his youth and his misbehavior during his twenties. It could all best be summed up as, "He had mommy issues."
What surprised me is most of Sade's early prison stays had nothing to do with writing. He didn't even write until his mid-thirties. The first couple prison stays were provoked by abusing women he hired for sex. His prison stays were extended by a mother-in-law who was sick of his carousing and "outrageous libertinage" as they put it.
So prior to his thirties Sade was essentially just rich pervert who liked to party.
The book focuses on the women of his life because the author has a strong case that without his wife Pelagie and several others he probably would have only been remembered for his excesses if at all. Pelagie supplied him with all of his writing supplies while in the Bastille and encouraged him to write.
From the Bastille onward the book was much more interesting, since it discussed his writing, his social and political manuevering during the revolution, and the way he was essentially "lost" in an insane asylum by Napoleon, the only major stay that seemed to have been influenced by his writing.
What amused me most is that Sade wanted to be remembered as a playwright, but his plays generally received poor response. He wrote much of his pornographic writing for money, and did so anonymously, denying he wrote several to his grave.
"At Home with the Marquis de Sade" was a dense, sometimes difficult read, but the story it tells is rich and worthwhile, making suffering through its thoroughness ultimately worthwhile.
Also, it makes the movie "Quills" appear even more ridiculous than I thought possible.
December 26, 2021
Engaging and well-written. Of course the Marquis was mostly a pathetic, self-centered pervert, but he lead an interesting life and I find his writing and ideas provocative (how could one not? If only to dismiss with an eye roll). He is a thinker of evil, and Flaubert and Baudelaire were on to something when positing him as necessary to understand our moral universe...
September 11, 2016
Absolutely superb portrait of a difficult to define figure. If you are looking to learn about de Sade from an objective perspective, look no further. du Plessix Gray absolutely nails the impossibility of, for example, a feminist reading of de Sade but then pulls it off anyway. A really wonderful chronicle by someone who admires what de Sade meant, the human being he was, and the fiction he wrote contrasted with an objective and rational approach to the most deplorable facets of all those aspects. Humor goes a long way in accomplishing this: du Plessix Gray is not beyond excoriating her subject, nor is she bereft of his morbid sense of humor.
Also, I'm sure Simon & Schuster editors don't read this and sure I did buy an old copy, but there are a number of either mistranslated or outright wrong facts stated here. The Knights Hospitaller are not "The Knights Templar" (holy fuck, really?), Momus is not "The Roman god of insanity" but the Greek god of satire and mockery. It made me wonder what else was construed incorrectly, and along with an occasional redundant stating of things covered in detail elsewhere prevent this from being a favorite piece of writing.
Also, I'm sure Simon & Schuster editors don't read this and sure I did buy an old copy, but there are a number of either mistranslated or outright wrong facts stated here. The Knights Hospitaller are not "The Knights Templar" (holy fuck, really?), Momus is not "The Roman god of insanity" but the Greek god of satire and mockery. It made me wonder what else was construed incorrectly, and along with an occasional redundant stating of things covered in detail elsewhere prevent this from being a favorite piece of writing.
January 20, 2023
2.5/5
Ahhh. The cishet view of history. So full of technical correctness, so replete with projecting idiocy. To cast back a tad, at one point long ago, I was interested in both this figure known as the 'Marquis de Sade' and feminism, and so a biography both written by a woman and purportedly focusing on two of the women in Sade's life seemed made for me. All these years later, I'm certainly still interested in the historical links, factual substance, and the sturdier sorts of references and analyses that fill in the gaps of a society and an individual caught in the momentous flux of upheaval. However, I'm now far beyond even the slightest inclination towards the 'psychosocial' biography as is wielded by the majority status quo writing field, so when talk leaves off from the governmental power plays and socioeconomic ripple effects and goes into vomitous levels of armchair diagnosing, I zone out for the sake of my own academic credibility, at the very least. All in all, I got enough out of this, including a informative summation of the transition period from guillotine to Bourbon restoration, to rate it what I did. However, I fear for any reader who doesn't take some of the author's more fearmongering rants with a grain of salt, for to simper on about 'psychopaths' and 'narcissists' is no different from indulging in the sort of rhetoric that fueled the witch hunts and the Nazi camps: it just happens to be more fashionable these days.
As the title suggestions, this book claims to explore a general biography of Sade through the vantage point of the domestic, including, as the inside flap proclaims, an especial focus on two of the women in his life: his wife, who sacrificed her life for him until a bloody revolution shifted her perspective on self-immolation, and his mother-in-law, who is straight out of Les Liaisons dangereuses in her grasp on social mechanics and skill in the written word. This focus is more or less adhered to when the author finds convenient, and if you find yourself wondering what long and drawn out tirades about a few of Sade's literary works or self-indulgent paragraphs about the writer's own journey through the countryside of her subject's youth have to do with this domestic focus, you're not alone. For all that, most of the information this contained was useful enough and/or engaging that I was able to enjoy more than once the extremely pleasurable experience of various gaps in my knowledge banks being filled in. The best parts of this involved the breaking down the various mystiques that have built up around Sade, this cataclysmic figure whom, due to a conjunction of familial bickering and government jockeying, ended up being singled out so viciously, and in hindsight so inconsistently, amongst the backdrop of his equally violent peers. Couple that with a journey through historical France and various asides on Sade's literary legacy, and I got some excellent context for many of my ungrounded tethers of hearsay and explications, although, as mentioned, I had to leave off whenever the author grew a tad too in love with her own unsubstantiated pontifications. As such, this is a text I'd only recommend to those who already have a decent grasp on the politics, the literary scene, and propaganda that cakes all of it to this very day, as there's certainly many any interesting thing to be learned from this piece, but just as it is with Sade, you're better off not following the author too closely when they leave off the observations and start going out on a limb.
As I said in a previous review, whatever the reason, my current direction for 2023 reading has started me off with a whole lot of nonfiction, giving me the opportunity to weigh one against the other in terms of their strengths and their faults. This work is certainly the meatier sort that I'm more used to, and when it reined in its habits of moralizing and pathologizing, I truly did learn a great deal about Sade and many other interesting tidbits, especially the ones that built on one another holistically, that made the read well worth it. However, I would not recommend this work to any who are used to a higher degree of academic credibility in an author's pronouncements and judgments, as they would find themselves continually frustrated and not much to show when the read was all over and done with. In any case, the world will continue to wrestle with Sade so long as the status quo practices the human sacrifices it does with a sense of self-righteousness and no small amount of pleasure. What I'm personally hoping for is a rich seam of Sade studies that takes on the queer, takes on the legal, takes on all that was actually predatory about this paragon of an aristocrat and what was actually revolutionary, and extends it out not into the bureaucratic juggernauts of the prison and the asylum, but into a future where sycophantic hobnobbing is a half remembered dream and the self reaches its pinnacle as function of community, not as rat race slavering up the endless pyramid so as to not be caught in the forever crushing base below. And if you consider that a full and total exculpation of Sade and the sum total of his actions, then by all means, read this book and trust fully in what it says as the full and fearmongering truth. It took me a long time to learn this, but in this particular field, your lack of critical literacy is not my problem.
Ahhh. The cishet view of history. So full of technical correctness, so replete with projecting idiocy. To cast back a tad, at one point long ago, I was interested in both this figure known as the 'Marquis de Sade' and feminism, and so a biography both written by a woman and purportedly focusing on two of the women in Sade's life seemed made for me. All these years later, I'm certainly still interested in the historical links, factual substance, and the sturdier sorts of references and analyses that fill in the gaps of a society and an individual caught in the momentous flux of upheaval. However, I'm now far beyond even the slightest inclination towards the 'psychosocial' biography as is wielded by the majority status quo writing field, so when talk leaves off from the governmental power plays and socioeconomic ripple effects and goes into vomitous levels of armchair diagnosing, I zone out for the sake of my own academic credibility, at the very least. All in all, I got enough out of this, including a informative summation of the transition period from guillotine to Bourbon restoration, to rate it what I did. However, I fear for any reader who doesn't take some of the author's more fearmongering rants with a grain of salt, for to simper on about 'psychopaths' and 'narcissists' is no different from indulging in the sort of rhetoric that fueled the witch hunts and the Nazi camps: it just happens to be more fashionable these days.
As the title suggestions, this book claims to explore a general biography of Sade through the vantage point of the domestic, including, as the inside flap proclaims, an especial focus on two of the women in his life: his wife, who sacrificed her life for him until a bloody revolution shifted her perspective on self-immolation, and his mother-in-law, who is straight out of Les Liaisons dangereuses in her grasp on social mechanics and skill in the written word. This focus is more or less adhered to when the author finds convenient, and if you find yourself wondering what long and drawn out tirades about a few of Sade's literary works or self-indulgent paragraphs about the writer's own journey through the countryside of her subject's youth have to do with this domestic focus, you're not alone. For all that, most of the information this contained was useful enough and/or engaging that I was able to enjoy more than once the extremely pleasurable experience of various gaps in my knowledge banks being filled in. The best parts of this involved the breaking down the various mystiques that have built up around Sade, this cataclysmic figure whom, due to a conjunction of familial bickering and government jockeying, ended up being singled out so viciously, and in hindsight so inconsistently, amongst the backdrop of his equally violent peers. Couple that with a journey through historical France and various asides on Sade's literary legacy, and I got some excellent context for many of my ungrounded tethers of hearsay and explications, although, as mentioned, I had to leave off whenever the author grew a tad too in love with her own unsubstantiated pontifications. As such, this is a text I'd only recommend to those who already have a decent grasp on the politics, the literary scene, and propaganda that cakes all of it to this very day, as there's certainly many any interesting thing to be learned from this piece, but just as it is with Sade, you're better off not following the author too closely when they leave off the observations and start going out on a limb.
As I said in a previous review, whatever the reason, my current direction for 2023 reading has started me off with a whole lot of nonfiction, giving me the opportunity to weigh one against the other in terms of their strengths and their faults. This work is certainly the meatier sort that I'm more used to, and when it reined in its habits of moralizing and pathologizing, I truly did learn a great deal about Sade and many other interesting tidbits, especially the ones that built on one another holistically, that made the read well worth it. However, I would not recommend this work to any who are used to a higher degree of academic credibility in an author's pronouncements and judgments, as they would find themselves continually frustrated and not much to show when the read was all over and done with. In any case, the world will continue to wrestle with Sade so long as the status quo practices the human sacrifices it does with a sense of self-righteousness and no small amount of pleasure. What I'm personally hoping for is a rich seam of Sade studies that takes on the queer, takes on the legal, takes on all that was actually predatory about this paragon of an aristocrat and what was actually revolutionary, and extends it out not into the bureaucratic juggernauts of the prison and the asylum, but into a future where sycophantic hobnobbing is a half remembered dream and the self reaches its pinnacle as function of community, not as rat race slavering up the endless pyramid so as to not be caught in the forever crushing base below. And if you consider that a full and total exculpation of Sade and the sum total of his actions, then by all means, read this book and trust fully in what it says as the full and fearmongering truth. It took me a long time to learn this, but in this particular field, your lack of critical literacy is not my problem.
February 6, 2014
Sinners could pay for absolution in the Catholic church. The money made by this practice was enormous. The question becomes: Who was the real sinner, the Church or the adulterer?
As de Sade said in Justine: "Is there one religion not marked by imposture and stupidity? What do I see in all of them? Mysteries that insult reason, dogmas that go against the laws of nature, grotesque ceremonies that only inspire derision and disgust. But if one of them particularly merits our scorn and our hatred . . . isn't it the barbarous Christendom into which we were both born? Is there a more odious one? Is there one which more offends the heart and the spirit?"
As a boy, Donatien (the Marquis de Sade) had access to many books that were meant to be read as the French euphemism goes "with one hand." This time was known as the Age of Pleasure Seeking. Some of it violent. The Comte de Charolais killed peasants the way other men went hunting. Louis XV forgave him but said he would be even more pleased by pardoning the man who kills the Comte de Charolais.
Young women were often married to men they did not know until the wedding night. Usually for social and financial advancement. Incredibly, de Sade's wife was loyal and overlooked his shortcomings and sexual activities. He had apartments rented around town to meet his lovers.
Inspector Louis Marais was a prominent official in Paris's police corps and the leading authority on libertinage. For 15 years he was charged with the constant surveillance of de Sade. He left posterity a highly detailed account of the Count's life in that time. Reports such as these had a purpose: they were sent to Mme de Pompadour, the official mistress of the king. With their sexual life no longer active, they lived vicariously through the reports.
Whipping was a common practice in bordellos, not only for the Count. Perhaps it was a result of the flogging done in schools. Most men hypocritically followed church rituals to protect themselves, not so with de Sade. In fact, he indulged in the shock value of many blasphemies against the church. That set him up for arrest, not his activities in themselves.
De Sade felt women had the power to exhaust 4 or 5 men in a row, so why waste that power?
His first imprisonment happened because of a woman named Rose Keller. She was taken to his country cottage to do some cleaning. Instead he locked her up, forced her to remove clothes, and whipped her as a form of sexual pleasure. At the trial, he said she was a prostitute, certainly a lie. He was able to be freed from jail, but he was losing his power to keep doing so.
After a huge orgy, Sade was sentenced to a double execution. 1. He was to be beheaded for a poisoning, believed to have been some form of Spanish fly. A woman complained to the police. 2. Burning for sodomy. Mannequins were beheaded and then burned. The primary purpose of such "executions" was for the "edifying effect on the public." Large crowds often thought the mannequins were real in the smoke.
The author Roland Barthes, considered one of Sade's most gifted commentators, said, "Order is essential to transgression." Sade orchestrated his orgies to the point of absurdity. In his final stronghold of La Coste, where he stayed to avoid being rearrested and sent to prison, he had a half dozen young teenage girl servants with him. It was also a common practice then to debauch the young with literature, lurid volumes with pictures. This was "a popular form of debauchery since the Renaissance." Sade's wife Pelagie was praised by all the young girls apparently for her gentle and comforting manners. And Sade's mother-in-law Madame de Montreuil spent a lot of her dwindling fortune to hire soldiers to try and capture Sade.
In February 1777, Sade would be arrested and remain in prison for the next 13 years of his life: Part II of the book. Sade had actually been cleared again, but a lettre de cachet by Louis XVI delivered by Marais and a few officers sent him back to prison.
In prison, he wrote his first book of erotica, described here:
The very first of these efforts was the monumental catalogue of sexual perversions known as The 120 Days of Sodom, written at the Bastille in 1785. Its composition was as bizarre as the book itself. In order to insure its safety, Sade transcribed it, in nearly microscopic handwriting, onto a series of five-inch-wide sheets of paper, which he glued together into a roll forty-nine feet long. Such a minuscule folio, tightly wound, could be easily hidden in a prison cell's wall. Working on it from seven to ten each evening, he finished transcribing his last draft in 37 days, an amazing for a manuscript of some 250,000 words.
The four central characters are powerful and depraved men: a duke, a bishop, a magistrate, and a financier. All are bisexual villains. They rant about the "inferiority of female sexual organs." They have their four wives and 28 young victims of both sexes in their months long orgy. The book contains bestiality, coprophilia, torture. Yet he claims to be edifying his readers by warning them.
It would not be published until the early 1900s. A citizen had enough sense to remove it from the Bastille without destroying it. It remained in a family for three generations.
Sade gave specific directions for having his body buried and acorns scattered over the site. His son disrespected those wishes. He received a cheap but complete Christian funeral. He was buried at the Charenton asylum where the whole cemetery would eventually be dug up.
Sade was a huge influence on Gustave Flaubert who called him "that honest writer."' He felt that men such as Nero and Sade "explained history" for him. He seemed obsessed with Sade.
Beaudelaire also loved Sade: "To understand evil, one must always turn to de Sade, that is, to natural man."
Many Romantics lionized de Sade as a rebel against authority and bourgeoise conformism. Algernon Charles Swinburne, who found pleasure in passive flagellation, read his writings. He referred to his "mystic pages." Called him "martyred" and "an illustrious an ill-requited benefactor of humanity."
Luis Bunuel and Salvadore Dali's film L'Age d'or was based on 120 Days of Sodom.
Heinrich Heine went to Germany to find the original manuscript. He travelled throughout France searching for more. Heine died of starvation in the first year of WWII when he spent his diminished fortune on feeding his numerous cats.
The ruins of Sade's chateau in La Coste is now a tourist site.
As de Sade said in Justine: "Is there one religion not marked by imposture and stupidity? What do I see in all of them? Mysteries that insult reason, dogmas that go against the laws of nature, grotesque ceremonies that only inspire derision and disgust. But if one of them particularly merits our scorn and our hatred . . . isn't it the barbarous Christendom into which we were both born? Is there a more odious one? Is there one which more offends the heart and the spirit?"
As a boy, Donatien (the Marquis de Sade) had access to many books that were meant to be read as the French euphemism goes "with one hand." This time was known as the Age of Pleasure Seeking. Some of it violent. The Comte de Charolais killed peasants the way other men went hunting. Louis XV forgave him but said he would be even more pleased by pardoning the man who kills the Comte de Charolais.
Young women were often married to men they did not know until the wedding night. Usually for social and financial advancement. Incredibly, de Sade's wife was loyal and overlooked his shortcomings and sexual activities. He had apartments rented around town to meet his lovers.
Inspector Louis Marais was a prominent official in Paris's police corps and the leading authority on libertinage. For 15 years he was charged with the constant surveillance of de Sade. He left posterity a highly detailed account of the Count's life in that time. Reports such as these had a purpose: they were sent to Mme de Pompadour, the official mistress of the king. With their sexual life no longer active, they lived vicariously through the reports.
Whipping was a common practice in bordellos, not only for the Count. Perhaps it was a result of the flogging done in schools. Most men hypocritically followed church rituals to protect themselves, not so with de Sade. In fact, he indulged in the shock value of many blasphemies against the church. That set him up for arrest, not his activities in themselves.
De Sade felt women had the power to exhaust 4 or 5 men in a row, so why waste that power?
His first imprisonment happened because of a woman named Rose Keller. She was taken to his country cottage to do some cleaning. Instead he locked her up, forced her to remove clothes, and whipped her as a form of sexual pleasure. At the trial, he said she was a prostitute, certainly a lie. He was able to be freed from jail, but he was losing his power to keep doing so.
After a huge orgy, Sade was sentenced to a double execution. 1. He was to be beheaded for a poisoning, believed to have been some form of Spanish fly. A woman complained to the police. 2. Burning for sodomy. Mannequins were beheaded and then burned. The primary purpose of such "executions" was for the "edifying effect on the public." Large crowds often thought the mannequins were real in the smoke.
The author Roland Barthes, considered one of Sade's most gifted commentators, said, "Order is essential to transgression." Sade orchestrated his orgies to the point of absurdity. In his final stronghold of La Coste, where he stayed to avoid being rearrested and sent to prison, he had a half dozen young teenage girl servants with him. It was also a common practice then to debauch the young with literature, lurid volumes with pictures. This was "a popular form of debauchery since the Renaissance." Sade's wife Pelagie was praised by all the young girls apparently for her gentle and comforting manners. And Sade's mother-in-law Madame de Montreuil spent a lot of her dwindling fortune to hire soldiers to try and capture Sade.
In February 1777, Sade would be arrested and remain in prison for the next 13 years of his life: Part II of the book. Sade had actually been cleared again, but a lettre de cachet by Louis XVI delivered by Marais and a few officers sent him back to prison.
In prison, he wrote his first book of erotica, described here:
The very first of these efforts was the monumental catalogue of sexual perversions known as The 120 Days of Sodom, written at the Bastille in 1785. Its composition was as bizarre as the book itself. In order to insure its safety, Sade transcribed it, in nearly microscopic handwriting, onto a series of five-inch-wide sheets of paper, which he glued together into a roll forty-nine feet long. Such a minuscule folio, tightly wound, could be easily hidden in a prison cell's wall. Working on it from seven to ten each evening, he finished transcribing his last draft in 37 days, an amazing for a manuscript of some 250,000 words.
The four central characters are powerful and depraved men: a duke, a bishop, a magistrate, and a financier. All are bisexual villains. They rant about the "inferiority of female sexual organs." They have their four wives and 28 young victims of both sexes in their months long orgy. The book contains bestiality, coprophilia, torture. Yet he claims to be edifying his readers by warning them.
It would not be published until the early 1900s. A citizen had enough sense to remove it from the Bastille without destroying it. It remained in a family for three generations.
Sade gave specific directions for having his body buried and acorns scattered over the site. His son disrespected those wishes. He received a cheap but complete Christian funeral. He was buried at the Charenton asylum where the whole cemetery would eventually be dug up.
Sade was a huge influence on Gustave Flaubert who called him "that honest writer."' He felt that men such as Nero and Sade "explained history" for him. He seemed obsessed with Sade.
Beaudelaire also loved Sade: "To understand evil, one must always turn to de Sade, that is, to natural man."
Many Romantics lionized de Sade as a rebel against authority and bourgeoise conformism. Algernon Charles Swinburne, who found pleasure in passive flagellation, read his writings. He referred to his "mystic pages." Called him "martyred" and "an illustrious an ill-requited benefactor of humanity."
Luis Bunuel and Salvadore Dali's film L'Age d'or was based on 120 Days of Sodom.
Heinrich Heine went to Germany to find the original manuscript. He travelled throughout France searching for more. Heine died of starvation in the first year of WWII when he spent his diminished fortune on feeding his numerous cats.
The ruins of Sade's chateau in La Coste is now a tourist site.
October 13, 2023
3.9 stars. Very eye opening.
November 15, 2011
I've always held something of an eye-brow raising fascination of the entity that is the Marquise de Sade (for whom the term "sadism" is said to be derived), the original bad boy of the literary world: a spoiled, entitled, debauched aristocrat, an over the top epitome of 18th century France, whose writings, predilections and peccadilloes (which ran to the extreme spectrum of sexuality) landed him in prison on a number of occasions. This historical book focuses on the women in de Sade's - his mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil, a a shrewd and resourceful woman who thought him a model son, only to discover his true nature and quickly became exasperated in keeping him from being prosecuted by the law due to his 'deviant' actions, and was instrumental in having him imprisoned; and his devoted, Renee Pelagie, who indulged and enabled his whims, caprices, and vices, until she relented for the sake of their posterity. Very interesting point of view from the women in de Sade's life who witnessed first hand a scion of the French ancien regime whose scandalous actions and literature brought about his own self-destruction.
June 30, 2018
Endlessly absorbing and deeply novelist bio by the sublime Francine DuPlessix Gray. One of her great insights is that Sade’s “liberatory,” democratic writing on the record was more likely a product of cunning opportunism than a change of heart. Exhilarating stuff!
August 21, 2022
Firstly, I want to commend Gray for being such an amazingly immersive writer.
Secondly, I have some issues.
While the book is wonderful for really bringing you into the story and choosing the best excerpts from various correspondence, I could not understand her characterization of some key players.
The first being the Marquise. Pélagie reminds me of Karla Homolka, or even the women devoted to Charles Manson. None of them seem devoted out of love, but out of delusion caused by emotional and psychological abuse coupled with some degree of fear.
The second is the belle dame sans merci herself, Madame de Montreuil. After having her first daughter thoroughly indoctrinated, and her youngest seeming similarly abused, she reacts the way any mother would and it came across greatly that Gray had little care for her reasoning--she was simply a woman out for blood.
The third, and final, is the devil himself, Sade. Oh, Sade. I do *not* share the same sympathy for Sade as the biographer does. Gray routinely reminds the reader that his mother was absent and thus he was unloved. Oh, poor Sade! Fuck off, you little sodomite. His mother, debatably absent given recent findings (which I don't fault this author for), was not the cause of his issues. Gray tells us at the start just how many mother figures he had, at least one of which he actually referred to as "maman" and was deeply devoted to. His biological mother's absence is hardly necessary to understand his character when he was entirely surrounded by family and friends who lavished him with praise and devotion.
I don't know how I feel about this biography. I loved the level of detail and the writing--I especially enjoyed the passages that were written as a fiction story might be--but I struggled with such a difference of opinion than that of the author that I can't give this five stars.
I would also plead that no one except Nabokov himself refers to young girls as "nymphets." This term, when employed by someone speaking about children and teenagers, should not EVER be used to describe the victims of a pedophile. Humbert Humbert used this term to sexualize Delores in Lolita, when you or someone else uses it to describe a young girl, you are aligning yourself with Humber Humbert. You may not intend to, but that is the result. Nabokov himself would not approve of referring to any victim as such.
Secondly, I have some issues.
While the book is wonderful for really bringing you into the story and choosing the best excerpts from various correspondence, I could not understand her characterization of some key players.
The first being the Marquise. Pélagie reminds me of Karla Homolka, or even the women devoted to Charles Manson. None of them seem devoted out of love, but out of delusion caused by emotional and psychological abuse coupled with some degree of fear.
The second is the belle dame sans merci herself, Madame de Montreuil. After having her first daughter thoroughly indoctrinated, and her youngest seeming similarly abused, she reacts the way any mother would and it came across greatly that Gray had little care for her reasoning--she was simply a woman out for blood.
The third, and final, is the devil himself, Sade. Oh, Sade. I do *not* share the same sympathy for Sade as the biographer does. Gray routinely reminds the reader that his mother was absent and thus he was unloved. Oh, poor Sade! Fuck off, you little sodomite. His mother, debatably absent given recent findings (which I don't fault this author for), was not the cause of his issues. Gray tells us at the start just how many mother figures he had, at least one of which he actually referred to as "maman" and was deeply devoted to. His biological mother's absence is hardly necessary to understand his character when he was entirely surrounded by family and friends who lavished him with praise and devotion.
I don't know how I feel about this biography. I loved the level of detail and the writing--I especially enjoyed the passages that were written as a fiction story might be--but I struggled with such a difference of opinion than that of the author that I can't give this five stars.
I would also plead that no one except Nabokov himself refers to young girls as "nymphets." This term, when employed by someone speaking about children and teenagers, should not EVER be used to describe the victims of a pedophile. Humbert Humbert used this term to sexualize Delores in Lolita, when you or someone else uses it to describe a young girl, you are aligning yourself with Humber Humbert. You may not intend to, but that is the result. Nabokov himself would not approve of referring to any victim as such.
October 11, 2024
"Sí, reconozco que soy un libertino: he concebido todo lo concebible en ese género, pero qué duda cabe de que no he hecho todo cuanto he imaginado ni nunca lo haré. Soy un libertino, pero no un criminal o un asesino".
.
Del Marqués de Sade se han escrito trémulos ríos de tinta; por él se acuñó un término para explicar un trastorno psicótico, y gracias a él nos enteramos de las perversiones de la sociedad francesa de su época. Ha escandalizado, ha sido imitado, ha sido llevado a la pantalla grande y, sobre todo, ha sido mal entendido.
.
Este libro lo compré hace casi veinte años y a lo largo de este tiempo no solo he vuelto a él cuando quiero deleitarme con la vida novelesca de Donatien, sino cuando quiero aprender sobre escritura biográfica de la mano de Francine du Plessix Gray: con su prosa nos lleva a una época [1740 - 1814], a un país [Francia] y a un personaje principal [Donatien], alrededor de quien gravitan hombres y mujeres ya sea por amor, odio, dependencia, sangre, curiosidad, envidia, admiración y pasión.
.
Sade es un hijo de su tiempo, pero ha sido el hijo desobediente: él no solo se atrevió a vivir esos extremos de la sexualidad tal y como lo hacía la alta sociedad francesa, sino que la desenmascaró a través de sus escritos.
.
¿Qué leía Donatien? Francine nos cuenta: Homero, Virgilio, Lucrecio, Montaigne, Tasso, Ariosto, La Fontaine, El Decamerón, Beaumarchais, Marivaux, Voltaire, Robinson Crusoe, Defoe, Fielding, Smollett y Choderlos de Laclos, por poner algunos ejemplos destacados [y veo con gusto que tenemos varios en común, Marqués].
.
¿Qué se le antojaba comer a Donatien cuando por inmoral pasaba largas temporadas en la cárcel? Francine también nos lo cuenta: mostachones, malvaviscos, mermelada de ciruelas, fruta confitada, melocotón en conserva, pastel de almendras y chocolate. "[Quiero] un pastel grueso de chocolate; y que la crema de vainilla del interior sea muy dulce; si no está bueno lo devolveré. Tiene que estar escarchado por encima".
.
Si les llama la atención la figura del Marqués de Sade y quieren aproximarse a ella, más allá de películas e incluso de su propia literatura, este libro es para ustedes.
.
Del Marqués de Sade se han escrito trémulos ríos de tinta; por él se acuñó un término para explicar un trastorno psicótico, y gracias a él nos enteramos de las perversiones de la sociedad francesa de su época. Ha escandalizado, ha sido imitado, ha sido llevado a la pantalla grande y, sobre todo, ha sido mal entendido.
.
Este libro lo compré hace casi veinte años y a lo largo de este tiempo no solo he vuelto a él cuando quiero deleitarme con la vida novelesca de Donatien, sino cuando quiero aprender sobre escritura biográfica de la mano de Francine du Plessix Gray: con su prosa nos lleva a una época [1740 - 1814], a un país [Francia] y a un personaje principal [Donatien], alrededor de quien gravitan hombres y mujeres ya sea por amor, odio, dependencia, sangre, curiosidad, envidia, admiración y pasión.
.
Sade es un hijo de su tiempo, pero ha sido el hijo desobediente: él no solo se atrevió a vivir esos extremos de la sexualidad tal y como lo hacía la alta sociedad francesa, sino que la desenmascaró a través de sus escritos.
.
¿Qué leía Donatien? Francine nos cuenta: Homero, Virgilio, Lucrecio, Montaigne, Tasso, Ariosto, La Fontaine, El Decamerón, Beaumarchais, Marivaux, Voltaire, Robinson Crusoe, Defoe, Fielding, Smollett y Choderlos de Laclos, por poner algunos ejemplos destacados [y veo con gusto que tenemos varios en común, Marqués].
.
¿Qué se le antojaba comer a Donatien cuando por inmoral pasaba largas temporadas en la cárcel? Francine también nos lo cuenta: mostachones, malvaviscos, mermelada de ciruelas, fruta confitada, melocotón en conserva, pastel de almendras y chocolate. "[Quiero] un pastel grueso de chocolate; y que la crema de vainilla del interior sea muy dulce; si no está bueno lo devolveré. Tiene que estar escarchado por encima".
.
Si les llama la atención la figura del Marqués de Sade y quieren aproximarse a ella, más allá de películas e incluso de su propia literatura, este libro es para ustedes.
December 29, 2024
Francine du Plessix Gray ha escrito una biografía extraordinaria sobre el Marqués de Sade. Es extensa, detalladísima y, sin embargo, tiene la magia de no aburrir en ningún momento. Es mi primer acercamiento a la obra de esta fantástica biógrafa y crítica literaria, y aunque no he encontrado otros textos suyos disponibles, buscaré todo lo que pueda.
La biografía muestra Sade en todas sus facetas: como aristócrata, libertino, esposo, padre, un hombre egoísta, ambicioso, contradictorio, profundamente ateo y materialista, acomodaticio. Está narrada de forma brillante, con una bibliografía amplísima que evidencia la erudición de Plessix. Incluso llegó a contactar a descendientes del marqués y a visitar lo que queda de sus residencias en Francia.
El personaje es fascinante, sin importar si nos repele o no. La combinación de su correspondencia personal (la fuente más rica sobre su vida junto con su literatura), con informes policiales, y otros documentos judiciales mantiene el interés en todo momento. Además, el retrato histórico de la Revolución Francesa y el periodo napoleónico es sublime, te transporta al siglo XVIII.
Lo que también destaca es la honestidad de la autora. Cuando hay lagunas en el conocimiento sobre ciertos aspectos de la vida de Sade, como la misteriosa desaparición de Marie-Constance Quesnet, su compañera durante sus últimos años, en la semana final de su vida, Plessix no lo oculta. Lo menciona, plantea hipótesis y sigue adelante con la misma claridad.
El epílogo, dedicado a la importancia póstuma de Sade, no es la parte más sobresaliente del libro, pero igual resulta interesante.
La biografía muestra Sade en todas sus facetas: como aristócrata, libertino, esposo, padre, un hombre egoísta, ambicioso, contradictorio, profundamente ateo y materialista, acomodaticio. Está narrada de forma brillante, con una bibliografía amplísima que evidencia la erudición de Plessix. Incluso llegó a contactar a descendientes del marqués y a visitar lo que queda de sus residencias en Francia.
El personaje es fascinante, sin importar si nos repele o no. La combinación de su correspondencia personal (la fuente más rica sobre su vida junto con su literatura), con informes policiales, y otros documentos judiciales mantiene el interés en todo momento. Además, el retrato histórico de la Revolución Francesa y el periodo napoleónico es sublime, te transporta al siglo XVIII.
Lo que también destaca es la honestidad de la autora. Cuando hay lagunas en el conocimiento sobre ciertos aspectos de la vida de Sade, como la misteriosa desaparición de Marie-Constance Quesnet, su compañera durante sus últimos años, en la semana final de su vida, Plessix no lo oculta. Lo menciona, plantea hipótesis y sigue adelante con la misma claridad.
El epílogo, dedicado a la importancia póstuma de Sade, no es la parte más sobresaliente del libro, pero igual resulta interesante.
December 1, 2022
Excelente biografía del divino Marqués, que diría Guillaume Apollinaire. Personaje denigrado y maltratado en vida y en la posteridad, rescatado por los surrealistas, merece una biografía amplia y detallada como esta.
Lo mejor para mí es el uso de fuentes primarias, como las cartas y los diarios conservados del marqués y de las personas que se relacionaron con él, como su administrador, su suegra y su esposa. Es muy interesante la lectura de esta correspondencia, que aparece intercalada en el texto y comentada, y da una imagen más fidedigna y humana del personaje. Sade ha quedado como el nombre de una desviación sexual, pero como comprobamos en este libro, es mucho más. La biografía no blanquea lo siniestro del personaje y su egoísmo patológico, pero nos lo muestra con una cara más humana. No fue sólo un monstruo de crueldad (rasgo que se ha exagerado y parece que esa crueldad es más literaria que real), sino también un gran escritor y filósofo materialista y ateo radical -muy recomendable el "Diálogo entre un sacerdote y un moribundo"-.
El retrato que hace la autora de la relación de Sade con las dos mujeres más importantes de su vida (su suegra y su esposa) y con sus tres hijos, humaniza al personaje.
También destacaría los episodios de la Revolución francesa vistos a través de Sade y sus allegados, para mí lo más interesante del libro. Lectura muy recomendable.
Lo mejor para mí es el uso de fuentes primarias, como las cartas y los diarios conservados del marqués y de las personas que se relacionaron con él, como su administrador, su suegra y su esposa. Es muy interesante la lectura de esta correspondencia, que aparece intercalada en el texto y comentada, y da una imagen más fidedigna y humana del personaje. Sade ha quedado como el nombre de una desviación sexual, pero como comprobamos en este libro, es mucho más. La biografía no blanquea lo siniestro del personaje y su egoísmo patológico, pero nos lo muestra con una cara más humana. No fue sólo un monstruo de crueldad (rasgo que se ha exagerado y parece que esa crueldad es más literaria que real), sino también un gran escritor y filósofo materialista y ateo radical -muy recomendable el "Diálogo entre un sacerdote y un moribundo"-.
El retrato que hace la autora de la relación de Sade con las dos mujeres más importantes de su vida (su suegra y su esposa) y con sus tres hijos, humaniza al personaje.
También destacaría los episodios de la Revolución francesa vistos a través de Sade y sus allegados, para mí lo más interesante del libro. Lectura muy recomendable.
December 1, 2022
Excelente biografía del divino Marqués, que diría Guillaume Apollinaire. Personaje denigrado y maltratado en vida y en la posteridad, rescatado por los surrealistas, merece una biografía amplia y detallada como esta.
Lo mejor para mí es el uso de fuentes primarias, como las cartas y los diarios conservados del marqués y de las personas que se relacionaron con él, como su administrador, su suegra y su esposa. Es muy interesante la lectura de esta correspondencia, que aparece intercalada en el texto y comentada, y da una imagen más fidedigna y humana del personaje. Sade ha quedado como el nombre de una desviación sexual, pero como comprobamos en este libro, es mucho más. La biografía no blanquea lo siniestro del personaje y su egoísmo patológico, pero nos lo muestra con una cara más humana. No fue sólo un monstruo de crueldad (rasgo que se ha exagerado y parece que esa crueldad es más literaria que real), sino también un gran escritor y filósofo materialista y ateo radical -muy recomendable el "Diálogo entre un sacerdote y un moribundo"-.
El retrato que hace la autora de la relación de Sade con las dos mujeres más importantes de su vida (su suegra y su esposa) y con sus tres hijos, humaniza al personaje.
También destacaría los episodios de la Revolución francesa vistos a través de Sade y sus allegados, para mí lo más interesante del libro. Lectura muy recomendable.
Lo mejor para mí es el uso de fuentes primarias, como las cartas y los diarios conservados del marqués y de las personas que se relacionaron con él, como su administrador, su suegra y su esposa. Es muy interesante la lectura de esta correspondencia, que aparece intercalada en el texto y comentada, y da una imagen más fidedigna y humana del personaje. Sade ha quedado como el nombre de una desviación sexual, pero como comprobamos en este libro, es mucho más. La biografía no blanquea lo siniestro del personaje y su egoísmo patológico, pero nos lo muestra con una cara más humana. No fue sólo un monstruo de crueldad (rasgo que se ha exagerado y parece que esa crueldad es más literaria que real), sino también un gran escritor y filósofo materialista y ateo radical -muy recomendable el "Diálogo entre un sacerdote y un moribundo"-.
El retrato que hace la autora de la relación de Sade con las dos mujeres más importantes de su vida (su suegra y su esposa) y con sus tres hijos, humaniza al personaje.
También destacaría los episodios de la Revolución francesa vistos a través de Sade y sus allegados, para mí lo más interesante del libro. Lectura muy recomendable.
May 5, 2024
El libro, presenta una perspectiva detallada y cautivadora sobre la vida de este enigmático escritor. A través de una narrativa absorbente, el autor explora los eventos clave y las influencias que dieron forma a la mente y las obras del Marqués.
A medida que me sumerjo en la historia, Sade me va evocando tanto sentimientos de ira como sentimientos de empatía, desafiándome a confrontar las complejidades de su carácter y legado.
En resumen, es un libro fascinante que recomiendo leer si quieres explorar la vida y obra de este controvertido escritor desde una perspectiva absorbente y cautivadora.
A medida que me sumerjo en la historia, Sade me va evocando tanto sentimientos de ira como sentimientos de empatía, desafiándome a confrontar las complejidades de su carácter y legado.
En resumen, es un libro fascinante que recomiendo leer si quieres explorar la vida y obra de este controvertido escritor desde una perspectiva absorbente y cautivadora.
November 13, 2017
The first half of the book was fascinating simply because weird people are interesting. Sade seemed a sad person, cheated of familial love. But after you see that he was a narcissistic pervert, you really just feel both bored and disgusted by him. I’d had enough halfway through. I didn’t finish the book and have no interest in knowing anything more.
August 9, 2017
This is a wonderful work of biography. About as objective a presentation as one can get, up until the last few pages; very well researched and referenced; eminently readable and interesting. This glimpse at the life of the divine marquis helps to clear away the miasmic smog as well as the overly lucid rays of worship, while also framing his life and excesses within the context of his familial, matrimonial, and convict elements.
June 25, 2020
Una historia de vida extravagante. Este libro se presenta como una forma de entender al Marqués antes de criticar. Aceptar o no su estilo de vida es una decisión individual. Y como dicen por ahí, entre gustos no hay disgustos.
April 10, 2023
Sin comentarios...
March 1, 2024
Finally finished this one about one twisted mofo. It was, however, interesting beyond twisted, so at least it wasn't dull.
June 22, 2025
"I'm not happy,but I'm ok" 🤔
Read
September 17, 2025Ya me lo he leído y conseguido parir un trabajo para el máster de sexología. Me ha molado bastante pero ya valió de hablar sobre este libro.
Leéroslo, punto.
Leéroslo, punto.
January 13, 2013
I bought this book from the dollar shelf at the used bookstore as a way to cleanse my palate after reading about a dozen rock memoirs. Rock memoirs are fun to read but are not particularly well written and not very academic or scholarly. Also I'm a sucker for any book that has the blurb " A Pulitzer Prize Finalist". I didn't see that on the cover of David Lee Roth's memoir.
Before this book I knew very little about Sade. Obviously that the word sadism comes from his name. I attempted to read his book Justine when I was in college. Wanted to see what all the fuss was about. UGH. I only got about 50 pages into it before I quit. The absolute loathing towards women dripped off the pages of the book. So disturbing. So venomous. So not how I want to spend precious hours of my life. It was like reading a snuff film. The complete antithesis of sexy.
I also read the play Marat/Sade in college and saw the movie Quills so I knew Sade had been imprisoned in an insane asylum for his writings. That knowledge added to the creep factor of Sade.
The author did an amazing job with this biography. I still think Sade is the poster boy for creeps but at times I actually felt sorry for him. That almost shocked me as much as reading his book. Gray presented a very in-depth look at Sade which helped to explain why he was the way he was. She also tied him into the larger picture of the place and time he lived in. I am fascinated by that period of French history. For some reason it had never dawned on me that Sade lived then. Having read a lot of books about that period, I was familiar with a lot of the people and events Gray wrote about. When she wrote about Sade barely missing the guillotine I immediately thought of the story of Josephine Bonaparte. The same thing happened to her! Name called on the 8th of Thermidor, marked absent, no one really bothered to look around for the missing prisoner, then the next day - the ninth of Thermidor - Robespierre is arrested & guillotined and the Terror ends. Take about your close calls. Sadly, he was not in the same prison as her but he was in the same prison as de Laclos (the author of Dangerous Liaisons). I love finding out tidbits like that. Sade & De Laclos hated each other. Oooh, interesting! Author catfight!
Gray wrote a lot about Sade's relationships with women - his absent mother, his indulgent aunts who were all nuns, his masochistic first wife, his domineering mother-in-law, his sensitive second wife. She wrote about his hatred of motherhood and how his dislike of vaginal sex tied into his issues with motherhood. He had a real madonna/whore view of women that was intertwined with his snobbish beliefs about class. Those beliefs certainly shine through in the 50 pages of his one book I tried to read.
Gray also wrote a lot about Sade's legal troubles & prison time before the revolution. I had no idea he was imprisoned for so much of his life. And not for his writings but for actual crimes. There are 3 known incidents that got him in trouble. I find it hard to believe those were the only times he attacked women. Sade had bad luck his entire life but it couldn't have been bad enough that every time he attacked a woman he was caught.Gray made a good point that if Sade had limited his pervy behaviors to married women of his own class, he never would have gotten into trouble. However, unlike every other libertine in Europe, he wouldn't have sex with married women because he believed in the sanctity of marriage - HAHA. So he would kidnap and rape prostitutes instead. Because that's ok in his mind because they are lower class. I really feel for the women he attacked. He must have been so shudderingly off-the-charts weird to freak out the prostitutes like that. I was honestly very surprised when he got arrested. Nobility got away with A LOT back then. But not sad-sack Sade.
While I've come away from this biography with a much greater understanding of Sade, I still never understand why his first wife was the way she was. Gray suggests his wife was a masochist, which I certainly believe. I also think there was some sort of Stockholm Syndrome behavior occurring. She reminded me of women who are partners with serial killers and help them trap their victims. I don't get those women at all. Are the men so charming? So powerful? So dominant? Or are the women just so weak? So depressed? So stupid? She creeped me out like Sade did.
I'm glad I found this book. I was worried it would be dry and boring. Instead it was a compelling read. Anyone interested in that period of time or in mental illnesses or law/crime should read this book.
Before this book I knew very little about Sade. Obviously that the word sadism comes from his name. I attempted to read his book Justine when I was in college. Wanted to see what all the fuss was about. UGH. I only got about 50 pages into it before I quit. The absolute loathing towards women dripped off the pages of the book. So disturbing. So venomous. So not how I want to spend precious hours of my life. It was like reading a snuff film. The complete antithesis of sexy.
I also read the play Marat/Sade in college and saw the movie Quills so I knew Sade had been imprisoned in an insane asylum for his writings. That knowledge added to the creep factor of Sade.
The author did an amazing job with this biography. I still think Sade is the poster boy for creeps but at times I actually felt sorry for him. That almost shocked me as much as reading his book. Gray presented a very in-depth look at Sade which helped to explain why he was the way he was. She also tied him into the larger picture of the place and time he lived in. I am fascinated by that period of French history. For some reason it had never dawned on me that Sade lived then. Having read a lot of books about that period, I was familiar with a lot of the people and events Gray wrote about. When she wrote about Sade barely missing the guillotine I immediately thought of the story of Josephine Bonaparte. The same thing happened to her! Name called on the 8th of Thermidor, marked absent, no one really bothered to look around for the missing prisoner, then the next day - the ninth of Thermidor - Robespierre is arrested & guillotined and the Terror ends. Take about your close calls. Sadly, he was not in the same prison as her but he was in the same prison as de Laclos (the author of Dangerous Liaisons). I love finding out tidbits like that. Sade & De Laclos hated each other. Oooh, interesting! Author catfight!
Gray wrote a lot about Sade's relationships with women - his absent mother, his indulgent aunts who were all nuns, his masochistic first wife, his domineering mother-in-law, his sensitive second wife. She wrote about his hatred of motherhood and how his dislike of vaginal sex tied into his issues with motherhood. He had a real madonna/whore view of women that was intertwined with his snobbish beliefs about class. Those beliefs certainly shine through in the 50 pages of his one book I tried to read.
Gray also wrote a lot about Sade's legal troubles & prison time before the revolution. I had no idea he was imprisoned for so much of his life. And not for his writings but for actual crimes. There are 3 known incidents that got him in trouble. I find it hard to believe those were the only times he attacked women. Sade had bad luck his entire life but it couldn't have been bad enough that every time he attacked a woman he was caught.Gray made a good point that if Sade had limited his pervy behaviors to married women of his own class, he never would have gotten into trouble. However, unlike every other libertine in Europe, he wouldn't have sex with married women because he believed in the sanctity of marriage - HAHA. So he would kidnap and rape prostitutes instead. Because that's ok in his mind because they are lower class. I really feel for the women he attacked. He must have been so shudderingly off-the-charts weird to freak out the prostitutes like that. I was honestly very surprised when he got arrested. Nobility got away with A LOT back then. But not sad-sack Sade.
While I've come away from this biography with a much greater understanding of Sade, I still never understand why his first wife was the way she was. Gray suggests his wife was a masochist, which I certainly believe. I also think there was some sort of Stockholm Syndrome behavior occurring. She reminded me of women who are partners with serial killers and help them trap their victims. I don't get those women at all. Are the men so charming? So powerful? So dominant? Or are the women just so weak? So depressed? So stupid? She creeped me out like Sade did.
I'm glad I found this book. I was worried it would be dry and boring. Instead it was a compelling read. Anyone interested in that period of time or in mental illnesses or law/crime should read this book.
January 25, 2011
This book did a very good job of turning someone whose name has become more symbolic than anything back into a human being. Gray does a good job of separating de Sade's actual behaviors from his writings -- his sexual encounters were in fact not terribly different from many other aristocrats of the day (for the most part, and that's not to say that most aristocrats' behavior wasn't reprehensible or kinky); he left his kinkiest ideas to his fiction. She also separated his philosophical and political opinions from his writings -- as with his use of sex in fiction, de Sade used extremes in philosophy in order to shock or make a point. His actual beliefs are better found in his letters.
I cannot give this 5 stars for 2 reasons:
a: The book usually clips along at a fairly good pace, but slows down considerably when de Sade is in prison during the reign of Louis XVI, when he had nothing to do but write angry letters to his wife bitching about the food she sent him. And this lasted for FOURTEEN YEARS.
b: The book is consistently smattered with psychoanalytic language and theory, and Gray at one point even stops the action entirely to give us a Freudian theory for his actions -- some claptrap about infantile anally fixated maternal hatred neuroses bla bla bla....Yes, I know this was written in 1998, and the author was born in 1930, but it's no excuse. CBT and personality disorders have existed since the 1960s, and it's just...it's...there are no words. Conditioning and learning history describe his behaviors so much better and so much more concisely. I was pulling my hair out.
Overall, I considered this an excellent character study. Gray does a good job of putting the person back in the Marquis de Sade while also examining his works and what they mean, and putting his life and his writings in the context of the very turbulent times in which he lived.
I cannot give this 5 stars for 2 reasons:
a: The book usually clips along at a fairly good pace, but slows down considerably when de Sade is in prison during the reign of Louis XVI, when he had nothing to do but write angry letters to his wife bitching about the food she sent him. And this lasted for FOURTEEN YEARS.
b: The book is consistently smattered with psychoanalytic language and theory, and Gray at one point even stops the action entirely to give us a Freudian theory for his actions -- some claptrap about infantile anally fixated maternal hatred neuroses bla bla bla....Yes, I know this was written in 1998, and the author was born in 1930, but it's no excuse. CBT and personality disorders have existed since the 1960s, and it's just...it's...there are no words. Conditioning and learning history describe his behaviors so much better and so much more concisely. I was pulling my hair out.
Overall, I considered this an excellent character study. Gray does a good job of putting the person back in the Marquis de Sade while also examining his works and what they mean, and putting his life and his writings in the context of the very turbulent times in which he lived.
August 10, 2021
So as I read this book I was left with the question -- why is the Marquis de Sade even famous? It was interesting to read about him in the same way that it would interesting to read about anyone's life, but I kind of felt like "so why should I care?"
May 10, 2008
After reading the Marquis de Sade and seeing Quills, I had to learn more about the Marquis himself. This is where this book comes in. It is an interesting look at the dysfunctional triad of mother, daughter and son in law. Interlaced within the history of the Marquis's life is a look into many of the scandals that created the essence of who we all love and hate. Never dull and full of liberties on the part of the author to piece together the life of the Marquis, a must read for those needing a little more background on a complex man.
August 22, 2008
This biography is wonderfully written. The author tells De Sade's story without bias, keeping it lively and interesting (not a difficult task given the subject). It seems very thorough. The reader can leave this book feeling as though they've lived his life, as opposed to many other biographies that read like textbooks. Whether or not the readers would want that is up to them. As to be expected, it gets explicit in parts, so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone that offends easily.
August 12, 2016
Very good,scholarly biography of a man whose books I have never read.This bio.does not make me want to read them nor does it makes me like or admire him but I enjoyed reading his life pieced together from letters and diaries.I enjoyed the way the history of the Ancient Regime and the French Revolution were explained and related to his troubles.Not a man I would like to know but a very enjoyable book.
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