Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

by Marquis de Sade

  Sade, disciple of the Encyclopedia

  This was to reject straight off all the current charm—all the perennial facilities—of literature. This was also to lay oneself open to a new difficulty. For, you know, this lonely man did after all have to go and invent God, and the spirits, and the satyrs, and the Minotaur. Now you’ll not be very far advanced toward acquaintance with him until you have managed—by consulting nothing outside the bounds of human nature—to account for not just our real societies and the passions that agitate them, but also for those vast fantastic societies which accompany them like their shadow. Such is the weight with which, all of a sudden, the death of God falls upon Letters. Voltaire is human, I know. He even belongs among the better specimens of common everyday man. However, there is no getting away from the fact that there have been wars and great religions, migrations and Empires, the Inquisition and human sacrifice—and that, in fine, men have not very often resembled Voltaire.

  “Never mind,” replies the Encyclopedia. “We are not presumptuous. We shall have the necessary patience. We already have man for a start: he is right here, we have him before our eyes. We are companions in exile (if it be a question of exile). We have but to observe man objectively, to submit him to our investigations. Sooner or later he’ll come clean. Should he contrive to hide (for he is crafty) some one or other of his penchants from us, our grandchildren will get at them. Time is on our side. For the present, let us compile our notes and assemble our collections.”

  Sade belongs to his age. He too begins with analyzing and patient collecting. That gigantic catalogue of perversions, The 120 Days of Sodom, was for a long time taken to be the summit and conclusion of his work. Not at all; it is the foundation of his work, and the breaking of ground for it. Such a beginning would have won approval from the Encyclopedia. Indeed, for rigorousness Sade outdoes any of the Encyclopedists, who (thought he) all fall more or less rapidly into dishonesty: some, like Rousseau, because they are weak-natured and prone to tears, forever being embarrassed by things as they are, always ready to shrink from the sight, from the touch, from the sound of man such as their senses perceive him to be, and to chase instead after some sort of kindly savage (whose existence the history of peoples denies a thousand times over). Others, like Voltaire, because of their hardheadedness and unemotional character, being quite incapable of believing in the truth of passions they themselves do not experience. Or still others, like Diderot, brilliant but frivolous, skipping from one idea to the next. Voltaire’s version of man may explain how humankind came to invent the spade; Jean-Jacques’, the hayloft; Diderot’s, conversation. But ogres and inquisitions and wars? “Eh,” replies Voltaire, “those poor people were mad. We shall correct all that.” “That is exactly what I call cheating,” rejoins Sade; “we set out to understand man, and before we have even begun you are already trying to change him.”

  Where Voltaire and Jean-Jacques cheat

  This rigor—I am much tempted to say, this heroism—might, it cannot be denied, have played Sade false and led him astray (as it did, at about the same period, that hot-blooded little fool and very able writer, Restif de la Bretonne). Such was not the case. Reiterating them through ten volumes and supporting them with a thousand examples, a Krafft-Ebing was to consecrate the categories and distinctions the Divine Marquis traced. Later, a Freud was to adopt Sade’s very method and principle. There has not, I think, been any other example, in our Letters, of a few novels providing the basis, fifty years after their publication, for a whole science of man. It must surely be agreed that, before he was deprived of his liberty, Sade must have been an even keener observer than he was a tireless reader. Or else that a certain fire in him caused him to feel—and also enabled him to intuit—the broadest range of passions. And to me it seems strange that this has not earned him more gratitude. That said, it is all too obvious that scientific rigor, in such matters, entails its danger: it usually leads to awarding overmuch and too exclusive importance, in the study of the passions, to the physical aspect of love (as, in social economy, it leads to overemphasis upon individual interest). For the existence of the soul, even the existence of the mind, may be easily denied; but not copulation.

  Another facility; and Sade refuses it no less severely. That which is common to most erotic books, and which is absent from his, is, as we have noted, a certain superior tone (and it could just as well be called an inferior tone), a certain air of sufficiency (or insufficiency, if you prefer to call it that). More precisely, a certain stiltedness, an aloofness of style, a certain abrupt divergence of style from content. For literature halts, and so almost does language, before an event (which is sometimes called animal, or bestial) wherewith the mind seems to have nothing to do; and which one therefore confines oneself to ascertaining and recording, either—like Boccaccio or Crébillon—with an amused satisfaction, or with a few reservations, like Margaret of Navarre or Godart d’Aucourt. But this divorce they establish, this distance they preserve is unacceptable to Sade. “Man is all of a piece,” says he, “and lucid. There is nothing he does but he does it as a reasoning being.” Whence it is his heroes accept themselves for what they are, constantly, down to their last aberrations, and keep themselves under their mind’s survey. “We buggers,” one of them declares (but all the others speak in the same vein), “pride ourselves upon our frankness and upon exactitude in our principles.” Speeches and reflections are what set them in action.

  Man undertakes nothing that is not subject to the scrutiny of his reason

  Therein resides their weakness. For reflections and speeches could then also appease them. No argument, however wise, does not accept in advance to bow before a rebuttal if in the latter it recognizes wisdom superior to its own. Thus does the Léonore of Aline et Valcour more than once elude rape by means of the excellent pretexts she invents on the spur of the moment. Justine herself is again and again invited to refute her persecutors. There is never any deviation from the rule: “No transports,” she is told. “Give me arguments. I’ll cede to them if they are good.” Now, Justine has a head on her shoulders. The problem presented to her is so honestly presented—so detailed, so explicit—that we expect her to find the solution to it at any moment. One word and the riddle would be solved. Justine, or the new Oedipus.

  VI. THREE RIDDLES

  Most of these riddles have provided no end of diversion since Sade’s time. The danger is that we today tend to consider them separately whereas Sade poses them simultaneously and in combined form; the danger is also that, detached from one another, they are too familiar to us, and the answer to them—or the difficulty of answering them—too evident. But let’s have a close look at the texts.

  “First of all,” says Sade, “the exact details. Who are you, and what are you after in this world? Only too often I behold you asleep, inert, or just barely alive, coming and going like some organic statue. This statue—is it you? No, you would have yourself a conscious being, as conscious as possible, and rational. You seek happiness, which increases consciousness tenfold. What happiness? Ordinarily it is located in pleasure and in love. All well and good. But one thing: avoid confusing the two. To love and to taste pleasure are essentially different; proof thereof is that one loves every day without tasting pleasure, and that one still more frequently tastes pleasure without loving. Now, while an indisputable pleasure goes with the gratification of the senses, love, you will admit, is accompanied by nuisances and troubles of every sort. ‘But moral pleasures,’ do you say? Indeed. Do you know of a single one that originates anywhere but in the imagination? Only grant me that freedom is this imagination’s sole sustenance; and the joys it dispenses to you are keen to the extent the imagination is unhampered by reins or laws. What? Fix some a priori rule upon the imagination? Why, is it not imprudent merely to speak of rules? Leave the imagination free to follow its own bent.

  The unique and its property

  “Pleasure, that was what we were discussing. Here we still have to distinguish the pleasur
e you sense from that which you think you bestow. Now, from Nature we obtain abundant information about ourselves, and precious little about others. About the woman you clasp in your arms, can you say with certainty that she does not feign pleasure? About the woman you mistreat, are you quite sure that from abuse she does not derive some obscure and lascivious satisfaction? Let us confine ourselves to simple evidence: through thoughtfulness, gentleness, concern for the feelings of others we saddle our own pleasure with restrictions, and make this sacrifice to obtain a doubtful result. Rather, is it not normal for a man to prefer what he feels to what he does not feel? And have we ever felt a single impulse from Nature bidding us to give others a preference over ourselves?”

  “Still in all,” Justine replies, “the moral imperative . . .”

  “Ah, morals,” Sade goes on, “a word or two about morals, if you like. Are you then unaware that murder was honored in China, rape in New Zealand, theft in Sparta? That man you watch being drawn and quartered in the market place, what has he done? He ventured to acquit himself in Paris of some Japanese virtue. That other whom we have left to rot in a dank dungeon, what was his crime? He read Confucius. No, Justine, the vice and virtue they shout about are words which, when you scan them for their meaning, never yield anything but local ideas. At best, and if you consider them rightly, they tell you in which country you should have been born. Moral science is simply geography misconstrued.”

  “But we who were born in France,” says Justine.

  A slaves’ morality

  “I was coming to that. It is indeed true that, from earliest childhood, we hear nothing but lectures on charity and goodness. These virtues, as you know, were invented by Christians. Do you know why? The answer is, that being themselves slaves, powerless and destitute, for their pleasures—for their very survival—they could look nowhere but to their masters’ bounty. Their whole interest lay in persuading those masters to behave charitably. To that end they employed all their parables, their legends, their sayings, all their seductive wiles. Those masters, great fools that they were, let themselves be taken in. So much the worse for them. But we philosophers, with more experience behind us, we shall, by pursuing pleasure in the manner we wish and pursuing it with all our might, do exactly what your beloved slaves practiced, Justine, and not what they preached.”

  “And remorse?” Justine timidly asks. “What shall you do about remorse?”

  “Haven’t you already noticed? The only deeds man is given to repent are those he is not accustomed to performing. Get into the habit, and there’s an end to qualms and regrets; whereas one crime may perhaps leave us uneasy, ten, twenty crimes do not.”

  “I have never tried.”

  “Why not try it and find out? Furthermore, it is vouched for by the innumerable examples offered to us day in, day out by those thieves and brigands who, most appropriately, are called hardened criminals. The further one sinks into stupidity, the better disposed one becomes for faith; similarly, oft-repeated crime renders one callous. There you have the very best proof that virtue is but a superficial principle in man.”

  “However,” Justine insinuates, “had there formerly been some agreement entered into by men, some understanding binding man to man, which our honor or our well-being might enjoin us to uphold—”

  “Ah, ha,” says Sade, “you raise there the entire question of the social contract.”

  “Perhaps I do.”

  “And I fear you misunderstand it. But let us see. You claim that in the earliest stage of their societies men concluded a pact along these lines: ‘I shall do you no ill so long as you do me none.’”

  “It could have been a tacit arrangement,” Justine remarks. “Anyhow, I fail to see how, without some such thing, any society could be founded or last one day.”

  “All right. A pact, and one which must constantly receive fresh adherents, one which must be reindorsed by each of us.”

  “Why not?”

  “I would simply draw your attention to one thing, that a pact of this kind presupposes the equality of the contracting parties. I renounced doing you harm; which means I was free to harm you up until then. I renounce harming you now; this means I have been free to harm you up until now.”

  “Well?”

  The social contract

  “Imagine however that you are delivered utterly into my power the way a slave is into his master’s, the way a man condemned to die is handed over to his executioner. How could it possibly occur to me to strike a bargain with you whereby you acquire illusory rights through my foregoing real rights? If you are unable to hurt me, why in the world should I fear you and deprive myself for your sake? But let us go still further. You will grant me that everybody draws his pleasure from the exercise of his particular faculties and attributes: like the athlete from wrestling, and the generous man from his benevolent actions; thus also the violent man from his very violence. If you are completely in my power, it is from oppressing you that I am going to reap my greatest joys.”

  “Is it possible?” wonders Justine. “Is it human?”

  “That man be human is not something I’d stake my life on. However, observe this also: as the mighty man takes pleasure from the exercise of his strength, so does the gentle or the weak man profit from his compassion. He too has a good time. It is his own way of having a good time; and that is his business. Why the devil must I further reward him for the enjoyment he gives himself?”

  “Thus you see,” says Justine, “that there are a thousand varieties of weakness and strength.”

  “I don’t doubt that. Civilization has changed the aspect of Nature; civilization nonetheless respects her laws. The rich of today are just as ferocious in their exploitation of the poor as the violent used to be in their vexation of the helpless. All these financiers, all these important personages you see would bleed the entire population dry if they fancied its blood might yield a few grains of gold.”

  “It is indeed dreadful,” Justine admits, “and I must own I have seen some examples of it.”

  VII. THREE MORE RIDDLES

  That religion, conventional morality, society itself are among those malignant inventions which enable certain individuals, they being none other than the most powerful individuals, to victimize the lower classes—this is a proposition contradicted by no eighteenth-century writer concerned with ideas. The wise, the modest Vauvenargues himself appeals in the name of Nature. Voltaire simply finds religion to blame for the state of affairs, Rousseau blames society, Diderot the going morality. And Sade blames them all at the same time. Aye, the laws are harsh, their enforcement is implacable, the authorities are despotic. (We are rushing, says Sade—and Sade is the only one saying it—toward Revolution.7) Very well. What is left for him to do who has grasped this truth, and who is nevertheless powerless to put a speedy end to so many oppressions?

  If nothing else he can at least free himself of them, inwardly defeat their influence upon him. Grimm, Diderot, Rousseau, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse or Madame d’Epinay cleave, as regards morality, to a single tenet which they sometimes proclaim openly, sometimes conceal: that one must in every case discover and then heed the heart’s first and most spontaneous prompting; by dint of patience and of weeding out obstructions, restore the primitive man in oneself; and in oneself restore—they add—natural goodness.

  Of the various Savages of Tahiti, Bougainville’s Voyages, Histoire des Sévarambes, Supplements to the Voyages and Supplements to the Supplements, which toward 1760 were the fare of sensitive souls, modern sociology has left nothing intact. Nothing except the yarns. It could have been expected.

  Primitive mentality

  For I see very well that Tahitian savages know nothing of our laws and of our moral codes. But what if they know others, no less severe or, who can tell, crueler still? Shall we go a little further? I can see very well that they do not have our coaches or our cannons. And if this were deliberate? What if they had known our civilization, and then given it up (as you are tempted t
o do)? It is said, after all, that the Chinese invented gunpowder long ago, and the Romans the elevator. The Tahitians you behold are perhaps the last vestiges of a glorious and prosperous society, which had its palaces and its pomp—and then came to know the vanity of riches and of display. Regarding languages, Meillet points out that there is no particular one about which we can say with certainty that it is closer to its origins than others. Likewise, not a single people exists that we can with complete honesty call primitive.

  “Why,” Jean-Jacques replies, “as for this primitive man, it’s enough for me to experience him in myself. And I know he is good.”

  “I’m not so sure of it,” says Sade.

  About the pleasures of cruelty

  Everybody has complained, and rightly enough, that there are too many tortures in Justine—and in La Nouvelle Justine a hundred times too many. Too many strappadoes and needles, gibbets and pulleys, whips and irons. All the same, let’s not be hypocrites. Our European literature includes another work, a greatly esteemed one, which contains (together with illustrations) more tortures by far than all of Sade’s writings, and in its tortures more refinements, and in its refinements more ingenuity: not thirty or forty, but one hundred thousand women bundled in dry straw and then slowly burned alive (after having first been gagged, to reduce the level of their screaming); and other women spread-eagled on nail-studded beds, and raped in front of their impaled husbands; and princes and princesses grilled over live coals; and peasant women in chains (those sweet, lamblike creatures, says the author) lashed and clubbed while dying of systematic starvation. At the end of which it isn’t by the dozen (as in La Nouvelle Justine) the victims are counted, but by the million. Twenty million, according to the author. He is a respectable author, and reliable historians (such as Gomara and Fray Luis Bertram) are there to confirm his allegations to within a round million; for this we are referring to is no novel but a piece of pure and simple reportage: the Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies of Father Bartolomé de Las Casas, whom no one is likely to accuse of designing to flatter our wicked instincts. Nor were the Spanish soldiers who set out for the New World selected for their cruelty. Who were they? Sightseers, ordinary adventurers, like you and me. What happened? Why, native populations were turned over to them.