2 The main character in a novel by Diderot.
Notes for Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man (1782)
1 Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribond, par Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de Sade, publié pour la première fois sur le manuscrit autographe inédit, avec un avant-propos et des notes par Maurice Heine. Paris, Stendhal et Cie., 1926.
2 Ibid.
Notes for Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)
1 During the Revolution of 1848, it was detached from the larger work and widely disseminated as a stirring work of great patriotic import.
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1 See the Anecdotes of Procopius.
2 Adam was nothing, nor was Noah, but a restorer of humankind. An appalling catastrophe left Adam alone in the world, just as a similar event did Noah; but Adam’s tradition is lost to us, Noah’s has been preserved.
3 This article will be treated exhaustively further on; for the time being, we limit ourselves to laying some of the bases for the system to be developed later.
4 See Suetonius and Dion Cassius of Nicaea.
5 See the History of Zingua, Queen of Angola.
6 See the History of Zingua, Queen of Angola, written by a missionary.
7 A later part of this work promising us a much more extensive dissertation upon this subject, we have, here, limited ourselves to an analysis but roughly sketched and but boldly outlined.
8 A careful inspection of this religion will reveal to anyone that the impieties with which it is filled come in part from the Jews’ ferocity and innocence, and in part from the indifference and confusion of the Gentiles; instead of appropriating what was good in what the ancient peoples had to offer, the Christians seem only to have formed their doctrine from a mixture of the vices they found everywhere.
9 Inspect the history of every race: never will you find one of them changing the government it has for a monarchical system, save by reason of the brutalization or the superstition that grips them; you will see kings always upholding religion, and religion sanctifying kings. One knows the story of the steward and the cook: H and me the pepper; I’ll pass you the butter. Wretched mortals! are you then destined forever to resemble these two rascals’ master?
10 All religions are agreed in exalting the divinity’s wisdom and power; but as soon as they expose his conduct, we find nothing but imprudence, weakness, and folly. God, they say, created the world for himself, and up until the present time his efforts to make it honor him have proven unsuccessful ; God created us to worship him, and our days are spent mocking him! Unfortunate fellow, that God!
11 We are only speaking here of those great men whose reputation has been for a long while secure.
12 Each nation declares its religion the best of all and relies, to persuade one of it, upon an endless number of proofs not only in disagreement with one another, but nearly all contradictory. In our profound ignorance, what is the one which may please god, supposing now that there is a god? We should, if we are wise, either protect them all and equally, or proscribe them all in the same way; well, to proscribe them is certainly the surer, since we have the moral assurance that all are mummeries, no one of which can be more pleasing than another to a god who does not exist.
13 It has been said the intention of these legislators was, by dulling the passion men experienced for a naked girl, to render more active the one men sometimes experience for their own sex. These sages caused to be shown that for which they wanted there to be disgust, and to be hidden what they thought inclined to inspire sweeter desires; in either case, did they not strive after the objective we have just mentioned? One sees that they sensed the need of immorality in republican manners.
14 It is well known that the infamous and criminal Sartine devised, in the interests of the king’s lewdness, the plan of having Dubarry read to Louis XV, thrice each week, the private details, enriched by Sartine, of all that transpired in the evil corners of Paris. This department of the French Nero’s libertinage cost the State three millions.
15 Let it not be said that I contradict myself here, and that after having established, at some point further above, that we have no right to bind a woman to ourselves, I destroy those principles when I declare now we have the right to constrain her; I repeat, it is a question of enjoyment only, not of property: I have no right of possession upon that fountain I find by the road, but I have certain rights to its use; I have the right to avail myself of the limpid water it offers my thirst; similarly, I have no real right of possession over such-and-such a woman, but I have incontestable rights to the enjoyment of her; I have the right to force from her this enjoyment, if she refuses me it for whatever the cause may be.
16 The Babylonians scarcely awaited their seventh year to carry their first fruits to the temple of Venus. The first impulse to concupiscence a young girl feels is the moment when Nature bids her prostitute herself, and without any other kind of consideration she must yield instantly Nature speaks; if she resists, she outrages Nature’s law.
17 Women are unaware to what point their lasciviousness embellishes them. Let one compare two women of roughly comparable age and beauty, one of whom lives in celibacy, and the other in libertinage: it will be seen by how much the latter exceeds in éclat and freshness; all violence done Nature is far more wearing than the abuse of pleasures; everyone knows beds improve a woman’s looks.
18 The same thinker wished affianced couples to see each other naked before marriage. How many alliances would fail, were this law enforced! It might be declared that the contrary is indeed what is termed purchase of merchandise sight unseen.
19 The Moralities: “On Love.”
20 It must be hoped the nation will eliminate this expense, the most useless of all; every individual born lacking the qualities to become useful someday to the republic, has no right to live, and the best thing for all concerned is to deprive him of life the moment he receives it.
21 The Salic Law only punished murder by exacting a simple fine, and as the guilty one easily found ways to avoid payment, Childebert, king of Austrasia, decreed, in a writ published at Cologne, the death penalty, not against the murderer, but against him who would shirk the murderer’s fine. Ripuarian Law similarly ordained no more against this act than a fine proportionate to the individual killed. A priest was extremely costly: a leaden tunic, cut to his measurements, was tailored for the assassin, and he was obliged to produce the equivalent of this tunic’s weight in gold ; in default of which the guilty one and his family remained slaves of the Church.
22 Let it be remembered that foreign warfare was never proposed save by the infamous Dumouriez.
23 The poverty of the French language compels us to employ words which, today, our happy government, with so much good sense, disfavors; we hope our enlightened readers will understand us well and will not at all confound absurd political despotism with the very delightful despotism of libertinage’s passions.
Notes for Eugénie de Franval (1788)
1 Of which the full title is: Catalogue raisonné des œuvres de M. de S*** à l’époque du 1er octobre 1788, and the subtitle: Cette collection contient quinze volumes in-8° avec estampes. The fifteen volumes of which he gives the breakdown do not, of course, contain the clandestine works he was disinclined to acknowledge.
2 Eugénie was to appear as the seventh tale in the fourth volume of Sade’s stories and novellas.
3 Sade, of course, was from Provence.
4 D.-A.-F. de Sade: Historiettes, Contes et fabliaux/Dorci, Paris, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1957.
5 In a letter to Gaufridy, dated late in May, 1790, Sade relates his tale of woe concerning his removal from the Bastille. “I was taken out bare as the back of my hand, and all my effects, that is more than a hundred louis’ worth of furniture, clothing, and linen, six hundred volumes some of which very expensive and, what is irreparable, fifteen volumes of my manuscript works, ready for the printer—manuscripts over which I daily weep tears of blood—were placed under seals.”
6 Perhaps, said the anonymous reviewer of the work in the Journal de Paris on 6 Brumaire (28 October) of that same year, because the author “doubtless thought that this hue was better suited to us now and for some time to come, since in this realm [of tragedy] reality still continues to surpass fiction.”
7 These passages appear in italics herein.
Notes for Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised (1791)
1 Girouard was later to perish, under the Reign of Terror, on January 8, 1794.
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1 O ages yet to come! You shall no longer be witness to these horrors and infamies abounding!
2 The Marquis de Bièvre never made one quite as clever as the Nazarene’s to his disciple: “Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church”; and they tell us that witty language is one of our century’s innovations!
3 Cf. a work entitled The Jesuits in Fine Fettle.
4 See L’Historie de Bretagne by Dom Lobineau. (Maréchal de Retz: Gilles de Rais, marshal of Charles VII’s army.—Tr.)
5 Let this not be mistaken for a fable: this wretched figure existed in this same Lyon. What is herein related of his maneuvers is exact and authentic: he cost the honor of between fifteen and twenty thousand unhappy little creatures: upon the completion of each operation, the victim was embarked on the Rhône, and for thirty years the above-mentioned cities were peopled with the objects of this villain’s debauchery, with girls undone by him. There is nothing fictitious about this episode but the gentleman’s name.
6 Kié, the Emperor of China, had a wife as cruel and debauched as he; bloodshed was as naught to them, and for their exclusive pleasure they spilled rivers of it every day; within their palace they had a secret chamber where victims were put to death before their eyes and while they enjoyed themselves. Théo, one of this Prince’s successors, had, like him, a very bloodthirsty wife; they invented a brass column and this great cylinder they would heat red hot; unlucky persons were bound to it while the royal couple looked on: “The Princess,” writes the historian from whom we have borrowed these touches, “was infinitely entertained by these melancholy victims’ contortions and screams; she was not content unless her husband gave her this spectacle frequently.” Hist. des Conj. vol. 7, page 43.
7 This game, described above, was in great use amongst the Celts from whom we are descended (see Monsieur Peloutier’s Histoire des Celtes); virtually all these extravagances of debauchery, these extraordinary libertine passions, some part of which are described in this book and which, how ridiculously! today awaken the law’s attention, were, in days bygone, either our ancestors’ sports, games far superior to our contemporary amusements, or legalized customs, or again, religious ceremonies; currently, they are transformed into crimes. In how many pious rituals did not the pagans employ flagellation! Several people used these identical tortures, or passions, to initiate their warriors; this was known as huscanaver (viz., the religious ceremonies of every race on earth). These pleasantries, whose maximum inconvenience may be at the very most the death of a slut, are capital crimes at the moment. Three cheers for the progress of civilization! How it conspires to the happiness of man, and how much more fortunate than our forebears we are!
8 As for the monks of Saint Mary-in-the-Wood, suppression of the religious orders will expose the atrocious crimes of that horrible crew.
Notes for Bibliography
1 See the “Bibliographie des Œuvres de Sade” drawn up by Robert Valençay in Les Infortunes de la Vertu, Paris, Les Éditions du Point du Jour, 1946.
2 In a letter of March 6, 1791.
3 An earlier edition of The 120 Days, edited by Dr. Eugen Dühren, was published in 1904. The version is so riddled with errors, however, that Maurice Heine’s 1931–1935 edition must rightly figure as the original edition of this work.
4 Numbers 1 through 17 represent works mentioned in the 1788 Catalogue raisonné; numbers 18 through 20 are works seized at Sade’s publisher, Massé, on 15 Ventôse, An IX; number 21 is the projected ten-volume work burned at the Préfecture de Police after Sade’s death.
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