References
- See Beauvoir's “Must we burn Sade?” Klossowski's Sade My Neighbour, Bataille's “The Use Value of D.A.F. de Sade”, and Lacan's “Kant with Sade”, in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis.
- Beauvoir, in her article, “Must We Burn Sade?” claims (with regard to Sade) that “even his admirers will readily admit that his work is, for the most part, unreadable” (in Marquis de Sade, 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings. Compiled and trans. Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver. Intro. Simone de Beauvoir and Pierre Klossowski [New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1966], 4. Hereafter cited as DF). And Blanchot, referring to the story of Justine and Juliette, calls it, “a work perfectly unreadable: unreadable as much for its scope, as it is for its composition, its redundancies, the vehemence of its descriptions, and the indecency of its barbarity, which could only hasten it to Hell”, (Lautréamont et Sade [Paris: Les éditions des minuit, 1963], 18. Hereafter cited as LS). All translations from French to English of the book Lautréamont et Sade (the principal text with which this article deals) are my own.
- Leisure, Veblen claims, is a sign of aristocracy in our culture of conspicuous consumption. “In the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership” (Thorstein Veblen, “From the theory of the leisure class”, in Reflections on Commercial Life, ed. Patrick Murray [London: Routledge, 1997], 319). Sade's point is that the leisure classes make the best libertines because the wealthier have the time and inclination to reach beyond society's ‘norms’ for their enjoyment. Veblen's point is that leisure (or the illusion of leisure via a clean and well-decorated house) is not only the sign of wealth, but, in our culture, of “reputability” and “decency” (Ibid., 328).
- An interesting side note here: One of the characters most hated by the libertines is one of their fellow members who, after participating with them in savage crimes, has the habit of going to a chapel to pray and ask for forgiveness. This strikes the libertines as particularly disgusting—more so than any of the murders and tortures that they could ever perform.
- Or so we might think upon first glance. We might see it otherwise (along with Bataille) later on within this argument. We may find that Sade very much leans upon notions of God and Godliness within his work, and I would declare that idealism is not so far away from here.
- Epicurus claims that the very dawning of human society was forged when humans got together and decided that the most logical way to exist as a group was to ensure that the least of its members would not be harmed. That way, we all live a more tranquil life. In fact, by Epicurus’ ethic, I act according to the social contract so that I feel no ‘guilt’ lest my neighbours find out my immoral actions, and since there is no way for me to be absolutely sure that they will never find out, the best solution is to simply act morally. So, acting according to the social contract is a means for me to live a more tranquil life. Furthermore, in Plato's Republic, the character of Glaucon explains a similar ethic: When asked for his definition of justice, he claims that justice is for the weak. The story of ‘the Ring of Gyges’ is meant to be an illustration of the fact that if any man (even a virtuous shepherd!) could ‘get away’ with any amount of selfish and evil actions, he would. So, since each of us acts according to self-interest, it is best that we make laws that safe-guard against such behaviour; thus the weak are protected from the evil acts of the strong (who could more easily act with impunity). It is interesting to note that in neither of these examples is it denied that man is inherently selfish. This gives credence to Sade's belief. See Epicurus's Letter to Menoeceus and Plato's The Republic.
- The Society for the Friends of Crime (Sade's foremost group of libertines) is based upon “the complicity of the passions and the mutual respect for dangerous ideas” (Ibid., 26).
- See, for instance, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Beyond Good and Evil. Oscar Wilde writes in the preface (the opening page), “those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope” (The Picture of Dorian Gray [London: Penguin Books, 1985], 21). And, later on in the novel, Lord Henry says, “it often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence…their entire lack of style” (Ibid., 130). Also: “The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are so colourless”, and: “Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new hedonism that was to re-create life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely puritanism” (Ibid., 101 and 162). What is bad is that which ‘lacks charm’, ‘lacks style,’ is ‘inartistic’, ‘colourless’ or ‘uncomely.’ As for Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, he claims that a fault in philosophers is that “they have lost their sense of humour” (Beyond Good and Evil. trans. Walter Kaufmann [New York: Random House, Inc., 1989], 37). A fault in the average man is that he is ‘odious’ and disgusting and anyone who does not notice this is “certainly not a man of elevated tastes” (Ibid., 37f). In fact, one must shed the ‘bad taste’ of agreeing with the many (Ibid., 53). Whereas free sprits with a true energy for life are “grateful to god, devil, sheep, and worm in us; curious to a vice, investigators to the point of cruelty, with uninhibited fingers for the unfathomable…ready for every venture” (Ibid., 55).
- Lacan addresses this issue in great complexity, specifically in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (Seminar VII). He claims that one might risk everything for the possibility of having sex with a beautiful woman, just for the small chance to cut her up. This ‘risking everything’ is much in accordance with Sade's desire that we live extremely.
- « Qu'à l'homme qui se lie avec énergie au mal, jamais rien de mal ne peut arriver » (DF 23). I must also make note of the difficulty of translating all of the French words with the root-word ‘mal’ in them. In French, ‘mal’ has the connotation of evil, harm, sickness or illness, pain, trouble, bad, difficulty, and more. To have ‘malchance’ means to have misfortune. ‘Malheureux’ can mean to be unhappy, miserable, unfortunate or unlucky, depending on the context. ‘Malheur’ can mean adversity, misfortune, disaster or tragedy. Blanchot uses many of these ‘mal’ words in this section. It is a very difficult word to translate since English tends to have different (more precise but less full) words for each connotation, and the overall effect of ‘mal’ is lost.
- “It's for this reason that, in spite of the analogy, it seems correct to let Sacher Masoch be the father of masochism and Sade be that of sadism” (LS 30).
- Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Dennis Porter (London: Routledge, 1992), 78.
- “The theoretical developments therein are especially numerous”, (LS 18).
- « l'égalité des êtres, c'est le droit de disposer également de tous les êtres » (LS 20).
- Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, 1977.
- Blanchot claims that for Sade, a libertine's view of her or his victim is that she or he is merely “a simple element, indefinitely interchangeable in an immense erotic exchange” (LS, 32).
- See 120 Days of Sodom, 255–260 for this particular roll call. By way of example, I give descriptions of two of the children: “Augustine, daughter of a Languedoc baron, fifteen years old, alert and pretty little face”, “Zelamir, thirteen, son of a Poitou squire” (SD, 259).
- Moreover, perversion itself is a human quality requiring a full Other. On this we can agree with Paul Moyaert when he writes: “Such perversions are not possible without a basic recognition of the Other as a person…. In perversion, one aims above all and to an extreme degree at the subjective reactions of the Other as a person. In sadism, one does not permit the Other to disappear into the impersonal exterior of his or her existence” (Moyaert, “The Phenomenology of Eros: A Reading of Totality and Infinity, IV.B”, in: The Face of the Other & The Trace of God: Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. ed. Jeffrey Bloechl (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 40. In other words, it's no fun for the sadist if the torture victim cannot feel, cannot see, does not respond to the torture as a human person. Although Sade attempts to ‘get past’ the person by utilitarian means (by turning his victims into numbers with roles to play), it is clear that his joy presupposes that which he wants to get past. It is the ‘getting past’ itself which becomes enjoyable.
- The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 75. Lacan further writes that in Kant's hands, “No Wohl, whether it be our own or that of our neighbour, must enter into the finality of moral action…. Thus action is moral only when it is dictated by the motive that is articulated in the maxim alone” (Ibid., 76). The correlation to Sade is obvious: in both cases, people are reduced to the role they play in carrying out their duty, be that duty to the moral law or to the law of the orgy.
- LS 32, my emphasis.
- “Sade's work is a chaos of clear ideas where everything is said, but also where everything is concealed” (LS 36).
- “Non seulement son œuvre, mais sa pensée restent impénétrables,—et cela, bien que les développements théoriques y soient en très grand nombre, qu'il les répète avec une patience déconcertante, qu'il raisonne de la manière la plus claire et avec une logique très suffisant…Il explique, il affirme, il prouve; il revient cent fois sur le même problème» (LS 18).
- Maurice Blanchot, The Gaze of Orpheus, trans. Lydia Davis (Barrytown: Station Hill Press, 1981), 40.
- Avicenna, Metaphysics, I; commenting on Aristotle, Topics I.11.105a4–5. For more on Avicenna, see Robert Wisnovsky, “Avicenna and the Avicennian Tradition”, in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
- Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 7.
- For full passage, see above, endnotes 3 and 42. The phrase “un logique très suffisante” could also be translated as “a very sufficient logic” which indicates even more strongly its oddity, since something is either sufficient or it is not: There are not, strictly speaking, degrees of sufficiency or adequacy.
- Maurice Blanchot, “Literature and the Right to Death“ in The Gaze of Orpheus, 54.