Joel Warner’s “The Curse of the Marquis de Sade”
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
There's not a perversion in sight, except the financial. He wrote it on a roll like Kerouac. That was new to me (Kerouac had a typewriter. De Sade had a pot of glue. I hope it was glue. Maybe he made do with what was to hand...)
The same curse can be said to vest in almost any literary work which has gone missing in action. It's why "the Hitler Diaries" happened: the value to some of the goods as handled is inestimable. People still say the Mona Lisa returned after theft is a fake and some Mafia lord has the real one in a safe, to gloat over. Perhaps that's why "glass onion" had it?
"Possession" by A.S.Byatt is a fictionalisation of the problem. Beautifully written.
If you were a soi-disant author, man of letters, handy with a whip, and about to be consumed by the wreckage of your prison .. wouldn't you grab that roll of bog-paper you'd been writing on? Apparently not. Maybe he was saner than people think?
here is an interesting french person. Sophie Germain. Write an article about her. spend money studying her. put a biography of her out. put her in your literary magazines. celebrate her. make movies about her. she never raped anyone. she helped found number theory which you use every time you pick up a phone or a computer.
OP's question is also my question. Why is this vile little man being promoted so much? After all, his entire existence and works are simply a declaration that humanity and nature are really just playthings for pleasure and settling scores with an abhored nature for a people like the Marquis. I can see how that sort of 'philosophy' would carry weight in some influential quarters.
So the simple rebut is that the pseudo intellectual classes always poo poo what appeals to the common man. But they love this stuff, and, the common people do not like it. That’s really the only thing that is interesting about de Sade and his fan club: the curious inversion.
& p.s. my personal sense is that de Sade legitimizes oppression as natural pleasure and that’s what makes him the court philosopher of the modern elite.
that's funny in a sad way. no, the post-enlightenment post-rationalist elite, the 'modern age'.
And this: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc/c/...
Safe to say Elon has some affinity for De Sade.
"Promoted" or "fascinated" are the wrong words. Sade is a classic and that's not because he was a nice guy. The same happens with many other famous authors. Fame is not a prize for being virtuous. It's what he wrote, not what he was.
If you want to censor his books, you're not punishing him, the man has been dead for a long time, he doesn't care. You're punishing all potential readers.
No. Not fascinated, heavily promoted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade_in_popular_cul...
Much of it so extreme that it is comical. What is both funny and transgressive is that he takes pretty much everything that we take morally granted and throws it back at us as just another intellectual construct. It is unsettling and I don't blame anyone for not liking him.
However, the fact remains that literary giants like Apollinaire, Breton, Beckett and more had a high opinion of him. Sade's influence was far from insignificant, and the dismissive tone of your comment comes across as somewhat presumptuous.
You named a few renowned intellects. (As I said before, 'the elite' of the modern age.) Must I fall prostate before their authority so as not to come across as "presumptuous"?
De Sade is important as a spiritual and intellectual weathervane. A sign of the age, this age, that rages on ..
* the 'accuser'
Which is fine. I am not trying to convince you, I am responding to your (and GGP's) question on why he is promoted.
> Must I fall prostate before their authority so as not to come across as "presumptuous"?
Of course not. On the other hand, denying that these people's literary opinion has value beyond some vile feelings about abhorring nature does come across as presumptuous.
On the second point you have misunderstood as well. They are entitled to their opinion, and are representative of a selected subset of thinkers in their era. The main issue is how they position themselves in relationship to "nature" (as you put it) which is rejected. Presumptuous only enters the picture if one insists, as you do, that such a choice can only be validated by a cultural and intellectual establishment (which is also rather characteristic of that set).
Your question was simple: "OP was asking why de Sade is promoted so heavily. [...] OP's question is also my question. Why is this vile little man being promoted so much?"
My answer to you was simply in response to that question. I don't claim that these people are right, I don't claim that their reading is the only possible reading. I try to explain under which possible reading Sade interests some people enough that they promote him.
You are welcome to rebut my point, but to do it, it is not enough to give an alternative reading. This is a different debate, which you would need to take up with people who are interested in promoting Sade (of which I am not).
> Presumptuous only enters the picture if one insists, as you do, that such a choice can only be validated by a cultural and intellectual establishment
Please give me the quote(s) where I do that. This is not the point I was trying to make, so if I mis-expressed my idea I would welcome an opportunity to correct myself.
1. Why do sportspeople/influencers/singers make millions while young mathematicians/physicists/writers/poets/sculptors/etc languish in obscurity, most of the time penniless. Why did Yitang Zhang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang) have to do accounting of a Subway franchise and deliver food? Why did Abel have to die of tuberculosis and poverty. Posed this way, the question is mundane and the answer is simple: Most people value certain things and are willing to pay for them and are not interested in and are unwilling for other things.
2. However, there are stories that would be compelling to a mass audience. You mention Germain, her story would be a great period drama (backdrop of Revolution, being a woman scholar in an antagonistic society, etc.) There are many other similar stories: Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Sofya Kovalevskaya. This would be a great Netflix series, one episode for each perhaps. If these stories are not spicy enough for modern streaming tastes, e.g. not enough sex or adventure (Germain never married, Agnesi was very religious, Kovalevskaya was married), one can use biographies of Ada Lovelace (gambling, mad&bad Lord Byron, insanity) or Émilie du Châtelet (lovers with Voltaire, 'nuff said). Or, if there's production budget, Hypatia.
So the questions is: why are these stories not told more often? Hard to tell. Probably because (1) producers worry that any mention of math or science will turn off potential viewers (2) screenwriters ar just not that familiar with this people. I think (2) is teh larger factor.
There was: