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by the Marquis de Sade. New York: Grove Press, 1988. Paperback. ISBN: 0802130852. When one is of a certain age, one discovers pornography and its confusing and arousing effects. This first porn is probably pictorial, soft-focus, silicon-enhanced. Everything's so glowing and nicely lit that one may as well be looking at stained glass windows. (Meeting one of the residents of this universe is about as likely as meeting a saint, too.) This pornography suffices for a while, until one discovers that there is a netherworld of desire where people do all sorts of things in addition to, or instead of, ordinary sex. Paraphilias, which basically cover everything that someone in Promise Keepers wouldn't admit to doing -- from anal sex to sadomasochism, from incest to the playfully named "watersports" -- exist in a country somewhere beyond straight fucking and sucking where people do (at least in their minds) the stuff that really turns them on. And there is pornography about this stuff. Lots of it, from books to videos. Once one is exposed to this more transgressive pornography, the soft-focus stuff pretty much loses its punch. The nastier stuff is more compelling because it reaches down into our minds, touches things we may find literally unthinkable, and makes us think about them in an uncontrollable way that can also be embarrassing, guilt-inducing, and very arousing. Somewhere on this journey from Air Brush Land to Nasty Land, you encounter the Marquis de Sade. Once you have discovered this author, you can be sure of two things: you have definitely reached the netherworld of sex, and once exposed to its denizens and their behavior, you'll find it very hard to go back. The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) was a French noble living at the time of the Revolution. It was a time when all the ideas and institutions that had held society together since the Dark Ages were being called into question: Royalty, the nation, the Church, the family, humanity's whole purpose on earth. It was a time of destruction and chaos, both politically and philosophically; what was not being burned and destroyed by mobs was being overthrown in the temple of people's hearts. It was also a time of infinite possibility, for when all the rules are revoked, practically anything is allowed. Thus de Sade's ideas -- a profound criticism of the ruling institutions of the day -- were not unusual, nor was the expression of these ideas in satirical novels and plays. What distinguishes de Sade from other figures of the day is the nature of his writing. De Sade chose to express his revolutionary ideas in the form of, as one of his books has it, "philosophy in the bedroom." His characters discuss, and act out, critical social theories as actors in one of the greatest works of pornography ever composed. For example, De Sade's critique of the church takes the form of orgies in which priests, monks, nuns and finally the Pope discuss and act out their own hypocrisy through acts of fantastic sex and violence. Before, during and after they fuck, the clerics and the prostitutes with whom they cavort discuss the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Church, religion in general and the concept of God. It takes some doing to pay attention to the philosophy, though, since the whole time the characters are fucking, sucking, pissing, shitting, whipping, masturbating, and even killing each other and a set of lesser humans, designated as victims by their class or their simple failure to be as nasty as the protagonists. The story begins with Juliette as a child being orphaned and put into a convent -- common in the day. When she reaches puberty, she is taken in hand by the Mother Superior of the convent and taught the arts of pleasure: kissing, "frigging," cunnilingus, fucking with dildoes. Her shock at the image of her guardians indulging in these activities lasts only a few moments; her resistance to joining in, once she gets turned on, is even shorter. Elizabeth is the first to be offered to my libertinage. "Place her," says Delbene, "in such a way she can kiss your dear little mouth while frigging you, and so that you'll receive a general stimulation, I'll take care of your asshole throughout the episode. Flavie dear, will you take Elizabeth's place. I recommend this exquisite creature's bubs to you," the Abbess adds, "suck them while she tickles you: in view of Volmar's tastes, you'd best run your tongue into her anus while, bending over you, she gives you the benefit of what her mouth can do.... I'll adjust myself so as to be able to suck both her ass and cunt while she renders you those same services. And finally, as for myself -- speak, my beloved, I am here to do your bidding." Warmed by the sight of what had been done for Volmar: "I'd love to embugger you," said I, "with this instrument." "Then do so, my darling, do whatever your heart desires," was Delbene's humble reply; she presented her buttocks. "There," said she, "mark it well. And spare it not." "Willingly!" I cried, sodomizing my instructress. Juliette soon leaves the convent and begins a career as a prostitute, thief, murderer and, lest we not forget the point of the book, a philosopher. She is mentored by a series of madams and perverted nobles; she goes into business for herself as a whore. Rising in society, she cavorts with princes, kings and the Pope; she and her companions also dally with servants, executioners, and the inmates of a madhouse. Their lust for sex knows no bounds of class, race or intelligence, but like some educated people, they prefer fucking somebody they can talk to. Someone who shares their philosophy and embraces "crime" is welcomed as a collaborator; anyone who quails is designated as a target of their lusts, a "victim." Juliette's thirst for erotic thrills expands until mere sex is insufficient. Once a whore, she is initiated into erotic violence, first as an adjunct to, then as the logical conclusion of, an orgy. The level of violence and the ingenuity with which it is committed rises page after page; "The Story of O" seems like a nursery school compared to the events in this book. Each of the sex scenes is punctuated by a philosophical discussion. A common pattern is for Juliette (who soon acquires an entourage of courtesans and thieves) to meet some worthy, indulge in a bout of fucking, and then embark on ten or fifteen pages of discussion of social mores and the superiority of the author's ideas. These interludes usually end with Juliette declaring, "Prince, your ideas are making my cunt drip," whereupon another, and usually more violent, sex scene begins. Lest the reader think I am some kind of real masochist, let me make one thing clear: I skip the philosophy parts. I just go right to the sex scenes. Here is a typical scene: Juliette arranges an orgy for one of her clients, Saint-Fond, a government minister. The orgy includes the murder of a whole family whose father denied Saint-Fond a political post. Among the personae are an executioner, Juliette's entourage of courtesans, and "three girls of condition spirited out of a convent at Melun, (whose) beauty was startling." Over a long night, Saint-Fond humiliates and rapes each member of the family while the teenagers and the prostitutes surround and stimulate him by sucking and whipping him or permitting him to fuck them. Everyone, male and female, is eventually butt-fucked (an obsession of de Sade's), and the family is slowly put to death while sex continues to go on all around and a sinister torture wheel waits in the corner. Then the three teenagers, no relation at all to the targeted family, are again raped, then killed. The last suffers this: "Look there," says the Minister. "I've saved the best for you."And the traitor does not fail to caress her and to kiss her tenderly upon the lips; yet again he embuggers her before delivering her to the killer. Delcour has her now; hideous are her screams; she is fitted into position [upon the torture device], fastened there, and the wheel begins to turn. Fucked now by one valet, now by the other, Saint-Fond sounds Delcour's ass while alternately kissing Palmire's behind and mine, and in a detached and fugitive manner fingering the three unoccupied assholes. Very soon the ascending volume and tone of the victim's screams give us report of her pain. Violent you may be certain it was; judge thereof by this detail: the blood was coming from her like one of those fine rains blown almost to mist by a strong wind." And that is only a quarter of the way through the book. One of the aspects of de Sade's genius is to invent a seemingly endless number of variations on ways to have sex and to commit violence, with the distinctions between the two fading as the book goes on. The first excerpt cited above comes from page 30; the second comes from page 340. Using this as a scale, you can imagine the depths to which the characters plunge by page 1200. It is difficult to express, without making a list, the variety of erotic couplings (and triplings, quadruplings, etc.) that take place. Every imaginable form of sex is performed, with both genders and all ages. Children are not exempt from orgies; both men and women regularly have sex with their own offspring as well as the denizens of orphanages, convents and the like. De Sade's imagination is just as fertile when dispatching victims; they are shot, stabbed, hung, drawn and quartered, torn apart by wild beasts. A great many die by poison. Basically, de Sade's philosophy, as expressed in "Juliette" and other books, is this: Human institutions, from the church to the family to the nation, are mere inventions. They are designed to cloak a human nature that is essentially selfish and violent. Humans are no better than animals; they possess more sophisticated mental faculties, but the proper use of these faculties is not the praise of God or the betterment of society but the pursuit of greed and pleasure. Therefore, any act, however filthy or violent, is permitted; in fact, since pleasure and violence are man's true purpose, the more filthy and violent, the better. But the author is not proposing anarchy; he imagines a club, whose rules run on for several pages, where libertines of like mind may cavort with each other and run roughshod over an endless supply of hapless victims. Here, in de Sade's imaginary domain, the distinction between ruler and ruled is reduced to a matter of sheer power: I fell to toying with a lovely thing of sixteen; I was already handling her breasts and cunt when Clairwil scolded me for the delicate and unduly decent manner I was employing. "That's not the way you behave with this trash," said she, "they don't even deserve the honor of being selected for our consumption.... Command, they obey." I altered my tone at once, and my orders were responded to with blindest obedience and inspiring alacrity. But sex and violence are not the only tools de Sade uses to transgress and tear down the reigning institutions of the day (Juliette was written in 1798); Juliette finances her ever-expanding appetites with some inspired thievery. Indeed, her lust for gold is what brings her into contact with kings and the Pope. She ingeniously robs them all. The final brick in de Sade's tower of satire is that none of these sins are ever punished. In fact, the characters survive by an ethos that turns traditional thinking upside down. They hold that virtue is always punished, while unbridled lust and greed are never punished. Thus, by the end of the book, Juliette's sister Justine -- whose adventures as a complete and total bottom are chronicled in her own book, written before "Juliette" -- shows up and, after being raped by Juliette's party, flees into a storm and is struck by lightning. Laughing uproariously, the libertines drag her smoking corpse back into the castle and resume making free with it. But the book is not without humor. In fact, a light tone suffuses the scenes of sex and violence. In one long and bloody orgy, one of Juliette's courtesans is seized by their host, a monster with a gigantic prick (most of the men in the book -- it was written by a man, after all -- have gigantic pricks) who has the intention of fucking her ass. "How do you expect me to endure this?" she demands. "With patience and understanding," is the monster's phlegmatic reply. In fact, the more evil and violent the character, the more likely they are to show a mild and humorous character. Only when they're coming do they really let themselves go. Readers who know from experience violence is a turn-off will not want to get this book. Most people, however -- if the constant diet of sex and violence created by Hollywood is any sign -- will find this book extremely titillating. It is really quite a test of one's tastes, in fact, or else a sign of how far one is willing to go with fantasy. The reader who begins at the beginning is seduced along with Juliette. First one is convinced that juicy scenes between lesbian residents of a convent are very arousing -- not much of a stretch, considering the prevelance of juicily simulated lesbian sex in today's pornography. Then the reader is exposed by degrees to the rest of the catalogue of lust. Erotic whippings become serious torture without one quite realizing it; playful strangling, which we all indulge in, becomes actual strangulation, and once one murder is committed, everything else follows. Eventually the reader realizes what is happening and questions his or her own character. What kind of person am I, anyway, to get off on reading about this vicious behavior? A person just like any other, de Sade would probably reply -- one who merely recognizes his natural impulses. But in our day, we know that the violence committed in this book has an echo in the real world, where people, including children, really are raped and tortured to death. So anyone with a conscience has to wonder at some point, why do the depictions of sex and violence in this book arouse me so much, and what does that say about me and my carefully constructed social personality? I'm no psychologist and can only answer for myself: De Sade's fantasies only arouse me when I'm aroused, when I'm masturbating, and that occurs seldom enough for me to safely compartmentalize it. While my more common violent fantasies, say, about firing a bazooka into the noisy S.U.V.s passing outside my house, occur frequently, they don't occur in the context of sex. Now, how you get from that to, say, raping and killing Jon Benet Ramsey, to name one recent famous case where the perpetrator seems to have crossed over the line from fantasy to reality, I don't know. To call "Juliette" an erotic classic is to understate the case for it. Two hundred years after it was written, it remains great pornography. It will take you weeks if not months to get through, so it's a great value. And it's one of the few pornographic books I can go back to again and again, and find arousing a scene I've read several times before. It should be on the bookshelf of anyone who has outgrown vanilla pornography.
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Last updated 3 Jan 2004. Email . Copyright 2004 Mark Pritchard |