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The definitive compilation of texts from “a great, horrifying, but also vastly illuminating figure . . . one of the most radical minds in Western history” (Newsweek).
The Marquis de Sade, vilified by respectable society from his own time through ours, apotheosized by Apollinaire as “the freest spirit that has yet existed,” wrote The 120 Days of Sodom while imprisoned in the Bastille. An exhaustive catalogue of sexual aberrations and the first systematic exploration—a hundred years before Krafft-Ebing and Freud—of the psychology of sex, it is considered Sade’s crowning achievement and the cornerstone of his thought. Lost after the storming of the Bastille in 1789, it was later retrieved but remained unpublished until 1904.
In addition to The 120 Days, this volume includes Sade’s “Reflections on the Novel,” his play Oxtiern, and his novella Ernestine. The selections are introduced by Simone de Beauvoir’s landmark essay “Must We Burn Sade?” and Pierre Klossowski’s provocative “Nature as Destructive Principle.”
“Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.” —Marquis de Sade’s last will and testament
The Marquis de Sade, vilified by respectable society from his own time through ours, apotheosized by Apollinaire as “the freest spirit that has yet existed,” wrote The 120 Days of Sodom while imprisoned in the Bastille. An exhaustive catalogue of sexual aberrations and the first systematic exploration—a hundred years before Krafft-Ebing and Freud—of the psychology of sex, it is considered Sade’s crowning achievement and the cornerstone of his thought. Lost after the storming of the Bastille in 1789, it was later retrieved but remained unpublished until 1904.
In addition to The 120 Days, this volume includes Sade’s “Reflections on the Novel,” his play Oxtiern, and his novella Ernestine. The selections are introduced by Simone de Beauvoir’s landmark essay “Must We Burn Sade?” and Pierre Klossowski’s provocative “Nature as Destructive Principle.”
“Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.” —Marquis de Sade’s last will and testament
28 Reviews
2.5
Shakeera
Created 3 months agoShare
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Vampyress
Created 4 months agoShare
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“I read this book, as well as watched the film, when I was a teenager. The mind of the deranged always fascinated me and I suppose that's why I enjoyed it as much as I did. Because it's sickening. Because it's not exactly something you would expect an author to write freely, with no sense of censoring or reprimanding themselves. Because I wanted to dive into the depths of a person that was much worse off than me. Truth be told, at that point in my life, it made me feel much better about my predicament despite my PTSD responses to the imagery. Life could be worse, you could be living in a Marquis de Sade novel eating shit.”
Matthew Sandusky
Created about 2 years agoShare
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“I highly recommend reading the essays provided by Simone de Beauvoir and Pierre Klossowki in Part One of this edition. I had never read any Sade before this and they served as a great insight into his philosophy, which is of paramount importance if one is to read and understand The 120 Days of Sodom.
Other than that, I don't know what to make of this book as a whole and gave it a low rating because of that. I actually found it quite boring as each day in the first month was pretty much repetitive and the only thing that seems to change is the intensity of the fetishes and sexual torture. But if you can get past the fetishes of the first day, then you have a good chance of finishing this long and drawn out tale. I actually found myself becoming pretty desensitized early on and by the third month when (SPOILER ALERT!!!) Sade tells of libertines having sex with animals and the animals subsequently giving birth to a human-animal hybrid monster, and then the libertine-father of the monster has sex with it, I actually found it so ridiculous and inane that I laughed out loud; however, I must state that the treatment of the wives-daughters of the libertines was truly tragic and was the one part of the book that actually grabbed me and held my true interest.
The pure irony, according to de Beauvoir, of The 120 Days of Sodom is that if you dislike it and disagree with it, then Marquis de Sade has accomplished what he had set out to do and, in a ironic twist, you are more likely to be agreeing with his philosophy. So yeah, chew on that one while you read this tome.”
Penelope
Created about 2 years agoShare
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32gnashingteeth
Created over 2 years agoShare
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About Marquis de Sade
The Marquis de Sade was born in Paris, France in 1740. He fought in the French Army during the Seven Years War before he was tried and sentenced to death in 1772 for a series of sexual crimes. He escaped to Italy, but upon his return to France in 1777, he was recaptured and thrown into the prison at Vincennes. De Sade spent six years at Vincennes before being transferred to the Bastille, then to Charenton, a lunatic asylum, in 1789. He was released from the asylum a year later but was arrested again in 1801. He was moved from prison to prison before returning to Charenton in 1803, where he later died in 1814. A French novelist and playwright, de Sade is largely known for his pathological sexual views and ethical nihilism. His works include Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, Juliette, and Aline and Valcourt, Or The Philosophic Novel.
Other books by Marquis de Sade
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