Customer Reviews

Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This collection of works is an illuminating collection of Sade's best. The critical introductions are excellent, along with the massive chronology of Sade's life. Sade's letters and Last Will & Testament also give insight into one of France's most controversial literary minds.

The collection begins with "Dialogue between a priest and a dying man", perhaps the shortest, and least depraved, of his works. The dialogue is a concise evisceration of Judeo-Christian philosophy, advocating the supremacy and amorality of Nature.

"Philosophy in the Bedroom" follows, which is Sade at his most philosophically eloquent and sexually twisted. Every taboo is torn to pieces (sometimes literally) while the characters engage in philosophical dialogues about Nature, religion, politics, and, obviously, sex. There is a political treatise in the middle of the dialogues. The treatise is Sade at his most learned and compelling. Amid the erotic carnage, Sade displays himself as one of France's greatest philosophers. Foucault? Whatever.

Eugenie de Franval is next. It is a romantic tale about the love between a father and his daughter. It pre-dates Balzac, although it has a realistic style familiar to anyone who has read Pere Goriot (another tale of familial love, but not about incest).

Justine closes out the collection. This version is considerably longer than "the Misfortunes of Virtue" in the story collection of the same name. Sade fills the story with copious monologues discussing the stupidities of religion, the nature of fetishism (pre-dating Freud and Krafft-Ebing by a long shot), and the glories of crime. Depraved? Yes. Entertaining? Absolutely. Justine is comedy at its blackest. You'll laugh at all the misfortunes Justine gets herself into and her abundantly sentimental character. Kind of like "Pride and Prejudice", but totally messed up.

Reading Sade has opened my eyes and my mind to his scorched earth brand of philosophy. Nietzsche pales in comparison to the furious directness of Sade. Also, check out the chapter on Sade and Rousseau in Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae" for more insight than this silly little review.

Quality reading. Pick it up now!

When the Marquis de Sade was locked up in the Bastille for various crimes that ranged from sexual abuse of prostitutes to flagellation of young boys, he found that he had the time to write at length in novel form a series of books that have come to stand for his belief in the utter joy of inflicting pain on the virtuous: sadism. For the next few centuries, philosophers and literary critics have debated whether his works deserve the attention normally given to serious works of literature or whether they are simply the ravings of a mind unhinged. There is a current trend to rehabilitate his reputation, a trend which includes analysing his canon with the same set of standard literary tools that are used on mainstream authors.

The reader new to de Sade might well wish to begin with JUSTINE. It is here that he delineates a world that is composed of two categories of people: those of vice and those of virtue. With the former, de Sade presents a very nearly exclusive male dominant protagonist, one who is wealthy, middle-aged, possessed of a castle or subterranean dungeon, and has a proclivity to speak at great length on the superiority of vice over virtue. With the latter, De Sade, as he does in JUSTINE, gives the reader a young, well-shaped, nearly indestructable female whose sole purpose is to suffer a non-stop series of assaults both on her body and to her mind. Each assault is a carbon copy of its predecessor. Justine (called Therese) is kidnapped or tricked into entering the lair of a rich and dissolute monk or nobleman who promptly lectures Justine/Therese on the inevitable triumph of Vice over a feckless Virtue. Each time this Vice figure rapes and sodomizes Justine, he tells her, "You see, my dear? If there were truly a virtuous God watching over innocent lambs like you, then I would surely be struck down by a bolt of lightning." Typically, Justine's only reply is, "But Moniseur, surely you can allow your hard heart to be softened by my plight." As if to punctuate the superiority of his position over Justine's, her tormentor simply increases the pace of his ravagings.

What becomes clear well before the half way point is that both the tormentor and his victim are allegorical stick figures from the morality plays with which de Sade was undoubtedly quite familiar. And just as those figures of morality from the Middle Ages were sure to point to a victory of virtue over vice, de Sade was determined to reverse the results. JUSTINE, as well as his later JULIETTE and 120 DAYS OF SODOM, all point to the same nihilistic end; either there is no God or what is worse, there is one but this deity has so arranged his cosmos that the universal deck is stacked against those who seek to live the good and pure life. Today, as the modern reader plows through the thousands of pages of de Sades' canon, that reader will find that the real titillation lies not in the finite ways that a female body can be corrupted but rather in the more nearly infinite ways that this corruption can be justified. Few writers have made this point more clearly--or more horribly--than de Sade.

It is little wonder that the Marquis De Sade spent the last years of his life in a madhouse. Anyone as far ahead of his time as he was is sure to be considered insane by his contemporaries. This collection of his work is exhaustive, and deliciously exausting. You not only get "Justine" and "Philosophy in the Bedroom", there are many shorter works and a collection of De Sade's letters. All of these paint a picture of a man and a philosophy that was at least 150 years ahead of the morals and thought of his period. Sade not only anticipates Freud and Niezche, he goes beyond them. He declares homosexuality natural and advocates a woman's right to choose. The cruelty Sade is known for is the natural outgrowth of his philosophy and the pervailing attitude toward Nature during his life. Nature is the only real ruler of man, he says. Nature is sometimes cruel, indeed in the view of Western Civilization, Nature is always cruel. Therefore, says the Marquis, humans, if they are to be in harmony with the only true governing force, must allow themselves to at least imagine being cruel. Now, while one might criticize the Marquis for not being able to cross the rubicon with his views on Nature as he did with homosexuality, the fact remains that the conclusion is logical within De Sade's framework. This is not a collection for those seeking light erotica. Indeed, some of the situations described are the exact opposite of erotic. Read as philosophy, as the Marquis intended, his work is an earth shattering precursor to the modern and post modernist movement. This colection goes a long way in wresting Sade's name away from the pathology that unfortunatly bears his name.

When I read Justine ou Les Malheurs de Virtue, I lost my appetite. That's how intense it is. However, I loved it. Only the Marquis de Sade could have come up with such sordid tales. Many people believe his books are erotica, pornography, and even Satanic. I believe that throughout this work and all his others there is an obvious show of existentialism. De Sade is one of the first modern nihilists. When you think of existentialism, one of the first you name is Camou, but when someone asks me to name an existential I think of de Sade. The book is fascinating. It might seem like a show of wanton libertines, in fact, I would have to say, this book is about how man is inherently savage and animalistic; that innocence and virtue are nothing more than hopes created by hopeless people. Justine is one of them. She believes Man is by nature divine and pure. But throughout her journey she sees the contrary. Its called the Misfortune of Virtue because Justine never realizes at any time that Man is utterly sinful and completely unsaveable. She continues to find misfortune because she holds true to her hope and faith in Man and God; the two characters de Sade completely abhors. To de Sade Man is an animal equal to pigs and rats and therefore they have no true value except for what pleasure they can bring themselves in life. Personally if you have never read any of de Sades works, you should read his biography first. His books take alot of their inspiration from the marquis' own life. By the way, if you wonder why I gave this book a 4 and not a five, it is because I felt that the end was too abrupt and didn't have the climax I had hoped for. This book also has several short pieces by him of which the one I favor most is "Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man". That will is definitely serious but in the end you can't do anything else but laugh.

The writing here is certainly interesting for studying the complex and dark waters of human sexuality. De Sade's contribution to philosophy (by which I mean the far superior region of continental philosophy-Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, etc) is minimal, despite what some reviewers would lead you to believe. At this point in human history, de Sade is one of many who is useful only in the context of historical curiosity. All that he examined in his sprawling fantasies has been covered more extensively elsewhere. I would recommend Foucault's History of Sexuality before this. However, De Sade does have the ability to draw attention. There is a perverse pleasure in reading this. Yet, it isn't written all that well. There is really no development, and the prose, regardless of the fact that it is translated leaves a lot to be desired of. He is definately one of those where content mattered far more than style, and it depends on how much you like the content. The one thing that really really irritates me about De Sade is that people actually believe he was a misunderstood genius. Or, that he was imprisoned because he was just so far ahead of his time that people thought he was crazy. Utter nonsense. The man abosolutely deserved to be imprisoned. He raped several women, inculding violent attacks on his wife. Beyond this, he killed a couple other women after sexually violating them. He went free for so long, and received an incredibly light treatment because of his social position. Never mind what Dumass would have you believe, the Bastille was not a bad place to wind up. It was reserved for people of high standing. There are stories of prisoners having lavish seven course meals with a couple dozen guests and comfortable living quarters. This wasn't Sing Sing. De Sade himself lived quite well inside. If he was anyone else in French society, say a peasant or what not, he would have been executed without question. Not because he was 'misunderstood,' but because he liked to rape and inflict pain upon women. He is not a likeable or admirable man by any means. I wish people would stop taking the popular route of holding the man to high esteem. Only his work bears any interest, and even the insight he provides can be gained in other work. Worth the read only as general knowledge of a historical figure and the roots of various sexual concepts and philosophical ideas. Just have an honest understanding of who this man and what this work is going into it. Don't be fooled by those who want to make into a misunderstood visionary. He was not ahead of his time. He was right at home in the brutality of Louis' France. He just said what no one else would.

In one of the introduction essays in this collection, the translators write that those who read know of de Sade, but so few of those have actually read any of his work. People know who the Marquis de Sade is. He's referenced constantly in film, TV, and literature, and it's always some childish, snickering S & M reference. If his work was simply for shock value, it would have long been forgotten about. This is a man of ideas and philosophy. A terrifying vision, no doubt, but a unique and fascinating one, for those who can take it. This is an excellent compliation, including the complete version of Justine, the excellent Philosophy in the Bedroom, the hilarious Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man, and the superb Eugenie de Franval, one of de Sade's most respected short stories. Grove Press (who also put out Henry Miller's banned work) has also Juliette, the companion piece to Justine, and The 120 Days of Sodom and other writings as well. This book is the best of the three, in terms of its content (even thought Sodom's prose is much better than Justine. Justine is a more thought out book). It is a difficult read, and it's terrifying to be in de Sade's universe. But he also displays a dark humour (especially in Philosophy and Eugenie) that most people never give him credit for. And as one reviewer noted, the movie "Quills", while entertaining, is historically inaccurate. De Sade did die in Charnenton, but nothing like it was in the film. He died quietly in his sleep. Read this man's work. We're lucky to have these works, as most of his work was destroyed....

This collection of the Marquis de Sade's writings includes "Justine" and "Philosophy in the Bedroom". The latter is a "dialogue" about a teenage virgin girl's indoctrination into the ways of sex, basically. Some hands-on lessons soon turn this young innocent into a well-trained debauchee. Next, we have the novel "Justine." In this story of virtue vanquished by vice, "good girl" Justine leaves the convent to find herself molested by a wicked outside world of cruelty and perversion. The over-arching idea or message that Sade was trying to get across here was: doing good only leads to bad consequences, and besides, it's more fun to be evil and perverted. I don't believe in Sade's philosophy because even his apologists and sympathizers will admit that it is all about completely unleashing the beast within us, and the 20th century more than any other has taught us that that can only lead to total anarchy, and end in total annihilation. It is a doctrine of extreme nihilism based on selfish and compassionless self-gratification. Another problem is that all of Sade's villains are the same--their sexual proclivities, their philosophies, their social status, etc etc. Not much variety. Another fault some have found is that his plots are quite predictable and repetitous (same thing over and over: Justine meets a man who first seems good and decent on the outside, but turns out to be a real villain, which she only discovers after he has taken her to his secluded mansion, monastery, or some other place from which there is no escape for her). Of course, virtue is always punished by vice, and each time Justine begs for mercy, she is paid back for it with violent abuse and lust. In Sade's works, he makes it look like 9 out of 10 people, particularly men, are wicked, perverse, violent beasts. Also, there is a strong undertone of misogyny, sodomy, sadomasochism, and the hatred of all standard morality. Sade's ideas often have a seemingly convincing evil logic, but they are the thoughts and fancies of a clever and philosophical madman or serial killer, weakened at times by inconsistencies, contradictions, and platitudes. Sade writes from the perspective of a gifted writer who has been babied and pampered all his life, who has never worked, who has been able to satisfy his every desire, who has spent most of his life in jails and an asylum, and thus has lost touch with reality and the human race (and this shows clearly in his writings which are usually much more implausible than realistic), who has lived in complete comfort even in his confinement. Even the food which his wife had sent to him and which he ate behind bars would have suited a king. I believe Sade was an unfeeling, heartless wretch because his mother abandoned him at a very very early age, and he never learned love in childhood, so was unable to give it in adulthood.

I give this book 5 stars for its intellectual daring and originality as a documentation of the philosophy of evil, and because it is more or less well-written. I believe Sade's writings can give many insights into the thoughts and behavior of evil, and are important reading for theologians, psychologists, and criminologists.

(...)

This book was very hard to get though, and even harder I'd imagine if you have no background information on the subject. The language is poetic, but thick and at times hard to understand. The book's plot is unbelievable, which takes away from the it's credibility. It is not for the casual reader of the 21st century. It is for an open-minded reader looking to get insight on the historically famous sexual deviant from his own point of view.

Although other works by Sade are included in this volume, _Justine_ and _Philosophy in the Bedroom_ are the best known of the collection.

_Philosophy in the Bedroom_ is the about two men and a woman who quite thoroughly pervert a fifteen year old virgin. The most notable thing about this story is that a substantial portion of it describes Sade's sociopolitical philosophy.

_Justine_ is the story of a young woman who lives a life governed by virtue. As she goes through life, she encounters a series of evil people who use and abuse her. Even though she continues to believe in virtue, she is continually beaten down, while those who inflict evil upon her continually prosper.

Though an interesting read, Sade tends to get tediously repetitive when trying to justify (over and over) perversion in the context of Nature. And yes, this is as nasty and sexually perverse as one might expect, covering practices ranging from sadism to autoerotic asphyxiation.

Am I missing something here? 28 reviews, and only one alludes to these stories being satirical.
I haven't read a biography of the man, but my assumption reading Justine is that Sade was a satirist, excoriating the upper class in particular, and in general men, maybe humanity, for its gross hypocrisy, cruelty and selfishness.

I didn't feel he was celebrating 'sadism' in the least. The tone is certainly misanthropic however, and I felt a sense of both glee and disgust as he beats you over the head with the gross hypocrisy of 'polite society'.

The stories are at times sexy; graphic sexual depictions often are. But they typically are horrifific as well. I don't know whether the man was into abusive sex or not, but it seems clear that the underlying message is very cynical: virtue is for the naive and self-important (or at least mindless virtue, as the protagonist is a bit of an airhead), and be wary in particular of 'respectable society', or power. These stories having been written during the time of revolution in France, could he have been the only one espousing this point of view? This was the enlightenment, not the middle ages. I assume it was not morality, but the mirror of truth, that outraged those who tried to suppress his works.

As we seem to be a few steps from goose steps (or something more dangerously oblique) we could use this type of satire today! That is, socio-political messages wrapped in a titilating package for mass consumption, guilty or otherwise. (regarding fascism, here is a link worth pondering -(...)

The only other story I've read so far is "Dialogue", which I thought was one of the best examinations of the church that I have read. Sade again conveys a sense of outrage at the hypocrisy rather than the supposed values of christianity. If you are looking for a nihilistic rant that assaults compassion as pathetic weakness and individual action as unassailable no matter the consequence to others, turn to the Nietsche/Rand/Freidman school.

Sade's perspective seems firmly grounded in the enlightenment, only, it is a couple hundred years ahead of it's time with it's 'in your face' attitude.

Even so, I think the stories are dark fables rather than irreverence for the sake of being provocative.

Remember, the enlightenment was followed by a conservative religious backlash. So read this book while you can!