The Marquis de Sade was a favorite subject of the American artist Man Ray. One of his bronze busts shows the writer, philosopher and fanatic with the curly hair of the Ancien Régime and a face streaked with furrows and cracks, as if he were a brick wall himself, but which is already in decline. This idiosyncratic portrait is mostly understood as a symbol of the double function of de Sades: as a representative and revolutionary of a society for which he, coming from the old Provencal nobility, was a constituent and at the same time tore down the mask of decency with his philosophical and sexually extravagant works.
De Sade wrote the text in tiny handwriting while he was in custody in the Bastille
It is therefore just as cynical as it is consistent that the French state has just bought the original manuscript of the novel “The 120 Days of Sodom” for 4.55 million euros. De Sade wrote the text in 1785 during his imprisonment for various sexual offenses in the Bastille of Paris in tiny handwriting on a 12-meter-long roll of paper, which has changed hands several times over the centuries, was stolen and for several decades was part of the private collection of a lover of erotic memorabilia was. The French state designated the manuscript, which tells in pornographic details of the rape and torture practices of a group of bored libertarians, as a national property as early as 2017. It should now not only be preserved, but also made accessible to research.
De Sade, who himself is said to have witnessed countless atrocities as a young cavalry officer in the Seven Years’ War, is considered to be the founder of a subversive trend in French literature that despises correct appearances, which can be traced to the present day in the novels of Michel Houellebecq. Flaubert, Huysmans and Baudelaire invoked the Marquis (though not the “120 Days of Sodom” which was only published in 1904), as did George Bataille, Albert Camus and even the advocates of Critical Theory who believed its importance for the Emphasized questioning of occidental taboos. These are exceptionally good reasons to invest 4.55 million euros in erotic literature.