Review of 120 Days of Sodom by de Sade
No question should be raised whence
I derive my silly penname. In honor of that most unvirtuous author, I wanted to
review a bit of the cad’s written work here. His 120
Days of Sodom is a fun piece with which to start.
I have in my hands now the 2008
English translation by James
Hovoc. (I shall review some of Havoc’s wild work in another review.) Alas,
since I suck at French, this is as close as I can get to the Master’s original
manuscripts. But I trust in Havoc and this newest translation is by far the
best translation any English speaker could hope to find.
I’ve read most everything one can
by and on de Sade in English and I never cease to tire of either him
or his work. Most friends and colleagues I known simply can’t handle him
though. Even those who are into the swinging scene, BDSM, cuckoldry, or
whatever, are turned off by his writings. Perhaps I hang out with boring
people. It seems that even when we puritan Americans attempt to do the edgy thing,
we are only really fooling ourselves? Forsooth, if you value equality in sexual
“play” than de Sade is not for you. However, if you can dial down those liberal
democratic values hammered into you since preschool, de Sade is a healthy
escape.
For example, a quick excerpt:
“Durcet had Augustine shit in his
mouth, and the Bishop made Fanny suck the tip of his throbbing cock while she
spread her buttocks and dropped a turd down his throat. Its flavor drove him to
a violent orgasm, and as he sprayed his cock-juice over her gums he also
mangled her flanks between his clenched fists; but as much as he wished to see
her punished further, he could find no grounds to sentence her. Such was the
Bishop’s mercurial nature; no sooner had he come inside his pleasure-object,
than he wished to see it dashed to the Devil. Everyone knew of his vicious
temperament, and the young girls, the wives and the young boys all dreaded
nothing so much as being the recipient of his lust and loathing.”
Beautiful prose, eh?
Ass-Worship
Like all good writers de Sade is
able to expand the meaning of some words that we take for granted. The word
sodomy from that stupid tale in Christian and Jewish mythology (Genesis 19:4)
is a great example. Not only does sodomy mean a man inserting a turgid cock
into an asshole, male or female, but it also means all things having to do with
the utter worship of the buttocks over all other parts of the body (especially
the vagina), including what comes out of it.
Thus, coprophagia (the eating of
poo-poo) or scatology (the obsessive playing with shit) is as much a part of
sodomy as is traditional buggery. For the characters in this book, any other
sexual excess serves at best as side dishes to the main course of limitless
ass-worship.
Plot
Just a whole lot of butt-fuckery
which increases in amount, variance, artfulness, sadism, and satire: the book’s
plotline is subdivided into a pre-story introduction called “The Masterplan”,
followed by the four months, each as a part, and then ending with “The
Aftermath.” The most interesting element of the 120 days that really has
something of a story happens in the First Month. Here we have a running
narrative of one girl’s corruption over an entire lifetime. From a storytelling
perspective this is where de Sade really excels and keeps the book moving
forward. Learning about how the French girl is slowly molested at a preteen age
by the monkhood, later encouraged to join a brothel, then becomes proprietress of
the establishment after poisoning her employer all make for great reading!
The second to third months are not
fleshed out in anywhere the same amount of detail as the first month. I’m not
sure if this is because de Sade became bored with his own story or because he
just didn’t have time to fill in the last bits. If one reads his Juliette, then
you will know that it is probably not the former.
Philosophy
I have yet to read the Leo Straussian
tome on de Sade. Most accounts on de Sade as a philosopher I find are a bit boring
to say the least. This is because most writers on de Sade take out all the fun
vocab. One can’t talk about de Sade as the philosopher and also eschew diction/expressions
like “cock-wanker”, “fuck my eyes”, “catamite”, “cock-beating”, “semen-splashing
mania”, “smegma”, “scatology”, “libidinal fury”, “tight-ringed asshole”, “shit-befouled
haunches”, and on and on. In short, I always like to argue that how de Sade
says what he says is as important as what he says.
The following will be a longish
quotation, but it serves as a great example of how de Sade’s philosophy mixes
freely with his potty mouth:
“‘That notion does not conform to
the libertine viewpoint,’ opined Durcet. ‘For how can you be happy if you are
constantly able to satisfy yourself? It is not in the consummation of desire
that happiness exists, but in the desire itself, in the destruction of all
obstacles that stand in the way of that desire. Whereas here, one only has to
make a wish, and it is granted. I swear to you,’ he continued, ‘that since my
arrival here my cock has not exploded once because of the fuck-toys I find
about me in the château. No; every time I have discharged it has been because
of what is not here, what is absent from this place. And so it is that,
according to my belief, there is one essential element lacking to our
happiness. It is the pleasure of comparison, the pleasure one derives from
seeing wretched, normal men; here, one sees none at all. It is the sight of one
who does not in the least enjoy what we enjoy—and who suffers because of it—that
affords us the pleasure of being able to say: “I am therefore happier than he.”
Wherever all men are found equal, and where differences do not exist, true
happiness shall not exist either. It is the example of the man who only truly
appreciates good health after a lengthy bout of illness.’”
The above quotation has this
blending of moral philosophy and scandalous language that I and, I’m sure, many
other readers have found eminently enchanting over the past three-hundred
years. A shorter quotation that illustrates the same point is as follows:
“[A]ny relief given to misfortune,
any gesture that lightens the burden of the oppressed, is a heinous crime
against the natural state of things…only the crushing of the poor and needy is
worthy of a hard-on.”
Or, perhaps try this other short quotation:
“It’s ridiculous to think one owes
anything to one’s mother. For what would such gratitude be based upon? Are we
to be thankful that she allowed some lout to fire his seed into her cunt?”
Naturally, the above examples
crack me up. But they also make great prompts for a Socratic discussion. Give
it a whirl in your next Anglo-American analytic philosophy class…ha!
Read me!
Indeed, read de Sade’s work. This
particular book is a fun one with which to begin. Cannot recommend it enough.
Love, -Virginia de Sade
;)
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