Sade - Marquis de Sade

Brief Lives

Published by Hesperus Press Limited

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First published by Hesperus Press Limited, 2011

Copyright David Carter, 2011

The right of David Carter to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Printed in Jordan by Jordan National Press

ISBN : 978-1-84391-917-9

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Whats in a name? Everything, if that name is Donatien Alphonse Franois, Marquis de Sade. Most people would not be able to reel off those forenames, but mention the Marquis de Sade in almost any country that provides a reasonably broad education and the associations will be immediate: brutality, perversion, male dominance; the worst excesses, in fact, of sexual depravity. There are very few examples of writers whose names have entered language as concepts. It is possible of course to make adjectival forms of the names of many writers, but rarely have they entered common parlance. Notable exceptions are, in the world of drama, Shakespearean, Brechtian, and Pinteresque, and, in that of the novel, Dickensian and Kafkaesque. There are not many more. Sade has been given the additional honour of becoming an -ism. Sadism is a way not only of looking at the world but of interacting with it and philosophising about it.

Despite there being general agreement on what constitutes sadism, there is less agreement on what form of the family name one should use. When referring to the Marquis by his family name only, should one call him de Sade or just Sade? French dictionaries and other authorities provide a bewildering array of options for the use of the de, and ordinary native French speakers also disagree, except on one point: that it depends on the circumstances. Simone de Beauvoir and Pierre Klossowski preferred Sade, and many American writers have followed their examples. Biographers have varied. I have opted to refer to the family name always as de Sade, partly to maintain continuity with usage in works by him that have already been published by Hesperus Press, and partly out of the conviction that this form is more acceptable in British English (one talks after all of de Gaulle and not Gaulle, and indeed of de Beauvoir herself!).

Before it became notorious, the name had an interesting and illustrious history. Its origins are shrouded in legends, one even claiming derivation from one of the three Magi. The first known representative of the family was Louis de Sade, provost of Avignon in 1177, who paid for the construction of the famous bridge there. His descendants maintained and restored the bridge, and the de Sade coat of arms can still be seen on the first arch of the bridge. It seems likely that the family came originally from Italy. The name is spelt variously in ancient documents as Sado or Sadone, and sometimes Sauze or Saze. It may therefore be that the family took its name from a small town in Languedoc called Saze, on the banks of the Rhne, not far from Avignon. Over the centuries the family developed many prestigious connections, through marriage, with other local noble families, and also with the papacy. It was also renowned for its military exploits.

Another legend, for which there is stronger (though disputed) evidence, is that Laura, the woman immortalised as a symbol of spiritual perfection in the work of the early-fourteenth-century poet Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), was related by marriage to the de Sade family. According to the Abb de Sade, the Marquis uncle, who researched the family archives thoroughly, she was the wife of Hugues de Sade. Argument has raged ever since and the matter has never been satisfactorily settled.

Many other distinguished figures, however, can be attributed to the family without doubt; these figures include magistrates, governors, papal chamberlains, diplomats, abbs, abbesses and nuns. It is against the background of this distinguished lineage that reactions to the Marquis notorious behaviour must be seen.

The notion of corrupt nobility has always been associated with de Sade. Hence, he is often referred to, in one breath, as the Marquis de Sade. It is interesting to note that after his fathers death he was eligible to use the title of Count, but he had little fondness for it, and only used it when it benefited him in some way. Already in his own lifetime the Marquis de Sade was becoming the stuff of legend. He was happy to use pseudonyms however as it suited him: Comte de Mazan when pursued by the police, and Louis Sade or Citizen Sade out of political expediency at the time of the French Revolution. In his own epitaph, never put on his grave, but found in manuscript form in the family archives, he refers to himself simply as D.A.F. Sade, Prisoner under Every Regime. Exactly why he had to spend so much of his life in prison must be the central focus of any biography of a man who, despite circumstances that would have destroyed most other mortals, managed to produce some of the most original and imaginative writing of his age.

The child born on 2nd June 1740 in the Htel de Cond, Paris, should have been called Louis-Aldonse-Donatien de Sade, according to his mothers wishes, but, with so many new-born babies dying at the time, the christening was hurriedly put in the hands of some servants. Entrusting such important matters to servants was quite common at this time, and in this case the servants obviously thought that one of the fathers names, Franois, would be more appropriate, instead of Louis, and, as the Provenal name of Aldonse was completely unknown to them, they substituted Alphonse. The child who was to become infamous as the Marquis de Sade was thus finally named Donatien-Alphonse-Franois de Sade.

De Sades father, the Comte Jean-Baptiste-Franois-Joseph de Sade, was born in Avignon in 1702, to a family of Italian origin that had settled in Provence in the twelfth century, and he inherited the estates of Lacoste and Saumane and one at Arles in the Camargue, as well as sharing ownership of another at Mazan. On 13th November 1733 he married Marie-Elonore de Maill de Carman in the chapel of the same Htel de Cond where his son was to be born. His bride was the daughter of the Comtesse de Maill, who had been lady-in-waiting to the Princesse de Cond. Both the princess and the prince attended the wedding and, shortly after, Marie-Elonore was also appointed lady-in-waiting. For the first few years of his marriage the Comte de Sade lived separately from his wife, fulfilling his duties as aide-de-camp to the Marchal de Villars. A daughter was born to the couple in 1737 but survived for only two years. In 1739 the count was appointed lieutenant-general, and it was in 1740, when the Prince de Cond died, that he was sent to Cologne. He was at the Court of Cologne at the time of his sons birth.

The Princesse de Cond died only eighteen months after her husband, when the boy Donatien was just one year old. As a result his mother ceased to be lady-in-waiting but was allowed to stay on in the Htel de Cond to bring up both her own son and the five-year-old orphaned prince. It is likely that Donatien resented his position as the younger, weaker child, who was not shown the respect paid to the older prince, and it must have been hurtful as well as mysterious to him when his parents suddenly decided in 1744 to send him away to be brought up by other members of the family. It is possible that one reason for the parents decision was to free the countess to accompany her husband on some of his missions. In August 1746 another daughter was born, but only survived for five days.