The inspirer of vice Marquis de Sade is a symbol of sophisticated voluptuousness and evil

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

His name is known even to people who have never been fond of history. The way of thinking and defiant actions made Donatien Alphonse François de Sade a monster for his contemporaries, and his very name even gave rise to the psychiatric term - sadism. But by and large, this aristocrat, who lived at the turn of the century, is guilty only of being far ahead of his time in the field of erotic entertainment.

Born into the family of a French aristocrat Jean-Baptiste Joseph François de Sade, the future writer was a household favorite. They wanted to attach him as soon as possible to the French court, where there was a little prince of Condé, his peer. Donatienne's mother, Alphonse François, the maid of honor of the Princess of Condé, was placing high stakes on her baby. But alas, the boy did not justify his destiny: not only did the heir to the throne not interest him in any way, he also irritated the young de Sade. In the end, to get rid of the annoying playmate, Donasien gave the prince a hard knock. And then fate turned into a black side - Donasien was driven away from the yard.

In the lap of nature

The exile was only five years old. He spent the next five at his uncle's castle in Provence, and his favorite place to play was a huge basement, where there was not a single living soul except insects and rats. Here he could indulge in his dreams, and no one distracted him. The mind of the young Comte de Sade was inventive and self-willed, he did not want to obey someone else's will. However, when the boy was ten years old, his Parisian parents remembered him and ordered him to go to Paris together with a teacher hired by his uncle. However, Donasien did not stay with his parents - they had divorced by that time. And the young count lived in the rooms of his teacher, and for training he was assigned to the famous Jesuit corps, where any freethinking was to die in the bud. However, this did not happen.

The count spent several more years in the Jesuit corps, after which he entered the cavalry school - this was in every way more pleasant than training with the Jesuits. In 1755 he was released from the school with the rank of junior lieutenant. And de Sade, sixteen years old, immediately fell into the Seven Years' War.

It turned out, by the way, a brave young man, a year later he received the rank of cornet, got into the Guards regiment, two years later he rose to the rank of captain of the cavalry. It seemed that a good military career began, but … Captain de Sade was quarrelsome, he had only enemies in the regiment, his relations with brothers in arms reached such hostility that a couple of times he asked for a transfer - anywhere, even with a demotion, if only away from colleagues.

Several times he fought in duels, once he started an affair, which he took for love, then it became clear to him that this was just an affair; and the young lady did not want to agree with this, but thank God the regiment was transferred. And after a while, a military career began to seem to Donatien a senseless stupidity. And he retired from the army.

Count de Sade, who called himself the Marquis, was 23 years old. He returned to Paris. Father immediately decide to arrange his fate. The means of arranging destinies was well known - marriage. They even managed to find a worthy bride for him: Rene Pelagi Cordier de Mompei, the eldest daughter of the President of the Tax Chamber. The only trouble was that Donatien himself liked the youngest, Louise, better. And he liked it so much that he asked for her hand, which he was immediately refused.

Neither entreaties nor threats softened Monsieur de Montreuil's heart. He motivated his decision simply: first, the eldest daughter must get married. He backed up the decision with a royal marriage license.

There was nowhere to go, on May 17, 1763, this wedding took place, which did not please Donatien at all, although his unexpected bride was in love with him without memory. Donasien quietly hated her. And he preferred to wander around hot places, to shoot prostitutes and have fun with actresses.

His antics became more and more frantic and - for that time - more perverse. The mother-in-law was indignant at this to the depths of her soul. She probably set up a kind of trap: de Sade was arrested right in a brothel and sent to prison for 15 days. It didn’t come to his senses!

He almost openly began to take his girls to his house, to the Villa d'Arnay. Meanwhile, his son had just been born. Madame Montreuil was furious. It seems that with her light hand the girl Keller appeared, who accused de Sade of rape. He was immediately taken into custody, and he spent several months in various prisons. The mother-in-law thought that this lesson would be enough for him. She was wrong.

The eternal prisoner

A couple of years passed relatively quietly, but Donasien had no feelings for his wife. He seems to have returned to military service, received the rank of colonel. But this occupation did not appeal to him. Retiring in the estate of Lacoste, Donatien wrote his first comedy and even put it on his own stage.

The comedy was found obscene, but they laughed heartily. And then everything returned to normal. And there and then a new criminal case was raised against de Sade - the Marseilles one. He was accused of poisoning and unnatural sex with several girls. The court sentenced de Sade and his servant to death, but the execution did not take place - both of the accused managed to escape, and Donatienne immediately went on a trip to Italy, and not alone, but with Louise, with whom he was once denied marriage. The mother-in-law threw herself at the feet of the king and obtained a prescription for the extradition of the prodigal son-in-law and his imprisonment.

He was arrested in Italy and he spent about six months in the prison of the Miolan fortress. Then Rene-Pelagy persuaded mother to return her husband to her, and de Sade made an escape. He returned to his Lacoste, but Rene-Pelagie did not receive any thanks. The girls reappeared in the castle, and the wife chose to leave there herself.

Rumors of de Sade's entertainment did not inspire optimism in her. According to rumors, the Marquis lured and seduced girls. When he went to Paris in 1777 to say goodbye to his dying mother, he was immediately taken on a denunciation and put in the Château de Vincennes. In this correctional institution he was destined to spend 13 years.

At first, the jailers treated him cruelly, he was forced to ask his wife to bring linen and food, but worst of all was that he was forbidden to write. It was only two years later that he was finally given a pen, ink and paper. A prisoner of the Vincennes castle, deprived of real life, lived this life, experimenting with the fate of his characters. And this should be taken into account when the real Marquis de Sade is identified with his heroes. He led his heroes and heroines through all the sufferings and pleasures of the flesh.

In the end, thinking and composing was the only way not to go crazy in prison.

The French Revolution

In 1782 Donatien was transferred to the Bastille. Here he stayed until the summer of 1789. Here he wrote most of his prison plays and short stories.

On July 14, the Parisians took the Bastille and released the prisoners. But Donatien was taken to the Charenton hospital for the insane - so the guards repaid him for screaming from the cell with an appeal to the people to release the prisoners a few days before the storming of the prison.

Freedom came to him only in April 1790. On the next day, Rene-Pelagie divorced him. And the Marquis became simply a citizen of Louis Sade.

At first, he rejoiced at the changes: suddenly it became possible to publish and stage his creations, the revolutionary government did not recognize God. It seemed to him that hypocrisy began to creep from morality.

Citizen Sad joined the revolutionaries. He even became a commissioner. But the revolution turned into terror, and soon Sad himself was persecuted: he was sentenced to death, he ended up in a new, revolutionary prison, and only general confusion saved him from death - the case of citizen Sad was lost, and they did not have time to execute him. He managed to escape.

A beggar, sick, old marquis made his living at the theater in Versailles. In 1801, he ended up in an asylum for the beggars of Saint-Pelagie, and from there he was sent to the well-known Charenton, where he died in December 1814.

And although Charenton was no better than a prison, the last 13 years of his life, Sad was glad to Charenton: there he could think and write again, that is, to do the only thing for which he was intended - an eternal prisoner and the most freedom-loving man of his time Donatienne Alphonse François, Comte de Sade.