Thursday, May 19, 2011

What would The Marquis de Sade think?


Best remembered for his mixing political and religious messages with his libertine sexuality, I'm curious as to whether de Sade would approve of society's current sexual revolution? He is often quoted encouraging his fellow Libertines to flourish in their carnal relations. In his dedication in Philosophy in the Bedroom he writes to them:

Voluptuaries of all ages, of every sex, it is to you only that I offer this work; nourish yourselves upon its principles: they favor your passions, and these passions, whereof coldly insipid moralists put you in fear, are naught but the means Nature employs to bring man to the ends she prescribes to him; hearken only to these delicious Promptings, for no voice save that of the passions can conduct you
to happiness.

Lewd women, let the voluptuous Saint-Ange be your model; after her example, be heedless of all that contradicts pleasure's divine laws, by which all her life she was enchained.

You young maidens, too long constrained by a fanciful Virtue's absurd and dangerous bonds and by those of a disgusting religion, imitate the fiery Eugénie; be as quick as she to destroy, to spurn all those ridiculous precepts inculcated in you by imbecile parents.

And you, amiable debauchees, you who since youth have known no limits but those of your desires and who have been governed by your caprices alone, study the cynical Dolmancé, proceed like him and go as far as he if you too would travel the length of those flowered ways your lechery prepares for you; in Dolmancé's academy be at last convinced it is only by exploring and enlarging the sphere of his tastes and whims, it is only by sacrificing everything to the senses' pleasure that this individual, who never asked to be cast into this universe of woe, that this poor creature who goes under the name of Man, may be able to sow a smattering of roses atop the thorny path of life.

It leaves one questioning if The Marquis' outlook holds validity. After all, he lived until the ripe old age of seventy-four, before antibiotics. Ans it's worthy of mention, that being incarcerated roughly 43% of those seventy-four years did nothing to hinder the aristocrat from getting laid, up until his death.

If all rumors in The Marquis de Sade's history are to be believed, it is safe to conclude that the nature of his fetishes were on the extreme level of the BDSM scale--even by today's standards. One could speculate that the century he lived in made his life style choices considerably more difficult. If he were alive today, finding a willing partner would be much less difficult, and he would likely remain unincarcerated. Permitting he kept his distance from the under-aged.

Returning back to the question at hand: What would The Marquis de Sade think? Would he even care? Call me a cynic, but he is dead. The pleasure's of the flesh are inconsequential to him...Or was he enough of a revolutionary he would applaud our lascivious ways?

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