The definitive compilation of texts from βa great, horrifying, but also vastly illuminating figureΒ .Β .Β . one of the most radical minds in Western historyβ (Newsweek).
Β
The Marquis de Sade, vilified by respectable society from his own time through ours, apotheosized by Apollinaire as βthe freest spirit that has yet existed,β wrote The 120 Days of Sodom while imprisoned in the Bastille. An exhaustive catalogue of sexual aberrations and the first systematic explorationβa hundred years before Krafft-Ebing and Freudβof the psychology of sex, it is considered Sadeβs crowning achievement and the cornerstone of his thought. Lost after the storming of the Bastille in 1789, it was later retrieved but remained unpublished until 1904.
Β
In addition to The 120 Days, this volume includes Sadeβs βReflections on the Novel,β his play Oxtiern, and his novella Ernestine. The selections are introduced by Simone de Beauvoirβs landmark essay βMust We Burn Sade?β and Pierre Klossowskiβs provocative βNature as Destructive Principle.β
Β
βImperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.β βMarquis de Sadeβs last will and testament