Donatien alphonse françois de sade biography
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The Marquis de Sade
A Life
By NEIL SCHAEFFER
Knopf
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The small, picturesque village of La Coste rises steeply through very narrow cobbled streets and cubist stone houses attached to the face of one of the hills in the Luberon range of Provence. On the brow stand the jagged stone walls of the ruin that once had been the Marquis de Sade's chateau of La Coste. Inside, the floors and ceilings have long since fallen, although there are hints—a bit of fancy molding here, a touch of antique and faded paint there—to suggest the life that once animated these rooms. Now the inside is a hollow, open to the pale, intense heat of the Provencal sky. Even as ruins, the thick stone walls are magnificent. Together, these walls and the hollow they protect are a perfect emblem of the castle's former owner.
It is inevitable that one comes to picture Sade behind walls. He lived to be seventy-four, but he spent almost twenty-nine years of his adu
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Letters from Prison
The Marquis dem Sade spent more than half his adult life behind bars. In prison he produced most of his major writing including the infamous 120 Days of Sodom and Philosophy in the Bedroom. His books were either banned or heavily censored. Letters from Prison, only discovered in 1948, are written principally to his beloved (and devoted) wife and to his hated mother-in-law, Madame la Pr'sidente dem Montreuil, who put him in jail to preserve the good name of her family, as well as to other friends and enemies. Impassioned, angry, caustic, indignant, pleading, self-justifying, Sade gives vent in these letters to his most profound and profane thoughts and opinions. They offer brilliant and original insights into society, tro, morals, politics and into the minds and motivations of dock and women. Letters from Prison fryst vatten the most candid portrait we have of a man who, two centuries after his death, fryst vatten an enduring influence on modern thought and literature.
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Marquis de Sade
French writer and nobleman (1740–1814)
For the French post-punk band, see Marquis de Sade (band).
"De Sade" redirects here. For the film, see De Sade (film).
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (SA(H)D;[3]French:[dɔnasjɛ̃alfɔ̃zfʁɑ̃swamaʁkidəsad]; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814) was a French writer, libertine, political activist and nobleman best known for his libertine novels and imprisonment for sex crimes, blasphemy and pornography. His works include novels, short stories, plays, dialogues, and political tracts. Some of these were published under his own name during his lifetime, but most appeared anonymously or posthumously.
Born into a noble family dating from the 13th century, Sade served as an officer in the Seven Years' War before a series of sex scandals led to his detention in various prisons and insane asylums for most of his adult life. During his first extended imprisonment from 1777 to 1790, he wrote a series of nov