Letters From Prison

  The oculists have sent a wonder-working powder that will, they say, produce miraculous results. You have to blow the powder into the eye, which presumably results in what is commonly known as dust in your eyes; in other words, claptrap.

  Most assuredly, you do me great honor. If you keep on this way, you’re going to give me a very swelled head. I had never thought myself either sufficiently attractive or seductive to throw dust into anyone’s eyes, in other words, blind anyone to the facts. Apparently I was mistaken; clearly a lack of self respect!

  Forthwith, I picked up my mirror and I made up a riddle and said: Oh! how right they are: I am one good-looking fellow, and smart as a whip to boot! I’m no longer surprised that I have blown powder in peoples’ eyes. Oh! the poor eyes! Oh! how heavy the eyes of those I have blinded!

  I send you fond greetings, Marie.5

  In the “Country Library” there is a volume—I cannot tell you which—that ends with a very short story whose title, I believe, is “An Extraordinary Adventure” or “A Very Peculiar Adventure,” something of the sort. I desperately need that volume; ask La Jeunesse to try and find it, and when he does kindly send it on to me immediately. All he need do is leaf through the various volumes until he finds the one that ends this way. I cannot tell you how impatient I am to have it. Which probably means that it will be a good while coming, no? The book entitled -is on its way to you and I’m also sending the others.

  1. A prison guard, not a personal manservant.

  2. Sade was a dog lover. At La Coste, he had two setters that accompanied him everywhere on his walks.

  3. Exactly how Sade felt about his sons remains unclear. In one of his letters he refers to them as “terrible brats”; also, he did allow rather too easily the hated présidente to take charge of their upbringing and education. Still, there is considerable evidence of paternal affection in his letters. At the end of his fourth year in prison, he asked Renée-Pélagie for their portraits as a New Year’s present; several times he asked for samples of their handwriting. In his requests for a prison transfer, he asks to spend time alone with his wife and children. And in a 1779 letter to his wife, he confesses to dreaming about them every night.

  4. One suspects the “M” refers to either Molière or Montaigne, two writers Sade greatly admired. But the exact attribution remains elusive.

  5. Je vous salue, Marie in the French, which could also be translated: Hail, Mary, linking Mme de Sade to the Virgin.

  71. To Madame de Sade

  [March 26, 1783]

  Still one more worry, my dear friend, still one more persecution, one more manuscript.1 But bear in mind that I am not insisting that you read it; all I ask is that you place it cheek by jowl with the other works of mine that you have already been kind enough to store away in a safe place. If however you had in mind to reread this tragedy to recover a bit from the boredom of a second reading, I did add a short play2 at the end that you may make you laugh now and then—not too often, however, for if you laugh too much I’ll find it no laughing matter at all.

  I believe you will find the tragedy somewhat improved. I corrected all the errors I could find in it, the chief of which was the unpardonable inconsistency of the assault launched by Charles upon a city into which he had sent a negotiator without ever knowing whether or not the negotiations had succeeded. In the new version he sets a deadline: he announces that if at the end of that deadline his officers have not reported back, then he will launch his attack. The appointed time arrives without there being any possibility of his learning what has happened with the negotiations, and one sees why. The attack begins; nothing is more simple, whereas in the earlier version it was not.

  What’s more, I reiterate that I had no intention of putting either anything allusory [sic] or allegorical in these plays, and that I have no problem changing anything that might shock or displease. Each play contains a hundred more verses than the rules call for; thus you can see that there’s plenty of room to trim and pare as much as you like.

  As far as the little play is concerned, I have but one word to say to whoever finds fault with it:

  First: ’tis in no wise necessary that in the end vice be punished and virtue rewarded. ’Tis a timeworn mistake, that, and I can prove it by harking back to Aristotle, to Horace, to Boileau, and by quoting some twenty comedies of Molière, who is the model for all of us.

  Second: that the depraved person is a woman, and that most assuredly if I had punished that woman, my play would be detestable. But though she goes unpunished, who would like to emulate her? That is what art is all about. In comedy it does not consist of punishing vice but of portraying it in such a way that no one would dream of emulating it; and that being so, one has no need to punish it. The condemnation of vice takes place sotto voce in the souls of all the spectators.

  If they take me to task on the matter of morals, I shall cite in my defense some fifteen of Molirère’s comedies, Georges Dandin first and foremost; among the moderns, Happily and Figaro, plays in which manners and morals are not respected as they are in my play.

  In the second couplet of Sevigné, there is a criticism of the societies of sensible women that you will be so kind as to view—you and those around you—as no more than idle banter, signifying nothing. Read this couplet over a second time and see whether it contains anything more than words and lovely rhymes.

  But what it does is cast a tinge of ridicule and self-conceit on this role, and that’s all I was looking for; ’tis foppish jargon, nothing more.

  Besides, I’ve no word that you even received the manuscript; such amenities are doubtless no longer in vogue. I fear dull and equally stupid knock-about scenes are all people require today.

  Please don’t forget the various requests I made and the legal actions I asked you to take on my behalf concerning the theft of my manuscript of The Unfaithful.3 You would greatly oblige me if you would not let that matter lie.

  To change the subject, tell me now, if you don’t mind, whether you don’t think I ought to be as surprised as I am bitter and deeply affected both to see that even the outside dates you had presumably set for my release had come and gone, and to see that, in order to console me for the despair into which that perforce dost plunge me, that you choose these moments of pain both to deprive me of your visits and to prevent me from having a bit of fresh air, and to have me, in a word, at all times and in all places, treated in the most harsh and shameful manner imaginable. Do you really believe that any other like example of tyranny and boorish imbecility exists anywhere in the annals of the entire world? Personally, I doubt it. And what is the purpose of all that? And what could the purpose possibly be? That is the question I cannot help asking over and over again. And that is what, in France, they call justice! A gentleman is shamefully sacrificed to that so-called justice, a gentleman who has served his country honorably and who, I dare say, is possessed of a fair number of virtues, is offered up as a sacrifice—to whom?—to whores! The blood boils, the pen falls from my hand when I dwell upon such infamies. I confess that such foul deeds are beyond my grasp and that my mind is not strong enough even to understand them. But these refinements of barbarism, these deprivations of everything at the very moment when my pain and sorrow are at their worst, when I am most in need of comfort and solace, and when what would serve me most would be to alleviate my situation, this conspiracy, this formal desire to harden my heart, to vex me and destroy in me all virtue! Yes! I say it openly and without fear, whoever is the prime mover behind this punishment can only be an arrant scoundrel, a brainless scoundrel, and the greatest enemy I can ever have on the face of the earth! . . .

  I wish you good evening, beg you to write me, to come and see me, and above all to arrange for me to be able to breathe some fresh air. You know that ’tis a season when that becomes even more essential to me than life itself. ’Tis impossible to describe for you how great my suffering is.

  I embrace you with all my heart.

  You can if you like receive my m
anuscript at present: ’tis completely aright, and I feel no need to fiddle with it any further. Please be so kind as to let me send it on.

  1. The tragedy Jeanne Laisné.

  2. Together with the full-length play, Sade sent a curtain raiser, A Foolish Test, or The Credulous Husband.

  3. A manuscript Sade sent, as he sent all his works for safekeeping, to his wife, which apparently was lost—or more likely confiscated.

  72. To Madame de Sade

  [April 20, 1783]

  What you have reported to me in your last letter is false, and Monsieur de Rougemont sent me word this morning that there was no question of my walks being restored anytime in the near future. The unworthy education of tub-thumping double-dealers wherewith you were inculcated must have been so deeply rooted within you that you are completely incapable of rectifying your odious lies. It seems that this bare and vile defect of backstairs gossip is so deeply ingrained in you that ’tis easier to render your soul than to forge the art of lying so foully and so basely. And what do you think you will gain from all that? What do you think will result from what you are doing? Ah! You shall see! I warn you in advance and swear to you most solemnly that when we are all together again not a word of truth will issue forth from my lips, and I shall so refine the art of lying that ‘twill be precisely at the moment when you think it in my best interest to tell the truth that I shall tell the most blatant lie.

  How your lies and duplicity—and I refer not only to you but to your tro________op of a mother—are so clearly visible in everything you do and say! The latest stupidity consists of two points: the door to my room remaining closed, and the deprivation of fresh air.

  After four and a half months to be exact, they give me back one-half of what they have taken away. Which leads me to believe that ‘twill be four and a half months hence that the rest will be restored to me: not a word. All that was naught but a tissue of lies, an effort to pull the wool over my eyes, an emulation of the lackeys and fraudulent ancestors who adorned your family tree, since you are doing precisely what they did.

  At least tell me when I shall have them back. What difference does it make whether or not I am told? Will it inform me when I am to be released? Haven’t you already committed that same stupid blunder six or seven times, without it resulting in anything positive for me? “But if you are informed, you will spend all you time adding and subtracting.”

  Eh! what bast-ly beasts you are: what does it matter whether or not I do my figuring before or after? You can see that your fears on that score are both vapid and clumsy beyond compare, since heretofore any calculations I made were for naught. I presume that in a month give or take I shall be allowed to take a walk. I ask you now, pray tell me if whether, being made aware of that fact today and therefore figuring when that date might be, or doing the same thing a month hence, makes the slightest difference? Would you like to be further reassured? May the devil take me here and now, as I pen these words, if I have any real desire to make such calculations, and if I request that my walks be restored for any other reason than that I simply can no longer exist without some fresh air, that I no more sleep at night than I can digest the foul food here. And may lightning strike me dead and reduce me this minute to dust if I ask you when these amenities will be restored to me for any other reason than to have a decent night’s sleep for the duration of my calvary here, and not, as you assume, in order to have the certainty and the consolation of knowing when my suffering will come to an end. But as for my release, if I ponder, and if I draw therefrom no conclusion, may I be blinded on the spot.

  I should very much like to know what purpose it might serve, or will have served, to thus forbid my walks, to take them away then restore them, and so on? The only reasonable thing you might possibly adduce is that, calculating the total time of my detention, you figure a certain period of it when I shall be deprived of fresh air, and you have divided up that totality in such wise that if I am not allowed my walks presently, or on the contrary if I am, then I shall somehow be able to figure out how outrageously long the rest of my detention will be. But my response to that is: all you needed to do was have my walks forbidden during the four winter months; you could have arranged for that, and I would not have been deprived during the spring and summer of something as necessary to me as life itself. But did you have to resort to numbers? Ah! numbers! ‘Twill be a matter of some debate, you’ll see. From what tribunal does that sowlike wench, to whom I am linked only because I had the great misfortune of marrying her daughter, believe she has the right to torment me with her numbers? But she is getting her revenge! Oh, in that case, you’re implying the minister1 allows people to take their revenge? Well then, if he allows her to act thus, by what right would he prevent me by taking mine? And that I fully intend to do, and ‘twill be swift and sure.

  Good night, go munch your little God-on-High and assassinate your parents. As for myself, I’m off to b----o----,2 and I have not the slightest doubt, I assure you, that when the act is over I shall have done less ill than you.

  1. Sade is referring to the government minister who supervises the prison system.

  2. In French, b. le v.—branle le vit—masturbate, or “beat off.” What other recourse was there for an oversexed, isolated prisoner.

  73. To Mademoiselle de Rousset

  April 26, 1783

  It saddens me greatly to see from your last letter, my dear Miss,1 that your ideas of fair and unfair are completely muddled in your head, and that that head, in other aspects rather amusingly well organized, nonetheless lends to prejudice what it ought to accord to reason.

  ’Tis with the intention of setting your ideas a bit aright, of rendering them more mature, through a slight infusion of philosophy, that I am going to clarify, and without further ado pass on to you, a short discourse on the matter of laws, wherein what was only sketched out in my January letter will appear here in some greater detail. You will find therein, in considerably greater abundance, various examples of the futility of our vices and virtues culled from other peoples of the earth. From which you will more easily be able to calculate what the intrinsic value of the sum total is, and to what extent ’tis unfortunately all too true that here below all is naught but system and opinion. Haven’t you been struck by the assertions culled from the reality of these examples, wherein we are so greatly at odds with so many of our brethren? If not, I would be greatly surprised. ’Tis nonetheless from this treasure trove that our most famous writers—our Helvitiuses, our Montesquieus, our Rousseaus, etc., have drawn their most triumphant premises, because a premise is always considerably stronger when it is backed up by a proof. In which case, it is hard to refute.

  Oh! my dear Fanny,2 let those who are supposed to be exemplary show us that they truly are, and we shall have no further need of laws; let those whom chance or luck have caused to rise to positions of prominence behave irreproachably, and they shall have every right to demand the same from us.

  ’Tis the manifold misuse of authority on the part of the government that multiplies the vices of individuals. With what face do those who are at the head of government dare punish vice, dare demand virtue, when they themselves provide the example of every depravity on the face of the earth?

  By what right does this crowd of leeches who slake their thirst on the misfortunes of the people, who, through their despicable monopolies plunge this hapless and unhappy class—whose only wrong is to be weak and poor—into the cruel necessity of losing either their honor or their life, in the latter instance allowing the poor wretches no other choice but to perish either out of poverty or on the gallows; by what right, I say, do such monsters claim to require virtue from others? What! when in order to satisfy their cupidity, their avarice, their ambition, their pride, their rapacity, their lust, I see them remorselessly sacrifice millions of their king’s subjects, why should not I, if it so pleases, sacrifice others just as they do? By what means do they make amends for the universe of their crimes? By what means do they atone for
their foul deeds? Who, I ask, who gives them the right to do whatsoever they please, and to punish me, if I take it upon myself simply to do as they do?

  O centuries of barbarity, O savage centuries, when the vanquished enemy served as fodder to the victor, an adornment to his triumph, no, you do not even come close to an atrocity such as this! Wretched were those who were defeated in battle, but at least you had weapons with which to defend yourselves! Today, all we have left is our tears, and we deal with them bravely.

  At least these tyrants should learn how to choose their victims more fairly. They should learn not to vent their spleen upon those who know them intimately, upon those whose penetrating gaze will reach down even unto their most secret thoughts. Such hands, as soon as they have freed themselves from their chains, will tear away the blindfold of illusion, and by so doing will leave the idol on its pedestal completely exposed, so that the newly enlightened multitude can see with its own eyes the raw and disgusting matter wherewith ’tis composed.

  Fanny, my dear Fanny, you no longer ask me for news of everything that is happening. You, my dear Miss, are losing interest regarding the concerns of your Lovelace. Yet how amused you would be if only you could see Lady Mazan3 during the visits she makes to her husband, if only you could see her casting a sidelong glance as long as she can at her dense Submer4 trying to make him understand that she is going to betray him; and he, who can see no farther than the end of his nose, having failed to see the glance, asks what she means by that, by that stupid outburst, which reminds me ever so much of those fat turkeys that are forced to swallow chestnuts . . . Ah! Fanny, Fanny, the mere act of recounting the story makes me laugh all over again! Lies and deception are greatly to be admired, especially when practiced by a dolt. Such a person seems to grow fatter and fatter by virtue of all the efforts made to become subtle, just as ’tis true as ever that nature and lies work poorly together.