Help us raise $200,000 to keep the Rail independent, relevant, and free!
Marquis de Sade
Social relevance and literary influence continue to mark the posthumous career of Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, MARQUIS DE SADE (1740-1814), author of Juliette, or the Prosperities of Vice, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and other works.
ALINE and VALCOUR or, the Philosophical Novel
By Marquis de SadeHow can I say it? How soften the blow I must inflict? My senses are confused, reason leaves me, I exist here and now only through pain and sorrow...
Two Extracts from Aline and Valcour
by the Marquis de Sade, translated from the French by Jocelyne Geneviève Barque and John Galbraith SimmonsNo surprise that Sade would defend what came to be known as homosexuality but his reasoned defense of it is unusual for its rejection of nurture or upbringing as its cause in favor of what would within a couple of centuries be largely acknowledged as owing to inborn biological or constitutional features. From the character known as Sarmiento, a thoroughly unpleasant Portuguese adventurer who has gone native in Africa, a hundred years before Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
ADVERTISEMENTS