The "divine marquis" (the words of Guillaume Apollinaire) is the second most misunderstood author of the Western Canon after Niccolo Machiavelli. I gobbled Joel Warner's book instantly on the bookshelves. The book does not fully penetrate into rather impenetrable De Sade, in particular, because the author tries to uphold him to the standards of the normal person. Not so, De Sade certainly was a textbook case of incongruously named "Borderline Personality Disorder" deprived of the benefit of the modern psychotropic medications.
But the author goes far enough in recognizing that De Sade was a visionary who was so disgusted by what he saw in human nature that it drove him to the point of insanity. Some of the artistic influences such as Bunuel's L'Age d'Or are aptly described in the book. I did not like more recent "Quills" very much despite my admiration for Geoffrey Rush because it was so serious. Much better take was made by the French cartoonists who made the full-length animation on De Sade making its personages animals -- with Divine Marquis himself as a noble Labrador retriever -- and the sadistic scenes of his writings as his imaginings in the prison cell of the Bastille.
Marquis did not kill anyone in his life except maybe as a cavalry officer for the French Crown, and the war was and is currently considered a noble endeavor in the US. On the contrary, Napoleon, his jailer significantly depopulated contemporary Europe.
The degree of derangement and vision of Marquis de Sade can be proven that one of the last of his manuscripts contain the drawings of the concentration camp barracks. With such knowledge, what forgiveness.
No comments:
Post a Comment