fragments dim of lovely forms

well well well. look who it is

If we start from the principle of denying others posited by de Sade it is strange to observe that at the very peak of unlimited denial of others is a denial of oneself. Theoretically, denial of others should be an affirmation of oneself, but it is soon obvious that if it is unlimited and pushed as far as it can go, beyond personal enjoyment, it becomes a quest for inflexible sovereignty. Concern for power renders real, historical sovereignty flexible. Real sovereignty is not what it claims to be; it is never more than an effort aimed at freeing human existence from the bonds of necessity. Among others, the sovereign of history evaded the injunctions of necessity. He evaded it to a high degree with the help of the power given him by faithful subjects. The reciprocal loyalty between the sovereign and his subjects rested on the subordination of the latter and on their vicarious participation in his sovereignty. But de Sade’s sovereign man has no actual sovereignty; he is a fictitious personage whose power is limited by no obligations. There is no loyalty expected from this sovereign man towards those who confer his power upon him. Free in the eyes of other people, he is no less the victim of his own sovereignty. He is not free to accept a servitude in the form of a quest for wretched pleasure, he is not free to stoop to that !

Erotic conduct is the opposite of normal conduct as spending is the opposite of getting. If we follow the dictates of reason we try to acquire all kinds of good, we work in order to increase the sum of our possessions or our knowledge, we use all means to get richer and to possess more. Our status in the social order is based on this sort of behaviour. But when the fever of sex seizes us we behave in the opposite way. We recklessly draw on our strength and sometimes in the violence of passion we squander considerable resources to no real purpose. Pleasure is so close to ruinous waste that we refer to the moment of climax as a “little death”. Consequently anything that suggests erotic excess always implies disorder. Nakedness wrecks the decency conferred by our clothes. But once we have ventured along the path of sensual disorder it takes a good deal to satisfy us. Destruction and betrayal will sometimes go hand in hand with the rising tide of genetic excess. Besides nudity there is the strangeness of half-clothed bodies; what garments there are serve to emphasise the disorder of the body and show it to be all the more disordered. Brutality and murder are further steps in the same direction.

The events of de Sade’s real life lead one to suspect an element of braggadocio in his insistence on sovereignty seen as a denial of the rights and feelings of others. But the boasting was essential if he was to work out a system completely free from human weakness. In his life de Sade took other people into account, but his conception of fulfilment worked over and over in his lonely cell led him to deny outright the claims of other people. The Bastille was a desert; his writing was the only outlet for his passions and in it he pushed back the limits of what was possible beyond the craziest dreams ever framed by man. These books distilled in prison have given us the truest picture of a man for whom other people did not count at all.