Thursday, May 25, 2006
Eventually we begin to realize that Sade has never been understood. He cried out for liberty, and we accuse him of being a forerunner of Hitler. He dreamed of a world without punishment, and we attribute brutality to him. He spoke for the spirit of love, and we project every viciousness onto him.
We are afraid of being seduced by him, we Hiroshima-makers.
He showed us our own face in a mirror and we have screamed for 150 years that it was his face.
Nothing could be more explicit than his actual words:
Laws should be "flexible," "mild" and "few'' (Sade, p. 310).
We must "get rid forever of the atrocity of capital punishment" (Sade, p. 310).
Women must be equal with men: "Must the diviner half of humankind be laden with irons by the other? Ah, break those irons, Nature wills it" (Sade, p. 322).
Property should cease to be monopolized by a few (Sade, p. 313-314).
The present system of property-and-power rests on"submission of the people . . . due to . . . violence and the frequent use of torture" (Sade, p. 11).
He gave up his post as magistrate rather than administer capital punishment — "They wanted me to commit an inhumane act. I have never wanted to" (Sade, p. 29).
His principles are, as he says, quite correctly, not those that lead to tyranny but "principles to whose expression and realization the infamous despotism of tyrants has been opposed for uncounted centuries" (Sade, p.311).
Even against the clergy, he maintains a solidly libertarian position: "I do not, however, propose either massacres or expulsions. Such dreadful things have no place in the enlightened mind. No, do not assassinate at all, do not expel at all.... Let us reserve the employment of force for the idols; ridicule alone will suffice for those who serve them" (Sade, p. 306).
But these words are ignored. Because he committed one crime — the crime of reporting accurately the secret day-dreams and longings of the psyche of men and women in this civilization, men and women reared in the crucible of authority-and-submission, discipline-and-punishment — he has been portrayed as the endorser of these extremities.
More truly than Flaubert said"Je suis Bovary," Sade could have said (did say, for those who read between the lines), "Je suis Justine." It is his voice that cries out continually in Justine's speeches, "Oh, monsters, is remorse and dead in you?" Just as it is his voice, undeniably, in the"Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man" which says simply, "Reason, sir — yes, our reason alone should warn us that harm done our fellows can never bring happiness to us . . . and you need neither god nor religion to subscribe to [it]" (Sade, p. 174).
I dreamed I called Jesus Christ on the phone and asked him, say, Man, did you really forgive them for they knew not what they did?
"Verily, verily, I say unto you," he replied, "I made my position on authority-and-submission as clear as I could: 'You know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you.' — Matt. 20:25. 'Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.' — Matt. 12:25. 'If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' — Matt.15:14. 'For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them upon men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.' — Matt. 23:4. They be blind leaders of the blind, baby, and mechanical laws of punishment-and-conditioning lead them in little grooves of robot-life."
But, but — I protested — is there anything outside conditioned behavior? Is there a real freedom, Man? Is there?
"Find the place where Sade and I agree," he said, "and there you will find the beginning of a definition of liberty."
And the line went dead with a sudden click like the sound of a bedroom door closing as a little boy is pushed outside.
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