Volume 5, Number 2 · August 26, 1965
King Phallus
By John Weightman
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings
by Marquis de Sade, compiled and translated by Richard Seaver, by Austyn Wainhouse, with Introductions by Jean Paulhan, by Maurice Blanchot
Grove, 753 pp., $15.00
This, it would seem, must count as a historic volume, since it is the first serious, non-clandestine edition of the Marquis de Sade's writings ever to appear in America. The translation reads well, in spite of a number of perhaps misleading archaisms or gallicisms, such as 'luxury' for 'lust' (luxure) and 'inconsequent' for 'inconsistent' (inconséquent). The choice of texts is quite representative; in addition to seven letters by Sade and a dialogue on atheism, there are two 'black' items, Justine, in one of the later, fuller versions, and La philosophie dans le boudoir, and one 'white' item, Eugénie de Franval, a tale of incest and murder with a conventional moral ending. Eugénie is rather a bore, but at least it shows that Sade could bow to the moralizing conventions of the eighteenth century when he chose to do so, just as he could deny authorship of the 'black' works with a fine display of moral indignation worthy of Diderot or Rousseau. Justine and La philosophie are not quite so overpoweringly ghastly as Les 120 journées de Sodome, which has been omitted; still, they are obscene and sadistic enough to give a fair idea of the Marquis in his most typical mood and to put any homme moyen sensuel completely off sex for a day or two.
Review, 2385 words
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