Marquis de Sade_ Selections from his Writings chosen by Paul Dinnage, and an Essay by Simone de Beauvoir

Description

"Must we burn Sade?": a translation of "Faut-il bruler Sade?" originally published in 'Les Temps Moderne', December 1951 and January 1952, translated from the French by Annette Michelson.Also includes selections from de Sade's writings chosen (and translated from the French) by Paul Dinnage. This edition works better for giving us the essay by de Beauvoir than the anthologized passages that here follow her article. The prose selections from the Marquis included here after "Faut-il brûler Sade?" have been superseded by fuller, unexpurgated translations. Presumably due to censorship laws or fear of prosecution, this anthology was published 1953-54 with careful renderings of a few political, religious, sexual, and philosophical excerpts chosen by Paul Dinnage. The original French often remains to disguise the lubricity, the homosexuality, and assorted brands of "sodomy," while the atheism, moralizing, and murder is intact in English. These selections, often less engrossing than dull, give some sense for the curious reader of the range of his thought, and the narrowness of its depths, but as in the case of poor Olympe tossed by her companions (after two hours of outrages) into a volcano simply because she "bores" them seem more puerile than philosophical, compared to the "Pensee" above. He cites Voltaire to sum up his own outlook: "Love is the fabric of nature embroidered by the imagination." De Sade may bore you more than you might suspect, but as in the excerpt above, he does cloak within his verbosity moments that you will remember, if not the ones you might have first expected.