SOURCE: "The Sade Machine," in Studies on Voltaire in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. XCVIII, 1972, pp. 207-18.

[In the following excerpt, Lee evaluates Sade's technique in his "iconoclastic" novels in terms of its function and apparent purpose.]

In the last pages of his novel Juliette, Sade describes nature in convulsive upheaval. Lightning and turbulent wind attack the universe so violently that, in the author's words, 'On euit dit que la nature, ennuyee de ses ouvrages, fut prete a confondre tous les elements pour les contraindre a des formes nouvelles.'

Patterning himself on this cataclysmic nature, Sade the novelist rejected the bland literature of his predecessors and set about to constrain thought and its expression into new forms. He constructed an elaborate machine, a literary battering ram designed to smash the foundations of moral rectitude for centuries to come. Our century has considered the Sadian machine with increasing interest and, recently, with an abundance of criticism, most of which is philosophical, moral or psychological. But if we confront Sade's literary product as a working apparatus, a series of techniques calculated to achieve a certain effect, then it becomes necessary to analyse and evaluate his work on a more immediate and practical level. To begin with, we may consider this apparatus from several points of view, for example, from the standpoints of: 1. its originality; 2. its endurance; 3. the quality of the machine as a machine; 4. its efficacity (or its effect on the reader).

On the first two counts, those of originality of invention and durability, the success of Sade's product is beyond dispute. Like all original artists, this author remoulded traditional forms and ideas, imbued them with his own fire and blazed a way to the future. Sade's invention has become such a modern phenomenon that—as Simone de Beauvoir has suggested—today's critics usually view his work as the province of Freud and Krafft-Ebing rather than the creation of an eighteenth-century writer.

But when we consider the intrinsic merit of his system—the quality of the machine as a machine—how are we to appraise it, and what possible standards may we apply to it? It is helpful, first of all, to distinguish generally between two models or categories of Sade's novels: on the one hand, those in which Sade, like Prevost, prudently pretends to paint vice in order to illustrate the superiority of virtue (e.g. Les Infortunes de la vertu, Aline et Valcour, Les Crimes de i'amour); on the other hand, those iconoclastic works in which virtue is merely a stupid foil for brilliant, triumphant vice (La Nouvelle Justine, Juliette, La Philosophie daus le boudoir). It is not the pseudo-virtuous novel of lip service, but the brutal, iconoclastic novel that most logically figures in an analysis of Sade's subversive system. Such works are usually novels of ideas. Yet it is difficult—perhaps unfair—to judge them either by philosophical or literary standards: the abundant philosophical commentary that fills their pages may be rich in insights into the author himself, but rather than a careful, significant contribution to the history of moral thought, this philosophy remains first and last a pretext and a blatant admixture of alibis. And as for literature, Sade did not intend to make of his iconoclastic novels true works of art. He was concerned neither with psychological portrayal nor with a credible depictive plot. Moreover, these works were written too hastily to show any serious, consistent attention to composition and language.

Rather than view such texts in the light of intellectual or artistic standards, we may well attempt to measure them with a more functional, utilitarian yardstick … Sade's novels are components of a high-powered instrument for evil. How well, then, do they serve their author's purpose? Let us begin by examining the construction and main characteristics of the Sadian machine.

If we consider such novels as La Nouvelte Justine or Juliette, we find the structure both simple and apparent: a visual description of vice alternates with the verbal justification of vice. The physical and the abstract succeed each other with see-saw regularity. Unity and continuity are achieved only through this mechanical repetition throughout the works.

On the philosophical side, there is little hint of any logical development of ideas, but, rather, an oscillation between one magnetic pole of a theory and its antithesis or counter-pole. 'One must conform to the morals of one's country', a Sadian spokesman insists; but a few pages later, a similar spokesman offers convincing arguments for utter nonconformism. 'All things are equal in nature', another hero argues, and in no time at all we have just as strong a case for inequality. If a protagonist wishes to justify matricide, he follows Hartsoeker's and La Mettrie's theory that the sperm alone counts in the reproductive process and that mothers are overrated. But naturally when fathers are liquidated, that little sperm is a bagatelle. Conscience, necessity, utility, nature, society are all double or triple agents.

It would be difficult to trace any chronological evolution in this philosophical commentary. On the subject of Sade and nature, Philippe Sollers writes [in Logiques, 1968] that 'Après avoir réfuté Dieu par la nature, [Sade] finit par immoler la nature'. On the subject of Sade and crime, Simone de Beauvoir says that Sade, who speaks in terms of absolute vice and crime, 'finit par denier au crime tout caractere criminel' [in Les Temps Modernes, 1952]. But instead of forming any definite progression, Sade's contradictory views appear to alternate as the spirit moves the author, and inconsistent as these viewpoints may be, they circle each other with remarkable consistency.

As for the ingredients of the philosophical machinery, it is obvious that Sade, opportunistically, takes his material where he finds it. We are reminded of the clever phonographs with speakers from Japan, changers from England, cabinet work from Yugoslavia, that are assembled and packaged in New York and sold as American products: Sade will turn to Condillac for sensationalism, to La Mettrie, Diderot and especially Holbach for atheistic, deterministic materialism, to Helvetius for self-interest, to Montesquieu for geographic relativity. Voltaire's debunking devices are always available for crushing infamous religion, and almost any philosophe may provide fuel for the Sadian blowtorch of reason. Here we have not only philosophical promiscuity but philosophical gluttony as well. Sade might have eliminated a great number of his chameleonic abstractions and confined himself mainly to his more convincing arguments—those based on a very concrete and personal self-interest. But like Juliette, who did not want to let one single part of her body remain vacant, he insists on stopping every moral gap through a total metaphysical onslaught.

So the long commentary inevitably precedes and follows the orgy, theory alternates with practice, and it is not the practice so much as the theory that seems out of place to readers. Georges Bataille has noted in his preface to La Nouvelle Justine that Sade's long dissertations throw cold water on the violence that he builds, and that 'la froideur d'un langage de raison retire a la verite erotique sa seule valeur'. What then is the function of this philosophical component? Is Sade sincerely trying to convince the reader through these arguments? Given Sade's egocentricity and the cavalier manner in which he appropriates either side of almost anyone's philosophy, his didacticism seems intended less as a means of converting the ignorant than as a way of showing the fiendish cleverness of his heros, and, by extension, of himself. But within the framework of the Sadian machine, the long moral sermons appear to serve a more immediate purpose. …

On 17 April 1782 Sade wrote the following lines from his prison at Vincennes to Marie Dorothée de Rousset: 'II y a toujours deux fatals instants dans la journée qui rappelle [I'homme] malgré lui à la triste condition des bêtes dont vous savez que mon système… ne l'éloigne pas trop… celui où il faut qu'il se remplisse et celui où il faut qu'il se vide'.

Indeed, this dual process of filling and emptying forms the very structure of the mechanism. Sperm, blood, saliva, excrement, tears and vomit inundate the orgies. Although an unknown percentage of these elements is consumed in more or less good spirit, this re-use is merely a step toward the ultimate goal—ejection. But rare is the orgy that does not end with a banquet, so that those who have become depleted may not only regain their lost force but acquire enough new supply to carry them to and through the next Vesuvian round. And it is precisely during lunch or dinner that most of the sermons are given. The atmosphere is relaxed. Theorizing is as calm, reasonable and polite as the orgy was brutal, and a victim who was raped with cries of 'putain!' in the previous section is now courteously called 'Ma chère Justine' when her torturer becomes a well-fed philosophe. Too tired to practise vice, the libertines are content to talk of it, and the talk itself often has almost the same therapeutic and rallying effect as the food that accompanies it. 'Comme vos lecons m'enflamment', cries Eugénie to Dolmancé as he expounds his ideas in La Philosophie daws le boudoir. And she is not alone in her reaction. The philosophical factor was clearly not designed to dilute the violence but to break the monotony of violence and to bring characters perpetually to a fresh start and a new siege.

Within the ebb and flow of Sade's work we find elements that are governed by rigorous laws. Sade has constantly itemized and categorized the hordes of characters in his work (or actors, as he is wont to call them). They form an almost immutable hierarchy, at the highest point of which are found the marquis's counterparts. These are easily recognizable: mature men with all the Sadian trappings—riches, a title, a gloomy castle, perhaps an obliging sister, and, without fail, a hearty dislike of women. Novels may offer a dozen identical heroes: they are always some form of a ubiquitous Sade, and they reign supreme. Somewhat beneath them are the female accomplices, often from nineteen to thirty years of age, and a few of these accomplices—Juliette, for example—may become powerful figures in their own right. But most of them have only temporary luck and temporary impunity, for Sade remembered Machiavelli's counsel: 'Have no accomplices or get rid of them once you have used them'.

Then there are of course the weak and virtuous victims—and the true Sadian victim is always a female: an orphan, somebody's wife, or perhaps an old beggarwoman a la Rose Keller. Although accomplices may fall from grace and join the ranks of victims, it is impossible for a victim to climb the ladder. Victimizers like Roland or Bandole advise Justine that she might one day be stronger than they, but for victims any advancement in status or change for the better is never made.

In the background we are aware of carefully classified and well-organized teams of supernumeraries, who might just as well be stage props. Judging from the account ledger at the end of Les Cent vingt journées de Sodome, most of these eventually become victims. They are referred to usually as 'objects', a handy, impersonal term with the added advantage of not distinguishing between genders. The word 'subject' is sometimes used when Sade wishes to equate victims directly with their fate.

The system of victimization is foolproof. In practically every case a victim is suspended between two alternatives, two catastrophes, one of which is so repellent that he will swing magnetically toward the other. For example, rather than see his parent or child killed, a virtuous victim will gradually be led to participate in all manner of sexual assaults on his loved one, little suspecting that he and his whole family will perish in either case. In La Nouvelle Justine the system is so economical that the victim herself does most of the work. At one point Justine is even told in advance that she will willingly choose the sexual trap. The diabolical Esterval informs her from the start that in order to try to save his other victims she will stay in his castle and fall into his clutches. And of course this is precisely what happens. Justine's unhappy choice of alternatives is a necessary choice: that robot is carefully programmed for vice through her own logic of virtue.

But just as the orgies must be interrupted by food and philosophy, clearly the victim has to be resuscitated in order to become victimized again. So Sade's works inevitably follow the picaresque pattern of temporary cure and permanent disaster, a few hours of revival buying six months of torture. Thus we have a perpetual, systematic oscillation between orgy and philosophy, intake and output, betrayal and self-destruction, cure and catastrophe. These mechanical phenomena find expression in a series of episodes that constitute a highly fragmented work. It would be hardly fair to condemn the author for this lack of unity, since unity was not one of his major concerns here. But there are certain other defects that cannot be overlooked, because, unfortunately, they relate directly to the main function of the mechanism.

In order to generate his vicious storm, Sade had set himself the Promethean task of capturing the energy, movement and force of nature and unleashing them through his own work; nevertheless critics have persistently pointed to the static quality of this work. As we have seen, Sade has not interspersed his orgies throughout a moving, living plot, but has alternated them instead with large sections of philosophical sermonizing. And the orgies themselves are, in the long run, as lifeless as the sermons, since they are, to use Sade's term, tableaux, and have as much energy as a set of blueprints of interlocking parts in various combinations. The language describing the orgies is a static language of nouns. Even the verbs are little more than substantives. Typically, Saint-Fond tells Juliette: 'Je parricidais, j'incestais, je sodomisais, etc.', and, in essence, Sade's characters are always nouned, never verbed.

Sade insists that his tableaux are full of life and rapid movement, but at the same time he laments the fact that a painter could not seize the temporal quality that is their very essence. He tells us: 'II n'est pas aisé a l'art, qui n'a point de mouvement, de realiser une action dont le mouvement fait toute l'ame'. Time plagues the author at every step of the way. His characters complain in sheer frustration that their crimes cannot last for centuries, and even their ingenious torture machines cannot prolong suffering eternally. Sade attempts to solve the problem of duration by steadily increasing the length of brief novels like Les Infortunes de Ia vertu or Les Prosperites du vice. In so doing he buys time at the expense of vitality, and offers us monotony. He fears monotony like the plague, and he tries to combat it by being ever new ('se renouveler sans cesse'). But the verb to re-new is inevitably a chimera and a contradiction. In the last analysis, Sade is condemned merely to repeat.

At times variety seems an answer. In one exotic episode, a party at Olympe's place, the unlikely ingredients are one eunuch, one hermaphrodite, one dwarf, an eighty-year old woman, a turkey, a monkey, a bulldog, a goat and somebody's four-year-old great grandson. But the number and kinds of actors and agents are, ultimately, finite, and the number and types of combinations are limited too. These realities are at the heart of the bitter lamentations of Sade's heroes, who constantly bemoan the poverty of their means. The poverty of Sade's own means as a narrator and the sameness of his technique are intimated at the end of the first part of Juliette. There the heroine informs us that 'L'Histoire de cette premiere partie fut a peu pres celle de toutes les autres, aux episodes pres, que ma fertile imagination avait soin de varier sans cesse'.

If attempts at variety are largely failures, Sade offers us another solution—proliferation. A novel may begin with solitary encounters, but the tete-a-tete very soon admits several other participants, and what started out as an intimate circle expands to whole brigades in subsequent chapters and reaches the capacity of a Hollywood pageant or three-ring circus. The solitary crime suffices for only a few pages, and Sade works his way quickly enough to genocide. Numbers count, because for Sade numbers are at least as exciting as size or duration. Thus the abundance of lists and ledgers included in his work—lists of actors, lists of victims, countries, expenses and so forth. The portraits that Sade offers of his heroes are no more than long inventories of their vices. Even the rare descriptions of nature, such as those found in the pseudo-virtuous novel Aline et Valcour, consist in the quantity of nightingales, flowers, fruit or game.

But in Sade's work, just as time and energy are lost in space and substance, quality is obscured by this quantity. The technique of proliferation is undoubtedly more effective as a device for comedy than as a means of generating the searing and forceful electricity that Sade wanted to discharge. A more promising technique than proliferation is the progressive intensification that Sade tries to effect in his novels. The most graphic example of this intensification is his categorizing of Les Cent vingt journées de Sodome chronologically into 'passions simples', 'passions de seconde classe ou doubles', 'passions de troisieme classe ou criminelles', and 'passions de quatrieme classe ou meurtrieres', each class of passions more vile than the previous one. Readers of Sade's frankly vicious novels are continually confronted with ogres who are 'encore plus libertins' than their predecessors, and the long story of Juliette ends with a wholesale dismembering and human bonfire. As for the unhappy Justine, she is doomed, understandably, to a steady disintegration. In the first half of her story, although she plays primarily the role of voyeur (a sort of I am curious black and blue), in the second half she replaces the real victims and comes ever closer to death.

Certainly the process of intensification is a valid one, and it would seem most suited to Sade's purpose. Unfortunately, the long iconoclastic works are so diffuse that the evolution between one degree of crime and another is almost imperceptible. Such an evolution is much more noticeable, for example, in the more compact, earlier versions of Justine and Juliette. Another drawback in Sade's use of intensification is that the author is usually too impatient to be able to start in a stage whisper and build up to a high pitch. What can astonish us after the excesses of the first few pages? Sade recognized this mistake and in notes for Les Cent vingt journ6es he admonished himself to soften the first part of the work. Yet he rarely seemed able to take this sort of advice.

What Sade was undoubtedly banking on was the frank and ruthless language of his works—the spelling out of the unmentionable. For after all, what better stimulant than the explicit narration of vicious and aberrant acts? The public recapitulation of shocking details is always a fitting end to an old debauch and a proper prelude to a new one, and the narration of vicious deeds serves as an ever-present catalyst in Les Cent viogt journ6es. Sade was well aware that a suggestive narration could be more effective than a specific one. In a note to La Nouvelle Justine he quotes La Mettrie's statement, 'On dit mieux les choses en les supprimant, on irrite les desirs, en aiguillonnant la curiosite de l'esprit sur un objet en partie couvert'. This note presumably explained why Sade had decided not to describe one particular scene of the novel. But the idea occurred to him only after 620 pages of the most explicit description! 'Un philosophe doit tout dire', Sade has said. And in his work this 'tout' is construed not only in the sense of a courageous lack of censorship, but in the sense of a total narration. One of the most thorny aspects of this total expression, is, certainly, the problem of imagination, for, as Pierre Klossowski and others have noted, Sade and his characters are for ever faced with the thankless task of translating ineffable acts into conventional language.

It would seem then that the qualities that Sade's work failed to realize were precisely the ones that he rated most highly—energy and movement, variety, intensity and imagination. But does the absence of these important qualities prevent the machine from fulfilling its function as an instrument for evil? This question brings us, finally, to the user, or reader, and here we enter a shadowy realm with even more questions. To what extent does Sade's work elicit in the reader reactions of fascination or repulsion? Is the reader's reaction of satiety some sort of automatically self-imposed escape hatch? To what extent does evil encourage evil? …

One of the most common reactions is, admittedly, shock. And because we are shocked at least to some degree, we imagine that this was Sade's purpose and that he intended the reader as victim rather than beneficiary of the machine. Indeed the reader finds himself most often in the role of Justine: regaled with long sermons on vice on the one hand, and on the other put into the position of voyeur and unwitting participant. Sade's own references to the reader are most cordial and conservative. 'Ami lecteur', he apostrophizes in introducing his Cent vingt journées, and in his Idee sur les romans he offers advice on how to sustain reader interest. But when Sade describes what will please the reader, he is referring to what pleases the marquis de Sade. Readers may, in a sense, become accomplices of Sade by the mere fact of reading and thus accepting him, but Sade was not interested in accomplices. If Sade had wanted to charm the reader, he would have done what he condemned in Crebillon fils, that is, made vice alluring. Or he would have tried to approach the reader gently with human beings and a love story like Prevost, or with wit and an intimate wink of the eye like Voltaire or Diderot. The reader would have been electrified, not electrocuted, seduced, not raped. But the author would not have been Sade.

For the Sade machine is, essentially, an onanistic device, originally designed, like La Nouvelle Helofse, to deal with the author's own sexual phantoms and fantasies. In view of this fact, the reader would appear to be neither a chosen victim nor a welcome participant, but a mere by-product of the system. If Sade has become a mystique today, it is not so much because of the immediate efficacity of his work. It may be partly a question of timing. 'Tout se deprave en vieillissant', said Sade, writing of his jaded era and its literature. Like that literature, like Sade's characters, like Sade himself, no doubt, and like the eighteenth century, our own century has reached that point of licence in which it is difficult to discover and destroy new taboos. We turn to Sade—almost in spite of his work. And when the pendulum swings back to prudery, the divine Marquis will still have to be reckoned with. Brilliant or foolish enough to have ventured where no one else had dared, he made himself herald, influence, symbol and myth. And well beyond his dank and fetid literary machinery, a totally pure and optimistic force continues to project itself. To quote three glorious hemistichs of a victorious Juliette.

Le passe m'encourage,
Le present m'e1ectrise,
Je crains peu I'avenir.