Le Jeu de la Sphinge: Sade, et la Philosophie des Lumières

Le Jeu de la Sphinge consists of five chapters preceded by a short introduction. The link between these chapters is the materialist philosophy of Sade, "le matérialisme intégral" as Sclippa calls it, which is associated with subjects as diverse as mythology, libertinage, nature, violence, coprophagy and tragedy. Each one of the five chapters can be read separately as a short essay.

The author begins and ends his work with a reference to Œdipus who embodies both the monstrosity and the tragedy of human fate. The first and last chapters draw a parallel between this tragic hero and the Sadean characters. Sclippa starts the first chapter by explaining why he prefers to use the feminine name "la Sphinge" instead of "le Sphinx". What is exactly "le jeu de la Sphinge"? What is at stake? Beyond the well-known riddle that Œdipus must guess after meeting the Sphinx, the author convincingly investigates the relationship between Œdipus and "la Sphinge". He also compares Sade to Œdipus in the sense that both are patricides (Sade, as a materialist philosopher, "killed" God, and Œdipus killed his father) and ultimately give a satisfying answer to this ontological question: what is man? According to the author, Sade incites us to see the beast in man. Sclippa argues that Juliette behaves like "la Sphinge": she puts her prey to the test and kills her victims when they are unable to recognize themselves as potential monsters. As for Justine, the quintessential victim, she is a loser because she refuses to play the game and keeps on denying the monstrosity of man in spite of all her unfortunate experiences.

Sclippa deals at great length with Sade's materialism in the central chapter entitled "Sade et la nature". For the eighteenth-century philosophers, the idea of nature refers to a "principe normatif", "une force normatrice universelle" (50), whether it stems from God or not. Nature is often personified and also it is given holy attributes. Yet this "Mère universelle" does not cherish mankind in Sade's fiction. On the contrary, she is blind and indifferent to man. Such a point of view calls into question the traditionally anthropocentric hierarchy of species, since the human race receives no more respect than the plant kingdom. The author rightfully comments that "dans le contexte de ce relativisme absolu, l'expérience humaine se trouve donc réduite à l'absurde" (53). From the idea of nature one has slipped towards the notion of matter. Perpetual motion makes matter a theater of continuous changes where death has lost its meaning or even its legitimacy. Yet such themes are not completely new: Sade's vision is in keeping with materialist thinking going back to Epicurus and Lucretius. Furthermore, one knows how much Sade owes to his contemporaries such as D'Holbach.

The analysis becomes especially stimulating when the author examines the consequences of this materialist philosophy in Sade's fiction. The libertine heroes claim that they just obey their instincts and the laws of nature when they kill, which does not lead to death but brings about a change of state in matter. In their opinion, they don't commit any crime since they act in accordance with the laws of nature. Consequently, they dream of violating these laws. "Changer la marche périodique des astres" (61) would be a true crime against nature. The impossibility of carrying out their dreams makes the characters always unsatisfied, furious and jealous of nature. Sclippa shows in the penultimate chapter how coprophagy gives the libertines the illusion of cheating nature by spiriting away quantities of matter that otherwise would be recycled. By imitating nature, the Sadean heroes try hard to equal it and to surpass themselves.

Sclippa contends in the second chapter ("Libertinage et philosophie") that all these characters, driven by such an enormous ambition, are merely fictional insofar as they personify philosophical conceptions. It is a fact that philosophy and libertinage merge within Sade's novels (e. g. La Nouvelle Justine and Juliette) in a very original way. After retracing the evolution of the meaning of the word "libertinage" through the Ancien Régime, the author explains how specific Sade's philosophy is in comparison with that of his contemporaries who were mainly concerned with the relationships between moral principles and social institutions. Sade's philosophy treats moral codes as an individual issue rather than as part of a collective debate. It views libertinage at once as free-thinking and debauchery. Sclippa justifiably underlines the close relationship that Sade establishes between these two forms of libertinage. This relationship appears especially in La Nouvelle Justine and Juliette where the heroes alternate between speaking about their philosophical ideas and putting them into practice.

In this connection, I would like to point out that the author's use of the word "démonstration" throughout the analysis is questionable: for instance, he argues that "[...] une fois replacées (par l'explication) dans un ensemble logique, les horreurs décrites deviennent alors autant d'éléments esthétiques cohérents et constitutifs d'un tout, en tant que démonstrations et applications d'une théorie" (44). But a description is not a demonstration, strictly speaking. The philosophical argumentations alternating with the descriptions of erotic scenes are demonstrations and thus I do not agree that descriptions and argumentations are of the same textual category. In his descriptions, the Sadean narrator portrays theatrical actions, libertine scenes, gestures and attitudes, while in their argumentations, the characters explain their philosophical ideas. Moreover, several comments leave me quite sceptical, such as: "si la coprophagie est si prédominante dans l'œuvre de Sade, cela a peut-être quelque chose à voir avec ses goûts" (82). Maybe it has something to do with Sade's tastes, maybe not, but who knows? But does not the author himself advise the readers against the danger of mixing up Sade's life with his fiction and words with things ("Sade n'a jamais tué personne" (67), "les excréments […] sont de pure fiction" (81), for example)?

The last chapter is devoted to Sade and tragedy. Following in the footsteps of many other scholars, Sclippa makes his own attempt at answering the question of whether Sade's novels are ultimately tragic in vision. After comparing the Ancien Régime with Ancient Greece, both periods characterized by the decline of tragedy and the emergence of philosophy, he highlights the contrast between the conceptions of passion that prevail throughout these periods. According to him, the Sadean hero and the tragic one are quite similar because both of them are aware that their own lives do not matter and because they relativize their death, as life and death are part of the same natural cycle. Given that the criterion of time is of importance in the definition of tragedy, Sclippa wonders to what extent the Sadean heroes are trapped by time. He comes to the conclusion that "Sade déconstruit la machine tragique" (98) by playing with the codes that govern tragedy.

There is, unfortunately, quite a large number of typing errors, misprints, spelling mistakes, anglicisms and clumsy or faulty sentences that make the argumentation hard to understand at times. But, in spite of this remark, the fact remains that the analysis is often judicious, mainly in the first and last chapters. Sclippa's arguments about "le jeu de la Sphinge" and the monstrosity of the Sadean characters are especially interesting or even innovative.