Must We Burn Sade?

Must We Burn Sade? is a collection of essays edited by Deepak Narang Sawhney that highlights different aspects of Sade's work. The selections from well-known Sadean scholars include Philippe Soller's funny and imaginative "Sade Against the Supreme Being," purportedly a letter written by Sade to Cardinal Bernis in Rome, Annie Le Brun's "Sade and the Theatre," which discusses both Sade's relation to drama and the importance of theatrality in his work, and Georges Bataille's views of history and philosophy in Sade's writing, "Evil in Platonism and Sadism." The collection includes a variety of literary, socio-political, and psychoanalytical approaches to the Sadean text, at times combining all three, for example, in Alphonso Lingis' "Deadly Pleasures" and Sawhney's own "The Encyclopedia of the Embodied Earth." Political issues are pursued in "Seven Mirrors of Sade: Sex, Death, CAPITAL, and the Language of Monsters," by Steven Pfohl, which offers a political reading that connects capitalism not so much to the works of Sade as to sadism, and in Lucienne Frappier-Mazur's "A Turning Point in the Sadean Novel: The Terror," which discusses Sade's work in the political context of the French Revolution. Literary questions are the focus of Catherine Cusset, who considers fiction and the limits of discourse in "Sade: Critique of Pure Fiction," while David Allison's "Transgression and Its Itinerary" discusses the Sadean hero, discovering '8 stages' in the mastery of libertinage (while this number is not necessarily absolute, the reading is nonetheless interesting). "Alistair Welchman's "Reading the Lack of the Body: The Writing of the Marquis de Sade," investigates the links between literary, psychoanalytic, and philosophical meaning in Sade, finding him still "the most powerful antidote" against today's "anemic and academic antihumanism" (179). The book is dedicated in memoriam to Kathy Acker, whose literary and very personal analysis of feminism in Philosophy in the Bedroom and "Florville and Courval" often strikes refreshing notes ("Who needs Freud when Sade is around?") (238). Finally, Deepak Narang Sawhney provides a short introduction, "Unmasking Sade," in addition to an essay on his historical and philosophical perception of Sade.

To review such a diverse book is not an easy task. Its scope is vast and ambitious. The choice of essays necessarily reflects in a refracted way the editor's point of view through the composite mirror of the whole. Each essay can be read independently and appraised on its own merit, or relatively, in relation to the other companion pieces. Was Sawhney perhaps inspired by Sade himself who, at the beginning of the 120 Days of Sodom, invites his readers to see the book as a sort of banquet where they will be free to take and leave whatever fancies them most? The title is, of course, a translation of Simone de Beauvoir's own epoch making essay first published in 1955 by Gallimard. "Must we burn Sade?" is largely an academic question now, but it was not so at the time, when Jean-Jacques Pauvert was standing in court charged with pornography for attempting to publish Sade. Yet if his works have not been burned, Sade's reputation remains scandalous. The question, then, in appraising such a book, is to see whether it holds its promise to "peel away the layers of negative legacy" associated with the work of Sade (back cover).

This book does peel away very many of these layers, if not all of them. Indeed, we need more such collections, for we are still a long way from understanding Sade. Such compilations of intelligent, deep, original views on the significance of Sade's work will always delight the afficionado while helping the neophyte to understand an author of the foremost importance. Not that it is necessary--again--to agree with each and every of the diverse views expounded in the book. Not everyone will be equally receptive to Stephen Pfohl's impressionistic style, for instance, or Alphonso Lingis' view that there is prophecy in Sade, and other restrictions may apply. But without a central thesis, the book allows for this type of variance. I found myself increasingly approving the choices made by the editor as my reading progressed, and I agreed with the different viewpoints expressed far more than I disagreed. It is a banquet that both glutton and gourmet might enjoy (the gourmet will however put down the book from time to time to better savor whatever "piece" was last enjoyed).

I do, however, have a few reservations. I do not necessarily agree with the recurrent socio-political theme expressed through the book (in the studies of Lingis, Pfohl, and Sawhney) and inspired by Horkheimer, Adorno, and Deleuze, that Sade's work prefigures in many ways some chaotic, anarchistic future for humanity. I have always found Albert Camus' pronouncement that "Contemporary history and tragedy really begin with [Sade]" rather vague, especially in the light of Camus' massive misreading of his works in his L'Homme révolté (21). This does not mean that anarchy will NOT happen, but the opposite might be true as well: a new golden age in history could also be inscribed in these works, in the faith Sade places in mankind to overcome its destructive passions, for example, or in his belief in the redemptive value of his brand of materialism.

Sahwney's own essay forms the centerpiece of this banquet. It is a well-written, jargon-free, intelligent study of Sade's concept of the state in relation to desire. His analysis of the Sadean hero as the embodiment of cosmic forces is a powerful view that deserves our attention, for if Sade should ever be successful in renewing the whole corpus of Western literature, it might be through this clever and simple device of embodiment, which is perhaps the most important key to understanding him. Through this essay on the dialectics of desire in Sade's works, Sahwney shows convincingly and with the utmost clarity how a proper understanding of the Sadean hero is essential to understanding the very world(s) we live in.

Any scholar of Sade and any lover of literature will enjoy this collection of essays, which provides an occasion to think and meditate anew upon someone who increasingly appears to be one of the most important authors of our times. Often refreshing and challenging, the overall impact of this book I found well expressed in Kathy Acker's statement that "Sade wanted to show or to teach us who we are; he wanted for us to learn to want to not exist" (241). Indeed, this is true of any high philosophy: thus Plato, Parmenides, etc. Wanting to not exist, as Sade also pointed out, is the beginning of the sole true life worth living, the life of philosophy: "What is an existence without philosophy? Is life worth living when one lives crushed beneath the yoke of lies and stupidity?" (44). No philosopher has ever succeeded in communicating this desire to the reader as unequivocally as the Marquis de Sade, and D. N. Sawhney's compilations go a long way towards making us understand why.