Nobody likes to be reminded that their civilization is just a three-millimeter varnish over an abyss of wild impulses. Donatien Alphonse François de Sade spent his life holding that mirror in front of a society that, logically, preferred to lock him up and throw away the key. They didn’t hate him for being crazy; they hated him for being right about the things people don’t say out loud. Sade didn’t invent cruelty; he simply took off its powdered wig and left it naked in the middle of the drawing room.
Sometimes I wonder if this keyboard is my own cell at Charenton. My fingers stop for a second. Do I really want to write this? I don’t know. My arm itches a bit, near the elbow—a silly annoyance that pulls me out of the depth of the paragraph.
The Reflection of the Polite Monster
We love to talk about rights and natural goodness, but then we fight over a parking spot with a fury that would make an 18th-century libertine turn pale. Sade understood that the human being is a predator that has learned to use silver cutlery. His work is a constant reminder that our “normativity” is a very fragile peace treaty.
Sometimes, the truth isn’t elegant. It’s dirty.
I wonder if you, on the other side of the screen, also feel that small knot in your stomach when you recognize a dark impulse. Or maybe you’re just hungry. The line is very thin.
Hypocrisy as Social Architecture
Mental health has become a kind of modern decoration. We put motivational phrases on the walls to cover the cracks of a structure that is falling apart. Sade, on the other hand, preferred the cracks. He knew that it is in the fissure where reality resides. His literature is a hammer blow against the glass of complacency.
My chair makes a strange noise every time I move. A dry creak. It’s irritating. It distracts me from the idea of absolute sovereignty I was trying to explain to you.
Why does Sade scare us so much? Perhaps because he forces us to admit that total freedom is, in reality, a nightmare. If we were all truly free, by his terms, there would be no one left to clean the streets. Order is just the fear we have that the neighbor might be a little freer than we are.
The Right Not to Be Transparent
There is some relief in knowing that, no matter how hard they try, they cannot map every corner of our shadow. Sade died asking for his grave to be covered with acorns so that his name would disappear from the face of the earth. He wanted absolute oblivion, total opacity.
Today, when everything is about “sharing” and “being transparent,” Sade’s urgency to disappear seems like the most subversive act in the world.
I stopped writing for a moment to look out the window. There’s nothing interesting—just a gray cat crossing a brick wall. But that cat doesn’t have to explain its instincts to anyone. Sometimes I envy the cat.
