Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised a warning
Speaker 1: before we begin. This week's episode contains mentions of graphic
Speaker 1: sex and sexual violence. If that's not something you want
Speaker 1: to listen to, or if you are a younger listener,
Speaker 1: I would encourage you to skip this episode maybe and
Speaker 1: come back next week. Revolution was brewing in Paris. There
Speaker 1: were mobs in the city streets, and on July one,
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty nine, if anyone in those mobs happened to
Speaker 1: look up at the Bastille, they would have seen a man,
Speaker 1: a prisoner, standing in the window of his cell on
Speaker 1: the sixth floor, shouting down at them. Save the prisoners.
Speaker 1: The man yelled, their throats are being slack, they're being murdered.
Speaker 1: You must help. They were dramatic words, words that the
Speaker 1: prisoner was hoping would incite action. In actuality, the prison
Speaker 1: was nearly empty. The man shouting down from his window
Speaker 1: was the only prisoner remaining in his tower. He was
Speaker 1: short and wide, raggedly dressed as you might expect. If
Speaker 1: the mob on the street had squinted, they might have
Speaker 1: seen that the prisoner was holding an object to his
Speaker 1: mouth like a modern day megaphone, a metallic funnel. Even
Speaker 1: if they had seen the object, the people on the
Speaker 1: street probably would not have guessed that the funnel was
Speaker 1: a piece of the prisoner's urinal though of course, use
Speaker 1: of the urinal funnel to magnify his voice was entirely
Speaker 1: functional in this case. The fact that this man one
Speaker 1: happened to be holding an object associated with bodily waste
Speaker 1: up to his mouth is uniquely appropriate given who that
Speaker 1: prisoner was. His name was Dunisian Alphonse Francois, but he
Speaker 1: is better known as the Marquis de Sade. He is
Speaker 1: among the most infamous writers known to literary and cultural history,
Speaker 1: and among the most controversial for good reason, for his
Speaker 1: writing depicting gruesome sexual tortures and violence that went as
Speaker 1: far as murder. His grisly sexual imagination is the origin
Speaker 1: of the word sadism. Though never quite as violent as
Speaker 1: his characters, his many stints in prison weren't just for
Speaker 1: his ideas either. The man poisoned and beat sex workers,
Speaker 1: and was credibly acute used of kidnapping teenage girls. The
Speaker 1: Marquis de Sade has been widely censored throughout history, and
Speaker 1: is also published as a Penguin classic. He has been reconsidered,
Speaker 1: redeemed and villainized in the changing political winds of history
Speaker 1: by everyone from Apolloniere to Simone de Beauvoir. He was
Speaker 1: a writer, above all, known for his libertine works of
Speaker 1: sexual violence, less known for his political and esthetic writings.
Speaker 1: And as the Marquis de Sade stood in the window
Speaker 1: of the Bastille the July that the French Revolution would
Speaker 1: reach its climax, shouting into the metallic funnel, he was
Speaker 1: also one more thing, perhaps surprisingly, a husband to a remarkably,
Speaker 1: even strangely devoted wife, a pious woman married to a
Speaker 1: man who had had endless affairs, mostly with sex workers,
Speaker 1: but also with her own sister. And yet she had
Speaker 1: stood by him throughout his many violent indiscretions, his many imprisonments,
Speaker 1: his burnings in effigy. As the Marquis de Sade stood
Speaker 1: there in the sixth floor of his prison tower, screaming,
Speaker 1: he may have been able to guess that soon he
Speaker 1: would be removed by the armed guards. In fact, he
Speaker 1: was removed at one the next morning. He may not
Speaker 1: have been able to guess that he wouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to take with him his library of six hundred books
Speaker 1: ranging from Homer to Robinson Crusoe to Erotica, that his
Speaker 1: wife had sent him by request. He may have had
Speaker 1: some sense that thirteen days later the Vestille would be
Speaker 1: stormed and the French Revolution would begin in o earnest,
Speaker 1: But surely Sod could not have known that he was
Speaker 1: on the immediate precipice of losing the two things in
Speaker 1: the world that surely he believed he would never be without,
Speaker 1: first the pages upon pages of his manuscripts, the scrawling
Speaker 1: writing that he had kept secret and hidden during his imprisonment,
Speaker 1: and second, at last, his once devoted wife. I'm Dana Schwartz,
Speaker 1: and this is noble blood, all right, listeners, Right off
Speaker 1: the bat, this is going to be an edgy one.
Speaker 1: Before diving into the story of Sod, let's start by
Speaker 1: acknowledging that sadism from the mind of the Marquis is
Speaker 1: not the now sex positive and consensual s that you
Speaker 1: might know from the contemporary acronym BDSM. Some of it
Speaker 1: starts there, but Sod's imagination goes far beyond even the
Speaker 1: most transgressive sex positivity into disturbing depictions of extreme tortures
Speaker 1: so obscene and violent that I can't won't even suggest
Speaker 1: them on this podcast. Fifty Shades of Gray is like
Speaker 1: a nursery rhyme by comparison. Sod himself told his lawyers
Speaker 1: that his books were quote too immoral to send to
Speaker 1: a man as pious and as decent as you. I
Speaker 1: needed money. My publisher asked me for something quite spicy,
Speaker 1: and I made him a book capable of corrupting the
Speaker 1: devil listeners. I can't give details of such works to
Speaker 1: someone as pious and decent as you, nor would I
Speaker 1: want to. What I can give is the story of
Speaker 1: the man behind those works. With that said, let's get
Speaker 1: into it. The Marquis de Sade was born on June two,
Speaker 1: seventeen forty, in the house of his father's mistress. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, the Marquis was a legitimate child of
Speaker 1: his married parents, but Sad's father, Jean Baptiste, only married
Speaker 1: his wife in the first place to get closer to
Speaker 1: another woman, the Princess of Conde. Jean Baptiste loved the princess,
Speaker 1: but settled for marrying her lady in waiting, Marie like
Speaker 1: his eventual son, Jean Baptiste, had also been arrested for
Speaker 1: his sexual exploits with men, and Marie, unsurprisingly was rather
Speaker 1: absent from the household and from her son's childhood. In
Speaker 1: a sad little incident from the Marquis de Sad's early life,
Speaker 1: neither parent bothered to show up to his baptism, so
Speaker 1: a pair of servants baptized him with the wrong name.
Speaker 1: He was called Denisian Alphonse Francois, not Denisian al dunt Louise,
Speaker 1: as his absentee parents had originally intended. At age five,
Speaker 1: the young Sad moved in with his father's brother, who
Speaker 1: scandalously lived with a mother and daughter with whom he
Speaker 1: was both sleeping with. Sad had access to his uncle's
Speaker 1: impressive library, which included Molieri, Hobbes, and books with titles
Speaker 1: like The Bordello or The Everyman Debauched and The Good
Speaker 1: and Bad Uses of Flagellation. In other words, this was
Speaker 1: a child who grew up surrounded by promiscuous sex, for
Speaker 1: whom the taboo was commonplace. This was the era after
Speaker 1: the licentious Regency period in France, when so called libertinism
Speaker 1: was common. The word libertine comes from the Latin root liber,
Speaker 1: meaning free. A libertine was a person living without moral
Speaker 1: or religious restraint, particularly in the bedroom. When sod turned ten,
Speaker 1: his father sent him to a Jesuit school that disciplined
Speaker 1: boys by flogging them in front of their classmates. Accusations
Speaker 1: of sodomy also ran rampant at the school, which was
Speaker 1: a criminal act at the time. Usually, when covering a
Speaker 1: subject on noble blood, it's unnecessary to the story to
Speaker 1: either report or speculate on the specifics of the individual's
Speaker 1: sexual proclivities. But in the Marquis de Sad's life, his
Speaker 1: own personal sexual activity is so inextricably linked to his
Speaker 1: work and also to his life that I find it
Speaker 1: actually does hold some relevance here. So whether or not
Speaker 1: s'd first encountered sodomi at his Jesuit school, we know
Speaker 1: that in both his personal life and in his writings,
Speaker 1: for him, it was the only type of physical sex
Speaker 1: that ever satisfied him, whether he was in prison or
Speaker 1: in his marital bed, whether he was with men or
Speaker 1: with women. Young S'ad went on to fight in the
Speaker 1: Seven Years' War, where his sexual appetites were so well
Speaker 1: known that his honorable discharge papers called him deranged. By
Speaker 1: the time S'd was twenty two, his father was desperate
Speaker 1: to get him married off. Sad was therefore betrothed to
Speaker 1: a respectable young woman, Renee Pelege Montcre. But six weeks
Speaker 1: before the wedding, Sada in Provence was writing letters to
Speaker 1: a different woman he wanted her instead, of course, while
Speaker 1: saying how much he loved her, he was also calling
Speaker 1: her an ungrateful wretch and blackmailing her regarding the gonorrhea
Speaker 1: that he also had likely given her. So, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: his relationship with that woman didn't work out. Nonetheless, Sod
Speaker 1: refused to come back to Paris to marry the woman
Speaker 1: that his father chose for him, and the wedding date
Speaker 1: was approaching. Sod's father knew what a mess he was
Speaker 1: creating for the young Rene Pelage Montrell and her mother.
Speaker 1: I pity them, he wrote, for making such a bad purchase,
Speaker 1: capable of making all kinds of trouble. Finally, one day
Speaker 1: before the wedding, Sod arrived back in Paris carrying the
Speaker 1: then traditional wedding delicacy of artichokes. He married Peleget, who
Speaker 1: stood four foot ten beside Sod's five foot two This
Speaker 1: was a time when five ' four would be considered average.
Speaker 1: But even so, sd was short. Make of that what
Speaker 1: you will, and shockingly, the Marquis and his new marquise
Speaker 1: actually seemed to really like each other like a lot.
Speaker 1: Sod called her his beloved soul and dearest friend. Renee
Speaker 1: Pelget came to at least accept, maybe even enjoy Sod's
Speaker 1: particular predilections in the bedroom, which were, as I alluded
Speaker 1: to before, not the type that would risk pregnancy. Biographer
Speaker 1: Francine de Plusie Gray said that Renee Pelaget's utter adoration
Speaker 1: for her husband quote has a legendary mythical streak. It
Speaker 1: is akin to the devotion displayed by wives of Ogres
Speaker 1: in European fairy tale. Of course, all of that love
Speaker 1: and devotion wasn't enough to restrain the Marquis de Sade.
Speaker 1: She had married the Marquis de Sade, after all, and
Speaker 1: he was untamable. Three weeks after the wedding, Renee Peleget
Speaker 1: was pregnant. Five months after the wedding, her husband was
Speaker 1: in jail for the first time. It was a relatively
Speaker 1: tame first charge. He had forcibly demanded that a sex
Speaker 1: worker whip him, and he threatened to whip her in turn,
Speaker 1: all of which was actually kind of common practice at
Speaker 1: the time for a married male aristocrat. But under threat
Speaker 1: of violence, he had also forced this woman to speak
Speaker 1: blasphemies against God. It was actually S'd's wife and mother
Speaker 1: in law who worked to get him out of prison.
Speaker 1: He was only there for three weeks, but even still
Speaker 1: he considered his treatment massively unfair. Was a noble really
Speaker 1: going to get in such trouble for how he treated
Speaker 1: such lowly women. In August seventeen sixty seven, Sod's first
Speaker 1: son was born. Eight months after that, Sod was in
Speaker 1: jail again, this time for seven months for the violent
Speaker 1: coerced whipping of a woman named Rose Keller. By seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy two, Sod and his wife had two sons and
Speaker 1: a daughter, and he was convicted for a third time.
Speaker 1: He had given sex workers a candy that contained a
Speaker 1: dangerously high dose of an aphrodisiac called Spanish fly, which
Speaker 1: left at least one girl hospitalized. Spanish Fly is not
Speaker 1: a euphemism. It is literally a bug a beatle actually
Speaker 1: rumored at the time to increase arousal and even used
Speaker 1: as a treatment for various illnesses, including STIs at the time,
Speaker 1: but it was also incredibly toxic, sometimes even deadly in
Speaker 1: large doses. This time, Sod was sentenced to be burned
Speaker 1: and beheaded, in a practice common for nobles at the time.
Speaker 1: He was burned only in effigy, and the sentence was
Speaker 1: considered complete. In the meantime, Sod was off in Italy
Speaker 1: with a very particular mistress. His devoted wife's sister, Anne Prosper,
Speaker 1: was nine years younger than her sister, and she was
Speaker 1: infatuated with the Marquis de Sad. Still, Sod's wife stuck
Speaker 1: by him. In seventeen seventy four, Sod had serious kidnapping
Speaker 1: allegations levied against him. Renee Pelge covered for him, knowing
Speaker 1: all along that he had in fact taken five young
Speaker 1: teenage girls and one young boy servants into the dungeon
Speaker 1: of his family chateau to have them act out depraved
Speaker 1: scenes and orgies. Finally, in seventeen seventy seven, and with
Speaker 1: the help of his once loving mother in law, Sod
Speaker 1: was taken into custody. It would be the thirteen year
Speaker 1: long imprisonment that eventually led him to the Bastille. For
Speaker 1: a guy best known for his elaborate imaginations about torture
Speaker 1: and restraint, SD did not take well to imprisonment. He
Speaker 1: was not initially held at the Bastillo fortress. He was
Speaker 1: first at a fortress called Vincenne cell eleven, with windows
Speaker 1: just barely high enough for him to see a sliver
Speaker 1: of sky above the fortress walls. The marquis wrote to
Speaker 1: his wife constantly requesting incredibly specific items herivens, hemorrhoid creams,
Speaker 1: face powder, toothpicks, cologne. She worked to send them, writing
Speaker 1: letters that professed ardent and passionate love. Sometimes he returned
Speaker 1: her affections. He wrote about his intense desire for her,
Speaker 1: using euphemisms about his hem bow and arrow. He asked
Speaker 1: her to send him cylindrical objects shaped in very, very
Speaker 1: particular dimensions. But sometimes he turned on her. He blamed
Speaker 1: her mother, correctly as it turned out, for his imprisonment,
Speaker 1: calling her a venomous beast, an infernal monster, and other
Speaker 1: epithets that I cannot speak on this podcast. He sent
Speaker 1: his mother in law a letter written in his own blood.
Speaker 1: In the height of irony, he accused Rene Pelaget's wife
Speaker 1: of wearing clothes that were too immodest. As a result,
Speaker 1: she went to live at a convent. It was Leap
Speaker 1: day of seventeen ninety four when Sod was transferred to
Speaker 1: the Bastille. Ironically, his tower was called the Tower of Liberty.
Speaker 1: He was in an octagonal cell that he plastered with
Speaker 1: flowers and portraits of his family, almost like a dorm room.
Speaker 1: By the end of his stay in the Tower of Liberty,
Speaker 1: he was on the sixth floor, surrounded by six hundred
Speaker 1: books in a bookcase. His collection included Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Erotica,
Speaker 1: and the book Dangerous Liaisons, written right around the time
Speaker 1: of Sod's imprisonment. He also had dozens of pens and
Speaker 1: blank notebooks. His wife had sent him all of it
Speaker 1: because upon being imprisoned, Sod turned at last, in earnest
Speaker 1: to the thing that he would become most famous for writing.
Speaker 1: Sod turned his wife into his research assistant. He would
Speaker 1: ask her to find hotel names, streets, managers, and surrounding
Speaker 1: settings in locations as distant as Lisbon and Madrid. Yet
Speaker 1: his letters also derided the writing abilities of the very
Speaker 1: woman who was sending him the books and research and
Speaker 1: strawberries and rosewater he requested to the Bastille. In one letter,
Speaker 1: he wrote, quote, you don't seem to have bathed today,
Speaker 1: for it is impossible to read anything drier than your letter.
Speaker 1: In another, he wrote, You've sent me three pages of
Speaker 1: idiotic ramblings, but it's in your manner to say stupidities
Speaker 1: to have your reason go off track. Renee Peleget is
Speaker 1: generally considered uneducated. Her writing is misspelled, and she certainly
Speaker 1: didn't share her husband's famous linguistic dexterity. But she engaged
Speaker 1: him in complex questions of law and ethics, and she
Speaker 1: read and critiqued his manuscripts. She also probably accidentally misled
Speaker 1: him in answer to some of his research questions. The
Speaker 1: descriptions of foreign nations in the Marquis de Sade's books
Speaker 1: are often wrong, and that's the evidence that the Marquis
Speaker 1: de Sade's prison writings were actually reliant on his long
Speaker 1: suffering wife. Of course, sod was still in prison when
Speaker 1: he began writing his first book in seventeen eighty five.
Speaker 1: He had to be secretive. He wrote in frenzied three
Speaker 1: hours from seven to ten pm. The night darkening outside
Speaker 1: his window. As his hand trembled with excitement, he wrote
Speaker 1: on five inch pieces of paper in tiny handwriting. There
Speaker 1: are many tales about books being written in ridiculously short
Speaker 1: periods of time. Supposedly, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Jacqueline Hyde
Speaker 1: in three days, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the First Sherlock
Speaker 1: Home Story in three weeks, and fasad it took thirty
Speaker 1: seven days to produce forty nine feet of writing. His
Speaker 1: book was about two hundred and fifty thousand words, about
Speaker 1: one thousand pages, more than double the size that would
Speaker 1: make a modern agent or editor blanche if they got
Speaker 1: it in the mail. That book was The one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty Days of Sodom, a catalog of every possible
Speaker 1: sexually violent act. I cannot name them here. You are
Speaker 1: welcome to look them up yourself. But if you are
Speaker 1: imagining titillation, don't be surprised to find yourself repelled. During
Speaker 1: all this time, the seeds of the French Revolution were
Speaker 1: about to bloom. Revolutionaries were preparing their muskets and sharpening
Speaker 1: their swords. The Liberty Tower was emptied of all but
Speaker 1: one prisoner, Its most depraved and one day most famous
Speaker 1: the Marquis de Sade. He had been hearing the discontent
Speaker 1: of the revolutionaries down below, and he was feeling bored
Speaker 1: and annoyed, denied his daily walks. So at noon on
Speaker 1: July one, seventeen eighty nine, he took the funnel that
Speaker 1: linked his urinal to the fortress, mote, put it to
Speaker 1: his mouth, stood at his window and yelled down to
Speaker 1: the people below. The prisoner's throats are being cut, he
Speaker 1: screamed down into the crowd. If the Marquis de Sad
Speaker 1: is anything, it's consistent and his desire to provoke people,
Speaker 1: to say scandalous things and get a reaction. Unsurprisingly, the
Speaker 1: Bestille guards were not happy with him. At one am
Speaker 1: that night, they seized him in his cell and took
Speaker 1: him basically naked, to the convent of the Brothers of Charity.
Speaker 1: It was, in Sod's words, an insane asylum. Sod was
Speaker 1: desperate over the loss of his writings, which were still
Speaker 1: hidden in his cell in the Bastille. He gave the
Speaker 1: police commissioner the right to open his cell as long
Speaker 1: as his wife, Madame de Sad, was there. Sod assumed,
Speaker 1: of course, that his wife would take his writings to safety.
Speaker 1: But the Marquise had been having a bit of a
Speaker 1: change of heart. We really don't know why. At long last,
Speaker 1: the wife, who had stuck with Sod through all of
Speaker 1: his troubles, finally changed her mind about him. What we
Speaker 1: know is that on July fourteenth, thirteen days after her
Speaker 1: husband screamed from the window of his cell and was
Speaker 1: removed to an insane asylum, the Bastille was stormed and
Speaker 1: blood ran through the streets of Paris. We know that
Speaker 1: she was having mobility issues with her legs, and that
Speaker 1: she was forty eight years old and married to a
Speaker 1: man who had spent the better part of their lives
Speaker 1: together in prisons, and she was becoming more religious at
Speaker 1: the convent she lived at. And we know that on
Speaker 1: April first, seventeen ninety Sad was released. He was balding,
Speaker 1: nearly fifty, wearing a ratty woolen coat. We can only
Speaker 1: imagine the feeling of freedom after a thirteen year imprisonment.
Speaker 1: He must have breathed in the fresh air exhaled, and
Speaker 1: he had only one There's one thing on his mind,
Speaker 1: his wife. Maybe he wanted to do to her. These
Speaker 1: sexual things that he had described in his letters over
Speaker 1: the years. Maybe he simply wanted to sit down together
Speaker 1: to a good meal at a table where they could
Speaker 1: stay for as long as they wanted. Man and wife
Speaker 1: reunited at last. He went immediately to seek her out
Speaker 1: and found her convent. He waited patiently for Renee Pelage
Speaker 1: to come meet him. She never came. Your wife does
Speaker 1: not wish to see you ever again, a messenger told Sod.
Speaker 1: She wants a legal separation. Sad never again saw the
Speaker 1: manuscript that he left behind in the Bastille. But the
Speaker 1: bigger blow was the loss of his long suffering wife.
Speaker 1: As I said, we don't know for sure why Renee
Speaker 1: Pelaget changed her mind at last. It's not as though
Speaker 1: she had a shortage of But I will add one suggestion.
Speaker 1: It must have been much easier to have a husband
Speaker 1: like the Marquis de Sade. When he was in prison.
Speaker 1: You could visit him and then leave him safely behind you,
Speaker 1: where you knew you would find him the next time.
Speaker 1: In prison, he could not be frequenting brothels and picking
Speaker 1: up yet another venereal disease to pass on to you.
Speaker 1: With him in prison, you had a modicum of control
Speaker 1: in your marriage to a man who had so abused
Speaker 1: and degraded you. For Rene Pelage, her husband's imprisonment must
Speaker 1: have been a freedom that she could not give up.
Speaker 1: A certain streak of karma would have had Sad live
Speaker 1: out the rest of his days alone. But he quickly
Speaker 1: met a new woman, thirty three year old Constant Quesnay,
Speaker 1: who had a six year old son from previous marriage.
Speaker 1: She became yet another inexplicably devoted partner. I know a
Speaker 1: ton of amazing women who are still single today, and
Speaker 1: this guy finds endless devotes. Love is not fair. It
Speaker 1: was after Sad's stint in the Bastille, and after the
Speaker 1: loss of his wife, that he wrote the works for
Speaker 1: which he would become best known in his lifetime. Philosophy
Speaker 1: in the Boudoir, Justine and Juliette were sexually explicit and
Speaker 1: violent books that shocked society's sensibilities. Sad was free for
Speaker 1: only eleven years before he was arrested again at his
Speaker 1: publisher's office in eighteen oh one, this time for the
Speaker 1: crime of obscenity. He spent another thirteen year stint in
Speaker 1: the insane Asylum, still receiving conjugal visits from at least
Speaker 1: two whims women until he died on December twond eighteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: at age seventy four. He willed everything to his second partner, Constance.
Speaker 1: He stated in his will that I trust the memory
Speaker 1: of me shall fade out in the minds of all men.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's not what happened. The legacy of the
Speaker 1: Marquis de Sade is extremely complicated. At various points over
Speaker 1: the centuries, his reputation has been sanitized and resurrected as
Speaker 1: a figurehead against censorship. At other points, his work has
Speaker 1: been castigated for its misogynistic violence and censored all over again.
Speaker 1: He is one of those lightning rod historical figures who
Speaker 1: is endlessly used for the political ends of whichever movement
Speaker 1: wants to evoke him. He has been revisited by everyone
Speaker 1: from Flaubert to Simone de Beauvoir. Mary Shelley may have
Speaker 1: named her case character Justine and Frankenstein, after Sad's character
Speaker 1: of the same name. The One hundred and Twenty Days
Speaker 1: of Sodom was translated anew into English as a Penguin
Speaker 1: classic in twenty seventeen. It is complicated to consider Sod
Speaker 1: in the contemporary moment. Do we defend his works on
Speaker 1: the basis of anti censorship and the virtue of sex
Speaker 1: positivity or at least open sexual expression. Or do we
Speaker 1: reject the works on the basis of opposition to misogyny
Speaker 1: and violence against women, opposition to the author the sexual
Speaker 1: coercion and violence, abduction and rape actually committed by the
Speaker 1: man himself. And how do we even read Sad if
Speaker 1: we do? Were his writings even meant to be erotic?
Speaker 1: They may have been at least partly comedy, partly satire,
Speaker 1: partly political commentary amidst the beheadings and power upheavals of
Speaker 1: the French Revolution. Maybe Sad was an eighteenth century troll
Speaker 1: and his works were just meant to be provocative for
Speaker 1: the sake of provocation. Duplicit Gray writes that far from
Speaker 1: intending to arouse the reader, the quote repugnance of the
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty days quote makes it far more
Speaker 1: conducive to chastity. I have to be honest listener reading
Speaker 1: Sod's works for this episode, I was second by his
Speaker 1: treatment of his characters, especially the women, and I want
Speaker 1: to be very clear about my opinions here. Often, when
Speaker 1: researching a historical figure, I find myself ending with more
Speaker 1: empathy for them than when I began. But in this
Speaker 1: case I just feel disgusted and yet simoned. Above WHI
Speaker 1: our mother of second wave feminism, wrote an essay arguing
Speaker 1: that we should not burn Sod because he shows us
Speaker 1: something important about the dark heart of humanity. In the end,
Speaker 1: I think there's a way to believe that Sod should
Speaker 1: not be jailed for obscenity in his writing, only for
Speaker 1: his actions, to think that his works should not be censored,
Speaker 1: and also to think that we need not celebrate in
Speaker 1: order not to censor. The heirs of Sod may feel
Speaker 1: the same. The line of Sod, which stretched back to
Speaker 1: medieval times, stopped using the title Marquis after his death
Speaker 1: in eighteen fourteen. Out of embarrassment. The heirs began to
Speaker 1: call themselves compt instead, all the way until twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: when one heir chose to reclaim marquis again. Who knows
Speaker 1: what time will bring whether future generations will once more
Speaker 1: renounce their claims to the infamous Libertine. That's the story
Speaker 1: of the infamous Marquis de Sade. But stick around after
Speaker 1: a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the fate of his most famous Bestille manuscript and
Speaker 1: how it actually became the one hundred and twenty Days
Speaker 1: of Sodom. The Marquis de Sade never saw his one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty Days of Sodom again, and it was
Speaker 1: never published in his lifetime. He died believing that the
Speaker 1: manuscript was destroyed in the Bestille, But the fate of
Speaker 1: the one hundred twenty Days was not so simple. Unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to the Marquis de Sade, it was discovered and removed
Speaker 1: by a Ciphilian two days before the storming of the Bastille.
Speaker 1: It wound up published for the first time in nineteen
Speaker 1: o four by a psychiatrist and sexologist based in Berlin,
Speaker 1: who published it under a pseudonym. The book was considered
Speaker 1: appropriate for medical and psychiatric use as a massive catalog
Speaker 1: of sexual desire. In twenty fourteen, the original manuscript was
Speaker 1: purchased for seven million euros by a Frenchman who had
Speaker 1: literally won the lottery and was later arrested for running
Speaker 1: a Ponzi scheme. In twenty twenty one, the French government
Speaker 1: bought the manuscript for four point five million euros. The
Speaker 1: obscene scroll that started its life in the Bastille is
Speaker 1: now officially a French National treasure. Noble Blood is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Shworts,
Speaker 1: with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zuick,
Speaker 1: Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is
Speaker 1: edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali,
Speaker 1: with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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