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Available
Call number
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Collection
Publication
Wilder Publications
Description
The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade relates the story of four wealthy men who enslave 24 mostly teenaged victims and sexually torture them while listening to stories told by old prostitutes. The book was written while Sade was imprisoned in the Bastille and the manuscript was lost during the storming of the Bastille. Sade wrote that he "wept tears of blood" over the manuscript's loss. Many consider this to be Sade crowing acheivment.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Psychodrama
A word to those who put this on their to-read list: I'm fairly certain this version of the book is the watered down version. If you want to read the original, there's an e-book version floating around online. That's what I read.
Of course I didn't like it. This was the most disgusting book I've
Th...more A word to those who put this on their to-read list: I'm fairly certain this version of the book is the watered down version. If you want to read the original, there's an e-book version floating around online. That's what I read.
Of course I didn't like it. This was the most disgusting book I've ever read, and I doubt there is any as vile out there in the world. For grammar and wording it would receive 5 stars; de Sade is certainly intelligent...the more to fear him.
The book is about four disgusting men who decide to assign men to kidnap hundreds of children, choose from ten young boys and girls (the others are sold as prostitutes), then hole themselves in a secluded location. Along with them are four old women (employed to keep watch over the chilren), several well-endowed men used for the purpose of you-guess-what to the four men in charge and the children, and four women storytellers who amuse the main men (the self-proclaimed libertines) by recalling stories from their lives of prostitution.
The libertines are disgusting...in the introduction we are told of how they've killed their own children and raped all of them, as well as killed many others, so you know what's in store for later. However, they like to prolong everything, which is why they don't deflower the children from the very beginning, and why the stories start out only slightly shocking. As time goes on, the stories get more disgusting (bodily functions come into play), but still readable. After the stories are told, the libertines like to re-enact much of that told in the stories.
Over time one begins to feel like Sade exhausted all of his perverse ideas...this is a false security. The real horrors begin in the second-to-last chapter, the forty-third day, in which violence begins to mingle with sexual acts. It's like a Saw series from the 1700s, but with violence AND sex, which makes it all the worse in my opinion. There are innumerable horrors done to pregnant women, toddlers and even an infant mentioned to have been raped, teeth being pulled out to be replaced with red-hot nails, arms twisted...I'm only scratching the surface here.
As I read, I felt like I was going to faint from horror, disgust, and shock, or puke...whichever came first. There was even a point where I felt like screaming in terror because of what I read. I had to use my courage to press on, and even then I had to skim sometimes. The whole thing is more terrifying if you imagine what went through the children's minds during those months of sexual and violent torture. Of course, the libertines can't control their violent lust, so the elders, the studs, the storytellers, their own wives, and even some of the hired help are tortured. They start declaring who's to die each day: one of the deaths is described in great detail and is probably one of the most squeamish events in the book. At the very end, de Sade lists the number of all those holed up in this secluded place, and the number who survived: 16 out of 46, and not one of those survivors left without missing some fingers, an eye, a broken bone, etc.
Most who end up reading this story, like me, did so just to prove they can finish. I sincerely hope there weren't any who got enjoyment out of it...if you can masturbate to this, you should feel guilty. This is one of the books people read and come away feeling a complete despair for humanity; most can only stomach a chapter a day. If you want to sicken your friends at a party, whip the book out and have them read a certain portion out loud.
Of course I didn't like it. This was the most disgusting book I've
Show More
ever read, and I doubt there is any as vile out there in the world. For grammar and wording it would receive 5 stars; de Sade is certainly intelligent...the more to fear him. Th...more A word to those who put this on their to-read list: I'm fairly certain this version of the book is the watered down version. If you want to read the original, there's an e-book version floating around online. That's what I read.
Of course I didn't like it. This was the most disgusting book I've ever read, and I doubt there is any as vile out there in the world. For grammar and wording it would receive 5 stars; de Sade is certainly intelligent...the more to fear him.
The book is about four disgusting men who decide to assign men to kidnap hundreds of children, choose from ten young boys and girls (the others are sold as prostitutes), then hole themselves in a secluded location. Along with them are four old women (employed to keep watch over the chilren), several well-endowed men used for the purpose of you-guess-what to the four men in charge and the children, and four women storytellers who amuse the main men (the self-proclaimed libertines) by recalling stories from their lives of prostitution.
The libertines are disgusting...in the introduction we are told of how they've killed their own children and raped all of them, as well as killed many others, so you know what's in store for later. However, they like to prolong everything, which is why they don't deflower the children from the very beginning, and why the stories start out only slightly shocking. As time goes on, the stories get more disgusting (bodily functions come into play), but still readable. After the stories are told, the libertines like to re-enact much of that told in the stories.
Over time one begins to feel like Sade exhausted all of his perverse ideas...this is a false security. The real horrors begin in the second-to-last chapter, the forty-third day, in which violence begins to mingle with sexual acts. It's like a Saw series from the 1700s, but with violence AND sex, which makes it all the worse in my opinion. There are innumerable horrors done to pregnant women, toddlers and even an infant mentioned to have been raped, teeth being pulled out to be replaced with red-hot nails, arms twisted...I'm only scratching the surface here.
As I read, I felt like I was going to faint from horror, disgust, and shock, or puke...whichever came first. There was even a point where I felt like screaming in terror because of what I read. I had to use my courage to press on, and even then I had to skim sometimes. The whole thing is more terrifying if you imagine what went through the children's minds during those months of sexual and violent torture. Of course, the libertines can't control their violent lust, so the elders, the studs, the storytellers, their own wives, and even some of the hired help are tortured. They start declaring who's to die each day: one of the deaths is described in great detail and is probably one of the most squeamish events in the book. At the very end, de Sade lists the number of all those holed up in this secluded place, and the number who survived: 16 out of 46, and not one of those survivors left without missing some fingers, an eye, a broken bone, etc.
Most who end up reading this story, like me, did so just to prove they can finish. I sincerely hope there weren't any who got enjoyment out of it...if you can masturbate to this, you should feel guilty. This is one of the books people read and come away feeling a complete despair for humanity; most can only stomach a chapter a day. If you want to sicken your friends at a party, whip the book out and have them read a certain portion out loud.
Show Less
LibraryThing member antao
(Original Review, 2008)
Good old erotica. Instead of just 'lets do it'.....wine and dine, ballroom dance, see the city lights, drink some coffee, and then 'lets do it'.
The book is quite mildly interesting regarding the psychology of sexuality. It describes the the progression/escalation of some
On the other hand, this book is deeply unpleasant, I forced myself to read almost all of it and somewhat regret the experience. It took me some time ( years ) to get over it, 120 Days is certainly not a titillating pornographic novel like American Psycho, which is disturbing as you can 'get off' on the sex and murder thinly veiled as literature. Arguing over whether it is literature misses the point. Philosophically, it describes a particular point on the map. A brutal, bleak, horrifying philosophical space, but a space nonetheless. The main characters in Sade don't just torture people to death, they describe in great detail why they are doing it. It's a description of what happens when power ends up in very bad people's hands, at the same time as it's a rational refutation of religion and superstition.
Personally,I think the way to understand De Sade is as a global pioneer in the art of trolling. His actual sexual acts were fairly tame in the broad scheme of things - 15 year-old servants, but people were getting married at that age in his time. As far as history records, his actual practical sexual tastes didn't extend much further than a little light flagellation and buggery. What he really loved was to shock and upset people with what he wrote, and he was extraordinarily good at it. In 'Philosophy in the Bedroom', he extends the theory that God must want us to have anal sex, or he wouldn't have made our arseholes so deliciously tight. In one paragraph he lands a perfect hit on both sexually prudish Christians and atheistic, Rousseau-ite Pangloss / Natural Man types. Troll perfection! But it's more about unpacking what the concept of 'troll' might mean. There have always been people who enjoy poking away at society's dark places through transgressive writing. De Sade was very good at spotting the hypocrisy of the morality and dogma of his time, and at picking it to pieces and laying it bare. During the period, Christians (as some do now) were prone to explaining the world in terms of God's intentions, within a tradition that goes back to Boethius. But Rousseau had painted a picture of a world in which everything is as nature intends, and that if we follow nature, all will be well. In the example I gave, De Sade managed to poke fun at both parties in one go, pointing out by implication that all of the distasteful things in life might also be made the way God or nature intended, including the most distasteful human desires. I used the term 'troll' because I think that De Sade would have loved the internet, and would have totally understood the urge to get a reaction by giving calculated offence. But I also think that you can see a broader picture around the people who do that now if you put it into historical context. Many contemporary 'trolls' probably also feel that they are exposing hypocrisy and broadening minds.
De Sade was 'lucky' enough to exist at a time of great personal affluence in his class, and huge personal peril. I think he would have loved the internet with its infinite possibilities.
Bottom-line: No, the book is not really aiming to be titillating at all. It's an experiment to see how far boundaries and morality can be pushed...and then push a step further, and a step further, on and on to see what the logical conclusion is. I think I'm pretty unflappable but I couldn't make it through it. Nauseating. Very boring reading, out of this world monologues and almost no smut.
Good old erotica. Instead of just 'lets do it'.....wine and dine, ballroom dance, see the city lights, drink some coffee, and then 'lets do it'.
The book is quite mildly interesting regarding the psychology of sexuality. It describes the the progression/escalation of some
Show More
types of non-normative types of sexuality and sexual fetishes to serious deviations from the norm. One example in the book is the evolution from 'normal' sexual penetration in the first part to full-scale mass piquerism in the last part. Which is why Bloch, Hirschfeld and Eulenberg found the book very relative to their studies of human sexuality.On the other hand, this book is deeply unpleasant, I forced myself to read almost all of it and somewhat regret the experience. It took me some time ( years ) to get over it, 120 Days is certainly not a titillating pornographic novel like American Psycho, which is disturbing as you can 'get off' on the sex and murder thinly veiled as literature. Arguing over whether it is literature misses the point. Philosophically, it describes a particular point on the map. A brutal, bleak, horrifying philosophical space, but a space nonetheless. The main characters in Sade don't just torture people to death, they describe in great detail why they are doing it. It's a description of what happens when power ends up in very bad people's hands, at the same time as it's a rational refutation of religion and superstition.
Personally,I think the way to understand De Sade is as a global pioneer in the art of trolling. His actual sexual acts were fairly tame in the broad scheme of things - 15 year-old servants, but people were getting married at that age in his time. As far as history records, his actual practical sexual tastes didn't extend much further than a little light flagellation and buggery. What he really loved was to shock and upset people with what he wrote, and he was extraordinarily good at it. In 'Philosophy in the Bedroom', he extends the theory that God must want us to have anal sex, or he wouldn't have made our arseholes so deliciously tight. In one paragraph he lands a perfect hit on both sexually prudish Christians and atheistic, Rousseau-ite Pangloss / Natural Man types. Troll perfection! But it's more about unpacking what the concept of 'troll' might mean. There have always been people who enjoy poking away at society's dark places through transgressive writing. De Sade was very good at spotting the hypocrisy of the morality and dogma of his time, and at picking it to pieces and laying it bare. During the period, Christians (as some do now) were prone to explaining the world in terms of God's intentions, within a tradition that goes back to Boethius. But Rousseau had painted a picture of a world in which everything is as nature intends, and that if we follow nature, all will be well. In the example I gave, De Sade managed to poke fun at both parties in one go, pointing out by implication that all of the distasteful things in life might also be made the way God or nature intended, including the most distasteful human desires. I used the term 'troll' because I think that De Sade would have loved the internet, and would have totally understood the urge to get a reaction by giving calculated offence. But I also think that you can see a broader picture around the people who do that now if you put it into historical context. Many contemporary 'trolls' probably also feel that they are exposing hypocrisy and broadening minds.
De Sade was 'lucky' enough to exist at a time of great personal affluence in his class, and huge personal peril. I think he would have loved the internet with its infinite possibilities.
Bottom-line: No, the book is not really aiming to be titillating at all. It's an experiment to see how far boundaries and morality can be pushed...and then push a step further, and a step further, on and on to see what the logical conclusion is. I think I'm pretty unflappable but I couldn't make it through it. Nauseating. Very boring reading, out of this world monologues and almost no smut.
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LibraryThing member Telute
The tags give a fair idea of what to expect. No real plot, but the framing device is that a group of French lords gather in a large country house along with various servants and prostitutes and proceed to have sex in as many different ways as possible.
The book splits into four parts, the first is
The book splits into four parts, the first is
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the most detailed, whilst the other three are little more than lists. The acts described become more and more extreme, culminating in mutilation and murder. The prose is at best indifferent and the whole is difficult to recommend, except as a curio. Show Less
LibraryThing member pjh1984
It is De Sade after all. If you have no clue who he is I highly suggest searching him on the net before you pick up the book. Not for those who want only to see the happy bright side of life. It is a very dark book with graphic descriptions including child sexual abuse, scatology and sexual murder
Did I enjoy the content? It was revolting. It's a shame the man couldn't produce any other type of book. His writing itself was fantastic. [No, writing does not mean content]
That being said, the man can write to a 5 level but most will consider the content a negative 5. The content is a negative 5 but the writing itself is a 5
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of children.Did I enjoy the content? It was revolting. It's a shame the man couldn't produce any other type of book. His writing itself was fantastic. [No, writing does not mean content]
That being said, the man can write to a 5 level but most will consider the content a negative 5. The content is a negative 5 but the writing itself is a 5
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LibraryThing member DianaLynn5287
Ok ok, so I know the Marquis De Sade is known for his graphic and sometimes skewed depictions of sexuality, but I found this to be a bit much. Don't get me wrong, I highly respect the fact that he did a lot for freedom and sexual expression, but from an English standpoint, I found the book to be
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very repetitive (though I understand this was a draft copy and the final would have probably been much better). Some parts went on much to long. Case in point, the coprophilia. I found the novel to be one of the most graphic I have ever read. Overall, I give De Sade credit because the novel brought a lot of weird tastes forward and helped pave the way for modern erotica, though I don't have any desire to read the novel again... Show Less
LibraryThing member TerryDerby
I would like to have given it an extra half star but my laptop skills let me down. I love the idea of this guy writing this and causing moral outrage at the time. The literary skill is very high and I admire the thought gone into the story line. The father of modern erotica deserves to be read -
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even if the subject matter is sometimes hard to enjoy. Show Less
LibraryThing member brakketh
I just don't get it. A laundry list of horrifying events.
LibraryThing member Techboy35
I love this book. It is an absolute masterpiece.
LibraryThing member bookomaniac
“Now, dear reader, you must prepare your heart and your mind for the most impure story that has ever been written since the world existed, such a book being found neither among the ancients nor among the moderns.”
It sounds like a very cheap excuse (like reading Playboy for the interviews), but
To be honest: I mainly read the run-up to the book and most of the 'stories' of the first cycle (the first of 4), and even then, gradually I began to read diagonally, skipping the worst passages. I didn't have the stomach for it to begin with (some scenes really make you feel sick), and also, after a while the endless descriptions of the excesses really started to get boring. That also says something. Moreover, according to de Sade, that first cycle only contains a description of the “simple passions”. From the schematic overviews of the next three cycles (which he did not write out, thanks heaven), it can be concluded that after that first ‘simple’ cycle, it only goes crescendo into gruesome torture, up to and including the most beastly mutilations and even murder.
Curiously, all this is presented by de Sade as a kind of scientific experiment. The core of the story is that 4 friends (rich and powerful men) isolate themselves in a Swiss castle, together with about 30 victims, and for 4 months indulge themselves in an endless series of sexual and violent deeds, and while doing that, meticulously recording and sharing all their emotions and experiences. Regularly they debate on, for instance, what brings the greatest pleasure (the act or the desire for it), and its moral implications (or rather, the lack thereof), almost like in a Platonic dialogue.
So, even amidst these excesses occasionally interesting things can be found, I mean on a philosophical level (imagine!). For instance, they conclude that their happiness comes from the fact that others (their victims) cannot enjoy what they can, in other words: inequality and domination are basic goods. Or that good and evil are completely arbitrary, and that therefore everything is allowed. Striking, but not unexpected, are the fierce attacks against the church and against religion in general: only Nature (with a capital) counts, because, by making possible the most terrible acts, nothing (and certainly not God) stands in the way of doing just that, and therefor every evil is justified. It is the libertine “natural philosophy” that de Sade keeps coming back to.
Now, one of the points I was curious about is to what extent de Sade can be seen as an exponent of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, a thorny issue. Ok, he was part of the nobility, and therefore thoroughly rooted in the ‘Ancien Regime’, but so were other Enlightenment philosophers. And agreed, his focus was certainly not on higher reason, but on the contrary on the dark side of the human species. But his approach exudes the rationalistic-mechanistic view that is so typical of the French 'philosophes' of that period. Only look at the thoroughness with which the four ‘masters’ perform their brutal deeds, in a systematic-premeditated order, report on them and discuss them. In a way you can surely say that de Sade also exposes the dark side of Enlightened rationalism, eventually leading to the Holocaust (I'm not saying anything new, here).
Naturally you wonder: what was the personal motivation of de Sade to write all this, and especially why in that excessively explicit way? I know: libraries have already been written about it. And the views on this range from “de Sade just had a sick mind”, to “he wanted to provide a brilliant insight into the seething, stinking pit that hides inside each of us, but which we usually keep hidden”. I guess, all these views are valid. And so I definitely came to understand why the figure of Sade, and his writings, continue to fascinate, even after more than 2 centuries. But if you want my (completely non-binding) advice: beware, if you want to read this, know what you're getting into.
Annex: I have now also read his Justine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu (the reworked version from 1797), and I must say that it is on a much higher literary level (ok, this sounds very “I read Playboy for the interviews”-ish), it is a little bit less explicit, and, actually contains a little less violence, although it remains very rude and particularly derogatory of the female species. But above all it contains many more well-developed passages that philosophize about the (im)moral aspects of libertine behavior, and in that sense it is much more interesting.
It sounds like a very cheap excuse (like reading Playboy for the interviews), but
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I read this primarily out of historical interest (and okay, maybe a little curiosity too). I'm just going to say it straight: this is gross, but really gross, extremely gross, in ways you can barely imagine. And it is not only the unimaginable sexual escapades that de Sade describes, but mainly the ever-increasing violence, and the sickening way in which other people (especially women and children) are degraded to mere objects.To be honest: I mainly read the run-up to the book and most of the 'stories' of the first cycle (the first of 4), and even then, gradually I began to read diagonally, skipping the worst passages. I didn't have the stomach for it to begin with (some scenes really make you feel sick), and also, after a while the endless descriptions of the excesses really started to get boring. That also says something. Moreover, according to de Sade, that first cycle only contains a description of the “simple passions”. From the schematic overviews of the next three cycles (which he did not write out, thanks heaven), it can be concluded that after that first ‘simple’ cycle, it only goes crescendo into gruesome torture, up to and including the most beastly mutilations and even murder.
Curiously, all this is presented by de Sade as a kind of scientific experiment. The core of the story is that 4 friends (rich and powerful men) isolate themselves in a Swiss castle, together with about 30 victims, and for 4 months indulge themselves in an endless series of sexual and violent deeds, and while doing that, meticulously recording and sharing all their emotions and experiences. Regularly they debate on, for instance, what brings the greatest pleasure (the act or the desire for it), and its moral implications (or rather, the lack thereof), almost like in a Platonic dialogue.
So, even amidst these excesses occasionally interesting things can be found, I mean on a philosophical level (imagine!). For instance, they conclude that their happiness comes from the fact that others (their victims) cannot enjoy what they can, in other words: inequality and domination are basic goods. Or that good and evil are completely arbitrary, and that therefore everything is allowed. Striking, but not unexpected, are the fierce attacks against the church and against religion in general: only Nature (with a capital) counts, because, by making possible the most terrible acts, nothing (and certainly not God) stands in the way of doing just that, and therefor every evil is justified. It is the libertine “natural philosophy” that de Sade keeps coming back to.
Now, one of the points I was curious about is to what extent de Sade can be seen as an exponent of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, a thorny issue. Ok, he was part of the nobility, and therefore thoroughly rooted in the ‘Ancien Regime’, but so were other Enlightenment philosophers. And agreed, his focus was certainly not on higher reason, but on the contrary on the dark side of the human species. But his approach exudes the rationalistic-mechanistic view that is so typical of the French 'philosophes' of that period. Only look at the thoroughness with which the four ‘masters’ perform their brutal deeds, in a systematic-premeditated order, report on them and discuss them. In a way you can surely say that de Sade also exposes the dark side of Enlightened rationalism, eventually leading to the Holocaust (I'm not saying anything new, here).
Naturally you wonder: what was the personal motivation of de Sade to write all this, and especially why in that excessively explicit way? I know: libraries have already been written about it. And the views on this range from “de Sade just had a sick mind”, to “he wanted to provide a brilliant insight into the seething, stinking pit that hides inside each of us, but which we usually keep hidden”. I guess, all these views are valid. And so I definitely came to understand why the figure of Sade, and his writings, continue to fascinate, even after more than 2 centuries. But if you want my (completely non-binding) advice: beware, if you want to read this, know what you're getting into.
Annex: I have now also read his Justine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu (the reworked version from 1797), and I must say that it is on a much higher literary level (ok, this sounds very “I read Playboy for the interviews”-ish), it is a little bit less explicit, and, actually contains a little less violence, although it remains very rude and particularly derogatory of the female species. But above all it contains many more well-developed passages that philosophize about the (im)moral aspects of libertine behavior, and in that sense it is much more interesting.
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Awards
Scott Moncrieff Prize for French Translation (Winner — 2017)
Original publication date
1904
ms. 1785
ISBN
9781604594188
DDC/MDS
| Fic Gen de Sade |