Original subtitles

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

I think there's no question when you say

the word sod you think you think of

monsters and whips and chains and evil

and whatever it is

you have Christianity came from McKay's

name

sadism came from sods name he was the

ultimate rebel and when after his arrest

he was being brought north to Paris by

coach Saad became the OJ Simpson of his

time there were crowds at every stop the

word was out that the Marquis de Sade

the monster was going to be and they

wanted to catch a glimpse of this

monster Saad is a major intellectual of

the modern world

[Music]

one can see him as a decadent aristocrat

as sort of the last gasp of a kind of

degenerated feudalism or one can look at

him as the first true modern who can

imagine a world as Darwin would see it a

world without God a world of a cold

natural law that I think is so severe a

vision that even many Meyers have not

fully absorbed ultimate text or what I

don't continue to cut the bass young so

this is the state of the rape he wants

to discover and to document every

possible sexual fantasy that any human

mind could ever conceive somewhere in

the history of crime worldwide you can

find an analogue to every single fantasy

that saud imagined in his prison cell

alone preparing food for Sofia the guy

who has a protective seal if you take

the most lurid moments of contemporary

writers

biet Henry Miller or Norman Mailer or

Philip Roth they look like sweet

Valentine's compared to the scenes in

Assad and 200 years ago he simply

reached out and pushed the limits

further than anyone else I think that's

part of his curious kind of genius

[Music]

we have a portrait of a young man aged

17 by the artist van Lew which may be of

saud in which he's quite young pretty

with a little bob pigtail that's all

that we have of him pictorially there's

no real definite authentic

representation of him he was a man born

into the very high aristocracy of

Provence and the aristocracy of Provence

is notoriously arrogant notoriously

self-indulgent in its pleasures

[Music]

if you want understand sad don't think

18th century

think 10th century you have to look on

him like a feudal lord sitting on his

mountaintop at Lacoste which is

extremely representative of the

topography of power which he would

prefer making the law himself he had a

rather unhappy childhood his mother just

abandoned the family when he was about

five and his father was a diplomat who

was in disgrace much of his time because

he was bisexual

and his uncle took him over and brought

him up sod was sent to live with his

uncle at age five because he was such a

problem child to his parents his uncle

was an abbey man of the cloth and a very

high-ranking man of the cloth years from

five to ten but he spent there were very

formative years in the show too so on

[Music]

but it is forbidding dark

and the dungeons thereof reoccur without

question and his work later on and

Justina juliet and twenty days

and Saad also learned as a very young

boy that men of the cloth did not

necessarily refrain from sexual ethics

s's fusillade boosts circular place

hairs just in circular place who in the

budget

sure lead after that I see his knee on

the cross

the abbot Assad had a mistress he had a

mistress who lived in the Chateau and it

is probable that he also dallied with

his mistress's daughter so sod doing

this had a rather jaundiced view of the

church from a very early age

[Music]

and it affected him for the rest of his

life

[Music]

Sode hated the church because he thought

it was hypocrisy he thought it was

totally fairytales and nonsense and he

said it throughout his life

blasphemy was one of the sins with which

he was imprisoned and then at the age of

14 years underway to boarding school a

Jesuit boarding school where they beat

the students a great deal I mean very

heavy physical punishment whipping on

the buttocks publicly in front of the

rest of the school and that lasted until

he was 17 and then he went off to the

war the Seven Years War and then after

this rather disrupted childhood all he

knew was the barracks life the macula

sod is not very much of a sage Ian

figure he spent a third his life in

prison he was born in a chateau and

ended his life in a madhouse he was not

a very successful Dominator

in many ways he was blamed for the sins

all his class he isn't as awful as

tradition would have it then there was

an irrational as I was for most kids of

the aristocracy when in the early 20s he

and his wife actually were deeply fond

of each other as much as he could be in

love but he was in love with his wife

her name is Palacio de Monte one of the

problems he got into trouble was he

refused the Kings invitation to go to

the court to have his marriage blessed

his wife went his wife family went his

father went he refused to go she don't

want him I don't want any truck with

those people they're just awful all that

fawning and all that hypocrisy I just

can't stand it and there was this

element of honesty about him he became a

writer in effect because he was confined

to a jail cell his mother-in-law was

quite responsible for his writings she

would turn over in her grave if she knew

her name was Miranda mortified and at

first she's immensely drawn to sob she

finds him quite as attractive as a

daughter does very sexy and so she finds

it almost certain to troll Asian in

reading and hearing at its exploits

but then when he does something truly

naughty in her eyes which is to commit

apostasy with a prostitute then that

goes too far and Madame de montreuil she

starts to put the law down Easter Sunday

1768 Saud stood in front of the statue

of louis xiv and noticed the beggar

woman in front of a church and he

approached her and asked her to come

with him one of his first escapades with

the law he went with the prostitute so

they spent the night together

but he made her trample on the crucifix

say I deny God I deny Christ I mean so

forth and so on she believed that he was

asking her to clean his house in the

country he believed that he was hiring

her as a prostitute in any case she went

with him what was on a rose Keller she

said she thought he was stabbing her

with a small pin knife he said he never

did she said he was dripping hot wax on

her buttocks and he said he never did

and after a time she said are you trying

to kill me but she was very smart and

she bolted the door from inside and she

created from the sheets on the bed away

to escape and she sued him under civil

law for the harm that had been done to

her but his mother-in-law paid off the

debt and that made Rose Keller in the

eyes of most of the people who write

about her the predator because she took

money

[Music]

he was sent to Vincennes under a letter

to cachet which was an instrument that a

king could use to seclude wayward sons

of the nobility so that they couldn't

cause scandal families or domicile

Judson this is a form of arrest which

came without any trial and which came

upon the Capra's and whim of a king what

do you think of the relationship between

son and his mother

I think she's the only woman who stood

up to him

over a period of time the only one who

tried to stop him from doing what he was

doing

[Music]

she's like the Furies in Greek tragedy I

mean she really is pursuing the male for

having broken up that calm peaceful

harmony which women impose on the order

of society you have to look on him like

a four-year-old child who is not

socialized yet who wants what he wants

all the time and is screaming for it

that's that's the way you look at this

adds temperament it's a profoundly

[ __ ] pathologically [ __ ]

infantile mentality mixed into an

extremely sophisticated intellectual

development he lost his fortune he was

terrible with money he could not manage

his marriage he could not manage his

mother-in-law he could he could manage

none of the regimes under which he lived

sad was in many ways a total failure he

was a disaster he was of course a

triumph in his own mind and that is

where most of his books come from they

come from the time that he spent in

prison when he was in solitary

confinement when he was he'll when he

was depressed when he was not entirely

in control of his

mind

[Applause]

there's no question that he never would

have been a writer of any stature had he

not been sent to prison all of his major

work was really from the period when he

went into Vincennes in 1774 until 1790

that's a 16 year period was when he

wrote almost everything that exists

today prison did terrible things to the

Marquis designed his novels are full of

chambers underground passages mountain

fastnesses monasteries which are lost in

dark forests which are unapproachable

except by extraordinary means there is

this claustrophobia in the novel facade

which seems to me very much to reflect a

certain mental attitude which was forced

on him what is it about his work that's

socially the work is so antisocial not

only in the sexual context of the term

but sought was a revolutionary sod was

someone who was out to take society and

turn it on his head and by the time he

went into prison he lived enough to have

certain ideas about the world and about

his own sexuality and about sexuality in

general to write about it for the first

time in history he saw society as a

conspiracy mounted by the weak to stop

the progress of the strong

[Music]

his life life in prison it's not like

any life in prison we know now it was

extremely luxurious a nobleman was

allowed to bring into a good jail

Bastille was really the four-star jail

he's allowed to bring his tapestries his

curtains his dogs a few domestics his

his piano his harp most appurtenances of

a decent home and he was vastly obese by

the time he had been in jail for seven

or eight years he weighed probably 300

pounds he had his libraries

he had a secretary it was really

extremely conducive this life to writing

books

I think sod has to simply be treated as

though we treat the rest of pornography

you know what I object to is making sod

into a literary man that I object to

he's a pornographer that's it that's

what he is he's just another predatory

pimp the 120 days of Sodom is quite the

most gruesome book I think that I've

ever come across

it's in four parts only the first part

of which was was written and the rest is

a kind of catalog actually he calls it a

menu of 600 horrible things that you can

do to other people

singly in pairs or collectively in

groups

I think pornography's main interest is

to allay anxiety to present the sexual

scene in such a soft easy mode that you

don't become disturbed at watching it

sods book 120 days of Sodom is designed

to arouse anxiety its nervous reading

and the early ones are quite maybe

disgusting but they involve I think his

number three is a priest who likes to

suck the snot out of little girl's nose

there's a boy who has his penis cut off

and a red-hot poker to enlarge his anus

and he is turned into a kind of woman

and as you read on you know it's only

going to get worse and it takes a kind

of courage I think of the stomach or the

mind as well to read the whole book

[Music]

a great film is pazely nice subtle

[Music]

modernizes sounds work but it preserves

the spirit of it almost of a letter

what do you think of Pasolini sailor I

made me feel quite ill I was sorry I

went to see it boomed well main Bell

it's a transposition of the plot of that

logic to the collapse of Mussolini's

fascist dictatorship our akhantar a moon

on a theory a dear accompli passions of

these four Libertines assad would have

called them are excited by for elder

women who were like [ __ ] your asses who

tell erotic tales a or Neela he vias are

after me since 1945 and what we know of

the Holocaust sad seems to be a very

modern author all of a sudden he accepts

human nature for what it is not very

pleasant and he tears away the the

flimsy veil of sociability that we've

plastered over this horrible monster

that lies beneath and sad says come out

of your hole it's playtime away you go

the whole Nazi thing and latterly to a

but to a lesser regimented degree the

Russian gulags and so forth revealed

revealed something the world had thought

did not exist that Assad initial aim to

circumvent it a la vista de la cañada

macho Gregorio is so prolific Jordi's

aji they really passionately put a

realistic see one of the major mistakes

made by contemporary admirers of Saud is

that he was a liberal that in some way

his endorsement of free sex of the free

sexual impulse is the same thing as

progressive politics but on the contrary

he is in political terms totalitarian or

or rather he believes in the rule of the

strong of the best principle that looks

forward to Nietzsche's Superman

[Music]

[Music]

um Cora Saad tests our limits he breaks

through every standard of decorum and

taste he pushes these primal buttons I

think of disgust and revulsion he's not

just about sex as attraction he attracts

you he lures you in only in order to to

get his his claws into your brain and

then to torture you to make you want to

vomit

[Music]

it's about the crudity and the barbarism

of human physiology I know I support the

Hobby give a subpoena second particle

see the antibodies to the Jennifer Dodd

GJ yva Kelly screaming Nicolas treviño /

Benicio Del Rey Chester true dr. Kapoor

set up to support a pozzolan near vivo

you need a broker at all of in la vela

damage people done men fear women

because they fear women's power to

reduce them every time a heterosexual

man has sex with a woman he's making a

very charged journey back to the site of

his origins and so he tried he needs a

job and a man needs to dominate woman

and a woman needs to allow man to think

that he is dominating her in the sex act

or otherwise because men cannot function

men will just collapse into it into a

job into impotence

and a Bastille of course he had 120 days

of sodom which he wrote there and hid in

the wall and when he was moved out of

the Bastille he left it and it was only

recently published in this in the in the

20th century he called it the most

impure book that was ever written since

the world began you know reading sounds

work he's still difficult it's both

sometimes boring as people have pointed

out in a repetitive relentless kind of

procession of of grotesque acts and

genuinely morally repulsive quite a lot

of the time but that sense of moral

repulsion is a part of what Sardis is

exploring all working at

[Music]

so many of them are childish silly

stupid pranks so many of them are evil

and frightening I don't think you'll

read a more disturbing book

[Music]

he wants to make you uncomfortable

that's one of the things about sudden I

think you need both hands steady to to

read him you're not going to hold the

book with one hand if you're reading

Saad he was a very difficult prisoner he

abused turnkeys he satirized the

governor he would make trouble all the

time his correspondence was sensitive of

course and renée's his wife's

correspondence was censored as well so

that when you read the letters in the

bibliothèque nationale you find big

black marks covering sometimes half the

page almost all the letter things that

were not permitted to be said the French

Revolution had a period where anything

went new ideas sexual Liberty etc he was

obsessed there were demons in this band

and his fantasies were wild

[Music]

what we consider to be pornography at

the time was a mixture of political

satire anti religious philosophy and um

and pure sex his work philosophy in the

boudoir is a mixture of all these with

her your head between her legs so that

you can sucker clip than usual exchange

places so that I may suck your [ __ ]

like what [ __ ] Juliet once more while

you rub her [ __ ] we shall all come

together in that position together

[Music]

the philosophy in the bedroom is a

pastiche import commuting incest

adultery sodomy and lesbianism all at

the same time yesterday he was still a

virgin I'm not I find it's a hilarious

book as a pastiche and I think it's a

deeply sophisticated book which meant to

make people laugh there's no such thing

as crime in nature's eyes what do you

mean if for example I would have murder

you for the sake of my orgasm you

considered a crime for us I would

consider it a pleasure he carried

anarchy

to the ultimate in his ideal society no

anybody would be free to do anything

they wanted now that's dangerous for any

regime generosity charity goodwill to

others for food look at the real world

who would think that sensible people

take all they can get damn anyone who

gets in the way we are born enemies

Julian that is Nature's Way if we were

intended to be brothers we would not

have been given such savage passions and

desires who would not have been created

to feel nothing of others suffering much

less to enjoy it

listen to nature and doing it and follow

her plan but mr. doorman the Bible says

it is mentioned the Bible words born led

the words elude us he makes the same

calculation as existentialist man does

there is no God there are no values by

which I can leave my life so what do I

do your ideas excite me mr. Dolman I

would like to commit some crimes I would

like to have a victim ah

of what sort a woman I would torment her

and make her absolutely miserable I'm

impressed with the progress I've made

with her young pupil engine you've done

a remarkable job mr. Dolman I agree

sods orgies are undoubtedly absurd the

illustrations which he oversaw for the

publication of his work you look at them

and think these are not erotic these are

not eternal in any way I think they were

joke I think sad was a man who was

looking for extremes and everything you

did in literature or in sex he was

interested in testing the borders how

far can one go in experiments in sexual

coupling so that you have these

extraordinary it would be used to call

daisy-chained I don't know if that's

still a term and I think he had a kind

of thrilled which was almost like a

mathematical thrill in seeing how far

and how complicated his couplings

could be

[Music]

[Music]

he was a survival artist and he suddenly

pretended that he was on the side of the

revolution and acted like a

revolutionary in June 1789 a month

before the storming of the Bastille Saad

became very angry and ripped a pissing

tube from the wall of his cell kind of

funnel like object and began haranguing

the crowds below saying that the

prisoners were being killed using the

tube as the megaphone exactly the

National Assembly abolished lettre de

cachet and then Saad had to be released

even against the wishes of madame de

menthe Roy who tried to keep him in the

one person he has in mind when he's

writing in my opinion is met him to

betray the hated woman who is the cause

of all his grief in 1792 he was in a

position of power in the Revolutionary

Committees and the names of his in-laws

appeared on a list of would be Aimee

gray which meant in effect the death

penalty would follow all Morris

automatically and sad used his influence

to have their names removed he refused

to take his revenge on the people who

had deprived him of liberty during most

of his years as a man

[Music]

this is the title page and the

frontispiece

off the first edition Cristina 1791 is a

simple rule of nature that the wicked

will flourish and the good must founder

the year after he got out of prison in

1790 he published Justine any woman who

goes out into the world not knowing that

somebody is likely to hurt her that's

the Justine woman and that would be

almost all of us most of the time what

do you consider his masterpiece to be

probably Justine probably Justine how

about you petite 17 later Justine is

younger by yeah really

how nice Justine as she gets her sisters

separated at birth and both 13 there's a

innocence about Justine which never

never she never loses no matter how much

she's berated no matter how much she's

taken advantage of she's raped numerous

times she's branded she's imprisoned she

still maintains somehow this belief that

good will triumph and sad is saying

forget about it

Steen come on just in time to the chains

exactly for sad virtue is a kind of

vacuum in nature virtue is without

energy and therefore becomes a kind of

magnetic attraction to the forces of

evil

[Music]

what about Justine I think she's the

model of the masochist who goes through

life being oppressed and offended and

suppressed and beaten I'm being rather

psychoanalytic here but I think that is

the masochist inside I think the

masochism was even more important in his

psychological makeup than the sadism if

you study the pattern of his sexual

exploits you will find that he's almost

more often asking to be whipped than he

is whipping women women

well she loved him throughout prison and

you might want to say that well maybe he

was easier to love in prison when he was

released from Charenton after the

Revolution she formally separated from

from him and would not see him again if

she dies of Juliette her sister looking

very happy

[Music]

job also by the way in society should

not probably enter into but was very

much a feminist before the time I chose

you must remember that Juliet is an

extraordinary phenomenon of feminine

freedom would you rather be a mistress

than a [ __ ] Sods women were out

sexually free as the men I seen the

correlation of Juliet as Madonna as a

woman who has infinite amount of

transformations and a kind of protein

personality I see that and who can act

out a lot of sodomy masochistic

fantasies sod can be said to have

created some of the most intellectually

and psychologically forceful women

characters in literature I have no idea

about a psychology at all and I don't

care I only care about what he did and

it enrages me not science work that

doesn't enrage me what enrages me is the

way that his biographers have treated

his life because it's not funny most of

what he wrote about he did

he used forces part of sex and he used

it against women and children whom he

kidnapped that's what he did that's what

is in common between his life and his

work that's a lot to have in common he

whipped prostitutes and it must be

recognized that in his time in his

generation prostitutes were not Lacan

looked upon as human beings that's

extremely regrettable but let's face the

fact they were a kind of almost animal

species and so you can't really condemn

him any more for his mores then you

could condemn Thomas Jefferson for

owning slaves I think there is a

parallel I would draw the conclusion

that at some point early in his life one

of the women that sought assaulted

should have killed him

that's the conclusion that I draw

feminists who are hostile to Assad are

hostile to the entire modern experience

because in dismissing Saad you are

dismissing everything that Darwin and

Freud also said that is the idea that we

are innately aggressive beings that we

are born not necessarily bad but with an

impulse toward egotistical dominance

bosses this is why I believe that Assad

should be required reading for all

feminists and in all women she should be

on the curriculum if you think Saad is

legitimate you think pornography is

legitimate and Saad then becomes the

intellectual of pornographers but

pornography in general I think requires

that one believe that women and children

are lesser human beings I think they've

taken him too seriously because I think

that there is a lot of the buffoon

inside it's he's an exhibitionist he's a

child

standing on the ramparts or the gates of

his house saying look at me look at me

and pissing down below or masturbating

publicly the this is the naughty

exhibitionist child who was I think deep

in the heart of every man that most men

repress and this is what did the

literature is about

so for me site is a hero of imagination

I don't admire his life but in but few

artists or intellectuals lives

in fact uh you know show the kind of

qualities that we would expect let's say

in a man of the church

[Music]

the sadhus initially imprisoned before

sexual misdemeanors at the instigation

of his mother-in-law when the final time

came when he was imprisoned at

Shackleton this was due to his his

writings he was seized at his publishers

with a brand new edition of Juliet with

incredible pornographic illustrations

and he was thrown into Chantal this was

a mental wish the mental asylum

this is quite common just because he was

thrown into mental asylum doesn't mean

he was insane is the conventional means

of getting rid of of unwelcome members

of society and there he died at the age

of 74 in 1814 in his sleep as peaceful

as any Christian a confessor was sent to

him in his last hour and he peacefully

recited its confession like a good

Catholic

[Music]

so restless this is the scale of machi

the shot the cast because we don't have

the original you know it was stolen

somewhere Logan is associated behind you

not either side once again I don't see

her push more having a phrenology he was

considered to be such a maverick that

his skull was open and his brain taken

out for study and the phrenologist who

studied his skull and his brain made a

report saying these skull shows of

following character traits

chasity rectitude self-discipline all in

all it could be the skull of a father of

the church

[Music]

Yoshida said hotel - esteemed former

associate Donny can not looking class to

reproduce para donar personally nobler

they appreciate what's the origin of his

name being is its first used in medical

dictionaries in eighteen in the middle

1830s and France and it's used as a

description of a very grave mental

disease that has to do with harming

others in the 19th century writers like

flow Barre Baudelaire were aware of

sart's work and always were interested

in that sort of darker side if you like

of human experience and then one of the

most politically oriented avant-garde

movements of 20th century art the

Surrealists rediscovered Sartre and

transformed his reputation into a

philosophical and revolutionary hero

[Music]

this is the drawing of Lacoste Stadium

in Lacoste itself and the Chateau of the

market yourself what was there

interesting well I think it had to be

played a quite an important role in in

surrealism many I think because of his

politics and his anti-establishment view

about life

this was the Marseille Peck who know

they were doing these in Marseille

before they escaped

well the Surrealists are really the ones

who reserved records odd because at the

beginning of the war they went down to

Marseille dancer what is he it's hard to

see the surrealist so inside

transgression sad tour of the rulebook

sod did everything in

in a completely different way and who's

this one Freud Sigmund Freud and he was

completely frank about his personal life

his thoughts his sexuality

he simply rejected all the bric-a-brac

of intellectual rational ecclesiastical

theological philosophical assumptions

and started a game I think the other

element of saud that was important for

early surrealist work was his

anti-clericalism his hatred of the

Christian Church in particular here's

the nun who's exposing her breasts and

here behind her is a sexual orgy

commonality of what could be challenges

well I think it's I think just crept in

I think it could be almost an imaginary

portrait of sound symbol of the

surrealist later on did portraits what

they thought they don't know and there

was the project of making kind of

imaginary portraits of saud which the

eldest man ray did of making substitute

portraits was hard

[Music]

that man and behind that guy I have to

accept such explain that lady I would

sit between fourteen fifty thousand

pounds it's a very rare suite of place

the question is to know if these plates

have an autograph influencing son and

you've got all the emblematic of the

death in the borders which is one of the

proof that the page could be autograph I

mean influenced by said well I'll tell

you something else this is so it's

curtains just give me the stone

it's an emblematic moment with

photobombs well where are you seeing

that sad is very connected because it's

in between literature and erotica books

it had a strong influence on the

surrealist so all the people who are

connecting Solaris books must have first

editions of sad energies part of French

literature and vineyards another

surrealist who worshipped him and did a

film version vaguely based on hundred

days of Sodom right at the end of the

film the last figure to emerge is

clearly meant to be the figure of Jesus

Christ and now this is not inside a

novel but Boone well did it is this kind

of scandalous anti-clerical gesture

southern France and cinema is less in

terms of themes than the way it's

watched

[Music]

the classic example is of the final girl

who's locked in a almost like a haunted

house this is the gothic novel which

isn't an inherited from Sodom in

prostitute by Blair for zones a

libertine poverty poverty which is again

the same somatic is reverse get up

prostitute the Azores you got a 50

direct line therefore from Assad is the

gothic novel horror to the Horomia

[Music]

I mean this is not erotic a photographic

to Detroit because it does not incite

you to commit the sexual acts at all

it's like a dose of saltpeter reading

sad so why should we pay any attention

to because the prose is very beautiful

and because he tests at the borders of

literature and because he did set out

the most radical notions of Liberty ever

set forth by probably any thinker in

Western civilization

[Music]

so if he's endured I think it's because

he was ahead of his time and in many

ways time has caught up with him he

would chortle today if he were to walk

through some of the areas of the world

or to go on the internet I think he

would be quite pleased with himself that

this repression had been lifted and he

would say to himself I suspect I had

something to do with that but it's in

the second half of the 20th century that

Sad has emerged really as the voice of

liberation liberating late twentieth

century civilization from its allusions

the idea that we can control history the

idea that a set of laws is a

satisfactory way of running a society

the idea that there are moral values by

which we should judge our actions in

fact once sad the demolition magazine

there isn't very much left and of course

at the end of the 20th century that is

exactly

[Music]

should you go to bed or watch another

channel for program get the answer from

the ask fate game on the Masters of

Darkness website at channel 4 comm

history next week's master of darkness

is queen elizabeth's magician at the

earlier time of 10 o'clock still real

life next tonight with love off the

streets

[Music]

you