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Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de SADE

Lettre du marquis de Sade depuis l'asile de Charenton "J'éprouve [...] un dégoût, un abattement total"

Charenton 1801, 15x22,8cm, un feuillet composé deux papiers encollés.

Original autograph letter by the Marquis de Sade, consists of 27 lines of relatively tight handwriting. Most likely written to his wife, as evidenced by the letter's origin from Sade's family. The letter is physically composed of two glued pieces of paper. On the verso the Marquis wrote 19 lines and scrupulously crossed them out - a few words and letters are still quite visible.
Cited in Maurice Lever's biography, 'Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de Sade', Paris, Fayard, 1991, p. 631.
On March 7, 1801, Armand de Sade, the Marquis's son, received a letter from the Minister of Police, Joseph Fouché, notifying him that his father had been arrested yesterday, and that handwritten pages from the novel 'La nouvelle Justine' [Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue] had been found on his person: “Nevertheless, sensitive to your request for leniency and concerned to preserve the honor of your name, I have decided to have your father transferred to the Charenton nursing home...”. It should be noted that, for Fouché, Charenton, an insane asylum, was nothing more than a nursing home, a prison. It should not be forgotten that a large proportion of the population of these asylums did not fit into the social and moral field, and psychiatry has long had no other aim than to normalize, to make them fit for social life. Contrary to what has been said, Sade fits in perfectly. However, as soon as he entered Charenton, Sade's attitude led to his expulsion to Bicêtre (the Bastille of scoundrels), but his family succeeded in getting him back into the Charenton asylum. Charenton was not only the Marquis de Sade's last incarceration, but also the last place he lived in, where he died in 1814.
The 19 lines scrupulously crossed out on the back of the leaf reveal a few words or letters; in this respect, we can conjecture that it's a coded message, which Sade was quite fond of, for if censorship had been behind these erasures, absolutely everything would have been, yet the message clearly shows that almost everything has been conscientiously crossed out apart from a few words or letters. We can still make out a few of them: 'Nécessaire', 'à tous', 'ger', 'ue', 'quel', 'je trouve', 'de'...
As for the letter itself, it is remarkable for the homogeneity of its message. It is a lengthy complaint describing the physical ailments Sade has suffered. It is an account of the sum total of the symptoms that overwhelm the writer. In a hyperbolic style, using, among other figures of speech, adverbs of intensity (si, tel, très...), Sade methodically spells out the violent pains his body is suffering, with the whole of this violence constituting a system, a structure in which all the parts are linked. In the writer's correspondence, it can be said that each time he found himself incarcerated, his letters mention uncontrollable physical attacks, although we know of no other letter so uniform and systematic.The pain originates in the pit of the stomach, radiating out to the periphery: head, eyes, legs, all converging on vertigo, loss of balance...
...because that's what it's all about: Sade isn't suffering from any illness, he's besieged by anguish whose ultimate meaning is vertigo, the wavering of a reality from which his freedom to live as he pleases, his freedom of movement, and his name have been taken away. The loss of these fundamental elements of his existence sends Sade in turmoil. In addition, and as regards the formation of these particular symtoms, if we consider that the fulfillment of a certain sexual sadism is necessary to him, the deprivation of this satisfaction turns this sadistic drive on itself, which becomes masochistic. The impossibility of externalizing the destructiveness that inhabits him, even if only through willpower, makes his own body the tortured seat, with Sade becoming both agent and victim of his own sadism.
Remarkable letter by the Marquis de Sade, written from the Charenton asylum. The Marquis seems to be reduced to the assaults of anguish, which beautifully transpires in his words. 

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