> > I just loved Erminia's quotes. It goes a long way to explaining his
> > popularity. I had a go at reading, I think it was, his Justine many
> > years ago but soon gave it up.
Hugh
(For those who do not go on British Poets, these are the quotes
I posted which have been emntioned in Hugh's letter.)
> Justine is faabulous: read it with
> Angela Carter's excellent book on
> De Sade (name???)
(One might add the third dialogue of Eugenie, in the Philosophy of the
Budoir.)
>Hi,
in his last Will and Testament, with a remarkable self-portrait capacity,
The Divine Marquis de Sade described himself as: "Imperious, choleric,
irascible,
extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has
never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, .." .
He knew he would not change, (as I think all criminals and ideologists would
know of
themselves) .
For him - what other people judged as violent , was merely an inclination
towards "strong feelings". It is a question of measures.
Anyhow, if I can dare insisting on this line, I do love this iconoclast
quotes:
1. "There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the
profanation
of the objects offered us for worship."
2. "One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders,
the
pleasure is greater."
3. "The pleasure of the senses is always regulated in accordance with the
imagination. Man can aspire to felicity only by serving all the whims of his
imagination."
This one will surely disturbe Peter as it disquiets me:
"All universal moral principles are idle fantasies."
I find this one anthropologically very naughty +charming:
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind."
This other one is my absolute favorite one:
"I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt;
I have vanquished, I have uprooted, I have destroyed everything in my heart
that might have interfered with my pleasure."
(Aline et Valcour)
"We are no guiltier in following the primitive impulses that govern us than
is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves."
"Has not Nature proved, in giving us the strength necessary to submit them
to our desires, that we have the right to do so?"
But THIS is the Best:
"It is not the opinions or the vices of private individuals that are harmful
to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures."
"All creatures are born isolated and have no need of one another."
And this, HOW REAL:
"What lack of movement! What ice! Nothing stirs me, nothing excites me...I
ask you, is this pleasure? What a difference on the other side! What
tickling of my senses! What excitement in my organs!"
This one is less appealing:
"Happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites
is crime."
"True felicity lies only in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them."
Love,
Erminia
PS Matter of fact, all through my life, I had to noto taht I find easier to
be interested in
those who think differently from me than in those to whose thought I do
conform.
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