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> The problem here I think is one of "enframing". If you frame Sade as
> "literature", if he you see his "world" as a literary world amongst other
> literary worlds, then you may well argue that darkness and terror and
> corruption and amorality must be part of any literary _gestalt_ if it is
to
> hold true, and that punishing or exorcising Sade for his particular
> extremities is dangerous because it threatens the "truth" of all
literature.
>

Absolutely.

> I think there is a kind of indolence and complicity in this enframing,
> however: it is like trying to read the Bible as literature, or the
Unabomber
> manifesto, or the Communist manifesto for that matter. None of these texts
> is strictly or simply "non-literary", but none of them sits comfortably in
> that frame - as passive literary artifacts presented for our objective, if
> not untroubled, contemplation, "demonstrations" of one truth or another
> about the world outside the text.

In total agreement.



> In speaking of de Sade as an ideologist and iconographer, I am trying to
> break that frame: not to reduce the literary to the non-literary, e.g. the
> political, but to undermine the distinction between literary
"consciousness"
> (the organic _gestalt_ which reflects on the world of human affairs) and
the
> political "unconscious" (the world of acts and motivations in which one is
> always caught up without mediation). Iconography is literature "at large";
> ideology is the world inscribing itself. One cannot ignore these
> transactions.


Certainly not.

>
> De Sade is not only a negative dialectician, showing us what to steer
clear
> of, but a pornographer dictating our (or at least his; but not only his)
> enjoyment; and he is not only a fanciful conjurer of spectacular literary
> horrors, but also a gifted apologist for a way of life who sets forth an
> elaborate a/theo/logical justification for the doctrine that might equals
> right - like a social Darwinism _avant la lettre_ (hence: The Divine
Ronald
> Reagan).


You are attributing  to Ronald Reagan (as a man and a politician) a value
that hugely
transcend the volgar mimicricy of his soul. I disagree with this comparison
wholly.


>
> he (De Sade) raped, but was never himself raped; he tortured, but was
never himself
> tortured. One must never forget how privileged he was.
>
> - Dom


NB  Please, consent me to quote from
"Coldness and Cruelty" by Gilles Deleuze /"Venus in Fur" by Leopold von
Sacher-Masoch (Zone Books)

"De Sade and Maso are compelmentary?" p.38-39
Saint-Ford in "Juliette" (De Sade)arranges for a gang of men to assail him
with whips.
The libertine is not afraid of being treated in the way he treats the
others. De Sade says "he rejoices in his
inner heart that he has gone for enough to deserve such treatment"...
In other words, this is the libertine's expiation for his sins against the
others.
Doesn't this "succeeds in embracing a whole conception of man, culture and
nature and discovery
of new forms of expression"?
George Bataille has stressed the fact that Sade's language is paradoxical
since it is essentially that of the victim.
His real attitudes - claims Bataille - are dramatically opposed to that of
the torturer.
(here I am merely reporting: therefore , remember "ambasciator non porta
pena"). But,
I am convinced that this is the case for the Divine Marquis. - since
 he is enframed in literature and does succeed in conveying  the truth of
art -( in such a powerful way as to gain
strong response in the audience across the centuries ).
Imagine the  amount of energy with spent on this theme.
Thank you for corresponding it.
Erminia


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