The 1990s have seen a resurgence of interest in the Marquis de Sade, with several biographies competing to put their version of his life story before the public. But Sadean scholar Richard Seaver takes us directly to the source, translating Sade's prison correspondence. Seaver's translations retain the aristocratic hauteur of Sade's prose, which still possesses a clarity that any reader can appreciate. "When will my horrible situation cease?" he wrote to his wife shortly after his incarceration began in 1777. "When in God's name will I be let out of the tomb where I have been buried alive? There is nothing to equal the horror of my fate!" But he was never reduced to pleading for long, and not always so solicitous of his wife's feelings; a few years later, he would write, "This morning I received a fat letter from you that seemed endless. Please, I beg of you, don't go on at such length: do you believe that I have nothing better to do than to read your endless repetitions?" For those interested in learning about the man responsible for some of the most infamous philosophical fiction in history, Letters from Prison is an indispensable collection.


From Publishers Weekly
The great libertine author, recently the subject of many biographical efforts, is finally allowed to speak about his life, in his own words, with the publication of this selection of letters written during the many years that Sade was incarcerated. Behind bars from 1777, when he was first imprisoned in Vincennes, to 1789, the marquis had nothing else to do but write. These letters reveal that while he was melodramatic, manipulative, self-righteous and prone to fits of rage and paranoia, he was also extremely insightful, intelligent, well read, full of ironic humor and capable of expressing great love and tenderness to his wife, Ren?e-P?lagie. Most of the letters in this collection are to his spouse, toward whom his emotions are startlingly extreme. In an early letter he writes, "My dear friend, you are all I have left on earth: father, mother, sister, wife, friend, you are all those to me, I have no one but you: do not abandon me, I beg you, let it not be from you that I receive the final blow of misfortune." But later, he vents his frustration on her, chiding her cruelly for foolish pursuits: "If 'tis true that one must account to the Lord for one's time on earth, what embarrassment awaits you in the next world!" The only drawback to this collection is that the reader gets only Sade's side. Although Seaver's elegant introduction nearly fills the need, the full context, in the form of the many letters Sade received, is missing. Even by themselves, however, these stunning epistles show a man who suffered endlessly in prison, but who never lost his spirit, finding solace in the written word. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Language Notes
Text: English
Original Language: French

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This volume of Sade's correspondence from prison covers a thirteen-year period, from 1777 when he was incarcerated in the Vincennes fortress near Paris, to 1789 when he was transferred from the Bastille shortly before it was stormed at the outset of the French Revolution, to the Charenton insane asylum, from which he was finally freed on April 2 - Good Friday - 1790. From ever danker and drearier cells, even as his health declined with each passing year, Sade wrote with supreme eloquence and increasing bitterness about the harsh conditions he was forced to endure, using his pen as a deadly weapon to lash out at his tormentors.

FROM THE CRITICS

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