Annie Le Brun (1942–2024)

On n'enchaîne pas les volcans (You cannot shackle volcanoes) collects four short essays on Sade by my favourite Sadeian expert, Annie Le Brun, loosely connected by the notion of theatricality, in Sade's atheism, literary work, and life. In plain words, fit for hellfire, the central idea is that Sade not merely philosophised with his dick, but had discovered that there is no other way to philosophise, that no one philosophises otherwise. Philosophy is lighted at the fire of passions, he show more wrote. Desire is primary. With Sade philosophy enters the boudoir and is tested directly on our bodies, to the extreme of our abilities, to the breaking point of our ideologies, and every last intellectual self-deception, every last reservation, barrier and restraint made on freedom. In this annihilation of ideology, refusal of the straitjackets of any intellectual system, in his total liberty, Sade is an enemy of party politics no less than of religion.

Two essays discuss Juliette, Sade's paragon of criminal immorality, created to show Vice Triumphant, as her sister Justine represented Virtue Abashed. I disagree with Le Brun's optic concerning Juliette's sex; I don't think it's in any way remarkable, within Sade's universe, that one of his greatest libertines (or the greatest, going by sheer mass of text expended on her) was a woman. show less