The Survival of Sade in French Literature of the 1950s

Abstract

Today, almost two centuries after his death, Sade still stands for absolute evil. He cannot, however, be reduced to this role. In various ways, he makes his presence felt in literature and philosophy. He is at once a man, a body of work and a symbol. Critics have remarked that he often resurfaces during great, nihilistic crises, or at times when civilization seems to lose its bearings. Michel Delon writes that Sade is ‘une des figures centrales de notre modernité et même de notre postmodernité’ (one of the central figures of our modernity and indeed of our postmodernity’).¹ He acts as a historical reference point, while disturbing diachrony as such; he functions as a syntagm always questioning any given ideology and any definition of ‘man’.