“Either kill me or
take me as I am, because I’ll be damned if I ever change.”
When I was 14 years old, I fell head-over-heels in love for
the first time. His name was
Donatien.
He’d been dead 186 years.
Life is so damned inconvenient.
Nevertheless, sometimes you’re given exactly what—or whom—you
need, even when time and space get in the way.
At the formative age of 14, what I needed most was a mirror, something
to reflect my own identity back at me, clearly and truly. I’d never had such a mirror, which meant I
wasn’t at all sure who or what I was.
Of course, other people seemed to have their own plans
regarding who and what I should be. They
were more than happy to reflect their own projections back at me, to try and
show me my image through the distorted mirrors of their own ambitions, needs,
and fears. My childhood was smothered in
conformity. I had parents who censored
everything I saw, listened to, and read to the best of their thankfully inept
abilities. My childhood was in a word uninspired, tantamount to sitting in a
waiting room.
Somewhere in that vacant fog, I heard Enigma and their
classic album
MCMXC
A.D, but I never pinned down the name of the artist until my teen
years. When I did, I became curious what
Sandra was whispering about in
Sadeness Pt 1, which of
course led me to discover the Marquis de Sade.
It’s one of life’s mysteries that when you discover
something essential to you, even before you get to know it, you sometimes feel it
in your bones. The moment I saw his
name, I knew I needed to snap up anything and everything I could about him.
But who was Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade? A dead revolutionary who
didn’t even rate a footnote in my high school history textbook? A violent criminal who wrote disgusting texts
to justify his cruel acts? An edgy
libertine obsessed with sex, sex, sex?
It depended on who you asked.
If any of these descriptions had actually summed him up, I
think I’d have been bored silly.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Sade—the supposed depraved
monster, the man who so many people assume was a moral vacuum—wrote this:
“Our reason alone should
warn us that harm done our fellows can never bring happiness to us; and our
heart, that contributing to their felicity is the greatest joy Nature has
accorded us on earth; the entirety of human morals is contained in this one
phrase: Render others as happy as one desires oneself to be, and never inflict
more pain upon them than one would like to receive at their hands.”
What a beautiful sentiment from a man whose name literally
has been equated to the infliction of that pain, whether in the playful sense
(which I believe he’d have appreciated) or in the destructive sense (he'd have appreciated the irony).
This sentiment can be read in a short essay called
Dialogue
Between a Priest and a Dying Man. This
piece is often overlooked of course, because there is little here to connect to
our culture’s obsession of sex, sex, sex.
Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man will do nothing to titillate
bored couples in the bedroom.
At the time I read it, I was an atheist, which was not appreciated in my parents' household, nor had such
a perspective gained the popular ground it seems to enjoy today. My beliefs have changed in conjunction with
the evidence of my experiences, but Sade's moral philosophy remains a core one in my
life. Reason and heart alone--these are what inform my beliefs and my choices, not the dictates of others.
Sade in the French Revolution
The Marquis de Sade was quite courageous to espouse atheism
at a time when the church was incredibly powerful. In fact, he was incredibly brave to champion
many of the ideas that he did. His
commentary not only on sexuality, but also on religion, nature, the human race,
and politics enraged Napoleon Bonaparte, resulting in his imprisonment without
trial. In fact, Sade spent more than a
third of his life behind bars in a variety of prisons as well as an insane asylum,
where he died at the age of 74.
The man was by no means perfect. He certainly was a sexual predator, and some
of his indiscretions were vile. The
majority however have been greatly exaggerated, both in his time and after it
(today I doubt they’d rate more than a blip in a tabloid). His first 13 years in prison were at the
behest of an angry mother-in-law. During
that time he was accused of an accidental poisoning, but the charges were later
declared groundless. Yet somehow he is
remembered more for the many false and embellished charges lobbed his
way than anything good he did in his life.
When the French Revolution set him free, Sade, who was
opposed to the death penalty, became a judge in a revolutionary court. He sought repeatedly to prove the innocence
of those who came before him, and even saved his hated mother-in-law who
condemned him to prison in Vincennes
from execution. Charged with being too
lenient, he was sentenced for execution himself. Thanks only to a typo (and the subsequent end
of the Terror), his life was spared.
Who would think a man who went down in history as a bloodthirsty, well, sadist, would literally risk his neck to save his bitter enemies—enemies who
condemned him to a fate of imprisonment which he likened to “this grave where
they have buried me alive”?
Society not only offered Sade vengeance, but actually demanded he kill his fellow human beings,
that he give into his most base instincts.
He refused, on the basis of his heart and his reason.
Yet the Marquis de Sade is remembered for the sadistic acts
he wrote about … not the merciful acts that nearly cost him his life.
On Writing
While I haven’t had a chance to read it, I have heard the
Marquis de Sade wrote an essay called “Reflections On The Novel.” Why did Sade choose to dwell on vice in his
writing? In his own words:
“Never shall I portray
crime other than that clothed in the colors of hell. I wish people to see crime laid bare, I want
them to fear it and detest it, and I know no other way to achieve this end than
to paint it in all its horror. Woe to
those who surround it with roses. Their
views are far less pure, and I shall never emulate them.”
In this essay he apparently also advised never to write for
money—at least not as a priority.
I’ve been thinking about this lately, because money, fame,
praise, and all forms of external feedback are why the vast majority of writers
write. They write to a formula, they
write to please “beta readers,” they write not to honour the highest truth in
their hearts, but to please the fickle mob.
This … they call art.
Don’t get me wrong. I
don’t have anything against the person who honestly
derives their greatest joy and meaning from pleasing others. I don’t have anything against someone who
writes primarily for a financial payoff and calls it what it is—content. I also have nothing against members of
television writing teams who miraculously manage to inject something genuine
into a collaborative process under the heel of an ongoing profit motive.
I do have a problem with individuals who say they are
creating magnificent, honest works from their hearts when they are actually pandering
to the whims of the mob. I realize the
grain of inspiration at the center of their works sometimes is derived from their hearts, but
they’ve allowed public opinions, trends, publishing houses and writing advice
columns to make revisions. They have twisted their works accordingly. If this represents their hearts as they claim, their hearts too have been twisted out of true, and belong to the highest bidders.
True will comes from the individual, not the
masses. True art reflects true will.
They’ll tell you it’s for the sake of making writing better, that their willingness to
butcher their own work is proof of their seriousness. But achieving greatness in writing doesn’t
entail handing one’s words to others to vivisect. It means doing that hard work yourself, like
a painter or sculptor or any other type of artist, and doing the thousands of revisions your soul demands with the passion
they deserve. Those revisions should be
driven not by the whims of the masses, but by your heart and reason.
Writing is about becoming a surgeon, not letting others be
your butchers.
I bring this up because I write novels, and I am so lucky not to be caught up in this
desperate race to please others. I am part of a tiny percentage of writers who treats their work as a sacred trust, a ritual, a link to the divine. It is an offering I give to the gods of my experience that grant me an inspired life and do so directly.
And every day, I hear that I am wrong. It is everywhere in blogs and advice columns all over the web. "Don't listen to to your heart or reason--listen to us. We know what you want to say better than you do."
I don’t mind being part of a tiny minority, and I can even
accept that my work will never be my living.
But I do mind that the other 99% pretend nobility and sacrifice—or count someone like me as a failure among their
ranks. I’m not a member of their
ranks. The only commonality is that I
work in the medium of words, as they do.
I got to wondering, “Why is that? What set me free? How did I learn to place value on the truth
in my heart, and not on the expectations of others?”
And then I realized. When
I was 14, I had a mentor. From across the
barriers of time and death, Sade taught me what true integrity looks like:
“Either kill me or
take me as I am, because I’ll be damned if I ever change.”
The priests of Sade’s fundamentalist time were
gatekeepers. They stood between the
masses and salvation, telling them what to believe, how to act, what was true,
and what was divine. If they did not get
in line, Hell awaited them.
Of course, the priests told them this to keep them in their place,
so that they could continue to hold power over their lives. Their mission was always to keep the disenfranchised from
seeking Heaven on earth, or trying to create it themselves. When we find salvation on our own, we no longer need priests. We are empowered, independent, free. We lead individual lives, lives that cannot so easily be reined in and controlled.
The gatekeepers of our time are everywhere. The parents who deny us love unless we
subscribe to their traditions, the politicians and CEOs that deny us bread
unless we join their corporate machines.
The fundamentalist priests—they are still here too, telling us that their god
speaks to us through their books and their sermons.
But perhaps the most insidious gatekeepers are the nameless masses—ordinary people who have not had the courage to see
that we derive knowledge from our experiences and meaning from our hearts. Having sold their integrity to others, they now seek to drag the rest down, because when they see integrity, it reminds them of just how much painful work they'd have to do to ever set themselves free.
In the world of writing, those gatekeepers are the
publishing houses and the beta readers and the public who believe that great
art must be subject to their discretion—that
it comes from what others believe we
should create, and not what we do. " "Don't listen to to your heart or reason--listen to us. We've let others butcher our souls. Now let us butcher yours."
They do this for the same reason as the priests of old:
power--or perceived power. In truth, it is nothing but
weakness. To quote another role model of mine, William Blake, "Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs
is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or Reason usurps its place
& governs the unwilling. And being restrain'd, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the
shadow of desire."
That’s why I wanted to take this time to reflect on a man
who changed my life. Though he never met
me, Sade held a mirror in front of me.
In him, I recognized the values in my own heart. He showed me that actions matter more than
words, that blood spilled or spared never lies, and that integrity is the
cornerstone for any moral system worth devising. When the Revolution swept over France
and a whole country went mad, he chose the hard path—the path of kindness.
He made his choices not because some priest, gatekeeper or
imaginary god told him to, and not because the masses respected, liked, legitimized, or
appreciated him. As Sade said,
“All human morality is
contained in these words: make others as happy as you yourself would be, and
never serve them more ill than you would yourself be served. These, my dear
fellow, are the only principles which we should follow. There is no need of
religion or God to appreciate and act upon them: the sole requirement is a good heart.”
While the world remembers either a monster or a sex-obsessed
libertine with no thought save for himself, I remember a man who spared his
bitter enemies from the execution block at the risk of his life, a man who once
went to prison not for assaulting a prostitute, but simply for practicing his
rhetoric on her paid time, a man whose dry humour was utterly delightful. Sex-obsessed he was, but the love of his life
was his platonic best friend. And at 74,
he took the time to teach the teenage laundry maid he was screwing how to read
and write. What an utterly idiosyncratic
individual.
In many ways, Sade never entirely grew up; in a childish,
petulant manner, he threw a tantrum anytime he didn’t get his way. So many of his mistakes weren’t the result of
cruel, cold-blooded determination, as so many would think, but most often of a
blithe, lonely innocence that sometimes didn’t realize the destruction it was wreaking
until it was too late.
Why do so many remember him differently? Part of it is probably that history is
written by the victors—and de Sade is hardly someone we’d term a victor in the
traditional sense. Part of it was the
myth he himself created. But perhaps his
own words explain it best: “Truth
titillates the imagination far less than fiction.”
Was the Marquis de Sade in truth a hero? I don’t know what it takes to call someone a
hero to others, and he certainly wasn’t a hero to every person he met. But he was a hero to me. He taught me if you really believe in
something, it is worth going to extremes to speak the truth and live a life through action that honours it as best you can. He never let others tell him how to write, what to believe, what was right or wrong, or how to live. He never let others stand in the place of his heart or reason as false gods. In a
way, he was there for me when no one else was.
I try to live a life he would be proud of.
In discovering Sade, I discovered
myself. Fifteen years later, I don’t
write this eulogy to say goodbye, but to say “hello again.” I also do it to remind you who are reading this that other people are not your gods. They have no right to tell you what to believe or how to act or to restrain your true desires. Have the courage to be yourself. Don't let anyone censor your soul. Stand up for yourself and live a life of integrity, like Sade.
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