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OPINIONS
Excerpting the Marquis de Sade's finest work -- the novel Justine -- is the
among the easist and the most difficult of labors. There are too many
exquisitely debauched pages to content one's self to a single one. Yet
despite all this, I managed to select a delicious little flogging scene
to pique your interest, though please, by all means, read the novel as a
whole. Sade, imprisoned for a good portion of his life and only released
by the victorious French revolutionaries in 1791, remains not only the
source of our word "sadism" but one of the most imaginative and penetrating, compelling and literate
writers of erotica ever. And though perhaps
the 120 Days of Sodom is more famous than Justine, it reads like an
encyclopedia while Justine is true literature. Here's a sample; it's
succulent, and entirely indicative of the rest:
-JM
* * *
From Justine by The Marquis de Sade
Clément arrives as warm with wine as lust . . . I fall to my knees as soon as I hear him
coming; he nears me, considers me in my humbled posture, then commands me to rise and kiss him upon
the mouth; he savors the kiss for several moments and imparts to it all the expression . . . all the
amplitude one could possibly conceive. Meanwhile, Armande, as his thrall was named, undresses me by
stages; when the lower part of the loins, with which she had begun is exposed, she bids me turn
around and display to her uncle the area his tastes cherish. Clément examines it, feels it,
then, reposing himself in an armchair, orders me to bring it close so that he can kiss it; Armande
is upon her knees, rousing him with her mouth, Clément places his at the sanctuary of the
temple I present to him and his tongue strays into the path situate at its center; his hands fasten
upon the corresponding altar in Armande . . . The impure monk uninterruptedly occupied with me in
like fashion, then tells me to give the largest possible vent to whatever winds may be hovering in
my bowels, and these I am to direct into his mouth . . . I obey and straightaway feel the effect of
this intemperance. More excited, the monk becomes more impassioned: he suddenly applies bites to six
different places upon the fleshy globes I have put at his disposal; I emit a cry and start forward
involuntarily, whereat he stands, advances toward me, rage blazing in his eyes, and demands whether
I know what I am risking by unsettling him . . . I make a thousand apologies, he grasps the corset
still about my toso, rips it away, and my blouse too, in less time than it takes to tell . . .
Ferociously, he seizes my breasts, spouting invectives as he squeezes, wrings, crushes them; Armande
undresses him, and there we are, all three of us, naked. Upon Armande his attention comes to bear
for a moment: he deals her savage blows with his fists; kisses her mouth; nibbles her tongue and
lips, she screams; pain now and again sends the girl into uncontrollable gales of weeping; he has
her stand upon a chair and extracts from her just what he desired from me. Armande satisfies him,
with one hand I excite him, and, during this luxury, I whip him gently with the other, he also bites
Armande, but she holds herself somehow in check, not daring to stir a hair. The monster's
tooth-marks are soon printed upon the lovely girl's flesh; they are to be seen in a number of
places; brusquely wheeling upon me: "Thérèse," he says, "you are going to suffer
cruelly"--he had no need to tell me so, for his eyes declared it but too emphatically. "You are
going to be lashed everywhere," he continues, "everywhere, without exception," and as he spoke he
again laid hands upon my breasts and mauled them brutally, he bruised their extremities with his
fingertips and occasioned me very sharp pain; I dared not say a word for fear of irritating him yet
more, but sweat bathed my forehad and, willy-nilly, my eyes filled with tears; he turns me about,
makes me kneel on the edge of a chair upon whose back I must keep my hands without removing them for
a single instant; he promises to inflict the gravest penalties upon me if I lift them; seeing me
ready and well within range, he orders Armande to fetch him some birch rods, she presents him with a
handful, slender and long; Clément snatches them, and recommending that I not stir, he opens
with a score of stripes upon my shoulders and the small of my back; he leaves me for an instant,
returns to Armande, brings her back, she too is made to kneel upon a chair six feet from where I am;
he declares he is going to flog us simultaneously and the first of the two to release her grip,
utter a cry, or shed a tear will be exposed on the spot to whatever torture he is pleased to
inflict: he bestows the same number of strokes upon Armande he has just given me, and positively
upon the identical places, he returns to me, kisses everything he has just left off molesting, and
raising his sticks, says to me, "Steady, little slut, you are going to be used like the last of the
damned." Whereupon I receive fifty strokes, all of them directed between the region bordered by the
shoulders and the small of the back. He dashes to my comrade and treats her likewise: we pronounce
not a word; nothing may be heard but a few stifled groans, we have enough strength to hold back our
tears. There was no indication as to what degree the monk's passions were inflamed; he periodically
excited himself briskly, but nothing rose. Returning now to me, he spent a moment eyeing those two
fatty globes then still intact but about to undergo torture in their turn; he handled them, he could
not prevent himself from prying them apart, tickling them, kissing them another thousand times.
"Well," said he, "be courageous . . . " and a hail of blows descended upon these masses, lacerating
them to the thighs. Extremely animated by the starts, the leaps, the grinding of teeth, the
contortions the pain drew from me, examining them, battering upon them rapturously, he comes and
expresses, upon my mouth which he kisses with fervor, the sensations agitating him . . . "This girl
entertains me," he cries, "I have never flogged another with as much pleasure," and he goes back to
his niece whom he treats with the same barbarity; there remained the space between the upper thigh
and the calves and this he struck with identical vehemence: first the one of us, then the other.
"Ha!" he said, now approaching me, "let's change hands and visit this place here"; now wielding a
cat-o'-nine-tails he gives me twenty cuts from the middle of my belly to the bottom of my thighs;
then wrenching them apart, he slashed at the interior of the lair my position bares to his whip.
"There it is," says he, "the bird I am going to pluck": several thongs having, through the
precautions he had taken, penetrated very deep, I could not suppress my screams. "Well, well!" said
the villain, "I must have found the sensitive area at last; steady there, calm yourself, we'll
visit it a little more thoroughly"; however, his niece is put in the same posture and treated in the
same manner; once again he reaches the most delicate region of a woman's body; but whether through
habit, or courage, or dread of incurring treatment yet worse, she has enough strength to master
herself, and about her nothing is visible beyond a few shivers and spasmodic twitchings. However,
there was by now a slight change in the libertine's physical aspect, and although things were still
lacking in substance, thanks to strokings and shakings a gradual improvement was being registered.
"On your knees," the monk said to me, "I am going to whip your titties."
"My titties, oh my Father!"
"Yes, those two lubricious masses which never excite me but I wish to use them thus," and upon
saying this, he squeezed them, he compressed them violently.
"Oh Father! They are so delicate! You will kill me!"
"No matter, my dear, provided I am satisfied," and he applied five or six blows which, happily, I
parried with my hands.
Upon observing that, he binds them behind my back; nothing remains with which to implore his mercy
but my countenance and my tears, for he has harshly ordered me to be silent. I strive to melt him .
. . but in vain, he strikes out savagely at my now unprotected bosom; terrible bruises are
immediately writ out in black and blue; blood appears as his battering continues, my suffering
wrings tears from me, they fall upon the vestiges left by the monster's rage, and render them, says
he, yet a thousand times more interesting . . . he kisses those marks, he devours them and now and
again returns to my mouth, to my eyes whose tears he licks up with lewd delight. Armande takes her
place, her hands are tied, she presents breasts of alabaster and the most beautiful roundness;
Clément pretends to kiss them, but to bite them is what he wishes . . . And then he lays on
and that lovely flesh, so white, so plump, is soon nothing more in its butcher's eyes but
lacerations and bleeding stripes. "Wait one moment," says the beserk monk, "I want to flog
simultaneously the most beautiful of behinds and the softest of breasts." He leaves me on my knees
and, bringing Armande toward me, makes her stand facing me with her legs spread, in such a way that
my mouth touches her womb and my breasts are exposed between her thighs and below her behind; by
this means the monk has what he wants before him: Armande's buttocks and my titties in close
proximity: furiously he beats them both, but my companion, in order to spare me blows which are
becoming far more dangerous for me than for her, has the goodness to lower herself and thus shield
me by receiving upon her own person the lashes that would inevitably have wounded me. Clément
detects the trick and separates us: "She'll gain nothing by that," he fumes, "and if today I have
the graciousness to spare that part of her, 'twill only be so as to molest some other at least as
delicate." As I rose I saw that all those infamies had not been in vain: the debauchee was in the
most brilliant state; and it made him only the more furious; he changes weapons--opens a cabinet
where several martinets are to be found and draws out one armed with iron tips. I fall to trembling.
"There, Thérèse," says he showing me the martinet, "you'll see how delicious it is to
be whipped with this . . . you'll feel it, you'll feel it, my rascal, but for the instant I prefer
to use this other one . . . " It was composed of small knotted cords, twelve in all; at the end of
each was a knot somewhat larger than the others, about the size of a plum pit. "Come there! Up! The
cavalcade! . . . the cavalcade!" says he to his niece; she, knowing what is meant, quickly gets down
on all fours, her rump raised as high as possible, and tells me to imitate her; I do. Clément
leaps upon my back, riding facing my rear; Armande, her own presented to him, finds herself directly
ahead of Clément: the villain then discovering us both well within reach, furiously cuts at
the charms we offer him; but, as this position obliges us to open as wide as possible that delicate
part of ourselves which distinguishes our sex from men's, the barbarian aims stinging blows in this
direction: the whip's long and supple strands, penetrating into the interior with much more facility
than could withes or ferules, leave deep traces of his rage; now he strikes one, now his blows fly
at the other; as skilled a horseman as he is an intrepid flagellator, he several times changes his
mount; we are exhausted, and the pangs of pain are of such violence that it is almost impossible to
bear them any longer. "Stand up," he tells us, catching up the martinet again, "yes, get up and
stand in fear of me"-his eyes glitter, foam flecks his lips-like persons distracted, we run about
the room, here, there, he follows after us, indiscriminately striking Armande, myself; the villain
brings us to blood; at last he traps us both between the bed and the wall: the blows are redoubled:
the unhappy Armande receives one upon the breast which staggers her, this last horror determines his
ecstasy, and while my back is flailed by its cruel effects, my loins are flooded by the proofs of a
delirium whose results are so dangerous.
". . . One never tires of this mania notwithstanding the fact is is a very pale image of what one
should really like to do . . . The desire to increase . . . 'tis, I know, the reef upon which the
fantasy is doomed to wreck, but is this peril to be dreaded by him who cares not a damn for
anything?"
