and in all cases the misfortunes of his fellowrnman mav become abominable delightsrnfor him.” Nature, according tornhim, “acts only through wickedness,. . .rneverything is vice and corruption, . . .rneverything is crime and disorder in herrnwill and in her works.”rnWhereas Voltaire’s and Laclos’s storiesrnultimately generate a moral message,rnSade’s works yield only cynicism, fright,rnand despair. Liaisons Dangereuses mayrnbe immoral, but it is also a morality talernbecause its characters inspire pity andrnthus demonstrate the futility of livingrnsoleK by the pleasure principle. Candidernlikewise ends with the advice that thernonlv wa’ to keep away the three greatrnevils of boredom, vice, and need is torn”work without reasoning.” But becausernSade’s own emptiness means he can creaternonly hollow, unbelievable, mechanisticrnfigures, his accounts of their absurdrnadventures inspire only aversion (orrnworse, boredom) and not pathos.rnThis point calls into question Sade’srnstatus as a major literary figure. Sadernmav ha’e said things no one had beenrnwilling to say before, but in reality hisrnpsychologically empty characters and hisrnridiculous plots neither shock nor impress.rnAs even Lever admits, “The impossibiliarn[of Justine], pushed to thernpoint of absurdity—or irony—sufficernto render the work unsuitable for titillation.”rnBut this citation comes from arnpassage in which Lever is essentiallyrnpraising Sade for subverting language,rnand the biography is littered withrnphrases that lead us to mistrust its author’srnliterary judgment. Lever refers severalrntimes, for instance, to the “splendor”rnand “grandeur” of the Sadeian liturgy,rnand he also writes of Sade’s “poetic genius,”rn”fresh lucidity,” and “lofty conceptionrnof vice.” He even ranges Sadern”alongside the best authors of thernperiod.” But the coup degrace has to bernhis comment that Justine “remains onernof the most powerful and most strikingrncreations of French literature”: moralityrncompletely aside, one wonders atrnthis point whether Lever has read Baudelairernor Proust, or even Sade’s fellowrnProvengaux, Jean Giono and FredericrnMistral. Sade’s works leave us with nothingrnbut his own misogynic notion ofrnhumanit’: “My neighbor is nothing tornme: there is not the slightest connectionrnbetween him and me.”rnF. Gonzalez-Crussi, a pathologist atrnChildren’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago,rnwrote in the New York Times Book Reviewrnsix years ago that, two centuries afterrnSade, we continue to behave as if thisrntenet were true. “We have stood indifferentrnto genocide in Germany, while itrnoccurred,” he writes,rnand to mass extermination inrnVietnam, Cambodia and Laos, tornname only a few recentrnhecatombs. It is worthy of noternthat while the carnage was goingrnon, we felt, in all candor, quite atrnease. The record will show thatrnthe entire world looked on withrnutter indifference at horrifyingrndeeds and that millions inrnVancouver, Beijing or Australiarnlose no sleep over thousands uponrnthousands of killings in CentralrnAmerica.rnFor persisting in his descriptions of humanrncruelty among general indifference,rnGonzalez-Crussi continues, Sade wouldrnbe locked up even in these sexually liberatedrntimes.rnBut Dr. Gonzalez-Crussi, like Sadernhimself, misses the point. Yes, humansrnare naturally violent and mean, but inrnthe face of this fact we must, as Voltairernreasons, keep working. Rather than agonizingrnover war in Bosnia and corruptionrnin Haiti, we must attend to the peoplernand the problems in our ownrnbackyard. In other words, “11 faut cultiverrnnotre jardin.” It is because Sade did notrndo this—because he left his elderly fatherrnto die in poverty while he squanderedrnwhat remained of the family fortune,rnbecause he brutalized (in word andrndeed) and betrayed his wife right underrnher nonetheless devoted nose, becausernhe deserted his children and refused torncontribute to their care—and not sornmuch because he depicted crimes betweenrnstrangers, that he deserves ourrnhorror and contempt.rnThere were others like him who deservernthe same. Lever demonstrates inrnhis brief references to other aristocratsrnand even religious men that Sade wasrnnot unique in his debauchery. As example,rnthe “sadistic” comte de Charolaisrn”killed his fellow human beings for sport,rnas other men went hunting. . . . His favoriternamusement was to fire a musket atrnworkmen repairing nearby roofs. Whenrnhe hit one, he jumped for joy.” And thernabbe de Sade, in addition to living withrntwo women “of whom he made freernuse,” was once “caught in the act at a selectrnhouse of prostitution” during a visitrnto Paris. The crimes the marquis committedrnwere not unusual in his day.rnWhat is more, these crimes contributedrnto the breakdown of a longstandingrnsocial order. If one is lookingrnfor a Voltairian lesson in this biography, itrnmay be here. As a critic of the sequel tornJustine put it: “I place licentious worksrnsuch as the one I am denouncing to thernauthorities in the same class as attacks onrnthe government, because if couragernfounds republics, good morals preservernthem. Their ruin almost always leads tornthe fall of empires.” If Sade’s works seemrnmore ridiculous than licentious today,rnour jaded sensitivities are an e’en biggerrnsign that our own empire (Senator Packwoodrnand all) is on its way down. crnAerogramrn£17 Michael McFeernLove note we passrnbehind the teacher’s back, the sour Miss Weltmeerrnwho would undo our careful folds, our S.W.A.K.,rnand declaim it to the laughing class.rnPane of strange skyrnuntroubled by domestic clouds, bright with namesrnand places and offhand phrases I can’t discoverrnno matter how many books I try.rnBlue mirror: bluernat first with homesickness, blue now with regretrnat having to return, at the unfolded bedsheetrnand blood of history kissing you.rnAPRIL 1994/37rnrnrn