10. A Crazy French Pervert
Donatien Alphonse Francois, Comte de Sade, is better known to history as the Marquis de Sade (1740 – 1814). A French aristocrat, de Sade became notorious for his deviant practices, perversions, and erotic writings that combined pornography with philosophy and violent sexual fantasies. So much so that his name gave rise to the terms sadist and sadism. De Sade was a pervert who is known to history chiefly for being a pervert. He did write about politics and philosophy, but it was the deviant stuff that made him famous.
Indeed, were it not for the deviant things that he did, and the deviant things that he wrote about wanting to do, little would be known today about history’s most famous Marquis. De Sade was an advocate of radically unrestrained freedom. His fantasies’ emphasis on violence, criminality, and blasphemy – and his real life partaking of criminally violent deviancy – kept him behind bars in prisons and insane asylums for most of his adult life. On and off, he spent 32 years behind bars, including 10 years in the Bastille. Most of his writings were penned while he was incarcerated.
