Extremely Sadistic 120 Days Of Sodom Declared A National Treasure

Now I am usually really open minded but this goes too far. Sadism is named after Marquis de Sade, the author of the 120 days of Sodom. This book is really extremely brutal and yep sadistic.

France declares erotic masterpiece '120 Days of Sodom' a national treasure to halt sale.

Wether you believe in Pizza gate or not. The things described in this book are every bit as horrible as the worst rumours you have read or heard about It!

Merry Saturnalia, I guess


ETA The Guardian had a damning piece last year about the fact that this book is now considered a classic.

The 120 Days tells the tale of four libertines – a duke, a bishop, a judge and a banker – who lock themselves away in a castle in the Black Forest with an entourage that includes two harems of teenage boys and girls specially abducted for the occasion. Four ageing brothel madams are appointed as storytellers for each of the four months, and their brief is to weave a 150 “passions” or perversions into the story of their lives.

The libertines, surrounded by their victims, listen and enact the passions described, and as the passions become more brutal, so do the libertines: the novel builds to a violent climax with the “criminal” and “murderous” passions of Parts Three and Four. These are presented as long, numbered lists, interspersed with brief accounts of the scenes they inspire. Sade’s tortures range from the cartoonish (“He vigorously flattens a foot with a hammer”) to the clinical (“Her air supply is turned off and on at whim inside a pneumatic machine”); and from the surreal (“They make her swallow a serpent which in turn will devour her”) to the mundane (“He dislocates a wrist”). But the vast majority are simply too obscene and too violent to be quoted, as one nameless victim after another is subjected to increasingly elaborate and frenzied torments.

‘The most impure tale ever written’: how The 120 Days of Sodom became a ‘classic’.

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

It has very gross content including graphic descriptions of rape and molestation. Then again it is a work of fiction, a book.

The fact that we're still discussing it over 200 years after it was written would seemingly indicate it's importance. Since his death Sade's work has been linked to numerous schools of thought. The surrealists unabashedly cited him as an influence. His focus on sexuality as a motive force bears a striking resemblance to the philosophy of Freud. His radical philosophy of freedom is mirrored by the Existentialists despite preceding them by over 100 years and his views towards those in power is comparable to the socialists of the mid-20th century.

Despite the graphic and disturbing nature of much of his writing there is no doubt that he had a great influence on what came after. That alone is enough to declare his work (especially 120 Days of Sodom) classic.

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

I did read the book Justine when I was a younger man. I have to admit that it caused some questioning of certain philosophies I had and still have.

I was thinking that DeSade wanted to remark that human nature at its most base can be cruel and disgusting - and that is true - but I decided it was best not to read anymore of his works at that point. I have seen people do some pretty cruel things - and its horrific to think that some are so powerful that they can do such things and hide behind that power.

I did see an Italian movie with the same title. It was very depressing.

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex


I don't recommend you watch Pasolini's film adaption, Salo.

a reply to: Fools

I was thinking that DeSade wanted to remark that human nature at its most base can be cruel and disgusting - and that is true - but I decided it was best not to read anymore of his works at that point. I have seen people do some pretty cruel things - and its horrific to think that some are so powerful that they can do such things and hide behind that power.

Exactly. It was a direct response to the "Man is Good" Enlightenment philosophies of the time.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

It has very gross content including graphic descriptions of rape and molestation. Then again it is a work of fiction, a book.

I am not for banning it - but declaring it a national treasure???

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

I am not for banning it - but declaring it a national treasure???

Its context and history alone is grounds for making it a classic.

You should give it a read, along with all banned books.

One year on from the melted-cheese over baked dough with tomato situation and it just won't die, seems to be getting bigger. Hope anyone associated with these activities suffer dearly for these atrocities. Also the censorship around it is unprecedented that it only helps validate its claims.

a reply to: Fools

I also read Justine when I was a teen and it also left me without any desire to read more from de Sade.

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

The governments of nations containing Aztec and Inca ruins, as well as international organisations, consider many of the ancient monuments of those locations, to be sites of special historical and archeological importance. Many of those sites were also involved with barbaric, violent sacrifice of human beings, to various deities involved with the cultures which ruled during the Inca and Aztec eras.

They are protected, as is this work at this time, by the notion held by those of learning, that to ignore what has come before ones time, is to fail to learn from it.

Auschwitz has not been maintained and turned into a historic tourism site, because the people maintaining the site agree with or promote the actions of those who built and ran the horrific hell hole in years long past. The Tower of London is not full of torture devices and ancient weapons of war, because the people who curate the place believe in breaking the bodies and the wills of those who enter the building. Books are not written about serial killers and other notable sociopaths, because the authors find kinship with the people featured in their pages.

We maintain the memories of these things, because we have to be able to learn something from them, in order that we do not allow ourselves to repeat past mistakes. In the case of the works which have been protected, the 120 Days of Sodom specifically, I believe it is necessary to look into the era in which the Marquis de Sade lived, the things which were occurring at the time, and remember two things about the works concerned...

First of all, de Sade wrote the novel while incarcerated in the Bastille. I do not know how much you know about French history pertaining to the place, but de Sade was one of the people who made that place famous, both in this period, and in the period in which he lived. He was removed from the prison and placed in a different one, two days or so before the storming of the place by revolutionaries. This may have been because he shouted from a window, to the baying crowds which had been gathering in the city "They are killing us in here!", which no doubt stirred the crowd up, to the alarm of the warden or guard commanders. He spent a great deal of time imprisoned, mostly because his belief was that morality was not something which could be dictated by a church or state.

Also, much of what is known about his record as a man is coloured by the influence of those who found him impossible to deal with, without locking him up, including the aristocracy themselves prior to the revolution, and indeed the benefactors of the revolution who came after him, dangerous and powerful fellows such as Bonaparte himself, for example. de Sade was locked away in prisons and mental asylums for HUGE chunks of his life. I am not sure how familiar you are with such places, but living NEAR them was known to send people mad, because the sheer sound of the inmates was horrific. The smell of rotting bodies, human excrement unceasingly present in the nostrils, the sounds of misery and madness issuing from every stone of which the places were built...

The man was sick, of that there can be no doubt. But he was also a man whose life story promoted liberty among the people who eventually revolted to give the French their freedom. His works may have been the first well known examples of deviant sexual behaviour in western lands, but they did nothing other than to make people aware that things had been very wrong in the upper echelons of society in his nation for GENERATIONS! He was NOT the first sadist, just the first to be realistic about what goes on, rather than puritanical on the outside, and deviant behind closed doors. His works were nothing more than an insider whistle blow, without which, many might still think their leaders to be pure of heart and noble of action.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex


I don't recommend you watch Pasolini's film adaption, Salo.

I hear Disney is going to do a remake of it.

Should be interesting.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex


I don't recommend you watch Pasolini's film adaption, Salo.

Yeah I already had that figured out for myself

It's France..

Who cares.

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

The article's headline is a bit confusing. They aren't trying to celebrate the book, it's about the first manuscript written by de Sade, a physical object. It's very valuable and they wanted to stop it from leaving France and being bought by some private collector in Dubai or something. Declaring it a national treasure gives it (the old papers) a special legal status and ensures that it will stay in France, for future generations to look at it in a museum maybe, I guess.

a reply to: TrueBrit

You do make an excellent case, chapeau. And yet I can't bring myself to agree in this specific case.

originally posted by: Cutepants
a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

The article's headline is a bit confusing. They aren't trying to celebrate the book, it's about the first manuscript written by de Sade, a physical object. It's very valuable and they wanted to stop it from leaving France and being bought by some private collector in Dubai or something. Declaring it a national treasure gives it (the old papers) a special legal status and ensures that it will stay in France, for future generations to look at it in a museum maybe, I guess.

I get that but given the topic surely looking at a copy beats granting it special status, no!?

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Why stop there, was there not as scene where a girl was forced to eat a guys poop off the floor?

No wonder islamic terrorists are hitting France so bad, let them have it

originally posted by: MisterSpock
I hear Disney is going to do a remake of it.

Should be interesting.

Maybe J.J. can do it, it'll be a reboot but pretty much the same as the original.

A national treasure? More like an embarrassing part of France's disgusting historical era. Unfortunately, France is giving it a celebratory position or framing it as such. And that's the sad and disgusting part. But, again, it's France. Very telling.