Don Marquis once said that a classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. He clearly wasn't thinking about The 120 Days of Sodom. Most people don't even want to have read this one. It's a brutal, repetitive, and genuinely exhausting piece of literature that has been banned, burned, lost, and rediscovered over the last two and a half centuries.
The Marquis de Sade wrote it in thirty-seven days while he was locked up in the Bastille. He did it on a single, continuous roll of paper that was about twelve meters long. Think about that for a second. He was hiding it from the guards, scribbling in tiny handwriting to save space, and eventually, he had to leave it behind when he was moved to an asylum just before the French Revolution kicked off. He actually cried when he thought it was lost forever.
Honestly, it’s a miracle the thing exists at all.
What actually happens in the book?
If you're looking for a plot, you're going to be disappointed. It’s basically a catalog. Four wealthy, powerful men—a Duke, a Bishop, a Judge, and a Banker—lock themselves away in the remote Silling Castle with a group of victims. They’ve got four "historiennes" with them, who are older women tasked with telling stories of their own "debauched" lives to spark the men's imaginations.
The book is divided into four parts: Simple, Double, Criminal, and Murderous.
Sade only finished the first part in detail. The rest of the book is essentially a series of notes and outlines. It’s a literal checklist of atrocities. The further you go, the more the "rules" of the castle take over, creating a claustrophobic sense of dread that is hard to shake. It’s not "erotica" in any modern sense of the word. It’s a cold, calculated look at what happens when absolute power meets absolute depravity.
Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Salò connection
Most people today know the name because of the 1975 film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the movie moves the setting from 18th-century France to the final days of Mussolini’s Republic of Salò in 1944.
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It was a brilliant, if horrifying, move.
By shifting the era, Pasolini turned Sade’s nihilism into a scathing critique of fascism and consumerism. He used the bodies of the young actors to show how power treats human beings like meat. It’s a hard watch. In fact, it's one of those movies that most critics call a masterpiece but also admit they never want to see a second time. Pasolini was murdered shortly before the film was released, which only added to the dark aura surrounding the work.
The film was banned in multiple countries for decades. In the UK, it wasn't fully uncut until 2000. Australia had it banned for nearly thirty years. This isn't just "edgy" content; it’s content that genuinely challenges the legal and moral boundaries of what art is allowed to do.
Why scholars actually care about this book
You might wonder why anyone bothers with a book that describes such horrific things. It’s a fair question.
The answer lies in how Sade explores the human psyche. Long before Freud, Sade was mapping out the darker corners of desire and the link between pleasure and pain. Philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir and Michel Foucault have spent a lot of time dissecting his work. They see him as a radical individualist who pushed the Enlightenment to its most terrifying conclusion: if there is no God and only nature exists, and nature is often violent, then why shouldn't man be violent too?
It’s a disturbing logic.
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- Political Power: The book shows how wealth and status can insulate people from the consequences of their actions.
- The Nature of Law: The "regulations" the men create for the castle are a dark parody of legal systems.
- Language as Control: The storytellers in the book use words to manipulate the environment, showing that narrative itself can be a tool of oppression.
The strange history of the original manuscript
The physical history of the manuscript is like something out of a thriller. After Sade was moved from the Bastille, the scroll was found by a man named Arnoux de Saint-Maximin. It stayed in private collections for years, mostly hidden because of its content.
In 1904, a German psychiatrist named Iwan Bloch published it for the first time, but he did it under a pseudonym. He thought it was a vital document for understanding "psychopathia sexualis."
Then, in the late 1920s, the Noailles family (who were descendants of Sade) bought it. They kept it until the 1980s, when a descendant allegedly sold it to a collector named Gérard Nordmann. But there was a massive legal battle because the manuscript had been stolen from the Noailles family by a middleman.
Eventually, the French government stepped in. They declared the manuscript a "National Treasure" in 2017 to stop it from being auctioned off. They didn't want it leaving the country. It was finally purchased for the French National Library for several million euros. It’s wild to think that a scroll written in a prison cell by a man everyone thought was insane is now one of the most protected documents in France.
Is it worth reading?
Probably not for most people.
If you want to understand the history of the novel or the roots of certain philosophical movements, then yes, it's essential. But as a casual read? It’s miserable. The repetition alone is enough to drive you crazy. Sade wasn't trying to entertain his readers; he was trying to document every possible permutation of human cruelty.
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It’s a "limit-text." It tests the limits of what can be written and what can be read.
Understanding the "Sadean" Worldview
Sade isn't just about "sadism" (a word that, obviously, comes from his name). He’s about the total rejection of social contracts. In the world of The 120 Days of Sodom, there is no empathy. There is only the "strong" and the "weak."
This is why the book remains so controversial. It forces us to look at the parts of humanity we’d rather ignore. It asks: if you could do anything and never get caught, what would you do? The answer Sade provides is bleak.
Navigating the cultural impact
If you decide to dive into this world, do it with open eyes. The influence of Sade's work stretches from the Surrealists to modern horror films like Saw or Hostel. Even if you haven't read the book, you've felt its impact on the way culture handles transgressive themes.
To truly understand the legacy of this work, consider these steps for further research:
- Read "Must We Burn Sade?" by Simone de Beauvoir. It’s one of the best essays ever written on why his work matters despite its content.
- Compare the book to Pasolini’s film. Notice how the context changes from 1700s France to WWII Italy. It changes the meaning of the violence entirely.
- Look into the legal history of the manuscript. The story of its theft and recovery is a fascinating study in international art law.
- Explore the concept of "Transgression" in literature. Research authors like Georges Bataille or Jean Genet, who followed in Sade's footsteps.
The 120 Days of Sodom isn't a book you "enjoy." It's a book you survive. It remains a stark reminder of the dark potential of the human imagination when it's stripped of all social and moral restraints. Whether we like it or not, it's a permanent part of our cultural history, sitting on a shelf in Paris like a dormant volcano.