Was the Marquis de Sade a travel writer at heart?

In Napoleon’s Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped, author Tony Perrottet notes that the Marquis de Sade, who is famous mainly for his sadistic pornographic writings, was at heart a travel writer:

The Marquis de Sade had always fancied himself a man of letters, and the first manuscript he intended for publication was his pompously titled Voyage in Italy, or a Critical, Historical and Philosophical Dissertation on the Cities of Florence, Rome and Naples, 1775-6 — an account of his experiences in Italy while on the run from the police under the assumed name ‘Comte de Mazan, Colonel in the French Army.’ Written on the journey and his return to France, the work falls easily within the formulaic (and today excruciatingly tedious) genre of gentlemanly travel memoirs of the eighteenth century. Filled with descriptions of architecture and artworks, and erudite references to Dante and Petrarch, the book is distinguished from dozens of others only by its unusually eclectic scope, which includes long diatribes on religion and local social customs. Sade was particularly offended at the Italians’ lax attitude to marriage, which he felt involved a shameful lack of affection. He hired an illustrator in Naples to illustrate his humble opus, but became distracted from its completion when he was arrested and never pursued its final publication. (It was eventually rediscovered in Paris and released in 1995.)

Instead, while languishing in the Bastille, Sade went over his notes from the Italy trip and culled the more sordid material for the first draft of his porn novel Juliette. The research proved fertile: Sade has his perverted heroine travel the same route through Italy as in his travel book, visit the same museums, and stay in the same inns, with less than edifying results. For example, Voyage d’Italie had included a visit to Florence’s Uffizi galleries, with a clinical report of a celebrated ancient sculture, The Hermaphrodite. In Juliette, the androgynous image inspires the heroine to flights of erotic fancy, as she admires ‘the most beautiful ass in the world…’ while her male companion assures her that ‘he once fucked such a creature, and there is no more delicious pleasure on earth.’ Other picturesque Italian settings became the settings for Juliette’s outrageous orgies and criminal acts. Sade remained a dutiful tourist: in his critical work Ideas on the Novel, he insisted that authors must do their on-site research. ‘I will not forgive you any improbable customs, or any mistake in costume, or even less, a mistake in geography…’

For more information on Tony Perrottet’s book, which includes all manner of curious historical trivia, check out his author website — or if you live in New York, head to his reading tonight at Lolita Bar, 226 Broome Street, from 6-9 pm.