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The Marquis de Sade

Manuscript

Author

Author Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
Selected by André Breton

Description

Manuscript copy of an extract from a text by the Marquis de Sade, undated.

This comes from an assorted set of texts, some of which must have been published (hence the note at the bottom of the page added to a work and mentioning the discovery of an unknown source relating to the Douanier Rousseau); the note on Père Enfantin, Charles Fourier’s principal disciple, and especially a quote from Michel Butor about Magritte help suggest dating this collection to the 1960s, perhaps 1965, the year of the L'Ecart absolu exhibition held, as we know, under the auspices of Fourier, as well as the year of the republication of the definitive version of Surrealism and Painting. Judging from the archives, in any event, these are some of the last texts Breton drafted or copied. In this dossier are also found notes on de Sade, a bibliographic note on the editor Pierre André Benoit (several of whose works are contained in Breton’s library), games, bibliographic notations that might have been intended for an auction, and reading notes on painting that could also be linked to work for Surrealism and Painting. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Handwritten manuscript, undated.
1 in-16 oblong page, handwritten text in Breton’s hand of an extract from Philosophy in the Bedroom by de Sade, ‘Yet another effort, Frenchmen, if you would become Republicans’: 

‘Let us give over thinking religion can be useful to man; once good laws are decreed unto us, we will be able to dispense with religion.’ [Auction catalogue, 2003]

Translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski