RONALD HAYMAN
sees the
buccaneer
or the
freebooter
Saninus to be sure and tell him:
'Monseigneur, we thank you for your advice. Nothing does so much
good as prison. Our son-in-law proves it. He is unrecognizable since
he has been there. Oh, what wise advice you give, Monseigneur. Oh,
what a great man you are, Monseigneur.'
195
Sade now found himself wanting to construct a mirror that would
throw back a reproachful image of contemporary absurdities.
If
his
opinions counted for nothing in the world outside the cell, what he
needed was an alternative reality, a literary space, where he would be
omnipotent. Tired of being the system's victim, he appointed himself
its ribald judge.
Apart from his letters, his first important work was an atheistic
credo,
Dialogue entre un pretre et un moribund,
which he completed
on 12 July 1782. Paradox had become Sade's favorite plaything.
If
there
was no circuit of communication by which he could prove his inno–
cence, at least he could have fun by short-circuiting the line of argu–
ment.
That he found relief by writing is unremarkable.
In
his situation,
nothing could have been more natural than the urge to pour words
over every available scrap of paper. But if what he wrote had not been
important, it would not be disturbing 200 years later. He did not
choose
to
turn his attention inwards: he had no option. His achieve–
ment is that before the Romantic movement had been launched, he
succeeded in making solipsism look like omniscience.
His
Dialogue
is the story of a death-bed conversion, but it is the
priest who is converted. When the dying man is asked whether he
regrets the sins to which human frailty has led him, he says it was
religion that led him into sin, by teaching him to resist the desires that
nature had implanted.
If
only he had had the good sense to ack–
nowledge Nature's omnipotence, he would have yielded to them
completely, and had a more enjoyable life.
The priest is unable to explain why God, after creating a corrupted
nature, should have wanted to test humanity by giving it freedom of
choi e. He must have been able to see into the future, and if he wanted
us to resist temptation, why did he choose not to make us stronger? As
it is, we are all driven by irresistible forces, victims of our own
inclinations. Our virtues and our vices are equally necessary to Nature,
who skillfully holds the balance between them. The best incentive to
virtuous behavior is not intimidation but reason. Ethics depend
entirely on the principle of trying to make other people as happy as we
wish
to
be ourselves. The dying man would therefore like to make the
