Gorgeous image by elaisted.
Here’s another fantastic essay that just undulates into your head: The Pervert’s Grand Tour – The Devil’s Playground by Tony Perrottet. It’s a travelogue visit to the Marquis de Sade’s castle in Lacoste (Provence), France and it is now owned by Pierre Cardin. It’s lyrical, lovely: Perrottet describes vividly the in-person visit to the strange estate, and explains the effect of the place (and its new owner) on the small village — but he also takes us to the places in time within the walls. Here’s a snip from the middle:
(…) Even while he was in prison, the château remained a font of inspiration for Sade’s grisly literary works—a Walden Pond for the polymorphously perverse.
Essentially, the château was the mise-en-scène for some of his more outrageous real-life escapades. To take one example, it became the setting of a light-hearted romp dubbed by biographers “The Little-Girls Episode.” At the end of 1774, the charismatic, 34-year-old marquis came to winter at Lacoste with his family and a string of fresh-faced household servants he’d hired in Lyon, including five unsuspecting virgins. These were intended to supplement his more knowing staff, such as the lovely housekeeper Gothon, whom Sade had hired because she sported “the sweetest ass ever to leave Switzerland,” and the studly male valet Latour, by whom Sade liked to be sodomized while prostitutes watched and cavorted. For the next six weeks, Sade dedicated himself to corrupting the captive minors. As far as historians can discern, he held them hostage in the château’s dungeon, forcing them to act out scenes from pornographic literature as well as Sade’s own intricately stage-managed sexual rituals. (A control freak, Sade like to choreograph every detail: As a character complains in one of his comic fictions, “Let’s please put some order into these orgies!”) Modern French wives are legendarily indulgent of their husbands’ peccadilloes, but Sade’s wife, Pélagie, took spousal freedom to new levels by overseeing this marathon debauch, keeping the five girls compliant, and then hushing up the ensuing scandal. When the police came knocking, she helped bribe the outraged parents and spirit the girls, decidedly damaged goods, away to convents.
Pondering this edifying tale, I puddle-jumped through the castle’s former moat and climbed in the pelting rain up to the wild plateau of Sade’s old estate. This was once a splendid garden and orchard (…read more, slate.com)
