Infernal Comedy. Spaces of Humor in The Marquis de Sade

Abstract

Is there any room for comedy in the “monster” that the “Divine Marquis” has been identified with, in such a “pervert” and “pornographer”? What fun can be derived from the work which in an exemplary way transgresses all the limits of morality and criminal imagination? Is it possible to admire anything in Sade, even his humor, if in the light of Georges Bataille’s opinion, “our admiration is tantamount to contempt for his victims, who we transfer from the material world of terror to the world of ideas”? Basing both upon the work of classical commentators and more recent literature on the subject, this text further contributes to the already existing research by presenting comical measures used by Sade in his prose and identifies in it the mechanisms responsible for arousing laughter in the reader. I corroborate the thesis that Sade can be read as a great humorist and that his oeuvre, despite its inherent violence, can be the source of unforced laughter. In order to notice this humor, however, the reader must, firstly, interiorize the difference between reality and the literary fiction and distance himself from the thematic, representational layer of the Sadean text, secondly, open to purely linguistic dimension of this oeuvre, to the “spectacle of discourse” (Barthes), and thirdly, possess (or work out) a certain aesthetic sensitivity or a “comic competence”