Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Happy Bastille Day Everybody !

We want the rights and we don't care how

I am currently slogging through Juliette by the Marquis De Sade. I don't think I am gonna make it. Anyway, he was locked up in the Bastille prior to it's downfall and actually helped to incite some of the rioting that resulted in said downfall. He was transferred to an asylum shortly before the 14th. Thing is, he might have actually been highly respected if he had still been in the Bastille at the time. After Robspierre (sp? - Is that like a French version of PierreBob ?) was ousted, De Sade was freed and actually elected to office. Napoleon put the kibosh on that & De Sade spent the rest of his life in prison and asylums where he wrote plays that were performed by the inmates.
De Sade's writings, well, at least this'n are long and boring and the philosophy stuff is pretty much the kind of thing that high school and college kids debate today. Back in the late 1700s, tho, while he was pretty radical - he had a lot in common with what we were doing in the U.S. As an elected official who was a hard core sexual deviant, he had a lot in common with modern American politics, too. What's a revolution without general copulation, tho - yanno ?

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