Justine

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Edition from 1791

Justine or from the misfortune of virtue ( French original title: Justine ou les Malheurs de la vertu ) is a novel by the writer Marquis de Sade , which he wrote in 1787 during his imprisonment in the Bastille .

Justine and Juliette are the daughters of a bankrupt businessman. After the death of her almost penniless mother, Juliette decides to go to the brothel as a prostitute , commits a series of crimes, becomes rich and is happy. Justine, on the other hand, chooses the path of virtue, experiences a series of adventures and mishaps and is continually subjected to persecution and humiliation until she - on charges of murder and arson - meets her sister again, to whom she tells her life story before she turns into one Thunderstorm is struck by lightning.

De Sade edited his work several times, and it is now available in three versions. The second version is dedicated to Marie-Constance Quesnet, de Sade's temporary partner.

The most important episodes of the original version

  1. Justine receives an offer from the sadist Dubourg to be regularly whipped for a fee, which she refuses.
  2. You Harpin, an unbearable curmudgeon who tried in vain to persuade Justine to steal for him, for his part defamatory reports the theft to Justine in order to bring her to prison.
  3. The friends of the criminal Dubois, with whom Justine escapes from prison, decide to rape Justine because she does not want to become their accomplice.
  4. The homosexual Marquis Bressac whips Justine to the blood because she refuses to poison his hated mother.
  5. Justine is branded by the surgeon Rodin and her two toes are cut off after allowing a child to escape who was about to be killed and cut open for anatomical studies.
  6. Justine, who wanted to receive the Christian sacraments in a monastery , is captured by four monks in order to celebrate perverse and eccentric orgies with her as a sex slave .
  7. Justine is robbed by a woman who she wanted to give alms to.
  8. A forger, whom Justine has saved from a crime against him, lures her to a lock to let her toil like an animal there.
  9. A mother brings Justine to trial after Justine tried in vain to save her child during a hotel fire.

Amoral message

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The three versions of the work

De Sade produced his novel in three versions (1st version 1787, 2nd version 1791 and 3rd version Die Neue Justine 1797). The original version was created by de Sade within two weeks and was not rediscovered until 1909 by Guillaume Apollinaire . The later variants contain - in addition to marginal changes in the basic structure - new episodes and extensions of the old episodes. In the 3rd version in particular, numerous detailed sadomasochistic profanities were added. In addition, a number of philosophical considerations were woven into the plot. Scenes of extreme cruelty and perversion alternate with pages of philosophical or pseudo-philosophical justifications and the apologetics of a revaluation of all values, which are dramaturgically incorporated as attempts to teach Justine and to convince them of the nonsense and harmfulness of virtue.

Since the multitude of extravagantly described sexual acts in the narrative perspective of the first person could no longer convey the virtuous character of the protagonist in a psychologically credible manner, the narrative form of the third version changes to the third person singular.

The development of the different text versions can be interpreted as a mere embellishment of the original plot or as a gradual abolition of self-censorship. According to another opinion widespread among sexologists and literary scholars ( Dühren et al.) De Sade tried to systematically compensate for the supposed loss of the manuscript of the "120 Journées" ( The 120 Days of Sodom ) left in the Bastille by expanding the original text to reconstruct the listed sexual acts and subsequently to integrate them into Justine's action.

Notes on the "New Justine"

Illustration for “Nouvelle Justine”, 1798

Between 1791 and 1797 de Sade wrote a series of shorthand notes on the last version of “Justine”, which largely lack punctuation .

Style and text sample, note no.108:

“The Bishop of Grenoble has a passion for ass fucking while cutting his victim's throat. Before doing this, he prefers to examine the person's neck and check where his sword should be attached. Monsignore's cabinet of justice is pentagonal. The bishop puts a waxed cord around the breasts, pulls the cord together and, as it were, cuts off the breasts. He bites into this plump mass and lets the blood gush into his mouth. He whips the face. He shits in his mouth. Development of the teachings of the Bishop of Grenoble on tyranny. Plan for a despotic government under which the people are as dependent as cattle for slaughter. The idea behind this project is that of total depopulation. "

(First cataloged and published by Maurice Heine 1931–1935.)

See also

literature

  • Donatien Alphonse François de Sade: Justine or the misfortune of virtue. Insel-Verlag, 1990, ISBN 3-458-32957-9
  • Donatien Alphonse François de Sade: Selected works. Volume 1-3. Hamburg 1962–65
  • Roland Barthes : Sade, Fourier , Loyola . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1986, ISBN 3-518-28185-2
  • Pierre Klossowski : Justine and Juliette . In: Bernhard Dieckmann, François Pescatore (ed.): Reading on de Sade. Stroemfeld / Roter Stern, Basel 1981, pp. 49–60

Web links

Wikisource: Donatien Alphonse François de Sade  - Sources and full texts (French)
Wikiquote: Donatien Alphonse François de Sade  - Quotes