Halting Auction, France Designates Marquis de Sade Manuscript a ‘National Treasure’
Even their author — the Marquis de Sade, the 18th-century French nobleman whose libidinous antics helped break sexual mores and inspired the word sadism — considered his work "the most impure tale ever written since the world began." France considered Sade such a notorious philanderer
that he was jailed under royal orders in the late 1700s, including in the Bastille prison in Paris for over a decade, just before it was stormed by revolutionaries.
Claude Aguttes, of the namesake auction house who is handling the sale, said the French government had agreed to buy the works by Sade
and Breton "at international market rates." Mr. Aguttes said "120 Days of Sodom" was the last known work by Sade to be held in private hands.
Sade’s work, written on a scroll measuring 39 feet long and just four inches wide, "is a serious document of literature, of France’s literary history," said Frédéric Castaing, an expert on 18th-century manuscripts and a member of a commission
that advises the government on what works should be designated as national treasures.
The writing, it said, "is of great significance, as much as it is his first work as it is his most radical
and most monumental." The manuscript of "120 Days of Sodom" was expected to go for up to 6 million euros ($7 million) on Wednesday, as part of a sale of historic manuscripts owned by Aristophil, a French investment firm whose founder was charged last year with operating one of the art world’s biggest scams.
Will McMorran said that It is the most extraordinarily shocking thing ever written,
But more than two centuries later, on Tuesday, the French government recognized his work,
titled "120 Days of Sodom, or The School of Libertinage," as a national treasure.