THE MARQUIS AND THE CHEVALIER

by James Cleugh ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 20, 1952

A popular presentation of the Marquis de Sade and the Chevalier von Sacher-asoch, who in their private characters and through their published works illustrate the only two possible corner-stones for a soundly monumental psychology of sex"". And hese sad, mad lives- of debauchery and deviation, offer not only the clinical evidence which was to coin a term, but a certain fascination in themselves- intensively interpreted here. For Donatien de Sade, softly nurtured and indulged in his childhood, rlish in his good looks, was forced as a young man into a marriage which offered only wealth, and was blocked in his pursuit of his wife's younger sister which- had been fulfilled- might not have occasioned the flamboyant erotic experimentation which was to follow. And Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, driven by an impulse more spiritual than carnal, a humanitarian rather than a hedonist, found the pursuit of love-in ubservience -- increasingly elusive in a series of relationships both marital and irregular, followed a downward path of sexual idiosyncrasy which ended in insanity.... general, rather than pathological, portrayal of libertine lives, in which sensationalism is reduced to sympathetic understanding- but nevertheless for many the lure will till in the curious, wayward pattern of degeneracy.

Pub Date: May 20, 1952

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown -- D.S.P.

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1952

Categories: NONFICTION