An erotic beyond
Subtitle: Sade
By: Octavio Paz ; translated from the Spanish by Eliot Weinberger.
Publisher: Harcourt Brace
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 84
Subjects: Sade, marquis de, 1740-1814 -- Criticism and interpretation; Erotic literature, French -- History and criticism
Other titles: Sade
Description: When, as a young man in postwar Paris, Octavio Paz first encountered the writings of the Marquis de Sade, his reaction was one of "astonishment and horror, curiosity and disgust, admiration and recognition.".

In an early poem and two subsequent essays written over a span of five decades, Paz pierces through the narrow image of Sade as pornographer and examines his work in the context of the paradox of human freedom and civilized man. He insists that Sade is worth reading, that the danger lies not in his books but in the passions of his readers.