Surrealism: echoes of de Sade?

The Marquis de Sade may have been imprisoned and treated as a pornographer of perverse cruelty in his lifetime, but now he is a cultural icon, an inspiration to artists and writers, especially the surrealists. But his image underwent several changes after his death.

In 1834, the word sadism (meaning pleasure derived from hurting or humiliating others) made it into the dictionary. In the same year, an article appeared in the Revue de Paris condemnins de Sade and his work. But while many saw de Sade as a corrupting influence, others were beginning to see him as a rebel against bourgeois respectability.

By 1843, an article in Revue des Deux Mondes by the critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beauve suggested that Sade as well as the poet Byron were the two greatest inspirations of the modern era. By 1909, Guillaume Apollinaire, a painter, poet and forerunner of the surrealist art movement, claimed de Sade had had the 'finest mind' in the world.

In the aftermath of the First World War, leaders of the surrealists, such as André Breton, wanted to outrage bourgeois society and they chose de Sade as their emblem. No longer was he perverse or cruel, but he had become a symbol for revolution in art and literature. Surrealist poet Paul Éluard wrote that Sade 'wished to give back to civilised man the force of his primitive instincts and to liberate the amorous imagination from its fixations'.

By the 1960s, de Sade's image changed yet again: this time, he was adopted as an icon of sexual liberation. Today's surreal S&M scene makes an unconscious nod in his direction. Despite these changing interpretations, many people who condemn or revere him have probably not read his work. His novels still push at the boundaries of taste – to read him, it helps to have a strong stomach and a surreal sense of humour.

PLUS: Was de Sade inhuman? Read Neil Schaeffer's expert opinion