History
Sade wrote The 120 Days of Sodom in the space of thirty-seven days in 1785 while he was imprisoned in the Bastille. Being short of writing materials and fearing confiscation, he wrote it in tiny writing on a continuous, twelve-metre long roll of paper. When the Bastille was stormed and looted on July 14, 1789 during the height of the French Revolution, Sade believed the work was lost forever and later wrote that he "wept tears of blood" over its loss.
However, the long roll of paper on which it was written was later found hidden in his cell, having escaped the attentions of the looters. It was first published in 1904 by the Berlin psychiatrist Iwan Bloch (who used a pseudonym, "Dr. Eugen Dühren", to avoid controversy). It was not until the latter half of the 20th century that it became more widely available in countries such as United Kingdom, the United States and France. The original manuscript is currently located in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, Geneva, Switzerland.
Read more about this topic: The 120 Days Of Sodom
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)