Sveinbjorn Thordarson

Ég er um þessar mundir að lesa bók mér til skemmtunar um Donatien Alphonse François, markgreifann af Sade (1740–1814), en orðið 'sadismi' er frá nafni hans dregið. Af mikilli undrun rakst ég á eftirfarandi í bréfum hans, en þarna segist markgreifinn vera fylgismaður efnishyggju Baron d'Holbachs. D'Holbach var einmitt viðfangsefni síðari meistararitgerðar minnar í fyrra:

[ . . . ] The System of Nature is verily and indubitably the basis of my philosophy, and I am and shall remain a faithful disciple of that philosophy even at the cost of my life, if it came to that. [ . . . ] a book that I recommended to the Pope himself, a golden book in a word, a book that ought to be in every library and whose tenets should be in the heads of everyone, a book that undermines and destroys forever the most dangerous and most odious of all fantasies, the one that has caused more bloodshed here on earth than any other, one against which the entire universe should rise up and destroy once and for all, if the people who make up this universe had the slightest idea of what constitutes their true happiness and tranquillity. . . . theism cannot for a moment stand up to the slightest scrutiny, and one would have to be completely ignorant of the workings of Nature not to recognize that it operates on its own and without any primary cause, and that so-called primary cause, which explains nothing and which on the contrary requires explanation, is naught but the nec plus ultra of ignorance. (Letter, Sade to his wife, late November 1783)

Síðan vissi ég ekki að markgreifinn var mjög pólitískt þenkjandi -- hann hafði svo sannarlega rétt fyrir sér með þetta:

The equality prescribed by the Revolution is simply the weak man’s revenge upon the strong; it’s just what we saw in the past, but in reverse; that everyone should have his turn is only meet. And it shall be turnabout again tomorrow, for nothing in Nature is stable and the governments men direct are bound to prove as changeable and ephemeral as they. (Juliette, p. 120, authorial footnote)

The throne is to everybody’s taste, and ’tis not the throne they detest, but him who is seated on it.

Og svo, mönnum til skemmtunar, hér er forsíðumyndin á La Nouvelle Justine eftir karlinn: