Visions of Phantasm: Madame de Sade in the Excess of Language and Imagination

Abstract

Madame de Sade (1965), a celebrated play by Mishima Yukio (1925-70), disentangles the enigmatic psyche of the Marquis de Sade’s wife, Renée, who decides to leave him after nearly two decades of imprisonment and forced separation. Featuring six female characters, the dramatic play has been often considered to reflect Mishima’s fondness for theatrical spectacle akin to that of Japanese kabuki. Setting aside the typical labeling of the play as such, this article contends that Madame de Sade engages with thematic concerns Mishima shares with fin-de-siècle decadent aesthetics.

To this end, the play sets forth a mutation of Renée who undergoes three stages of passivity, desperation, and renunciation in her relationship with Sade. These psychological transformations are interwoven with the socio-historical conditions of the French Revolution that affected the fate of the aristocracy. In the twilight of ancien regime, six characters metaphorically render various worldviews representing social and cultural disparities. Unpacking the reality of a crumbling aristocracy, the three acts imagine and assess the ontological nature of the Marquis de Sade. The process of evaluating Sade, however, results in a self-assessment of Renée herself, who ultimately accepts his immeasurable degree of monstrosity that has tacitly demeaned her as a devoted wife incapable of spirited vice. By virtue of the protagonist’s excessive subjectivity and linguistic opulence, the play eloquently stages a premonition of apocalypse for both the personal and national history of France. Simultaneously, the play reflects Mishima’s aspiration for modernizing Japanese theatre, as well as his endorsement of the autonomy of art tarnished by commercialized shingeki.