Dostoevsky vs. the Marquis de Sade

Another confrontation between Sadean egoism and virtue occurs between Svidrigaylov and Dunya. Svidrigaylov personifies Sadean libertinism. He struck his wife with a whip and, Mrs. Raskolnikov believes, murdered her; pursued servant girls; and brutally violated a deaf-and-dumb fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl who then hanged herself. In conversations with Raskolnikov, Svidrigaylov asserts his belief that women enjoy humiliation and boasts of his seduction of a virtuous lady. Fifty years of age, he is engaged to a girl not yet sixteen, yet he is still pursuing Dunya. An authentically Sadean lust for profanation is integral to Svidrigaylov's monstrous sexuality; he compares the face of his young fiancee to that of Raphael's Sistine Madonna and finds her innocent selflessness tempting. Echoing Sade's libertines' unrepentance in evil, he laughs at the thought that he is a miserable sinner. (24)

Anticipating Raskolnikov's reproaches in their first conversation, Svidrigaylov raises the possibility that he had fallen in love, which he "can't help," thus "everything is explained in the most natural way." That being so, perhaps he is the real victim. Besides, reason is merely the "slave of passion." He invokes a "natural tendency" to explain his conduct, and pins his hopes on "anatomy." Svidrigaylov elaborates in their final conversation that he sees no reason to restrain himself with women, and that his vice is "something permanent ... founded on nature and not subject to the whims of fancy; something that is always there in your blood." (25)

Here, again, Dostoevksy is clearly following Sade closely. The appeal to nature to explain sexual misconduct is Sadean. Moreover, much of Svidrigaylov's self-exculpatory talk recapitulates the monk Clement's speech in Justine, declaring that a man with perverted tastes is "sick" and deserves sympathy, and that "the study of anatomy," when perfected, will "be able to demonstrate the relationship of the human constitution to the tastes which it affects," and that one's moral and legal transgressions would be explained by physical causes such as the "degree of pungency in the blood." (26)

When Svidrigaylov makes his final attempt on Dunya, she resists promptly and effectively. She fires a revolver at Svidrigaylov, grazing his temple. He desists and permits her to go. Here, then, is another answer to Sade: the innocent, particularly women, the libertine's favorite targets, have a right not to be victimized and to resist evil.

Through Svidrigaylov, Dostoevsky warns that Sadean egoism offers its practitioners only death. Svidrigaylov sincerely wants Dunya's love, but his relentless, vicious selfishness so repulses her that she spurns his final entreaties. Trapped in isolation, foiled in his bid for a love to save him from himself, Svidrigaylov despairingly commits suicide.

IV

The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's last work, is steeped in awareness of Sade, and is his greatest effort to confront and answer Sade's demonic impiety. The central situation, the murder of Fyodor Karamazov by his illegitimate son Smerdyakov, for which his son Dmitri is wrongly blamed, is prompted by the liberating antitheism and nihilism at the core of Sade's philosophy. Here Dostoevsky elaborates his representation of various aspects of the Sadean soul and world view.