# Marquis de Sade — Against the Grain character guide

> Marquis de Sade in Against the Grain by J.-K. Huysmans.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** de Sade

**First appearance:** 0006-iv

## Snapshot

The libertine author whose cruelty and perversion Des Esseintes studies as a key to the secret impulses behind civilized art.

## Who they are

De Sade enters Des Esseintes' world through the library rather than the drawing room, as a writer whose frankness about the most mysterious impulses of human temperament becomes a kind of honesty. In a century Des Esseintes finds dull and stupid, de Sade represents an extreme that at least refuses to lie about what people want. He matters because he helps explain why Des Esseintes prefers the morbid and the excessive to the decent and the ordinary.

## In the story

### [Chapter IX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/chapters/ix)

Mentioned in the context of Des Esseintes' thoughts on art and the elect.

## Links

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