7.

Yukio Mishima, Madame de Sade

Those who visited one of B’s stage performances of Yukio Mishima’s play
Madame de Sade, opening at the Small Stage of Dramaten on April 8, 1989,1
could via the theatre program be informed both about the author, the
play, and the life and work of its absent central figure, Marquis Donatien-
Alphonse-François de Sade (1740-1814). They could learn that what most
people take to be the name of the Japanese writer – characteristically the
name of a noble samurai family – is actually a pseudonym for Kimitaké
Hiraoka (1925-70).2
The theatre program quotes Mishima‘s post-face to the American transla-
tion of the play:

Reading The Life of the Marquis de Sade by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa I was

most intrigued as a writer, by the riddle of why the Marquise de Sade,
after having demonstrated such absolute fidelity to her husband during
his long years in prison, should have left him the moment that he was at
last free. This riddle served as the point of departure for my play, which
is an attempt to provide a logical solution. I was sure that something
highly incomprehensible, yet highly truthful, about human nature lay
behind this riddle […].

This play might be described as “Sade seen through women’s eyes.” I

was obliged therefore to place Madame de Sade at the centre, and to
consolidate the theme by assigning all the other parts to women. Madame
de Sade stands for wifely devotion; her mother, Madame de Montreuil,
for law, society, and morality; Madame de Simiane for religion; Madame
de Saint-Fond for carnal desires; Anne, the younger sister of Madame de
Sade, for feminine guilelessness and lack of principles; and the servant
Charlotte for the common people. I had to involve these characters with
Madame de Sade and make them revolve around her, with something like
the motion of the planets. I felt obliged to dispense entirely with the usual,

1 The play had earlier been produced at the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki in 1970, in a transla-
tion by Bo Carpelan and directed by Karl-Axel Heiknert. A guest performance at Dramaten
took place in 1970. B did not see it.
2 What the program did not mention is that Mishima visited Stockholm in 1967. He then
brought with him Madame de Sade, obviously in the hope that B would be willing to produce
it. But the two never met (Christina Palmgren Rosenqvist, Vi, 1989, 17: 41). Three years later
Mishima died.