All man's happiness lies in his imagination - Sade

This execution of Marquis de Sade 's will was celebrated on the 2nd of December 1959 at 22:00 in Joyce Mansour's appartment. It began with a sound tape created by Radovan Ivsic which gave the impression to hear an erupting volcano from close by. This record had been created from sounds of the street amplified up to the unbearable and was transmitted by means of overpowerful loud speakers as an echo of Sade's sentence : "As I was once examining the Etna, the bosom of which was vomiting flames, I desired to be this famous volcano". The sound went on crescendo for several minutes until Jean Benoît's shattering entrance. Then, in a complete silence, one could hear a record of Sade's will read by André Breton. After which, Jean-René Major started to read Jean Benoît's Notes, while Mimi Parent helped him to remove one by one the pieces of his costume until he applied to himself on the spot of  his heart a white hot iron in the shape of Sade's name.

Annie Le Brun