The Anti-Justine, page 1
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THE ANTI-JUSTINE
BY RESTIF DE LA BRETONNE
AN EBOOK
ISBN 978-1-909923-49-2
PUBLISHED BY ELEKTRON EBOOKS
COPYRIGHT 2013 ELEKTRON EBOOKS
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FOREWORD
Next to the Marquis de Sade, the most famous erotic writer of the Revolutionary period was the productive Restif (Rétif) de la Bretonne (1734–1806). It was plainly Rétif, whom de Sade referred to unfavourably in his novels: “R... floods the public and needs a printing press next to his bed. By good fortune they groan alone under his frightful products; a dull decrepit style, nauseous adventures in the worst society; no other merit but a great verbosity for which only the store-keepers will be thankful.”
May not professional jealousy have played a part in his judgment?
We will later see that Rétif did not think much better of de Sade. It may also be that the highborn Marquis thought himself far removed from the lowborn Rétif. Indeed Rétif de la Bretonne mainly occupied himself with the representation of the moral corruption in the lower classes, thus supplementing the work of Marquis de Sade, with whom he had otherwise much in common. Eulenburg declares: “An infinitely closer figure to de Sade than Rousseau is that Rousseau du ruisseau Rétif de la Bretonne. He was lashed by a powerful sensuality and driven into a kind of exhibitionism by the idolatry of the ego. Therefore he was unequalled in understanding how to analyze the origin, essence and power of sexual life and to devote the ego to a greatly refined worship.”
There we have the germs of a literary de Sade but far weaker, more passive and less passionate. Were Rétif more active and impulsive, of a less contemplative nature, and were the means and milieu of the célébré Marquis given to the poor peasant’s son from youth onward, then perhaps a second de Sade would have resulted, who would have been literally equal in power and in sensitiveness of description. Not aimlessly does Rétif praise above all this unusual sensitiveness, this “sensibility, sometimes delicate, sometimes horrible, cruel and wicked.” We add to the characteristics of this remarkable writer that he was a passionate connoisseur of women and, unsatisfied with his very numerous mistresses, would run after every pretty girl he met on the street, and would not rest until he had made her acquaintance. He was personally of the greatest uncleanliness. He writes in the Contemporaries:
“Since 1773 till today, December 6, 1796, I have brought no new clothes. I have no underwear. An old blue coat is my daily garment.”
Rétif hence loved cleanliness – in women. He continually spoke thereof, gave detailed information in this connection in his Pornography, and approved the spread of this virtue among the Parisian prostitutes.
Despite his own patient observations he did not hesitate to avail himself of the adventures of others. Count Alexander of Tilly told in his Memoirs that Rétif de la Bretonne came to him with the request that he tell him his erotic adventures so that he could put them in a book. Very important was the relation of Rétif to Mathieu François Pidanzat de Mairobert (1727-1797), the famous author of The English Spy and the editor of Secret Memoirs of Bachaumont. The latter not only had his works printed at the secret press of Rétif but also collaborated with him in many works. One valuable treatise that appeared from there was Rétif’s Pornography on the sixteen classes of prostitutes and panders. Also the Contemporaries, the Owl and the Paternal Malediction were enriched by Pidanzat de Mairobert.
The greatest non-fiction work of Rétif was undoubtedly Nights of Paris, an inexhaustible thesaurus for the moral life in the Revolutionary period, the only representation of its kind of the moral physiognomy of Paris at the end of the eighteenth century, the true Nocturnal Tableaux of Paris, whose content rendered necessary a twenty years’ work. “Every morning,” said Rétif, “I wrote down what I had seen in the night.” The result was eight immense volumes from which unfortunately space does not permit us to quote.
In Monsieur Nicolas (Paris, 1794-1797, 16 vols.) Rétif de la Bretonne told the story of his life more truthfully than the authors of such similar works as Faublas, Clarissa and Heloise. Of especial interest is the thirteenth volume, My Calendar, in which Rétif, day by day, wrote down all the women, whose acquaintance he had made and whom he had seduced and made pregnant.
His Contemporaries is a collection of tales that are founded on actual experiences. The heroes of these adventures were supposed to have authorized the author to use their real names. They are essentially tales of the moral life of the people.
The Farmer and the Perverted Farmer’s Wife or the Dangers of the City are the liaisons dangereuses of the lower classes, which preach the sad truth that virtue through constant intercourse with vice necessarily is destroyed.
Fanchette’s Feet is the story of a young modist from the Rue Saint-Denis, whose small foot enchanted Rétif, for he was an outspoken foot-fetishist. He had a fanatic passion for pretty women’s feet and shoes.
The work of Rétif that sounded most in title like those of the Marquis de Sade was Innocent Saxancour or the Divorced Woman, supposedly the story of his unhappily married daughter, Agnes. Rétif in this work “crossed the boundaries of the boldest cynicism” and the author himself said that one will find in the work “all things that are called atrocities.” The unfortunate wife after the marriage had to submit to all the moods of a degenerate roué from her husband; she suffered the most unbelievable infamies and horrors of her passionate tyrant.
Yet the sub-genre of “de Sade literature” truly started with Rétif’s Anti-Justine or the Joys Of Eros, written at the Palais Royal in 1798, published under the pen-name of Jean-Pierre Linguet. Sixty illustrations were announced on the title-page, but they never appeared. Of the eight parts that Rétif promised in the preface only the first two were published. Of the first edition only two copies were preserved in the National Library after the great confiscation and destruction of all the obscene books found in bordellos and bookstores.
According to Monselet, Anti-Justine contained obscene descriptions from Rétif’s own life and was supposed to form a supplement to his Monsieur Nicolas.
The work was divided into forty-eight chapters on various obscene subjects. Rétif, however, managed to give a kind of moral mist to them and declared that it was a “kind of antidote” to the poison of the infamous Justine, which “would render the name Linguet immortal.” He set out with a warning to women against cruelty.
But Anti-Justine was for this reason just as obscene as Justine since the men had for them a substitute that could be used without the cruelty of de Sade’s works. Rétif continually repeated that these “antidotes were extremely urgent,” thus testifying to the enormous spread of de Sade’s works. Rétif ended the book with cynical remarks on the illustrations that were supposed to accompany the book, referring undoubtedly to the exceptionally obscene pictures of Justine and Juliette.
Finally, Rétif may well be remembered as de Sade’s greatest critic. For example Rétif, who knew the Marquis since 1768, gave in his Nights of Paris an entirely unfavourable account of the history of the Rose Keller affair, the “femme vivante dissequé.” Marquis de Sade is said to have met Keller on the Place des Victoires, brought her to his house, placed her in an anatomy-room, where a great number of people were assembled, and made preparations to vivisect her. “Who wants this unfortunate being in the world?” said the Marquis in a grave voice. “She can do nothing and will serve to reveal to us the mysteries of the human structure.” At a lull in the vivisection the woman is supposed to have freed herself and escaped.
That this rivalry undoubtedly led to the production of the Anti-Justine, one of the most obscene books outside the works of de Sade himself, is certainly something to celebrate.
–Dr Iwan Bloch
PREFACE
No-one has been more incensed than I by the foul performances of the infamous Marquis de Sade – I refer to his Justine, to Aline, to le Boudoir, la Théorie du Libertinage which I read while languishing in prison. This villain never presents the delights of love experienced by men without accompanying them by torments and even death inflicted upon women.
My design is to write a book, sweeter to the taste than any of Sade’s, and which wives who would be better served will bring to the notice of their undiligent husbands; a book in which the senses will speak to the heart, in which libertinage intends no cruelty towards the fair sex and rather restores the adored one to life than brings about her undoing; in which love, naturally considered and divested of scruples and prejudices, appears in none but a voluptuous guise and comes wearing always a smile. Peruse this book, you who are inclined to the worship of women or you in whom devotion has for some time slumbered; peruse it, I say, and you’ll own women for your darlings, beloved even as you lay claim to their cunts. But your abhorrence will only increase for that vivo dissequens, he who, his face decked in a long white beard, was dragged tottering out of the Bastille on the Fourteenth of July. May the enchanting tale I am sending to the printer sink his in merited obscurity!
A bad book penned with good intentions, this. I, Jean-Pierre Linguet, presently under arrest and confined in the Conciergerie, do affirm I have done this work, highly spiced though it be, with none but laudable purposes and useful aims. Incest, for example, is only included herein so as to provide the corrupted tastes of libertines with some vague equivalent of the abominations, the frightful cruelties with which our Sades lard their books to stimulate their depraved admirers.
My moral purpose – and mine is as good as any other – is to give those who have some spirit in them an “erotikon”, well-spiced and lively, which will encourage them to put a no longer lovely wife to the best possible use.
But not by any means to the same use suggested by that cruel and dangerous book of Sade’s, Justine ou les malheurs de la vertu, which of late has enjoyed such a regrettable popularity.
I have thus still another important intention. I wish to preserve women from cruelty’s delirious excesses. The Anti-Justine, no less highly seasoned, no less ambitious in its situations than Sade’s novel, but altogether unbarbarous, will henceforth prevent men from resorting to barbarity. The publication of this antidote is a matter of urgency, and if dishonor in the eyes of purists, fools and thoughtless censors is to be my lot, I accept it willingly in order to come to the aid of my countrymen.
There remains much that might be said about the scenes I am going to bring before the reader’s eye, hoping to make him forget what he saw in Justine and prefer The Anti-Justine. My book must just as much surpass the other in voluptuousness as it yields to Justine in cruelty. The reading of but one chapter must be enough to move a man to the proper exploitation of his wife, young or old, pretty or ill-favoured – provided the lady have a hygienic acquaintance with the bidet and a well-developed taste in footwear.
–Jean-Pierre Linguet
CHAPTER I
The stiff-pricked youngster.
I was born in a village which lies near Reims and I was familiarly known as Cupidonnet. From earliest childhood I had a decided fondness for pretty girls; I had a particular weakness, above all, for prettily turned feet and cunning little shoes, in which predilections I bore a resemblance to the Grand Dauphin, son of Louis XIV, and to Thevenard, the actor at the Opéra.
The first girl to get my youthful prick up was an engaging peasant who used to take me to vespers. With one hand poised on my naked ass, she was wont to tickle my little balls and, feeling my cock rise, would kiss me upon the mouth with an entirely virginal impetuousness, for although well-behaved, she was also hot-blooded.
The first girl upon whom I in turn laid my hands, in consequence of my enthusiasm for pretty footwear, was the youngest of my sisters, Genovefette. In all, I had eight sisters, five older than myself and by a former marriage, and three who were younger. The second-born of the earlier crop was as pretty as can be: I’ll have a great deal to say about her; the hair thatching the cunt of the fourth was so silken and fine ‘twas all by itself a delight; the rest were ugly; each of my three younger sisters was more of a provocative little minx than the others.
Now Genovefette, the most voluptuously attractive, held the first place in my mother’s preference, and, returning from a trip to Paris, she brought back an exquisite pair of slippers for her. I watched Genovefette try them on, and the sight caused me to get violently erect. The following day – it was a Sunday – she donned some new sheer white cotton stockings, a corset which drew in her waist, and with that luscious ass of hers, although she was still of tender age, she must have made my father’s prick stand up, for he bade my mother send her from the room. (I had hidden myself under the bed so as the better to see my engaging sister’s shoe and lower leg.) Directly Genovefette was gone, my father had at her (my mother) and there, upon the bed below which I lay concealed, gave her a good fucking, the while saying: “Oh, I tell you, keep an eye on your beloved daughter, she’s going to have a devilish temperament, I warn you… but she’ll have to compete fiercely, for I fuck like a steer, and look at the rewards I have for my trouble, cunt-juice, you’re squirting it out like a princess...” I noticed that, behind the half-opened door, Genovefette was watching and listening to what was happening. My father was right: that pretty rascal was deflowered by her confessor, and thereafter fucked by virtually everyone, but today she’s all the wiser for it.
After dinner Genovefette came into the garden, where I chanced to be by myself; I stared admiringly at her, and lo! up soared my tool! Having stepped close to her, without saying a word I squeezed her waist, touched her foot, her thigh, and fondled as pretty a cuntlet, as superb a cuntlet as ever there was. Genovefette was silent too; I had her get down on all fours, on, that is to say, her hands and knees, and in imitation of the manner of dogs; I wanted to fuck her thus, whining and snapping and jerking with all my strength the way a dog does. Powerfully clutching her groin with both hands, I made her arch her buttocks so that two holes of her cunt and ass were equally well at my disposal; then I closed in and poked the end of my cock between her pussy-lips, beseeching her to raise her ass: “Get it up so that I can get in,” I repeated several times. But, and the truth of it was only too plain, so youthful a crack was not readily able to accommodate a prick whose foreskin had not yet reached the back-slipping stage (what I needed was a well-beaten path, and I obtained one shortly afterwards). I could do no better than pry open her cunt’s outer doors, there ensued no discharge, for I was still a little fellow and very new at the sport. Unable to fuck her, following the example of the creatures I had chosen to emulate, I set to licking that narrow but infinitely delectable gap. Genovefette experienced a no doubt agreeable titillation, for she showed no signs of tiring of the game, and when at last I got back to my feet she kissed me a hundred times over. She was called back to the house and ran off.
As her breasts had not yet begun to develop, she promptly – the next day – outfitted herself with false tits, probably because she had overheard praise spoken of my mother’s or some friend’s. I perceived these latest accoutrements, had her put on her new shoes and, having placed her upon her bed in a suitable posture, I licked away for a good two hours. I believe she did indeed come, for my cunt-tonguing induced her to writhe and thrash like a small demon. Two days later she was packed off to Paris to begin an apprenticeship. There, in the capital, she lived up handsomely to my father’s predictions.
CHAPTER II
The silken-haired cunt.
Of the younger sisters left to me, one was properly behaved and kept me at bay (since those days I have fucked both her daughters in Paris), and the other sister was still too young.
The first, with whom nothing availed, was a superb creature of eighteen; I had to fall back upon the child when it became evident that Cuthos, Genovefette’s twin, was unapproachable. Ever since having had one within reach, I absolutely could not do without a cunt near at hand. I put Babiche through her preliminary paces; at last one Sunday, when she was dressed in her best and after my mother had given her a bath, we had a sucking spree.
‘Twas during that enjoyable operation that I was surprised by the ardent Madeleine of the silken-haired cunt; she spent a long time quietly observing us before interrupting our antics, and seeing that the little one was in the throes of pleasure, she was herself tempted to go under the tongue; she broke her silence and we two who were at grips separated in keeping with decency. Madeleine said almost nothing at all, only asked Babiche to leave, then started a conversation with me. Our gossiping lead to teasing; it was not long before she had thrust me into the hay (I had led Babiche into the barn’s loft) and, as I lay sprawled on my back, she tickled me, covering me with her body, straddling me, one leg to this side, one leg to that. By pure accident I reached my hand beneath her skirts and found there that admirable silken-haired cunt. That divine fur sealed my passion for her, and I straightway went mad over Madeleine’s cunt; I begged her permission to kiss it.
“Why then, little rascal,” said she, “wait a moment.” She went out to the well, drew a bucket of water, fetched it back up to the hay-loft and squatted down above it; that done, she returned to me and we prattled some more.
