Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man

Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man

Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man (original French: Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribond) is a dialogue written by the Marquis de Sade while incarcerated at Château de Vincennes in 1782, expressing his atheism by having a dying man (a libertine) convince a priest of the mistakes of a pious life. It is one of the earliest known written works from de Sade to be dated with certainty, and was first published in 1926 together with an edition of Historiettes, Contes et Fabliaux (written originally in 1788). It was subsequently published in English in 1927 by Pascal Covici in a limited, hand-numbered edition of 600 copies.

The dialogue inspired a similar scene in Luis Buñuel's film Nazarín (1959), wherein a dying man wards off a priest and debates with him about atheism and religion while on his deathbed. Buñuel has previously adapted The 120 Days of Sodom into a scene in his earlier L'Age d'Or (1930) and would go on to feature the Marquis himself as a character in La Voie Lactée (1969).

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