SOURCE: A review of An Erotic Beyond: Sade, in Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 1998, p. 478.

[In the following review, the critic summarizes the contents of An Erotic Beyond: Sade, noting the "uncommon intelligence and intellectual maturity" of Paz's approach to Sade.]

[In An Erotic Beyond: Sade] Mexico's Nobel Prize-winning poet and essayist meditates on the Marquis de Sade and his writings.

Paz (Sor Juana, 1988; The Light of India, 1997; etc.) discovered Sade when he went to Paris in 1946. Simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by the eponymous father of sadism, the poet found in him a figure crucial for the modern world. In 1947 Paz wrote a poem, "The Prisoner," as a somewhat begrudging homage but also an inverted votive offering to the demon that had begun to haunt his imagination. "Where are the borders between spasm and earthquake / eruption and copulation?" he wonders. The poem is the first item included in this very...