Nicolas Sarkozy: President or grave-robber?...

French intellectuals are up in arms over Sarkozy's latest publicity stunt. An avid reader of Albert Camus from a young age, the French President has decided to move the writer's body to the Panthenon in Paris; the resting place of many of France's literary treasures such as Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola and most recently Alexandre Dumas. Yet the move has caused outrage amongst Camus' fans, who refuse to accept the idea of right-wing president taking the body of a left-wing champion or an anti-intellecual, as Sarkozy is often called, grave-robbing an intellectual. The debate is likely to continue for some time.

On this day...

French writer and revolutionary, Donatien Alphonse François,Marquis de Sade, died in 1814 at the age of 74. Born into an aristocratic family, the Sades claimed to be the oldest Frank-descended nobility, and so the men alternated between using the titles 'Count' and 'Marquis'; however subsequent generations have refused to use 'Marquis' so as deny association with Donatien. Influenced by Voltaire, Sade philosophised on freedom of speech, yet took the measure to the extreme, advocating liberty to the detrement of religion, morality and law. Involved in numerous scandals, including poisoning and sodomy, Sade spent 32 years of his life occupying either prisions or insane asylums, including ten in the Bastille. Consequently many of his works were written in confinment, and indeed many feature themes which go against institutions of the day; a reoccuring motif being blasphemy against the Catholic Church. Sade's works gave rise to 'sadism' entering the language as a derivative of his name, and this is epitomised no more so than in his best known work, 'The School of Licentiousness'.

On this day...

François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, was born in 1694. Voltaire was a student of classical languages, and it was from this that his pseudonym came; an anagram of Arovet Li, the Latinised version of his surname, just one of the 178 aliases he is known to have taken. Part of the French Enlightenment movement, which included Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire believed in reason as the basis of authority, questioning the traditional institutions and customs of the time. Although a philosopher by first trade, he soon became a prolific writer of almost every literary form; including poetry, drama, novels and more than 20,000 letters. His sharp wit led Voltaire to being imprisioned in the Bastille, then exiled to England, sparking his subsequent attempts to reform the French judicial system. His best known work remains 'Candide', and he died in 1778 aged 83. When asked on his deathbed by a priest to renounce the devil and turn to God, he is alleged to have replied, 'Now is no time to be making new enemies'.