Peter Weiss’s play "Marat/Sade" can be considered as the most important outcome of an aesthetic reflection based not only on an ideological conflict but on a medial experimentation as well. The Marquis de Sade and the dramaturgical “translation” of his philosophy are part of Weiss’s complex considerations about the relationship between word and image, particularly as they are developed in the essay "Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Sprache" (1965). A sphere where word and visual representation merge, theatre thus becomes the crucial element of an aesthetics based on an articulate dialectical structure: de Sade’s “bildhafte[s] Denken” ("Anmerkungen zum geschichtlichen Hintergrund unseres Stückes" [1963]) finds its tangible fulfillment on the stage. Pasolini’s confrontation with de Sade occurs in a late phase of his artistic production in which the “visual representation” of the latter’s nihilistic ideology is part of his aesthetical experiment through cinema ("Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma" [1975]). The paths they trace as multimedia artists – Weiss from cinema to literature, Pasolini from literature to cinema – evolve along a common line: Sade’s literary work and philosophy are for them a congenial ground to exercise, by way of innovative medial formats, a radical critique of western ideology and culture.
