Lusty Libertines in France

When the disgraced former banker Dominique Strauss-Kahn indulged in orgies, was he simply a free-spirited libertine following in a notorious tradition dating back centuries and pervasive in French culture?

In 18th-century French and British literature, countless words are devoted to lusty libertines: rakes who lives in the present, heedless of past and future.

These Casanovas habitually seduce a partner, discard her and then forget her. Their exploits live on in classics such as “Dangerous Liaisons” or the “Misfortunes of Virtue” by the Marquis de Sade, who was himself jailed for sexually abusing a prostitute in 1768.

Today a libertine lifestyle still provokes unease. This summer a South Korean review board briefly banned the Marquis de Sade's novel, “The 120 Days of Sodom,” for “extreme obscenity.” Now the novel - a tale of the sexual orgies of four wealthy French libertines who rape, torture and murder their mostly teenage victims - ca n be sold in South Korea only in a sealed plastic cover to buyers above the age of 19.

This queasiness also exists in France, where Mr. Strauss-Kahn commented this month that the guest list of luminaries at libertine parties that he attended would surprise most people.

There are numerous swinger clubs in Paris and outside the capital where libertines come to shuffle sex partners. But when a new owner purchased Club 46, a swinger's retreat of more than 20 years in the Val d'Oise northwest of Paris, the bank told him to close his business account after it discovered the club's activities.

Last January, a well-known celebrity libertine club in Paris, Les Chandelles, closed in the midst of a police investigation into prostitution allegedly taking place in the club. At its peak in the 1990s, Les Chandelles was a haven for politicians and sports figures with dinners for two at 250 euros and a masked ball mimicking the one in Stanley Kubrick's film “Eyes Wid e Shut.”

Olivia Cattan, the head of an anti-sexism association called Words of Women, worries that libertinism is becoming too accepted, resulting in the exploitation of women who feel compelled to participate to rise in their own careers. She pointed out that one of the guests at Les Chandelles was a television host, Thierry Ardisson, who has talked openly about libertine parties and threesomes on his show.

“Swingers and libertinage are part of French mores,” she said. “We must question French society about this,” adding, “We talk about D.S.K., but what about all the others? It's easy to point at D.S.K. when there's libertinage among many politicians.”

The most perplexing question in the Strauss-Kahn affair is how a career politician with ambition to lead one of Europe's most powerful nations was blinded to the possibility that his zest for sex parties could present a liability, or risk blackmail.

On Thursday, Mr. Strauss-Kahn broke a long silence to acknowledge that perhaps his double life as an unrestrained libertine was a little outré. “I was too out of step with French society,” he said. “I was wrong.”