Fingers crossed, we would like the site eventually to become a genuinely valuable resource for anyone interested in Casanova or the political and social history of eighteenth-century Europe. The joy of developing a website such as this is the flexibility and creative independence it gives to us as well as the possibility, if the opportunity arises, to collaborate with other writers, artists and maybe even historians. In addition, there is a range of other material which is freely available: Range of related history articles.
The Shadows of the King - Part 1. Casanova's Life and Times.
In the long term. Keep up to date with our latest Blogs and News. Catherine the Great December 8, Prisoners in the Bastille December 1, It was a path to education and a secure status in a society. He himself did not feel a sense of religious calling; quite the opposite.
He was cynical about the whole experience and wrote about it in amusing, occasionally caustic terms. He did get a sense of excitement when he began preaching sermons, but for Casanova the most important part of the experience was the impression he made on women. In time, he found a quicker path to women and status as a successful gambler, and left the priesthood, although throughout his life he benefited from the classical education he had received.
So he spent the rest of his life manufacturing identities to overcome the disadvantage of low birth. He styled himself as the Chevalier de Seingalt, appropriating a title to which he had no claim. On this basis, he managed to ingratiate himself with the aristocracy, and to gain access to women of the upper echelons, who were, at least in his account, taken in by his impersonation of an aristocrat.
Each time he seduced an upper-class woman, he had a sense of evening the score, of striking a blow for the common man. C asanova claimed that he bedded women — not a lot, perhaps, by the current yardstick of some celebrity memoirs, but more than enough to qualify for libertine status, so long as he did not marry — and he never did. Who was his greatest love of all the women in his life?
A Freudian would answer: We know a few tantalising titbits about Zanetta. Ruthlessly ambitious, she abandoned him when he was a child to pursue her vocation as an actress.
Casanova saw her infrequently during the rest of his life. He met striking, brilliant, desirable women, never spending much time with them, but often devoting years of thought to them after the fact. Other affairs, with courtesans, prostitutes and scam artists, were more sordid. Some of his affairs were adolescent and shallow; others exploitative and selfish, and some, especially in England, seemed doomed to fail and painful to hear or read about.
A select few were exquisite. At least he was willing to learn from most of them, claiming: And at times he did just that. At other times, he was quite calculating and predatory. Yet many women eluded his grasp, and he regretted coupling with others, especially those who imparted sexually transmitted diseases.
The real-life Casanova bore scant resemblance to the popular image of the fabled seducer. He was tall, at least 6ft 1in cm , swarthy, sturdy, with a large forehead and prominent nose that gave him an awkward appearance.
- Casanova in Paris: The Shadows of the King Part 1.
- Hombre.
- Confessions of a Catholic Schoolboy: Jesus Runs Away and Other Stories.
- Open Spaces: My Life with Leonard J. Mountain Chief, Blackfeet Elder from Northwest Montana;
- Support Aeon this December?
- Dinner is Served;
He wore a powdered wig, in the fashion of the time; silk breeches; a satin coat; lace trim; a black cloak or tabarro ; a three-cornered black hat; and, in true Venetian fashion, a rigid white mask or bauta that the wearer could keep in place while eating and drinking. Only male citizens of the Republic could wear the bauta. Women generally wore the eerie black moretta , a mask held in place with a button between the front teeth, preventing them from talking. Aside from masks, men and women dressed almost identically, as if at a perpetual costume ball.
Legend has it that the original invaders of the Venetian lagoon wore masks for protection and disguise, and they continued the practice by law. Men found the real Casanova off-putting and pompous. On the other hand, women were attracted by his charm, attentiveness and agile cunning.
Although he was reluctant to admit it, Casanova was not completely heterosexual; one of his chief early loves was a young man, or so he believed. He later discovered that the object of his adoration was really a well-disguised woman. His feelings about women, and experiences with them, were so complicated and varied that it took Casanova 12 lengthy volumes of memoirs to sum them all up. For him, women were the focus of his life. It might seem that his uninhibited existence marked him as a man ahead of his time, but he was not. He was a man of his time, a libertine.
Shelf Abuse
Nor was the libertine existence confined to the margins of society. Priests and popes participated in the merrymaking, oblivious to the hypocrisy of siring children or keeping young mistresses and catamites. For his readers, there is much to learn about love in the pages of his memoirs, its splendours and follies and tragedies. Casanova had a large repertoire of seduction techniques — gifts, flattery, persistence, deception, new-fangled birth-control devices such as condoms, and eloquence — and he never lost his sense of excitement whenever the penny dropped.
Actual guilt or shame played no part in his daily life. He was a trickster, narcissistic but also generous. He was highly attuned to the amount of pleasure he gave to a woman, or that she experienced with him. Female sensual pleasure and orgasm — la jouissance , as it was called — was of paramount importance. His emphasis on giving the woman sexual pleasure was the secret of his success as a lover. The more pleasure he gave, the more he received.
By means of rope and sheets, Casanova lowered himself to the ground, boarded a waiting gondola, and fled Venice.
Storytelling, comic books and self-publishing
He occasionally published anonymous poems and stories in the Venetian newspapers; there were many to choose from. On one occasion, he carelessly read one of his transgressive poems to an agent of the omnipresent Venetian Inquisition, Giovanni Manuzzi, who reported: On 26 July at daybreak, 40 armed men burst into his small suite of rooms and arrested Casanova in the name of the Venetian Inquisition. They searched his bookshelves, noting questionable volumes such as the Kabbala and erotica. What better way to meet his fate in the drama of his life?
Prisoners in the Piombi never left alive, and no one had ever escaped. Casanova found himself in a state of shock as the Inquisitors formally charged him with possessing forbidden literary works. He was shoved into his cramped cell. Not since his earliest boyhood had he known such deprivation, helplessness, and claustrophobia.
During his confinement, he plotted his escape. By means of rope and sheets, he lowered himself to the ground, boarded a waiting gondola, and fled Venice. Casanova is believed to be the only person ever to have escaped from the Leads. He became rich from his proceeds, but soon lost his fortune in ill-considered business ventures. And there were unintended consequences. Casanova would inadvertently bring about the fall of the Venetian Republic.
Is there more to the legendary lover than his reputation? | Aeon Essays
In , Napoleon conquered Venice, bringing about the end of a fiercely independent, millennium-old Republic. Casanova himself was engaged in a different sort of conquest. He travelled extensively, usually by stagecoach, occasionally on foot. He spent a considerable amount of time in Russia advising but not seducing the young Catherine the Great still, the thought must have crossed his mind and in Spain, which he found too severe and pious for his libertine taste, and he was able to make few conquests.