Francesca was a year-old woman and the only "One" he hadn't managed to forget. The prize of a memorable duel with the Duke of Parma, Francesca hears word of his presence through the grapevine that grows in any small town.
Her commitment to the Duke seems to disintegrate, and the news of his arrival forces her to pen a request for a meeting. So begins the laborious journey into the facts and falsehoods of amore -- not to mention the nearly pages that detail it. Each well-articulated insight about life and love seems to be accompanied by paragraphs of exhaustive exposition.
These characteristics define the strengths and weaknesses of the novel.
Let's start with the positive: That is, he is capable of distilling our own musings and insecurities about love and sex, and putting them in terms that allow many of us to blame our dysfunction on what seem to be universal truths. Whether these "truths" have any bearing on reality is beside the point- we can retreat into the captivating illusion that we are all swept into drama beyond our control.
On the other hand, what tedious explanations! Characters, including the Duke of Parma and Casanova himself, deliver pages-long monologues that, after awhile, border on the kind of Dickensian excess that would make Hemingway turn in his grave. Flamboyant soliloquies have their place, but I'm not sure that place is smack in the middle of an otherwise well-paced novel.
Casanova Wannabe - TV Tropes
Small town Italy could be a reader's playground, yet we're grounded in a room with the curtains drawn. And despite Casanova's reputation, there's disappointingly little "play" inside that curtained room in the first place. That's not to say the journey doesn't have its charms.
Written as a play, the book and its indulgences would have made for a superb one-act. Imagining the sort of Kevin Kline-esque manner that would accompany any modern, theatrical adaptation of this book is easy. Furthermore, a talented actor would be able to bring to life what is, as a page of prose, simply monolithic.
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Still, those who are willing to abandon cynicism for a moment will be easily won over by eloquent turns of phrase. If that's not enough, an 18th century woman in drag and a man wearing the head of an ass may suffice. Casanova in Bolzano benefits from its niche audience. The hardcore literati will no doubt swoon over only the second English translation of a Hungarian master, and those looking for a fix through centuries old romance won't be disappointed.
It's those of us caught in between who will scratch our heads and twiddle our thumbs.
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The novel provides enough satire to allow us to trust its tangents, but careens off course just short of each pay-off. The result is frustratingly uneven. Approach the book as you might an ex-lover, as something beautiful you probably don't want to take home. The year in song reflected the state of the world around us. Here are the 60 songs that spoke to us this year. Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk is a thought-provoking tale of both love and injustice, and in working with Moonlight composer Nicholas Brittell, the two find compelling musical motifs from unexpected places.
Enlightenment on Casanova's sexual preferences
Short Stories columnist Jenny Bhatt presents the finest of this year's short stories collections from a wide range of authors that have no fear of pushing the boundaries. Juno-winning Canadian songwriter Dan Mangan's love of his influences and peers has lead him to craft something quite joyous: This is no scene or collective.
These artists have reached their limit in all directions, back into traditions and forward into uncertain futures. Kelly says he wanted to show "Casanova as someone who led pretty much an exemplary 18th-century life. Kelly also found evidence to confirm that a number of Casanova's sexual encounters had been with men, corroborating two references in Casanova's sensational memoir, The History of My Life. That he didn't dwell on the same-sex experiences in his memoirs may have to do with the fact that he simply didn't enjoy them as much, but it's also true that he was keen to quash rumours afoot in Venice that his rise to prominence was courtesy of his having been the rent boy of his first patron [Meteo Giovanni] Bragadin.
The Lothario of popular legend was also thrown out of the seminary in which had trained to become a priest for being discovered in bed with another male student. Casanova's tally of approximately sexual partners hardly compares with the legendary 1, of his mythical alter ego, Don Giovanni, or the French detective novelist Georges Simenon's claim of 10, But the number and nature of Casanova's sexual encounters, Kelly argues, pale into insignificance when compared with the candid and psychologically nuanced way in which he wrote about it.
Much more remarkable is the way he wrote about it, and how he was one of the first authors to place sexuality in the kind of close connection with personality that now, since Freud, we take for granted. Casanova, who felt his sexual identity to one of the most important parts of his personality, used on a number of occasions the word "soul" to describe, not just his sexual personality, but even his sexual organ.
He was also, Kelly argues, a key figure in history of contraception, writing at length bout the psychology of trying to incorporate, or convince one's partner to incorporate, the bulky and cumbersome 18th-century condom into the sexual act. He refers to it at times as a 'prophylactic against anxiety'. Kelly is also keen to highlight the possible involvement of Casanova in the representation of his mythical soulmate in Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte's Don Giovanni. Claiming to reveal evidence of Casanova's involvement in the preparation of the opera's libretto, Kelly argues that two drafts of a revised section of the libretto in Casanova's hand and on presentation paper are evidence of an involvement the hasty revisions of the opera prior to its first performance in Prague,