Giacomo Casanova

From Free net encyclopedia

Template:Otheruses3 Image:Casanova ritratto.jpg Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (born April 2, 1725, in Venice – died June 4, 1798, in Dux, Bohemia, now Duchcov, Czech Republic) was a famous Venetian adventurer and writer.

1 Biography
- 1.1 Works
2 Biographies
3 External links

[edit]

Biography

Casanova is universally known for his ability to seduce and conquer many a woman's heart. According to his own autobiography "Histoire de ma vie" (History of My Life), regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of social life during the 18th century, he slept with more than 1000 women during his lifetime.

Casanova was born in Venice in 1725 to the actors Zanetta Farussi and Gaetano Giuseppe Casanova. Casanova almost certainly acquired his surname from his mother's husband and not his biological father, who is generally believed to have been Michele Grimani, a member of the patrician family who owned the San Samuele theatre where they both worked a period. Neither parent paid much interest in their children (Casanova was the first of five children that reached adulthood – Francesco (1729) was also born out of wedlock, while the three other children Giovanni Battista (1730), Maria Magdalena Antonia Stella (1732) and Gaetano Alvisio (1732) were fathered by Gaetano) and Casanova never had a chance of developing a close bond to either of them. Casanova would himself sire many children outside of wedlock, but like his own parents he never paid them any serious attention.

Before Gaetano died in 1732 he appealed to the Grimanis to take care of his family, which resulted in Casanova being sent to boarding school in Padua to get an education – something which at this time only a son of a middle or upperclass family could have expected. He showed great promise as a student and quickly became the teacher's favourite, naturally quick-witted, with an intense appetite for knowledge and a perpetually inquisitive mind. It was also here that he came into contact with the opposite sex for the first time in his life when the teacher's younger sister apparently gave him his first orgasm at the age of 11. At the age of 16 he obtained his doctorate in Law from the University of Padua, where he had studied moral philosophy, chemistry, mathematics and law. He was keenly interested in medicine and later in life regretted not having made a career out of it, although he became an eager and often instinctively good amateur doctor.

In 1740 Casanova was back in Venice where he started his clerical law career in the church as an abate. By now he had become something of a dandy – tall (1.91 m or 6 ft 3.25 in, according to his passport of 1757) and dark, his long hair powdered, scented and elaborately curled. He quickly ingratiated himself (something he was to do all his life) with a 76-year old Venetian senator, Alvise Gasparo Malipiero. Malipiero moved in the best circles and taught young Casanova a great deal about good food and wine and how to behave in society. His preoccupation with sex now really took hold and he moved from one adventure to another without spending much time on his church career. He lost his virginity at the age of 16 in a threesome.

His career in the church was short, as it was tainted by scandals to which Casanova seemed to be naturally attracted throughout all his life. Soon after, he bought the commission to become a low ranked military officer for the Republic of Venice, and went to Constantinople after which he was stationed a short period on Corfu. He laid his military ambitions aside when he found his advancement in the military too slow and boring. Back in Venice, he became a violinist out of necessity in the San Samuele theatre, owned by his biological father. At the age of 21, he saved the life of a Venetian nobleman from the Bragadin family, who became his life-long patron and raised Casanova to the status of a wealthy gentleman. Due to another scandal this time about a freshly buried corpse dug up in order to play a practical joke - the victim went into a coma never to recover - and charges of rape against a young girl, Casanova (later acquitted) left Venice in 1748.

Having spent time in Paris, Dresden, Prague and Vienna he returned to his home town of Venice in 1753. In 1755, at age 30, he was arrested and convicted for his interest in magic/witchcraft by the Inquisitori di Stato in Venice, and imprisoned in "I piombi" ("The Leads"), a famous prison attached to the Doge's palace. Casanova was given 5 years but was neither informed of trial nor sentence. He shortly after managed an extraordinary escape from what was one of the most secure prisons of his time. No inmate before Casanova had managed to escape (see "Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la République de Venise qu'on appelle les Plombs"). He fled to Paris, where he arrived on the same day that Robert-Francois Damiens made an attempt on the life of Louis XV.

In 1760 Casanova started styling himself the Chevalier de Seingalt, a name he would increasingly use for the rest of his life. On occasion he would also call himself Count de Farussi (using his mother's maiden name). When Pope Clement XIII presented Casanova with the Papal Order of the Eperon d'Òr, Casanova was overjoyed since he now honestly could call himself Chevalier. In 1761 Casanova represented Portugal at the Augsburg Congress, which France had organised in an attempt to end the Seven Years' War.

During his lifetime Casanova travelled extensively over Europe and managed to visit all its capitals, from many of which he was expelled due to various scandals. In 1766 he was expelled from Warsaw due to a duel with Count Colonel Xavier Branicki with pistols over a ladyfriend of theirs. Both were wounded. It was not the first duel Casanova had fought, neither would it be his last.

Casanova retired in 1785 and became the librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein, a chamberlain of the emperor in the castle of Dux, Bohemia (now Duchcov, Czech Republic) where he died at age 73. It was at the Castle of Dux that he wrote his autobiography. His last years were dull, painful, boring, and frustrating for Casanova. Although he got on well with the Count, the Count had his own preoccupations and had little time for his librarian, often ignoring him at meals and failing to introduce him to important visiting guests. Casanova was thoroughly disliked by most of the other inhabitants of the Caste of Dux and the servants were often spiteful to the old man.

One of the reasons for Casanova's success as a lover was that he, unlike most eighteenth-century men, paid a great deal of attention to the other gender's pleasure as much as he did his own. He also delighted in being seduced; though he is often thought of as the great seducer, he much preferred to consider himself the object of female desire. He believed himself in love with many of the beautiful women he pursued, and, unusually for his time, often treated them as his equal and remained dear friends with them long after the affairs ended. He slept with a few men for the experience of it, and throughout his life he had an interest in transvestism. Venereal disease and gambling were two other major features of his life. The latter was a passion which almost, but not quite, equalled that for women. He won and lost many fortunes due to gambling; in Paris he made a fortune by starting a state lottery, but lost it all when he invested his money in a silk factory.

Although best known for his prowess in bed, he was recognised by his contemporaries as an extraordinary person. Prince Charles de Ligne, a great Austrian statesman who knew most of the prominent individuals of the age, thought Casanova the most interesting man he had ever met and said of him, "there is nothing in the world of which he is not capable". Count Lamberg wrote that he knew "few persons who can equal him in the range of knowledge and, in general, of his intelligence and imagination".

During Casanova's numerous travels he encountered historical figures such as Pope Clement XIII, Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great (who afterwards commented on his good looks), Madame de Pompadour, Crebillon, who was also his French teacher, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and many others. He was present at the premiere of Mozart's Don Giovanni and possibly made last minute revisions to Da Ponte's libretto. Although Casanova took the role of businessman, diplomat, spy, politician, philosopher, magician, and writer, with over 20 books and several plays credited to his name (including a translation of the Iliad and a history of Poland – "Istoria della turbolenze della Polonia", some of his plays were staged in Dresden, Genoa, Trieste and Madrid) – most of which was generally admired, for the greater part of his life he was a stranger to work, living largely on his quick wits, luck, social charm, and the money freely given to him by others. Few who gave him money regretted their benevolence.

Image:Casanova 1788.jpg

[edit]

Works

1752 - Zoroastro, tragedia tradotta dal Francese, da rappresentarsi nel Regio Elettoral Teatro di Dresda, dalla compagnia de' comici italiani in attuale servizio di Sua Maestà nel carnevale dell'anno MDCCLII. Dresda.
1753 - La Moluccheide, o sia i gemelli rivali. Dresda
1769 - Confutazione della Storia del Governo Veneto d'Amelot de la Houssaie, Amsterdam (Lugano).
1772 - Lana caprina. Epistola di un licantropo. Bologna.
1774 - Istoria delle turbolenze della Polonia. Gorizia.
1775 - Dell'Iliade di Omero tradotta in ottava rima. Venezia.
1779 - Scrutinio del libro "Eloges de M. de Voltaire par différents auteurs". Venezia.
1780 - Opuscoli miscellanei - Il duello - Lettere della nobil donna Silvia Belegno alla nobildonzella Laura Gussoni. Venezia.
1781 - Le messager de Thalie. Venezia.
1782 - Di aneddoti viniziani militari ed amorosi del secolo decimoquarto sotto i dogadi di Giovanni Gradenigo e di Giovanni Dolfin. Venezia.
1782 - Né amori né donne ovvero la stalla ripulita. Venezia.
1786 - Soliloque d'un penseur, Prague chez Jean Ferdinande noble de Shonfeld imprimeur et libraire.
1787 - Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la République de Venise qu'on appelle les Plombs. Ecrite a Dux en Boheme l'année 1787, Leipzig chez le noble de Shonfeld.
1788 - Icosaméron ou Histoire d'Edouard, et d'Elisabeth qui passèrent quatre vingts un ans chez les Mégamicres, habitans aborigènes du Protocosme dans l'intérieur de notre globe, traduite de l'anglois par Jacques Casanova de Seingalt Vénitien Docteur ès loix Bibliothécaire de Monsieur le comte de Waldstein seigneur de Dux Chambellan de S.M.J.R.A. A Prague à l'imprimerie de l'école normale.
1790 - Solution du probleme deliaque démontrée par Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, Bibliothécaire de Monsieur le Comte de Waldstein, seigneur de Dux en Boheme e c., Dresde, De l'imprimerie de C.C. Meinhold.
1790 - Corollaire à la duplication de l'Hexaèdre donné à Dux en Bohème, par Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, Dresde.
1790 - Démonstration géometrique de la duplicaton du cube. Corollaire second, Dresda.
1797 - A Leonard Snetlage, Docteur en droit de l'Université de Gottingue, Jacques Casanova, docteur en droit de l'Universitè de Padoue.
1960-1961 - Histoire de ma vie, F.A. Brockhaus, Wiesbaden and Plon, Paris.