Casanova in Paris - The Shadows of the King

The World of a Seductive Genius He lives in New York City. Brought to you by curio. Edited by Nigel Warburton. Everyone thinks that they know about Casanova, the legendary lover who proceeded from one romantic conquest to another, but almost no one really does.

Is there more to the legendary lover than his reputation? | Aeon Essays

They believe that he was handsome, distinguished and practised in the arts of love, a virtual Zorro of the boudoir. That he was a wealthy member of the upper class, and celebrated in his lifetime for his exploits. So runs the fable of the great lover. In reality, Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was a far more complex and intriguing figure, a libertine, to be sure, but so much more. And — in case there is any doubt — he was a real person. Born in Venice on 2 April , he was the obscure son of a somewhat famous actress and courtesan named Zanetta Farussi and a forgotten actor, Gaetano Casanova.

At the start of , the New Theatre in the Haymarket in London hired his parents along with an ensemble of Italian comedians; Zanetta and Gaetano left Giacomo in the care of his grandmother Marzia. Rumours described him as the bastard child of King George II. In Venice, meanwhile, young Giacomo suffered from nosebleeds that he said affected his ability to think.

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His environment was equally problematic. This rigid structure was destined to collapse under its own weight but, at the time, Venice thrived on sin; it was the Las Vegas of its day. Tourists came from across Europe to sample its gambling dens and its courtesans, and other illicit pleasures. Some convents functioned as harems for the daughters of wealthy families who did not want the girls to marry or to bear children. Under cover of religious vocation, they entertained well-heeled admirers and staged orgies. As the son of actors, Casanova had no place at all in Venetian society, decadent or otherwise.

For Casanova, a career in the clergy was the approved way up and out of the restricted circumstances of his birth. 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?

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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. 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. 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.

Casanova in Paris: The Shadows of the King Part 1

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. 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.

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