Books: Rake’s Progress

THE MEMOIRS OF CASANOVA, VOL. II: PARIS AND PRISON (714 pp.)—Translated by Arthur Machen—Putnam ($5).

“In any civilised man or woman who cannot win some enjoyment from this book,” wrote Havelock Ellis about Casanova’s Memoirs, “there must be something unwholesome and abnormal—something corrupt at the core.” Writing in the Victorian era, Scientist Ellis (Psychology of Sex) idolized Casanova as a free spirit, a man who had the courage to live life fully, and as a shining example of “adjustment”—for Casanova adapted himself so easily to his own desires. Yet there may be more truth in Ellis’ exaggerated view than in the more conventional notion expressed in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which complains that “the recital of his love affairs is monotonous and reveals a mind that was superficial and almost inhuman.” Casanova was all too human, and his far-from-superficial mind recorded in the Memoirs an incomparable picture of 18th century life, ranging from jail to royal court, from theater to church.

Although Casanova’s name has become an epithet, the fact that he actually existed is sometimes nearly forgotten, and his memoirs have only been spottily published in English. Previous U.S. editions were either abridged or sold by subscription; the present edition, the first in decades, seems to be the most nearly complete yet available. On the whole, it makes rewarding reading. There is no getting away from the fact that Memoirs is chiefly a record of night errantry, of seductions conducted on a scale that will amaze today’s grey-flannel philanderer. But the language is witty and infinitely less crude than that of almost any contemporary bestseller. And Casanova’s powers of observation make his autobiography read like a fascinating picaresque novel. As Critic Edmund Wilson put it: “Even when he has slipped to the bottom, he keeps his faculties clear.”

Indoor Sport. Casanova was born in Venice in 1725, the son of an actor whose Spanish forebears were noted for their adventurousness (one sailed with Columbus) and their illegitimacy. He was still in his teens when he decided that men are, so to speak, either florists or deflorists. His bent was clear, and when his mother enrolled him in a seminary, he was quickly expelled. The second volume of the Putnam edition (the first was issued last spring, and four more will appear at half-year intervals) takes up the rake’s progress when he is 23. Casanova has joined a runaway beauty named Henriette, set her up in a lavish apartment in Parma. In three months, he remarks mildly, “the only pleasure we took out of doors was a drive outside of the city when the weather was fine.”

But the idyl ends. The girl’s family retrieves her, and she scrawls on a window with a diamond: “You will forget Henriette.” Though heartbroken, Casanova goes on to innumerable other adventures. In Venice, he seduces a 15-year-old convent girl, then begins a violent affair with the beautiful nun who is her French teacher—fittingly enough, because she is also the mistress of the French ambassador. And so it goes. Yet he has not altogether forgotten Henriette. Years later, they will meet again. By that time she will be fat and Casanova feeble. As Havelock Ellis pointed out, the same women appear again and again in the Memoirs; it is perhaps a mark of the true Casanova that he can stay friends with his former mistresses.

Great Confession. Volume II ends after Casanova has been imprisoned by the State Inquisitors (possibly for dabbling in black magic), has dramatically escaped and returned to Paris with a year’s dammed-up energy.

There is no doubt that Casanova’s Memoirs ranks with the great literary confessions, notably Rousseau’s and Cellini’s. The trouble with confessions is that the author, no matter how detached in manner, implicitly pleads for the reader’s understanding. Somehow neither 20th century sociology, which might remark on the extraordinary tolerance of Casanova’s era, nor 20th century psychology, which might speculate about the libertine’s compulsion “to prove something,” really equips the reader to understand Casanova.

It is more than likely that he did not understand himself. Writing his Memoirs, near 70, he wryly discussed the illness “which the Italians call mal français.” Wrote he, sounding puzzled: “The greatest part of my life was spent in trying to make myself ill, and when I had succeeded, in trying to recover my health. [Now] age, that cruel and unavoidable disease, compels me to be in good health in spite of myself.”