The Real Casanova
The life of Giacomo Casanova the man with the reputation as the world’s greatest lover. In a relentless pursuit that took him across the length and breadth of 18th Century Europe, Casanova seduced countless women. Noble women, nuns and harlots all fell for his devastating charm.
In the past Casanova has been dismissed as a selfish womaniser for whom women were little more than conquests, but historians are now re-examining his life and loves and he is emerging in a fascinating light – as a sexual revolutionary centuries ahead of his time.
“…After years of fantasising about a man who really knew how to give a girl a GST (Good Seeing To), we learn that Casanova was a sentimentalist looking for love, and one who respected women’s brains as well as their bodies.” Jaci Stephen “Mail on Sunday”
Casanova’s enlightened views on women and the importance of pleasure are revealed in his own words…”I have always loved and done all that I could to be loved. I was born for the opposite sex. All of my life I was the victim of my senses. I have delighted in going astray. Cultivating pleasure was always the chief business of my life”.
Casanova’s partner - pleasure seeking might seem less radical now but he remains a pioneer and a sexual icon. His refusal to conform to conventional morality by his choice of short-term affairs over life-long relationships continues to challenge us today.
“….a fascinating life, in which the sex god even managed to escape from jail, where he was thrown after enjoying foursomes with a French ambassador and two nuns. (It was never like this in The Sound of Music)…..Jaci Stephen “Mail on Sunday”.
THE REAL CASANOVA
Giacomo Girolama Casanova was born in Venice on April 2, 1725, in a house on the Calle della Commedia, near the Teatro San Samuele. His parents were actors: Gaetano Giuseppe Casanova and Zanetta (nee Farussi) and were frequently absent and the sickly child was raised almost entirely by his maternal grandmother, Marzia Farussi..
Casanova’s father died when the boy was eight and at nine he was sent to board in Padua where he studied for four years and fell in love with Bettina, the sister of his teacher, Dr. Gozzi’. For four years he studied law at the University of Padua and was befriended by the Venetian nobleman Senator Alvie Malipiero and had many amorous adventures.
In 1742 at age 17 Casanova received his degree as a doctor of civil and canon law but was expelled from the Seminary and became secretary to Giacomo da Riva, “Governor of the Galleys”. Eventually he was asked to leave. In between his erotic adventures, Casanova needed to make a living and in this regard he was greatly aided by extraordinary luck.
Rushing to the aid of an elderly passer-by who was suffering a heart attack, Casanova helped save the life of Matteo Bragadin, one of the richest and most powerful men in Venice. Casanova convinced the superstitious old man that divine destiny had brought them together. The grateful Bragadin adopted Casanova – setting him up in his own apartments with a gondola and a generous allowance. The young man already had the sexual appetites of a playboy – now he had the income as well.
Casanova indulged himself in the wildly promiscuous culture of his day and his seductions were lavish and luxurious affairs. In his 3000 page memoirs which were not published in full until 1966 he claimed he made love as many as six times in a night, providing helpful hints on how to share in his sexual prowess.
Casanova’s philandering won him enemies who reported his liaison with two nuns and the French Ambassador and the Venetian Inquisition of “public outrages against the holy religion” found him guilty. He was sentenced to five years in the Leads, Venice’s notorious jail. No prisoner had ever escaped from this fortress but, after 15 months, the ingenious Casanova became the first to do so. In 1757, he risked his life to climb over the prison’s rooftops and escaped to Paris where he dined out on stories of his derring –do and sexual escapades.
THE REAL CASANOVA
It was in France that he also secured his fortune – stealing a fellow Italian’s idea of setting up a successful national lottery. Rich, admired and single, he was able to enjoy life in Europe to the full. It was a period of decadent excess when people believed that devotion to pleasure was more important than belief in God and few embodied this spirit of wanton excess more than the world’s most famous lover.
As a result he contracted numerous venereal diseases, most often gonorrheae – despite his pioneering use of a linen condom – eight inches long and tightened at the base with a pink ribbon. Far from retreating in embarrassment, Casanova regarded the ugly marks left by venereal infection as badges of honour, similar to the battle scars sported by soldiers.
Equally, while he believed that a woman’s most important feature was her face, he did not discriminate against ugly women in the bedroom. “The book may be more interesting than the title page suggests,” he wrote. This theory was tested when he arranged to meet a local beauty in a garden one night. It was pitch black as he enjoyed the romp to the full, only to discover in the morning that a haggard, old widow with rotting teeth and hideous skin had taken his intended’s place in secret. He had given her an unsurpassed thrill; she had given him gonorrheae.
One young woman Casanova wooed turned out to be one of his illegitimate daughters. Even so, Casanova slept with her and she bore him a child who was both his son and his grandson. Casanova eventually fell out with the Marquise d’Urfe, the eccentric elderly French woman he had stung for years and in 1763 he fled to London.
It was in London that he met the one woman he could not charm. She was La Charpillon, a beautiful 17-year-old prostitute who took delight in tormenting Casanova. He gave her money and gifts and she almost drove him to suicide. For the next 20 years he continued to tour Europe seeking the success and respect he craved. He embarked on a series of literary projects and dabbled in politics. He did some spying for the Venetian Inquisition, reporting on the private conduct of his fellow citizens.
Tired and dejected, Casanova spent his last years in a castle in Bohemia – employed as a librarian by a wealthy count – where his only source of pleasure was to relive his extraordinary life and loves through writing his memoirs. These revealed that many of the women he loved thought fondly of the man who had ravaged them. They wrote Casanova tender letters and returned to his bed often, regardless of the risks to their reputation, of pregnancy or of venereal disease.
This suggests that there was more to Casanova than an unfeeling Lothario. Perhaps he was the world’s first New Man: intelligent, sensitive, athletic and never more content than when pleasing women. Those who had shared his bed never challenged his reputation as the world’s greatest lover.
In 1798, Casanova fell ill with an infection of the urinary tract. On his deathbed he gave his manuscript of the “Histoire de ma vie” to his nephew-in-law, Carlo Angiolini. He died at Dux on June 4, 1798. According to the Prince de Ligne, his last words were: “I have lived as a philosopher, and die as a Christian.”
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/documentaries/stories/s869601.htm
Live and learn.