Casanova Actor Lover Priest Spy Ian Kelly

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The theatricality starts right at the beginning; Casanova was born in 1725 to an actress in Venice, a city literally of masks, for citizens were required to wear them from October into Ash Wednesday. All his life, if he was not himself on the stage, he was hanging out with actors, making love to actresses, or traveling with a troupe. He made his money starting up lotteries, or taking fees for his occult work within the cabala, but he was always better at spending it. There has always been a question of how much he padded his memoir and how much was sexual braggadocio, but Kelly finds corroborations for many of the episodes, including some that have previously been deemed questionable. It is likely that any errors in the memoir are due to simple and excusable lapses of memory more than to deliberate exaggeration. There would have been little need to exaggerate, anyway. What he describes in his memoir is guilt-free enjoyment, and the stories of pleasure resonate for us more than routine porn from the time for a couple of reasons. Casanova knew of men who got pleasure from inflicting pain on their partners, but this disgusted him; he had no interest in this sort of kink, or in being on the receiving end. He had little interest in coercion and almost as little in conquest. He did have some interest in homosexual encounters, but is subdued about describing them. He was repeatedly attracted to women dressed as men, and had a spectacular affair with a girl who was passing herself as a man so she could perform as a castrato on stage. He realized that he had a compulsive interest in sexual adventure, but that the thrill was only partly physical. He was sincere rather than cynical. He liked (theatricality again) the performance, the act of bringing joy and pleasure by seductive play and then moving on. His accounts of his amours are playful and affectionate: "He was a libertine on the cusp of being a romantic," says Kelly. He did not like sex unless it were linked with laughter, food, and joy. He liked intelligent women, and he liked pleasing them; he much preferred affairs to one night stands, and even his connections with prostitutes were long-term. He remained on good terms with many of the ladies after he had traveled away, sometimes leaving them pregnant. He was careful to keep their identities hidden in his memoir, although researchers have at least in some cases been able to give a name and personal history of some of the women he lists. He did not count himself handsome or well endowed, and he was frank about how he feared disappointing a lover, or losing an erection, or ejaculating prematurely.

In all, Casanova was one of the most fascinating characters in history, and we do him a disservice to use his name as a quick synonym for a mere "lover". There was far more to him. He talked with Dr. Johnson about etymology, for instance, and stayed with Voltaire, and visited Rousseau, the Pope, Ben Franklin, Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great, and Mozart. He might have contributed lyrics to Mozart's _Don Giovanni_; he certainly had a box at the premiere. He enjoyed food, and may have been the fellow who started off the folklore that oysters are aphrodisiacs; Kelly points out that we should appreciate Casanova as a food writer. He made his own way, had an enjoyable time of it, made it enjoyable for others, and then turned out a memoir that is known by everyone, even if not everyone has read it. Kelly's wonderfully sympathetic but unfawning picture is full of enthusiasm for its irrepressible subject, and it gives a fascinating account of the ways of life and love throughout eighteenth-century Europe.