Before His Time

May 21, 2009 at 4:48 pm (Uncategorized) (Casanova, Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt, men, relationships, women)

There are few men as notorious as lovers of women as Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt. Alive in Venice in the eighteenth century, he managed, by the age of 72, to acquire a total of 122 lovers. One would imagine that if he had been notching his bedpost, there would not be much left of it.

I’m reading his memoirs at the moment – written when he was 72 when he was a bored librarian – and I think I’m beginning to understand why he got so lucky. I mentioned to someone the other day that I was reading these memoirs, and they asked me if he was a serial seducer or a serial rapist. If one is to take his memoirs as gospel truth, it was certainly the former.

In some respects, Casanova was a product of his time. He certainly believed that there was no point educating women: “In a woman learning is out of place; it compromises the essential qualities of her sex … no scientific discoveries have been made by women … (which) requires a vigor which the female sex cannot have,” he says. But in some regards he paid them a great deal of respect – and he had some notions that one can only dream of having in a man today.

For example, take this notion: “Without speech, the pleasure of love is diminished by at least two-thirds.” It’s a beautiful notion – that conversation is necessary for love, that it is, in many respects, the foundation of it. One of Casanova’s most intense love affairs was with a woman named Henriette. He had this to say of her:

“They who believe that a woman is incapable of making a man equally happy all the twenty-four hours of the day have never known an Henriette. The joy which flooded my soul was far greater when I conversed with her during the day than when I held her in my arms at night. Having read a great deal and having natural taste, Henriette judged rightly of everything.”

He may not have been a fan of educated women (a prejudice one cannot help but chalk up to his time – it would be a pretty safe bet to say he would think differently born now, so enlightened is he in other aspects of his attitude) but he certainly liked clever women: “After all, a beautiful woman without a mind of her own leaves her lover with no resource after he had physically enjoyed her charms.” How true is this? If Casanova came out and said this today, I can guarantee you that 122 women would probably swoon at his feet immediately.

He also said this: “If I had married a woman intelligent enough to guide me, to rule me without my feeling that I was ruled, I should have taken good care of my money, I should have had children, and I should not be, as now I am, alone in the world and possessing nothing.” I’m unsure how I feel about the woman behind the throne principle he’s talking about, but behind all this is the notion of marriage as a sort of partnership – something astonishingly modern. We’ve all heard of the idea of a man being saved by the love of a good woman – even the greatest seducer of the modern era wanted no more than this.

I have not yet finished Casanova’s memoirs, but what has struck me is that he rarely leaves his lovers high and dry – and in many cases, they remain very good friends long after the liaison has passed. This has to be very unusual – and is a sign of just how well he understood the female psyche (for a man of his time, anyway). Sometimes he used his powers for evil, for sure, but he was largely very kind to the women in his life. He states openly that he never makes advances against those who have no capacity to resist, and this is certainly true of what I have read so far.

Casanova is, for his era, one of the most amazingly modern writers I have ever read. I began reading these memoirs prepared to dislike Casanova – he is, after all, a philanderer, which cannot be denied. He is a hero – a stud, I guess – whereas if he had been a woman I think we can wager that he would be remembered entirely differently, and with a much more negative spin: I doubt that we would consider him a ‘legend’.

And yet I cannot help liking Casanova – liking him a lot. “I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel,” he says. Even now, more than two hundred years after his death, I think Casanova still has the capacity to seduce.

~Jodi