It was only through reading W G Sebald’s book Vertigo that I realised that there was more to Casanova than the usual idea of a serial lover and seducer. This commonly accepted view of Casanova is even immortalised in the Merriam Webster dictionary as “Lover; esp: a man who is a promiscuous and unscrupulous lover”. Sebald on the other hand focused on Casanova’s mind during his period of imprisonment in Venice, and intriguingly drew parallels with his own mental condition. When actor and writer Ian Kelly’s book Casanova was published last month, it was serialised on Radio 4′s Book of the Week, and when I heard a couple of episodes while driving in the car, I decided that it would be my next book purchase.
Ian Kelly has done a magnificent job in writing the biography of this complex figure in a mere 360 pages. The source material, not least Casanova’s own Histoire De Ma Vie must have been vast, let alone the background reading on the history of the times and the innumerable countries that Casanova visited during his travels.
Casanova was born in Venice to a travelling actress, and was brought up by his grandmother while his mother travelled throughout Europe. At the age of nine he was sent to live in a boarding house in Padua in an attempt to cure repetitive nose-bleeds, thought to be be caused by the noxious air of the cramped Venetian apartment.
At school in Padua, Casanova exhibited prodigious intellectual gifts and was schooled by his mentor the Abbé Gozzi, to enter the church as an ecclesiastical lawyer, being appointed Abbé at the age of 19. Kelly recounts his first experiences with the opposite sex, not least with the two sisters Marta and Nanetta, daughters of a distant relative, with whom Casanova kept up a long-lasting triangular relationship.
The book’s chapters are called “Scenes” and are divided up into “Acts”, with Intermezzos in between the Acts. I think this suits the subject very well for Casanova’s life was indeed a performance from start to finish, not least in the way he described it in his memoirs. The Intermezzos provide useful background material: “Casanova and Travel”, “Casanova and Sex in the Eighteenth Century”, “Casanova and the Cabbala”, and “Casanova – Food Writer”.
Casanova was a constant traveller and Kelly devotes the travel “Intermezzo” to describing the appalling conditions suffered by those who had to travel from one city to another. The roads hardly qualified as such, and the coaches were hot and cramped. Worst of all to the modern mind was the state of the lodging houses along the way, where beds were seldom changed and usually had multiple occupants. Kelly writes a fascinating account of Casanova’s 156 mile walk from Ancona to Naples, in the company of Brother Steffano, a Francisan monk, who taught Casanova how to beg his way along the journey.
Casanova’s interest in the Cabbala went very deeply. He saw it as a tool of prophecy and divination and he was particularly interested in the numerology aspects of it, producing complex formulas based on the arrangement of letters in alphabets and religious books. I am impressed that Kelly manages to explain the systems used by Casanova in terms which a non-mathematician like myself can understand.
It would be impossible in a short review like this to go into much detail about the events of Casanova’s life, but I am pleased that Kelly covers Casanova’s imprisonment at the hands of the Inquisition in Venice in 1755, Poor Casanova was not told either the reason for his imprisonment nor the length of his sentence. He was held in a cell only five feet high, After several months of imprisonment Casanova began to work away at the floorboards of his cell with a spike. Alas his attempt to cut through the floor was discovered but he eventually escaped from his new cell by breaking through the roof by peeling back the lead.
He managed to escape to France, not returning to Italy for eighteen years. He met Voltaire in Geneva and had lengthy conversations about Italian literature and Casanova soon found himself at home in Voltaire’s “mini-court” at the Chateau de Ferney. I found interesting to read of Casanova’s visit to London as I found it hard to fit such a flamboyant Italian figure into the images in my own head of London coffee-house society. What an impact he must have made.
Casanova lived through a time of relative political stability, but of course, towards the end of his life, the French Revolution destroyed the pillars of the courtly society of Europe. I am grateful to Ian Kelly for producing such a readable and accessible account of Casanova, so much of whose life brings this important period of history to life in an almost technicolour way, which corresponds so much with modern-day interests. .
