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BiographyEarly years
His mother, with six children to feed, kept her five youngest at home and shipped Casanova off to boarding school in Padua on his ninth birthday, supposedly for the good of his health. She immediately returned to Venice - Casanova would not see her again for more than a year and would never again share her home. She was able to afford boarding school because before Gaetano died in 1733 he had appealed to the Grimanis to take care of his family. At boarding school he showed great academic promise and quickly became his teacher's favourite, naturally quick-witted, with an intense appetite for knowledge and a perpetually inquisitive mind. It was also here that he came into contact with the opposite sex for the first time when his teacher's younger sister apparently gave him his first orgasm at the age of 11. At the age of sixteen he lost his virginity in the arms of two sisters who, according to his account, threw themselves at him. At the age of 16 he obtained his doctorate in Law from the University of Padua, where he had studied moral philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and law. He was keenly interested in medicine and later in life regretted not having made a career out of it, although he became an eager and often instinctively good amateur doctor. In Venice and elsewhereIn 1740 Casanova was back in Venice where he started his clerical law career in the church as an abate. By now he had become something of a dandy — tall and dark, his long hair powdered, scented, and elaborately curled. He quickly ingratiated himself (something he was to do all his life) with a 76-year old Venetian senator, Alvise Gasparo Malipiero. Malipiero moved in the best circles and taught young Casanova a great deal about good food and wine and how to behave in society. He never spent much time on his church career, due to his restless nature and preoccupation with sex. His career in the church was short and tainted by scandals. After he left the church, he bought a commission to become a low ranking military officer for the Republic of Venice, and went to Constantinople after which he was stationed a short period on Corfu. He found his advancement too slow and boring and soon abandoned his military career. Back in Venice, he became a violinist in the San Samuele theatre, which was still owned by his probable biological father, Michele Grimani. At the age of 21, he saved the life of a Venetian nobleman from the Bragadin family, who became his life-long patron and raised Casanova to the status of a wealthy gentleman. Casanova left Venice in 1748, due to another scandal, this time about a freshly buried corpse dug up in order to play a practical joke — the victim went into a coma, never to recover — and charges of rape against a young girl, of which he was later acquitted. Fugitive and chevalier
In Paris he became one of the trustees of the first state lottery, an enterprise that allowed him to gather a large fortune. A protege of Marquess Jeanne d'Urfé, he pretended to be a Rosicrucian and an alchemist, a role that allowed him to meet some of the most prominent figures of the era. Among them were Madame de Pompadour, Count of St Germain, d'Alembert and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In 1758 he was entitled with a mission of selling the state bonds in Amsterdam. He succeeded and the following year was rich enough to found a silk manufactory. However, much of his wealth was lost on constant affairs with his female workers. For his debts Casanova was imprisoned at Fort-l'Éveque, but was liberated four days afterwards, on insistence of Marquess d'Urfé. He sold the rest of his belongings and acquired another mission to Holland. This time however he failed and he had to flee to Stuttgart, where he lost the rest of his fortune. On one night he lost 4000 Louis; this is roughly one million Euro by modern standards.[2] He was yet again arrested for his debts, but managed to escape to Switzerland, where he initially intended to become a Catholic monk. However, he changed his mind and instead visited Albrecht von Haller and Voltaire. In 1760, Casanova started styling himself the Chevalier de Seingalt, a name he would increasingly use for the rest of his life. On occasion, he would also call himself Count de Farussi (using his mother's maiden name). When Pope Clement XIII presented Casanova with the Papal Order of the Eperon d'Òr, Casanova was overjoyed that he could at last honestly call himself a Chevalier. In 1761, Casanova represented Portugal at the Augsburg Congress, which France had organized in an attempt to end the Seven Years' War. During his lifetime, Casanova travelled extensively over Europe and managed to visit all its capitals, being expelled from many due to various scandals. In 1766, he was expelled from Warsaw due to a pistol duel with Count Colonel Franciszek Ksawery Branicki over an Italian actress, a ladyfriend of theirs. Both were wounded. It was not the first duel Casanova had fought, neither would it be his last. Casanova was permitted to return to Venice in 1774 after eighteen years' exile, but was expelled again in 1783 after falling foul of a son of that same nobleman, Grimani, whom he believed to be his own father. RetirementCasanova retired in 1785 and became the librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein, a chamberlain of the emperor, in the Castle of Dux, Bohemia (now Duchcov Castle, Czech Republic) where he died in 1798 at age 73. It was at the Castle of Dux that he wrote his autobiography. His last years were dull, painful, boring, and frustrating for Casanova. Although he got on well with the Count, the Count had his own preoccupations and had little time for his librarian, often ignoring him at meals and failing to introduce him to important visiting guests. Casanova was thoroughly disliked by most of the other inhabitants of the Castle of Dux and the servants were often spiteful to the old man. Casanova's other desiresAlthough best known for his self-proclaimed prowess in bed, he was recognised by his contemporaries as an extraordinary person. Prince Charles de Ligne, a great Austrian statesman who knew most of the prominent individuals of the age, thought that Casanova was the most interesting man he had ever met and said of him, "there is nothing in the world of which he is not capable". Count Lamberg wrote that he knew "few persons who can equal him in the range of knowledge and, in general, of his intelligence and imagination". During Casanova's numerous travels he encountered notable figures such as Pope Clement XIII, Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great (who afterwards commented on his good looks), Madame de Pompadour, Crebillon, who was also his French teacher, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and many others. He was present at the premiere of Mozart's Don Giovanni and possibly made last-minute revisions to Lorenzo Da Ponte's libretto. Although Casanova took the role of businessman, diplomat, spy, politician, philosopher, magician, and writer, with more than twenty books and several plays credited to his name (including a translation of the Iliad and a history of Poland – "Istoria della turbolenze della Polonia") – most of which were generally admired – for the greater part of his life he was a stranger to work, living largely on his quick wits, luck, social charm, and the money freely given to him by others. Few who gave him money regretted their benevolence. Sinner or Sinned AgainstJudith Summers' biography of Casanova paints a different picture of him than the traditional one. She describes how he was attracted to strong-minded women who presented him with an intellectual as well as a romantic challenge. He did not pursue sex for its own sake and if he had nothing to say to a woman, rarely wanted to sleep with her. She also puts forward the theory that among his 200 plus lovers were many women who took advantage of his kindness, generosity and vulnerability. A story to which there is more than seems at first glance is the gorgeous nun who slipped Casanova a note suggesting he meet her in private. Casanova waxed lyrical about tasting the forbidden fruit and trespassing on the rights of the omnipotent husband. However, it transpired that the nun, M.M, was a sexual predator beholden to Francois de Bernis, the French ambassador, who was fully complicit of the seduction of Casanova and who most likely observed their first tryst from a secret chamber. Casanova fell deeply in love with M.M; however, she always put the ambassador first and outdid Casanova in her sexual extremism by seducing his fourteen-year-old ex-girlfriend first into a three-in-a-bed romp with herself and Casanova, and then with the ambassador. The debauchery of this young girl he had loved sickened Casanova, but he was so in love he colluded. Nor was the nun the only one to take advantage of Casanova's nature. The greatest love of his life, Henriette, as he called her (her real name was most likely Adelaide de Gueidan), took advantage of him to secure passage to Parma, was ensconced in the finest accommodation at his expense, then abandoned him with the instruction that if they were to meet in future he was not to acknowledge that he had known her. That she was on the run from a husband who intended her for a convent due to her infidelity and that Casanova had first encountered her in the arms of a Hungarian soldier she had enlisted to assist her passage to Parma did not seem to prepare him for the outcome. Though 'adopted' by a rich Venetian senator whose life he had saved, and with a small private income, Casanova was by no means rich and the maids and language teachers he had hired for Henriette had decimated his finances. He sought solace in sex in Paris, at one point keeping twenty lovers in twenty apartments. However the most devastating blow was yet to come. Marianne de Charpillon was a fresh-faced courtesan of sixteen being touted around London by her family in the hope of finding a suitor rich enough to support them all. With only a basic grasp of English, and it would seem of the wiles of women, Casanova was captivated by the French-speaking prostitute. She teased, tormented and tantalised him, being set up in a house in Chelsea along the way yet still not succumbing to his physical advances. On one occasion she curled up into a ball making penetration impossible and driving the furiously frustrated Casanova almost to rape. Yet when he would attempt to distance himself she pursued, lavishing gifts on him. He even forgave her indiscretions: upon catching her in flagrante with her male hairdresser, he smashed the house up before being reduced to a penitent submissive in a matter of minutes by this teenager, despite being a supposedly worldly man in his thirties. Ultimately she ruined his confidence in women and in himself, which goes some way towards explaining why the man whose name would become synonymous with lovers spent the last sixteen years of his life as a broken man working as a librarian in a remote corner of Bohemia. It is alleged that his only revenge on Marianne de Charpillon before fleeing London was to buy a parrot, teach it to say "Charpillon is a greater whore than her mother!" and resell the parrot in the market. Unusually for his time, Casanova was egalitarian towards the sexes. He accepted women as his equals and was non-judgmental about their behaviour, according them the same status to do as they wished as he did men. Quotations"I am writing My Life to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding."[3] WorksImage:Casanova 1788.jpg Casanova in 1788
In popular culture
Notes and references
See also
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