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Giacomo Casanova

  • Born to Show and Tell About It. In 1725, a little Giacomo Casanova was born to a Venetian show.
  • Giacomo Casanova The Italian adventurer Giacomo Jacopo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798) is best known for his memoirs, which are a most revealing record of 18th-century European society. The first child of an actor and actress, Casanova was born in Venice.
  • Giacomo Casanova Free BONUS Inside!. Read On Your Computer, MAC, Smartphone, Kindle Reader, iPad, or Tablet. It has been more than 200 years, but Giacomo Casanova’s name is still a slang word.
  • Giacomo Casanova was an adventurer. He travelled restlessly throughout Europe his entire life meeting kings, cardinals and philosophers. He repeatedly changed roles like a chameleon, going from priest to orchestra violinist, actor to scientist, con man to civil servant.

Casanova: biographical name Giovanni Giacomo 1725–1798 originally Giacomo Girolamo Casanova; alias Jean-Jacques, Chevalier de Seingalt Italian adventurer and memoirist.

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Giacomo Casanova - born in 1725 to a couple who were actors, he was never able to completely cut all ties to the theatre. He once wrote that the stage captivated him just as much as the women he was unable to resist. But this native Venetian was far more than just a womanizer, despite the fact that this cliché marks his initial impact on the history of the 18th century. Giacomo Casanova was an adventurer. He travelled restlessly throughout Europe his entire life meeting kings, cardinals and philosophers. He repeatedly changed roles like a chameleon, going from priest to orchestra violinist, actor to scientist, con man to civil servant.
In Paris he founded a lottery, in Lyon a silk factory, constantly seesawing between riches and debt. He was often forced to leave town at a moment's notice, often fleeing from gambling debts or to avoid paying taxes. He had a pronounced love-hate relationship with his home town of Venice, Italy. Twice he was exiled from the city, and in 1755 he was even incarcerated in the infamous prison known as the Leads. Fortified by lead plates on the roof of the Doge's palace housing the prison, it was acknowledged as the world's most secure penal facility at the time. No prisoner had ever escaped from the Leads. Its unfortunate inmates were brutally mistreated and conviction without trial was commonplace. But Giacomo Casanova, using a metal bar he had sharpened on a stone, managed to force his way outside and flee. The daring escape unleashed a sensation, and he would hardly have been Giacomo Casanova had he not capitalized on the hype. His subsequent book, 'Story of My Flight,' revealed the details of his adventure and became a best-seller throughout Europe.
Giacomo Casanova must have indeed been a charming, charismatic and remarkably imaginative person. Despite this, his life ended in solitude in 1798 at the Castle of Dux in the northern part of today's Czech Republic. For posterity he left 5,000 pages of brilliantly written memoirs, one of the most important literary contributions of his time.

The Italian adventurer Giacomo Jacopo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798) is best known for his memoirs, which are a most revealing record of 18th-century European society.

The first child of an actor and actress, Casanova was born in Venice. He set out to play the comedy of life with a short role as an ecclesiastic but was expelled from the seminary in 1743. He found refuge in Rome with Cardinal Acquaviva, the first of his many powerful protectors. By 1745 he had returned to Venice, where he practiced magic. Forced to flee prosecution for engaging in the black arts, Casanova drifted from city to city. In Lyons in 1750 he joined the Free Masons, an allegiance that gave him support in the noble, free thinking circles of cosmopolitan Europe. Gambling, profiteering, and amorous activities marked his first stay in Paris (1750-1753). His luck held until 1755, when he was imprisoned in Venice for 'black magic, licentiousness, and atheism.' His spectacular escape is chronicled in the only portion of his memoirs to appear during his lifetime (1788).

The years 1756-1763 brought Casanova his most brilliant successes in a society dedicated to games of love and chance. Voltaire, whom he met briefly, judged him to be a 'mixture of science and imposture,' a suspect combination which nevertheless brought Casanova in contact with Frederick II and Catherine the Great.

Casanova himself divided his life into 'three acts of a comedy.' The second, which he thought of as lasting from 1763 to 1783, was less droll than the first. Protectors were less willing, and as the adventurer's brilliance faded, his charlatanism became more evident. From 1774 to 1782 Casanova added to his repertoire the role of 'secret agent' for the Republic of Venice, but he was less a spy than an informer.

Again obliged to leave Venice, Casanova began the third act of his comedy penniless and on the road. But in 1785 he gained the protection of the Count of Waldstein, in whose château at Dux (Bohemia) he stayed until his death in 1798. There he wrote his celebrated History of My Life, ending with the events of 1774, after which he had 'only sad things to tell.' Written in sometimes imperfect French, this work moves rapidly and frankly through vast amounts of personal and social detail. Besides tales of the 122 women whose favors he claims to have enjoyed, Casanova offers a chronicle of social extravagance and decline and a vision of Europe as complex and colorful as the bawdy, elegant, naively rational, desperately pretentious, and comic figure of 'Seingalt' himself.

Casanova's writings also include miscellaneous gallant verse, several treatises on mathematics, a three-volume refutation of Amelot de la Houssaye's history of Venetian government (1769), a translation of the Iliad (1775), and a five-volume novel of fantastic adventure to the center of the earth, Icosameron (1788).

Further Reading on Giacomo Jacopo Girolamo Casanova de Seinglat

Giacomo

Giacomo Casanova Death

Long limited to bowdlerized editions derived from a first German translation of the manuscript (acquired by Brockhaus in 1821), Casanova's History of My Life may now be read in a faithful translation by Willard R. Trask (4 vols., 1966-1967). The dean of Casanova scholars, James Rives Childes, wrote the definitive Casanova: A Biography (1961). The richly illustrated book by John Masters, Casanova (1969), provides valuable evocations of his life and times.

Additional Biography Sources

Buck, Mitchell S. (Mitchell Starrett), b. 1887., The life of Casanova from 1774 to 1798: a supplement to the Memoirs, Brooklyn: Haskell House, 1977.

Casanova, Giacomo, The life and memoirs of Casanova, New York, N.Y.: Da Capo Press, 1984.

Giacomo Casanova Book

Childs, J. Rives (James Rives), Casanova, a new perspective, New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1988.

Giacomo Casanova Pdf

Ricci, Seymour de, Jacques Casanova de Seingalt: an address to the Philobiblon Club of Philadelphia, 24 May 1923, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1976.

Giacomo Casanova Autobiography

Roustang, Francois., The quadrille of gender: Casanova's 'Memoirs,' Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988.