Relentless

Giacomo Casanova.

The goblet tumbles to the floor. Red wine engulfs a haphazardly strewn mass of silk gowns and unoccupied corsets. The culprit, a stray toe, is reeled back in by Casanova as he passionately attends to every clumsy limb and unsuspecting patch of flesh. The sisters, Maria and Naneeta, are completely his, willingly trapped amidst their own writhing, squirming and squealing. Eventually, after a number of hours, the opulent riot hits its zenith. And slowly, the girls drift into slumber.

He waits, wide-eyed, until they are asleep. It is 3am and the night is young. He craves a flutter. Is it to be Quinze? Primero? Poker? Whist? The world’s greatest lover re-clothes and, with a satisfied grin, casually makes his way. “I must not be too late home tonight,” he ponders, “School tomorrow.” 

Eighteenth Century Venice was the place to be if hedonistic pleasure was your thing. It was Las Vegas, Monaco and Ibiza all rolled into one - carnivals, gambling houses, beautiful courtesans. And best of all, the politicians and clergymen that ran the city didn’t give a toss. All they craved were the tourists’ golden coins that would line their satin pockets. For most of Europe’s educated youth, Venice was a city of decadent debauchery. For Casanova, the famous bon vivant, it was a city of pleasure - and carnal pleasure at that.

Casanova was a man of many talents - violinist, spy, alchemist, scribe, soldier, even a lottery salesman - but he enjoyed none of them. Instead he ingratiated himself with cardinals, popes and noblemen with his raucous tales and warm manner. Connections, not careers, were his lifeblood. He used people, but only those he considered fools. He would plot and scheme around the focal points he knew best - principally gambling tables - acting gallantly when he lost and bashfully when he won, a gentleman amongst his social superiors and a chivalrous but incessant flirt with the women that flocked to the risky, well-moneyed scene.

He upped and moved from one noble house to another, spending his time charming the pants off his helpless targets on the ‘Grand Tour’ - a pan-European travel itinerary designed to take in cultural artifacts and antiquities that Casanova re-modelled into his own private voyage of carnal discovery. The sybaritic route would see him sample the women and wines of Paris, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Cologne, Stuttgart, Florence, Rome and Turin. He literally moved from one romp to another, working if he had to, and punctuating his mad existence with scandal and misdemeanour. 

For a period he was the live-in guest of Senator Bragadin, an important Venetian whose life the great romancer had saved thanks to his self-taught medical expertise. One night, Casanova, by cover of darkness, sneaked into a graveyard and dug up a freshly buried corpse. He had planned an elaborate practical joke, but it backfired when the hapless victim went into a paralysis, never to recover. Yet again, he was forced to move on. For every city wall he breached, the process would repeat and repeat.

The masterstroke came when he reached old age. Still he loved to travel. The mind was willing but the body had tired - some latent pox and gonorrhea, the hazards of a life of indulgence. As librarian to Count von Waldstein of Bohemia, Casanova announced that he was bored. The Count suggested he put pen to paper and document his extraordinary life. Memoirs de Ma Vie was the result. 

Casanova lived it, breathed it, shagged it, gambled it, contracted it, and performed it. Then he wrote it all down and watched it blow up. This was not some introspective ‘Dear Diary’ drivel. His story captured the imagination of Europe, and forever preserved the enchanting legend of the World’s Greatest Lover. In his own inimitable words: “I can find no pleasanter pastime than to converse with myself about my own affairs and to provide a most worthy subject for laughter to my well-bred audience.”

Words: Joe Johnson

Illustration: Eduardo Recife