The Story of My Life (Penguin Classics)
by Giacomo Casanova

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Book Reviews of The Story of My Life (Penguin Classics)

Book Review: Sex and violence
Summary: 4 Stars

Casanova is a by-word for libidinous excess, and the book is full of his sexual athletics, ranging from his deflowerings of virgins, his bizarre encounter with a fake castrato, his fun with nuns, his liaisons with noble women and actresses, as well as his more unsettling predilections, some of which would have led to his inclusion in the child protection register today. But unlike other 18th-century chronicles of excess, the memoir is not merely pornographical. Casanova was a highly educated and cultivated figure. He bests a bemused Voltaire in discussions of poetry, and his chronicle is full of witty commentaries on 18th century geo-politics, human relations, metphysics, and art. He writes with superb humour. His descriptions of his periodic resort to alchemical and cabbalistic confidence tricks to defraud rich patrons and mistresses are hilarious. He recounts with delicate irony a rather serious conversation with a muslim theologian on the moral conundrum of masturbation. And his portraits of the movers and shakers of the age are lively, vivid and frequently irreverant.

Casanova was a controversialist. Imprisoned for obscure reasons in Venice, he recounts his daring escape and enforced exile. His frequent scrapes as a spy, adulterer and con artist make his exile an increasingly precarious affair, as he drains his stock of patient patrons dry. As the work progresses, his infamy precedes him, and Casanova roves across Europe, expelled from capital after capital. The work climaxes with his account of a duel with a senior Polish officer, leading to his expulsion from the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which Casanova had fictionalised earlier as "The Duel". The tale is a locus classicus of 18th-century chutzpah, fool-hardiness, scandal and back-biting spite.

This is one of the great autobiographies. The extraordinary adventures of Casanova in themselves would divert the most thrill-hungry reader. But Casanova himself, apt to exaggerate and sometimes to appal, amoral and moralistic by-turns, Enlightened and reactionary, makes a novel, exhilirating, taxing, hilarious, companion.

The translation is reasonable, if, very occasionally, clunky, and the selections read well. The only real criticism is that the editors have shorn the account of much of its political intrigue, sometimes divesting Casanova's frequent encounters with the authorities of context. While this is a shame, and the editors underestimate readers' interest in this aspect of Casanova's milieu, it only marginally undermines one's enjoyment of this unique life.

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