In his "Memoires," Casanova explains that he was inspired to remove a doctor's mercury application from the dying Senator who promptly recovered and gave Casanova the credit.
So who's to blame him if he anticipated the relatively recent recommendation of the recent Alan Watts to wit: if one wishes to appear wise, wait for coincidences to occur - and then smile knowingly.
LE BILLET DOUX
Ah, to get to tell your own story.
And maybe get rich and famous if it's a good story and you do it really well?
In the 18th Century, for the first time, a European commoner might hope to make an honest income by writing.
It is sad to note that Casanova's arguably biggest, surely most enduring ambition - to be recognized and respected as a writer - was frustrated in his lifetime.
It was finally achieved only, as Casanova loved to write/say - by dying.
So in the end, we have him to believe because he wrote it the way he wanted it told and his words were mightier than his adversaries, mightier than the grave.
They've been avidly read for 250 years.
Curiously, the words of his handwritten "Memoires" - as distinct from this book ("The Story of My Escape From The Prisons of Venice"), the Memoires were first published posthumously after translation into 19th Century German (and censored and re-written in the process) and then from the German into English leading to some loss of vitality. To be gracious about it.
Casanova's escape from Venice is only a small part of that much lengthier work and suffered proportionately.
Because the french version of "The Story of My Escape From the Prisons of Venice" was written and published by the author, Giovanni Casanova, in his lifetime, approved only by himself, as he might have put it, I have felt honor bound to take no liberties with vocabulary or syntax but to be faithful in my translation allowing run-on sentences to run unmolested through commas and time tenses because the author obviously meant them to do just that.
Anyway, in the long run, in the really long run when we're all dead, if anybody's software still plays English, I hope this will remain the best translation of The Story of My Escape because his writing can make you feel powerful emotions.
or write me at DrJohn@idiom.com
