In fact, we are "spared" all mention of the 116 plus romantic intrigues strewn like every kind of gemstone through the voluminous Mémoires which Casanova discretely published posthumously.
Which is not to belittle the fact that Casanova loved women, respected women, understood women and honored women more than any male writer I have ever read.
After his death, bundles of loveletters were found some of which from women spanning 50 years. The last letter in his collection, from a lifetime love, received a year before he died, begins, "Dear Giacomo, I just can't sulk in your presence..... "
Casanova's high regard for women derived from his remarkable mother, Zanetta, a "perfect beauty at the age of 16" (Trask's translation), a single mother of 6! who arranged for his rite of sexual of passage with a gift of 20 pair of dress gloves to an "older" (probably 15) girl whom she paid to shave her son's head for lice on a weekly basis. One thing led to another and even though his tutor eventually dropped him for an older boyfriend, Casanova remained grateful.
If you're interested in his sex life - which was every bit as interesting as it's reputation - read his memories, not I PIOMBI which has more to do with his courage, ingenuity and sense of humor.
Casanova, the hedonist, personally eschewed marriage: "Le marriage," he wrote, "c'est le tombeau de l'amour" (marriage is the tomb of love).
But he rarely abandoned a lover: he either arranged for them to marry someone suitable, or provided for them in other ways.
He wrote that in matters of love, "men and women dupe each other."
He appears to have had no female enemies.
It is disappointing that neither Federico Fellini in his grotesquely stylized Casanova movie, nor the subsequent American production with Faye Dunaway came close to depicting this multi-faceted and wickedly witty Soldier of Fortune as he comes across so vividly in his own WRITE. .
Read on.
