The Complete Memoirs of Jacques Casanova eBook

Giacomo Casanova
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,501 pages of information about The Complete Memoirs of Jacques Casanova.

The Complete Memoirs of Jacques Casanova eBook

Giacomo Casanova
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,501 pages of information about The Complete Memoirs of Jacques Casanova.

The name of Paradise is a name in Genesis which indicates a place of pleasure (lieu voluptueux):  this term is Persian.  This place of pleasure was made by God before he had created man.

It may be remembered that Casanova quarrelled with Voltaire, because Voltaire had told him frankly that his translation of L’Ecossaise was a bad translation.  It is piquant to read another note written in this style of righteous indignation: 

Voltaire, the hardy Voltaire, whose pen is without bit or bridle; Voltaire, who devoured the Bible, and ridiculed our dogmas, doubts, and after having made proselytes to impiety, is not ashamed, being reduced to the extremity of life, to ask for the sacraments, and to cover his body with more relics than St. Louis had at Amboise.

Here is an argument more in keeping with the tone of the Memoirs: 

A girl who is pretty and good, and as virtuous as you please, ought not to take it ill that a man, carried away by her charms, should set himself to the task of making their conquest.  If this man cannot please her by any means, even if his passion be criminal, she ought never to take offence at it, nor treat him unkindly; she ought to be gentle, and pity him, if she does not love him, and think it enough to keep invincibly hold upon her own duty.

Occasionally he touches upon aesthetical matters, as in a fragment which begins with this liberal definition of beauty: 

Harmony makes beauty, says M. de S. P. (Bernardin de St. Pierre), but the definition is too short, if he thinks he has said everything.  Here is mine.  Remember that the subject is metaphysical.  An object really beautiful ought to seem beautiful to all whose eyes fall upon it.  That is all; there is nothing more to be said.

At times we have an anecdote and its commentary, perhaps jotted down for use in that latter part of the Memoirs which was never written, or which has been lost.  Here is a single sheet, dated ‘this 2nd September, 1791,’ and headed Souvenir: 

The Prince de Rosenberg said to me, as we went down stairs, that Madame de Rosenberg was dead, and asked me if the Comte de Waldstein had in the library the illustration of the Villa d’Altichiero, which the Emperor had asked for in vain at the city library of Prague, and when I answered ‘yes,’ he gave an equivocal laugh.  A moment afterwards, he asked me if he might tell the Emperor.  ’Why not, monseigneur?  It is not a secret, ’Is His Majesty coming to Dux?’ ’If he goes to Oberlaitensdorf (sic) he will go to Dux, too; and he may ask you for it, for there is a monument there which relates to him when he was Grand Duke.’  ’In that case, His Majesty can also see my critical remarks on the Egyptian prints.’

The Emperor asked me this morning, 6th October, how I employed my time at Dux, and I told him that I was making an Italian anthology.  ’You have all the Italians, then?’ ‘All, sire.’  See what a lie leads to.  If I had not lied in saying that I was making an anthology, I should not have found myself obliged to lie again in saying that we have all the Italian poets.  If the Emperor comes to Dux, I shall kill myself.

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Project Gutenberg
The Complete Memoirs of Jacques Casanova from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.