Casanova, Giovanni Giacomo

Casanova, Giovanni Giacomo

(born April 2, 1725, Venice—died June 4, 1798, Dux, Bohemia) Italian ecclesiastic, writer, soldier, spy, and diplomatist. Expelled from a seminary for scandalous conduct, he launched a dissolute career that took him throughout Europe. In Venice in 1755 he was denounced as a magician and imprisoned; he escaped and fled to Paris, where he mingled with the aristocracy. Fleeing from creditors, he took the name Chevalier de Seingalt and traveled again before returning to Venice in 1774 to become a spy for the Venetian inquisitors of state. He spent his late years (1785–98) as librarian to the Count von Waldstein in Bohemia. His huge autobiography, first published in 12 volumes in 1825–38, gives a splendid picture of 18th-century Europe; it established his reputation as an extraordinary seducer of women.

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Casanova, Giovanni Giacomo 

Born Apr. 2, 1725, in Venice; died June 4, 1798, in Dux Castle, in Bohemia. Italian writer and memoirist.

Casanova led a stormy life, traveling all over Europe and often being imprisoned. He is the author of several historical works and a fantasy novel, Icosameron (1788). The History of My Flight (1788) was part of his posthumously published Memoirs (1st ed., in German, translated from the original French; parts 1–12, 1822–28). Casanova’s memoirs are extraordinarily candid about his intimate life and present penetrating observations on the social mores of his time and a sober evaluation of historical events.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Memuary. St. Petersburg, 1887.

REFERENCES

Zweig, S. “Tri pevtsa svoei zhizni: Kazanova—Stendal’—Tolstoi.” Sobr. soch., vol. 6. Leningrad [1929].
Lucas-Dubreton, J. Le Don Juan de Venise: Casanova. Paris [1955].