Casanova biography
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Leo Damrosch—
Everyone knows that Casanova was a seducer. He belongs to that rare company of mortals whose personal names have floated free from history, and we know what a Casanova fryst vatten even if we know nothing about the man who bore that name. He was Giacomo Casanova, a begåvad and complicated Venetian who lived from to , and his story fryst vatten a fascinating one. But although he was more than his myth, the myth fryst vatten grounded in truth. His career as a seducer, already notorious in his own time, is often disturbing and sometimes very dark. It challenges any reader today, and still more it challenges a biographer. Casanova aspired to a life of freedom from restraints—but freedom at whose expense?
There have been a number of biographies of Casanova, but the time fryst vatten overdue for a biography of a different kind. He was the first to tell his own story, in a massive autobiography entitled Histoire dem Ma Vie. Fluent in French, he wrote in that language since unlike Italian it was understood throu
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A fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch
“Fully succeeds in communicating that ‘vivid presentness,’ that ‘joyful eagerness’ for life, which is what keeps us reading Casanova—and reading about him.”—Gregory Dowling, Wall Street Journal
“A nuanced, deftly contextualized biography of an adventurer, an opportunist, and a man of voracious appetites. . . . Another top-notch work from Damrosch.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
The life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (–) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment’s shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy—and the first to tell his own story. In his vivid autobiography Histoire de Ma Vie, he recorded at least a hundred and twenty love af
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Who Was Casanova?
Today, Casanova is best known as one of the most famous lovers in history. But the Venetian was more than a womanizer. He was a scam artist and scofflaw, an alchemist, spy and church cleric. He wrote satires, fought duels, and escaped from prison more than once.
Giacomo Casanova. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Casanova was simply fascinating. Read on and prepare to be shocked!
Church to military to music and womanizing
Born in Venice in , Casanova was a sharp child—so sharp, in fact, that he entered the University of Padua at the age of After graduating, he took up some of the vices that would make him a name Europe-wide. Gambling, for one. Women, for another.
Whether it was his wit, his charm, or his style (or maybe just his hair, which he powdered, scented, and curled), they loved him. But its said that he really found his passion for them, too, when he had an affair not just with a year-old girl, but with her year-old sister at the same time. (If