Casanova: The Man Who Really Loved Women - Hardcover

Flem, Lydia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374119570 ISBN 13: 9780374119577

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1997

Synopsis

Offers an unconventional view of Casanova as a benevolent lover of women, an ardent believer in the Enlightment, who grew from a sickly Venetian infant, abandoned by his actress mother, to become a spirited voluptuary

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Reviews

Flem, a Franco-Belgian psychoanalyst and author, takes a bit of a busman's holiday with this biography/critique of the 18th century's most famous rake. The 12 volumes of Casanova's History of My Life constitute one of the most delightful memoirs ever written. An elegant and witty- -and unexpurgated---1966 translation by Willard R. Trask finally became available in paperback this spring from Johns Hopkins University Press. So the timing of Flem's biography of Giacomo Casanova, the self-styled Chevalier de Seingalt, is fortuitous. Casanova was not, as he is casually styled, a mere libertine, a heartless and careless seducer of women. Rather, as Flem points out, he was a mercurial figure, a man of many guises--author, actor, soldier, priest, alchemist, scientist, gambler, lottery director, spy--who turned his life into ``an endless carnival.'' Most of all, he was a connoisseur of pleasure and happiness who dedicated much of his life to offering them to women. Yet he was, as Flem notes, ``born under the sign of loss.'' His greatest loves ended tragically, he outlived his closest friends, he was duped repeatedly by women. The Casanova depicted in Flem's book echoes the memoirs, which along with his letters are the main source for this volume. He sought out women who were his intellectual equals, placing a high value on exchanges of the mind as no less important than exchanges of bodily fluids. He is, Flem asserts, a lover of women in the best sense. Flem herself is, in Temerson's graceful translation, a skilled and passionate writer, as befits her subject. But her tone is darker and more elegiac than that of the memoirs and the result is not nearly as entertaining. Flem's book suffers from a peculiar organization in which Casanova's life is explored thematically rather than chronologically; those who are unfamiliar with his memoirs may find this volume opaque at times. A thoughtful and intelligent examination of the great lover, but more effective as analysis and literary criticism than as biography. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"Beyond pleasure, there is still happiness?such is the insolent legacy of Giacomo Casanova." Thus sounds the last line of this pretentious retelling of legendary lover Casanova's life?and that's about as deeply as Flem, a psychoanalyst, ventures. In a present-tense narrative (published in France two years ago) ribboned with quotes from Casanova's own massive memoir, Histoire de ma vie (1793)?written when Casanova the adventurer was out to pasture?Flem portrays her hero as a true feminist, rather than libertine, a lover who gave himself generously and desired only that his partner share equally in the joys of love-making. Flem is especially concerned with Casanova's remote actress mother and his lifelong pursuit of the "eternal feminine." The main problem here (besides a lack of literary or historical context) is that while Flem is telling his story, our lover, in his sassy descriptions, is showing, thus subverting Flem's method entirely. Libraries will want to provide literary readers with Casanova's History of My Life.?Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374119570
• ISBN 13: 9780374119577
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 258