Enlightenment on Casanova's Sexual Practices: The Kabbalah

Enlightenment on Casanova's sexual preferences

New evidence confirms that Casanova's formidable roster of sexual partners included men. But, as his latest biographer tells Guy Dammann, the rake's exploits in the bedroom pale in comparison to his intellectual achievements

Friday June 27, 2008
guardian.co.uk


A lot on his mind ... Ivan Mosjoukine as Casanova in Alexandre Volkoff's 1927 film. Photograph: Kobal
 

The familiar image of Giacomo Casanova as a libertine and sexual adventurer is due to undergo a revision. In a new biography to be published today, Casanova is claimed as a "proud intellectual and polymath" whose legendary sexual prowess was an expression of his commitment to Enlightenment ideals. Hidden aspects of Casanova's life are also uncovered, following the reopening of the Waldstein archives in Prague, including new evidence confirming that the quintessential "ladies' man" also experienced sex with men on a number of different occasions and, in a twist that may be of interest to many of today's A-list celebrities, that he attributed his success with women to the mystical Kabbalah.


The actor and biographer Ian Kelly followed Casanova's trail through archives in Prague, Moscow, St Petersburg, retracing the rake's wanderings between his departure from his native Venice in 1743 and his death in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) in 1798.

Kelly says he wanted to show "Casanova as someone who led pretty much an exemplary 18th-century life. "The century in which he lived witnessed an extraordinary explosion in the activities of self-reflection, self-representation and self-invention," he adds, "and Casanova was right at the centre of this process of exploration and discovery. "We should also not forget that sex was in fact one of the main forms of cultural commerce in the 18th century, but that this was a feature of Enlightenment mores that subsequent and more prudish centuries have suppressed." Kelly also found evidence to confirm that a number of Casanova's sexual encounters had been with men, corroborating two references in Casanova's sensational memoir, The History of My Life. "The modern concept of bisexuality, no less than of homosexuality, didn't really exist in the 18th century," Kelly says, " and the conception of sexual preference was on the whole a much more fluid affair. "It seems likely that Casanova was a man who in sex, as in life, wanted to taste all the flavours on offer. That he didn't dwell on the same-sex experiences in his memoirs may have to do with the fact that he simply didn't enjoy them as much, but it's also true that he was keen to quash rumours afoot in Venice that his rise to prominence was courtesy of his having been the rent boy of his first patron [Meteo Giovanni] Bragadin." The Lothario of popular legend was also thrown out of the seminary in which had trained to become a priest for being discovered in bed with another male student. Casanova's tally of approximately 130 sexual partners hardly compares with the legendary 1,003 of his mythical alter ego, Don Giovanni, or the French detective novelist Georges Simenon's claim of 10,000. But the number and nature of Casanova's sexual encounters, Kelly argues, pale into insignificance when compared with the candid and psychologically nuanced way in which he wrote about it. "The number of people he slept with wasn't that remarkable. Much more remarkable is the way he wrote about it, and how he was one of the first authors to place sexuality in the kind of close connection with personality that now, since Freud, we take for granted." Casanova, who felt his sexual identity to one of the most important parts of his personality, used on a number of occasions the word "soul" to describe, not just his sexual personality, but even his sexual organ. He was also, Kelly argues, a key figure in history of contraception, writing at length bout the psychology of trying to incorporate, or convince one's partner to incorporate, the bulky and cumbersome 18th-century condom into the sexual act." Casanova was at the beginnings of the sea-change in condom use from being a pure prophylactic to the symbol of sexual liberation it is today. He refers to it at times as a 'prophylactic against anxiety'." Kelly is also keen to highlight the possible involvement of Casanova in the representation of his mythical soulmate in Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte's Don Giovanni. Claiming to reveal evidence of Casanova's involvement in the preparation of the opera's libretto, Kelly argues that two drafts of a revised section of the libretto in Casanova's hand and on presentation paper are evidence of an involvement the hasty revisions of the opera prior to its first performance in Prague, 1787. However, this document and the possibility of Casanova's involvement with the libretto has been studied extensively by musicologists who have all concluded the link to be unlikely. Julian Rushton, author of a study of Don Giovanni and emeritus professor of music at Liverpool University, says the purpose of Casanova's redrafting of the libretto was indeed a mystery, but that he knew "of no evidence to suppose that they were made before the opera was composed. The relevant scene was composed earlier in Vienna and if any improvisation took place in Prague it concerned the second finale [and not the passage in question]." But if Casanova's involvement in the final version of Da Ponte's libretto for Don Giovanni is wishful thinking, his own literary output is nonetheless extraordinary. In addition to the vast History of My Life, he wrote a total of 42 books and plays, including a translation of the Iliad, a five-volume science-fiction novel, mathematical treatises and opera libretti. He was also a committed follower of the Kabbalah, the mystical Jewish cult holding a deep fascination for him to the extent that he attributed his life's successes to its power. Kelly's researches in the Prague and other archives, and among the records of the Venetian inquisition, which investigated Casanova, have also uncovered recipe books, evidence of self-prostitution, the development in later life of a sexual interest in young girls, and hitherto undiscussed journals relating the content of his dream life. "Writing for the elderly Casanova," Kelly claims, "was not primarily a way of communicating his thoughts and actions to others. He seems to have been writing, and on the advice of his doctor as a cure for melancholy, for himself, as way of reaffirming himself in the realm of the senses."



27.06.2008: Read an extract from Casanova by Ian Kelly