Saluting a Serial Seducer and His Steamy Tell-All

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was a diplomat, gambler, swindler, soldier, violinist, lawyer, alchemist, pleasure seeker, traveler and serial seducer. Along with all these professions he was also a prolific writer who documented his adventures and love affairs in a sticky memoir that is one of the unforgettable literary treasures of the 18th century.

H e born in Venice, he considered France as his adopted country but soon he was forced to flee Paris in 1760 after seducing the wives and daughters of important subjects of King Louis XV and cheating them out for their money.

Now when Casanova is back in France, it was celebrated by the French state. The original manuscript of his memoirs named as, “The Story of My Life,” and other prominent writings of his are on display for the first time at the National Library of France in the exhibition “Casanova, The Passion for Freedom”. He is also being called a feminist.

The story based on more than 3,700 pages of Casanova’s papers ended up in one of France’s most influential and appropriate institutions is one that Casanova himself would have loved.

He wrote his memoirs in the last years of his life just before his death at 73 in Bohemia in 1798, he left his papers to his nephew. In 1821 one of Germany’s most prominent publishers, Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus acquired those memoirs from the nephew’s descendants. It was assumed by literary circles that those documents had been destroyed in the bombing of Dresden in World War II but actually they were carried on a bike and hidden in a bank vault in Leipzig. An American military truck drove that literary piece of work to safety in Wiesbaden.

A complete version of it was first published in French in 1960 but except for a few scholars with access to the original manuscript, it was forgotten. Then one day in 2007 the French ambassador in Berlin contacted director of the National Library, Bruno Racine and told him that a mysterious intermediary was prepared to talk about the sale of those memoirs. France was deemed the appropriate destination.

A secret meeting was arranged to organize that writing stuff in a small room in the transit area of the Zurich airport. The thirteen large shallow boxes numbered in gold were laid out on two tables for arranging by Mr. Racine and his curators.

Those boxes contained the hand-written memoirs, as well as a text on a lottery and also a note to the emperor of Austria to end the system of usury and correspondence. The script found on it was often bold and undisciplined. Words were scratched out roughly and underlined with some ink blotches stained some pages.

Mr. Racine said in an interview, “I was completely ignorant of the existence of this manuscript,” “It had never been put on display but there was no doubt it was authentic. It was an unforgettable moment. It was almost as if we were in front of a religious relic.”

A French commission unanimously declared about the manuscripts as a “national treasure” that needed to be purchased but it took almost two and a half years of roller-coaster negotiations with a number of sources before an anonymous donor provided the finances to buy it.

The deal was hailed by the culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, as the most spectacular purchase ever made by a French library at $9.6 million, it was also the most expensive. The National Library also plans to make all the documents available online for everyone, and the Gallimard publishing house will begin publishing a multi-volume series of the memoirs in 2013 for readers.

Despite all his adventures, Casanova was best known for libertine. His first sexual encounter according to him was at 11 when he was groped by the sister of his guardian. During all his lifetime he claimed to have seduced 122 women, including one nun.

The French are presenting the text as a piece of their cultural heritage and focusing on Casanova as a gifted writer for them. The memoir is considered extraordinary because of its detailed and colorful descriptions of the social life of late-18th-century Europe and rich cultural including Casanova’s own sexual encounters, visits to royal courts, duels, evasions of arrest ,carriage chases and swindles.