Casanova, fin de siècle: actes du colloque international (review)

Giovanni Jacopo Casanova de Seingalt is best known for his autobiographical Histoire de ma vie, which is also largely responsible for his notoriety as the arch-seducer of women, a not entirely mythical reputation if we are to take the author at his word. It is this reputation that has fascinated numerous writers and artists, especially in the twentieth century. Arthur Schnitzler published a novel in 1930 entitled Casanova's Return to Venice, John Masters produced a masterly biography of Casanova in 1969, reissued in 2001, François Mitterrand and Philippe Sollers count among the eighteenth-century libertine's many admirers. Casanova wrote most of his work while employed as a librarian at the château of Count Waldstein at Dux near Prague. His memoirs were composed during the final nine years of his life between 1789 and 1798, although, as the editor of this volume points out in his introduction, Casanova placed greater value on his mathematical, philosophical, political and literary work. Nevertheless, the twenty-three papers in this collection reflect an interest that has generally centred less on the writing itself than on the authorial persona it constructs. Thus, the eight papers of Part 1 address Casanova's life in pre-revolutionary Europe, bringing together recent research on his relations both with his different homelands, Venice, France and Austria, and with his aristocratic friends. This part of the book will be of interest mainly to dedicated casanovistes and historians of the period. Part 2 contains nine essays on Histoire de ma vie, which was not available in unabridged and unadulterated form until the early 1960s. A recent republication by Laffont in 1993 provided the occasion for a more comprehensive evaluation of the work, giving rise to some fascinating and original research: into the use and value of money in the memoirs (Georges Coppel), the aesthetics of knowledge (Marc-Olivier Laflamme), thematic and structural similarities between the work of Casanova and Marivaux (Ilona Kovăcs), Casanova's reactions to Voltaire's political thought (Ruth Bombosch), and cinematic representations of Casanovan themes (Alain Sebbah). The six articles of Part 3 deal with Casanova's vast culture of moral, political and philosophical thought as expressed in his literary works and essays. This section may be of greatest interest to casanovistes, because it concerns writings that have attracted little scholarly attention hitherto, but non-specialists may be drawn to two articles that tackle the representation of the feminine (Marie-Françoise Bosquet, Paul Mengal), an issue crucial for an assessment of Casanova from the perspective of a sexual politics, but one completely ignored by the authors of the previous section. Mengal's essay, in particular, reveals surprisingly modern attitudes to women in the little-known science-fiction novel, L'Icosaméron. On a different tack, Béatrice Didier provides a skilful and instructive analysis of colour symbolism in this same novel. There is an appendix comprising an unpublished essay by Casanova on the passions, printed here in Italian, regrettably without translation or summary in French, an omission also affecting one of the essays in Part 2. In the main, however, there is something in this volume for specialists and non-specialists alike, whether Italian-speaking or not.