Love Him Or Leave Him

Certain books betray the unmistakable flavor of their origins on every page. Kafka rarely mentioned Prague, but the city tinges every sentence he wrote. As he put it, "The little mother has claws." Venice has claws too, though often discreetly sheathed. Even so, they flash at regular intervals throughout Casanova's "History of My Life," (Everyman's Library, 1,497 pages, $35), the most quintessentially Venetian book ever penned. Though Casanova ranged over all of Europe during his long life, venturing as far east as Constantinople, he always remained fixed on Venice.

He was born there, the illegitimate son of a touring actress, on April 2, 1725, and for the rest of his days, he loathed and loved the place. When exiled, he contrived to sneak back; when imprisoned there, he longed only to escape. His birthplace defined the boundaries of his memory. His narrative, as alive with surprises as the city itself, takes us down unexpected alleyways from which we emerge, without quite knowing how, onto improbable piazzas. Like Venice, the great lover's autobiography is a floating labyrinth.

The 12 volumes of "History of My Life," drawn from the complete translation by Willard Trask, are now available from Everyman's Library in a single hefty volume expertly abridged by Peter Washington and introduced by John Julius Norwich. The abridgement represents approximately half of the original, but is so well done — apart from the deletion of a few especially salacious passages — that it reads seamlessly. The translation is superb, as are the extensive annotations. Unfortunately, Mr. Trask is rewarded for his labors by having his first name misprinted on the title-page as "William," but this is the only flaw I can find in an otherwise beautiful book. This edition also contains a meticulous chronology, which places Casanova's recollections in their historical context, a good bibliography, and a fascinating "publishing history" of the original manuscript — the memoirs had as turbulent a history as their author's.

"The mind obeys the body," Casanova says. His memoirs bear him out. Not only the enticements of love, which he sampled in every form, but the delights of the table, the allure of elegant clothes and powdered wigs, and the sheer sensual enjoyment of a good shave, held him in thrall. No mind was ever more gleefully obedient to the body than his. He is completely without shame on this score, and this candor accounts for much of his charm. He is funniest and most charming when he waxes sententious but because he recognizes the absurdity of his posturing, we forgive him. He remains the amused spectator of his own rascality.

Aside from the sheer entertainment "History" affords — there's not a dull page anywhere — Casanova's greatness as an author lies in the subtle and various portraits he creates of dozens of lively women, all of whom remain unforgettable. Amid the schemes, the intrigues, the reversals — Casanova is one moment penniless, rolling in florins the next — the women provide the constant counterpoint to his own inconstancy. True, he lusts after them, but he finds their minds as sexy as their bodies. Thus, Teresa Imer, Donna Lucrezia, the luscious Barbaruccia, Genoveffa, and the "false castrato" Bellino, step from his pages, as alive in memory as they were in his embraces. Most magnificent is the enigmatic Henriette, the "love of his life," whom he adores but loses. This Provençal noblewoman is the only lover who calls the shots in their affair. In his old age, eking out his days in a Bohemian castle as librarian to Count Waldstein, Casanova recalls her with intense affection, no doubt because for once the woman did the leaving.

He was no mean escape-artist himself, and not only from amorous entanglements. His account of his spell in the notorious "I piombi" prison in Venice, so called because it was situated under the searing lead roofs of the Doge's palace, remains one of the great jailbreaks in literature. Tormented by fleas, stalked by huge canal rats, cooped in a cell where he could barely stand upright, Casanova spent the 15 months of his confinement plotting a way out. At moments his narrative has an eerily modern feel. Like Kafka's Josef K., he never learns the precise charges against him, leading him to remark:

The only business of the Venetian tribunal is to judge and to sentence; the guilty person is a machine which does not need to take any part in the business in order to cooperate in it; he is a nail which, to go into a plank, needs only to be hammered.

His sense of humor preserves him in the ordeal. When he asks for books, he's given "The Mystical City" by "an extremely devout Spanish virgin" named Sister Maria de Agreda, and this deranged tome, which he calls the product of a "sublimated cerebellum," alternately amuses and maddens him. His bumbling cellmates, whom he must rely on to make his escape, provide added comic relief. His description of their flight over the slippery rooftops of the palace is simultaneously terrifying and slapstick.

Much of the unflagging excitement that Casanova's "History" affords comes from our awareness that he is writing not merely to recapture the past but to relive it in all its graspable immediacy. He began the work in 1790 when he was 65; his good looks had faded, his teeth and his hair were falling out, whatever love he could find he had to buy. All he had left was his charm, but that he now bent in full force to his words. His masterpiece is irresistible, and designedly so. Only Casanova could scheme seduction from beyond the grave.

eormsby@nysun.com