The Complete Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt - Giacomo Casanova (best book club books of all time .txt) 📗

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THE COMPLETE MEMOIRS OF JACQUES CASANOVA de SEINGALT 1725-1798

THE RARE UNABRIDGED LONDON EDITION OF 1894 TRANSLATED BY ARTHUR MACHEN TO WHICH HAS BEEN ADDED THE CHAPTERS DISCOVERED BY ARTHUR SYMONS.

[Etext Editors Note: This is a compilation of the 30 volumes of The Memoires of Jacques Casanova previously published by The Gutenberg Project in the individual files below. These memoires were not written for children and may outrage those readers who are offended by Chaucer, La Fontaine, Rabelais and The Old Testament. D.W.]

TABLE OF CONTENTS With file titles [in reverse order]

Old Age and Death, by Jacques Casanova [JC#30][jcagdxxx.xxx]2980 Florence to Trieste, by Jacques Casanova [JC#29][jcfltxxx.xxx]2979 Rome, by Jacques Casanova de Seingalt [JC#28][jcromxxx.xxx]2978 Expelled from Spain, by Jacques Casanova [JC#27][jcexpxxx.xxx]2977 Spain, by Jacques Casanova de Seingalt [JC#26][jcspnxxx.xxx]2976 Russia and Poland, by Jacques Casanova [JC#25][jcrplxxx.xxx]2975 London to Berlin, by Jacques Casanova [JC#24][jclbrxxx.xxx]2974 The English, by Jacques Casanova [JC#23][jcengxxx.xxx]2973 To London, by Jacques Casanova [JC#22][jclonxxx.xxx]2972 South of France, by Jacques Casanova [JC#21][jcsfrxxx.xxx]2971 Milan, by Jacques Casanova de Seingalt [JC#20][jcmilxxx.xxx]2970 Back Again to Paris, by Jacques Casanova [JC#19][jcbprxxx.xxx]2969 Return to Naples, by Jacques Casanova [JC#18][jcrnpxxx.xxx]2968 Return to Italy, by Jacques Casanova [JC#17][jcritxxx.xxx]2967 Depart Switzerland, by Jacques Casanova [JC#16][jcdswxxx.xxx]2966 With Voltaire, by Jacques Casanova [JC#15][jcvltxxx.xxx]2965 Switzerland, by Jacques Casanova [JC#14][jcswtxxx.xxx]2964 Holland and Germany, by Jacques Casanova [JC#13][jchgrxxx.xxx]2963 Return to Paris, by Jacques Casanova [JC#12][jcrprxxx.xxx]2962 Paris and Holland, by Jacques Casanova [JC#11][jcphlxxx.xxx]2961 Under the Leads, by Jacques Casanova [JC#10][jculdxxx.xxx]2960 The False Nun, by Jacques Casanova [JC#9][jcflnxxx.xxx]2959 Convent Affairs, by Jacques Casanova [JC#8][jcconxxx.xxx]2958 Venice, by Jacques Casanova de Seingalt [JC#7][jcvenxxx.xxx]2957 Paris, by Jacques Casanova de Seingalt [JC#6][jcparxxx.xxx]2956 Milan and Mantua, by Jacques Casanova [JC#5][jcmmnxxx.xxx]2955 Return to Venice, by Jacques Casanova [JC#4][jcrvnxxx.xxx]2954 Military Career, by Jacques Casanova [JC#3][jcmcrxxx.xxx]2953 A Cleric in Naples, by Jacques Casanova [JC#2][jcclnxxx.xxx]2952 Childhood, by Jacques Casanova de Seingalt [JC#1][jccldxxx.xxx]2951

MEMOIRS OF JACQUES CASANOVA de SEINGALT 1725-1798 VENETIAN YEARS, Volume 1a--CHILDHOOD

THE RARE UNABRIDGED LONDON EDITION OF 1894 TRANSLATED BY ARTHUR MACHEN TO WHICH HAS BEEN ADDED THE CHAPTERS DISCOVERED BY ARTHUR SYMONS.

CONTENTS: CASANOVA AT DUX TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE AUTHOR'S PREFACE CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

CASANOVA AT DUX

An Unpublished Chapter of History, By Arthur Symons

I

The Memoirs of Casanova, though they have enjoyed the popularity of a bad reputation, have never had justice done to them by serious students of literature, of life, and of history. One English writer, indeed, Mr. Havelock Ellis, has realised that 'there are few more delightful books in the world,' and he has analysed them in an essay on Casanova, published in Affirmations, with extreme care and remarkable subtlety. But this essay stands alone, at all events in English, as an attempt to take Casanova seriously, to show him in his relation to his time, and in his relation to human problems. And yet these Memoirs are perhaps the most valuable document which we possess on the society of the eighteenth century; they are the history of a unique life, a unique personality, one of the greatest of autobiographies; as a record of adventures, they are more entertaining than Gil Blas, or Monte Cristo, or any of the imaginary travels, and escapes, and masquerades in life, which have been written in imitation of them. They tell the story of a man who loved life passionately for its own sake: one to whom woman was, indeed, the most important thing in the world, but to whom nothing in the world was indifferent. The bust which gives us the most lively notion of him shows us a great, vivid, intellectual face, full of fiery energy and calm resource, the face of a thinker and a fighter in one. A scholar, an adventurer, perhaps a Cabalist, a busy stirrer in politics, a gamester, one 'born for the fairer sex,' as he tells us, and born also to be a vagabond; this man, who is remembered now for his written account of his own life, was that rarest kind of autobiographer, one who did not live to write, but wrote because he had lived, and when he could live no longer.

And his Memoirs take one all over Europe, giving sidelights, all the more valuable in being almost accidental, upon many of the affairs and people most interesting to us during two-thirds of the eighteenth century. Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice, of Spanish and Italian parentage, on April 2, 1725; he died at the Chateau of Dux, in Bohemia, on June 4, 1798. In that lifetime of seventy-three years he travelled, as his Memoirs show us, in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, England, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Poland, Spain, Holland, Turkey; he met Voltaire at Ferney, Rousseau at Montmorency, Fontenelle, d'Alembert and Crebillon at Paris, George III. in London, Louis XV. at Fontainebleau, Catherine the Great at St. Petersburg, Benedict XII. at Rome, Joseph II. at Vienna, Frederick the Great at Sans-Souci. Imprisoned by the Inquisitors of State in the Piombi at Venice, he made, in 1755, the most famous escape in history. His Memoirs, as we have them, break off abruptly at the moment when he is expecting a safe conduct, and the permission to return to Venice after twenty years' wanderings. He did return, as we know from documents in the Venetian archives; he returned as secret agent of the Inquisitors, and remained in their service from 1774 until 1782. At the end of 1782 he left Venice; and next year we find him in Paris, where, in 1784, he met Count Waldstein at the Venetian Ambassador's, and was invited by him to become his librarian at Dux. He accepted, and for the fourteen remaining years of his life lived at Dux, where he wrote his Memoirs.

Casanova died in 1798, but nothing was heard of the Memoirs (which the Prince de Ligne, in his own Memoirs, tells us that Casanova had read to him, and in which he found 'du dyamatique, de la rapidite, du comique, de la philosophie, des choses neuves, sublimes, inimitables meme') until the year 1820, when a certain Carlo Angiolini brought to the publishing house of Brockhaus, in Leipzig, a manuscript entitled Histoire de ma vie jusqu a l'an 1797, in the handwriting of Casanova. This manuscript, which I have examined at Leipzig, is written on foolscap paper, rather rough and yellow; it is written on both sides of the page, and in sheets or quires; here and there the paging shows that some pages have been omitted, and in their place are smaller sheets of thinner and whiter paper, all in Casanova's handsome, unmistakable handwriting. The manuscript is done up in twelve bundles, corresponding with the twelve volumes of the original edition; and only in one place is