A TRYST WITH A CASANOVA

In this exquisite Italian novella from 1780, I met the real Casanova, a man with a fluid pen and a remarkable gift for analyzing human foibles.

The Duel by Giacomo Casanova was originally published in Italian in 1780. This translation by James Marcus was published by Melville House Publishing in 2011.

I had been gawking at an aging Casanova (George Clooney) as he fixed his darling wife’s red train on the evening of the 2022 Kennedy Center Honors when I heard from the real Casanova himself. Giacomo Casanova’s The Duel regaled me from start to finish.

Remembered for his countless affairs with women (and with a handful of men), Giacomo Casanova lived one day at a time. He made money as quickly as he lost it all. His self-assurance allowed him easy entry into the high-octane circles of every society. He was a brilliant academic and violinist whose undoing was often the women he met. This con-man founded state lotteries, fought duels, languished in jail, and managed to write forty-two books and thousands of pages of memoirs.

The original version of Casanova’s erotic memoir (of some 3700 pages in all) has achieved “the status of a French sacred relic”, according to this fascinating story about its survival in the Smithsonian magazine. Casanova was a gifted writer and I would chase him to the end of the world for his smooth and beguiling voice.

Originally published in Italian as Il Duello, the 1780 novella was one of several works penned by this infamous Venetian about town. Translated by James Marcus in 2011, The Duel was inspired by many events in Giacomo Casanova’s own life.

In real life, Casanova is believed to have been a womanizer who lost his virginity to two young sisters he met while he was in school. While The Duel describes many moments from his life, it’s obvious the author is not entirely candid about himself. He paints the Venetian in the story to be a paragon of virtue who is skeptical about those around him; the author barely even makes a mention of a woman when, in real life, Giacomo Casanova had apparently had over 120 lovers and was often mired in a scandal in just about every country he visited.

The Rialto Bridge is the oldest of the four bridges spanning the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. Photo credit: Vanitha Venkatraman.

In fact, the “narrator” in the tale does not even allude to the Venetian’s affairs and if he does mention his meeting with women, he alludes to them as if they were encounters with Mother Teresa. That made The Duel a bit of a disappointment for me. Yet, the tale is written in such a disarming tone and sparkles with so many truths about human psychology and conduct that it was impossible to not enjoy the story all the way to the end.

It begins with an epigraph from the Epistles of Horace that I found somewhat misleading. “Keep your passions in check, for when they do not obey you, they control you. Rein them in, keep them in chains."

By necessity, this man had become an adventurer—as does anybody who goes out into the world without riches and in disgrace back home. In Paris, he tasted the extraordinary favors of fortune, and abused them. He moved on to Holland, where he conducted some shrewd bits of business that yielded handsome sums, which he spent. Then he went to England, where a dangerous passion nearly caused him to lose his mind and his life.

The Duel is all about the adventures, in Northern Europe, of this notorious Casanova who is on the run from the authorities of his native Venice. Wherever he goes, he uses his swagger to impress the ruling elite until he reaches Warsaw where his life suddenly takes a turn. Insulted by a Polish count named Xavier Branicki over an Italian ballerina, Casanova has a moral impasse. He is in complete control of himself until a racial epithet from the count derails him. He feels he must reinstate his name by challenging his rival to a duel.

A view of Chiesa di San Simeon Piccolo from the waters. Photo by Vanitha Venkatraman.

If the word coward, however gross and stupid, had not been affixed to Venetian, perhaps he would have allowed the insult to pass. But a word that vilifies an entire nation is not, in my opinion, one that a man can ignore. After having made this remark, the Venetian went to the door of the theater to wait for his opponent.

Observations such as the one above make this little book an invaluable compendium on human interaction. Decades ago in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, when I was a defenseless child of 11, a local berated me for being late (by a few days) in returning my library books. Had he told me I was a thief I may not have remembered it today. What the clerk at the library added, instead, after yelling at me, was something that was completely unwarranted. It was a diatribe against a whole nation: “All you Indians are thieves!” It rankles in me even now—when I’m 61 years old—and I could understand why the Venetian took umbrage at that passing comment.

The Venetian and the Polish Branicki set a time for their duel on the outskirts of Warsaw. What follows, however, takes the reader by complete surprise and makes us marvel at how enmities can sometimes blossom into friendships.

The two men don’t die, after all, but both do sustain injuries that keep them bedridden for weeks. In that time, the Count sends daily letters inquiring after the Venetian’s health and wishing him a complete recovery. Many days later, the Venetian visits Count Branicki and his former opponent receives him courteously by extending his right hand.

The Venetian approached him, took his hand, and dutifully kissing it, he said: “I am sorry, sir, to be visiting Your Excellency first. I have come to tell you that I have been a thousand times more honored by you than injured by you. And I ask your pardon that on Saint Casimir’s Day, I was unable to hide the feeling that has led to your present difficulty. I hope you will honor me in the future with your favor and your protection.” The first of these statements was a lie, but the others were all true, and expressed his honest wishes.

By the time the Venetian returns to Warsaw months later after his other travels, he notices that his name has been somewhat tarnished in the social circles. Someone has been poisoning the court and others against him and it’s unclear exactly what has transpired.

These were all slanders—but don’t slanders have the same effect as accusations based on the truth? They may be proven false, and dispelled, that is true. But everyone knows how difficult this is to accomplish. Everyone knows that the poor victim of a slander never exits the purgatory of self-justification without bearing the indelible stain of false accusations.

The Duel closes on a thoughtful note about people and their opinions. I was left wondering exactly who the instigant was. It didn’t take me very long, however, to arrive at my conclusions.

From a gondola in Venice. Photo by Vanitha Venkatraman.