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Casanova in Naples
 In 1761 Giacomo Casanova
(1725-1798), the Venetian author, adventurer, and
eponym for
lascivious behavior (I lost out again
in the awards this year!),
returned to Naples
after an absence of
18 years. He describes this episode in The
History of My Life, memoirs he started in 1789. They weren’t
published
until after his death. Various editions have been so tampered with that
the old
standard 1894 Arthur Machen English translation is not a good choice
since he
was working from corrupted versions, but, on the other hand, it’s free!
Briefly, Casanova meets his old
buddy, the Duke. They spend
hours and days talking, reminiscing, playing cards and going to San
Carlo. The
Duke has a “mistress,” 17-year-old Leonilda, but she is a mistress in
name only.
The Duke is impotent and for that reason the girl’s mother has made
the safe
arrangement to entrust her daughter to him; as her guardian, he will
see that the
young woman is properly introduced into society. Leonilda
gets Casanova's attention early on:
| “The
seductive
features of this
charming girl were not
altogether unknown to me, but I could not recall the woman she reminded
me of.
Leonilda was certainly a beauty…She had splendid light chestnut hair,
and her
black and brilliant eyes, shaded by thick lashes, seemed to hear and
speak at
the same time. But what ravished me still more was her expression, and
the
exquisite appropriateness of the gestures with which she accompanied
what she
was saying.” |
Casanovas memoirs contain a number
of episodes of bawdy
humor—in a high school locker room sort of way. In one such scene, he,
the duke
and young Leonilda are sitting around a table. Casanova is kissing the
young
woman’s hand,
all the while becoming more and more aroused; Impotent Duke is getting
his
vicarious jollies by fondling Casanova under the table. At a certain
point,
Casanova “sprinkles” on the duke’s hand, and they both have a hearty
laugh over
it. Real funny stuff. It gets even funnier.
Casanova decides he wants to marry Leonilda.
She consents
and takes Casanova home to meet Mother. Hello—now he remembers why the
girl
looked familiar!
As soon as
the mother saw me she screamed and fell nearly fainting on a chair. I
looked at
her fixedly for a minute and exclaimed,—
"Donna
Lucrezia! I am fortunate indeed!"
"Let’s
catch our breath, my dear friend. Come and sit by me. So you are going
to marry
my daughter, are you?"
I
took a chair and guessed it all. My hair stood on end, and I relapsed
into a
gloomy silence.”
Donna
Lucrezia is Casanova’s old flame from 18 years earlier and, of course,
the
young girl he wants to marry turns out to be his own daughter. Now,
that might
be the end of a standard Neapolitan comic
opera. Ho-ho,
whew! That was close! He
almost… Then everybody goes home vaguely titillated and
disappointed but
having
had a good time. Not quite. Some passages outraged censors of the day:
“As
we were going away the duke made several observations on what moral
philosophers call prejudices. There is no philosopher who would
maintain…that
the union of a father and daughter is horrible naturally, for it is
entirely a
social prejudice…”
At
this point, you wonder if there weren’t enough inbred, moronic members
of royal
families in Europe in 1760 for
Casanova to
have noticed the link between “inbred” and “moronic.” (Casanova had
just met
the child-king of Naples at the opera, Ferdinand
IV, a prime
example—the best
of a litter of 16, one day to be infamous as the idiotic Re Lazzarone,
the
Beggar King, one of the worst monarchs in European history.)
In
any event, the story continues in a very non-Comic Opera vein. Since
Casanova
can’t marry his own daughter, Leonilda, he re-falls in love with her
mother.
The plot thickens:
“A
moment later the door opened, and Leonilda laughed heartily to see her
mother
in my arms, and threw herself upon us, covering us with kisses. The
duke came in
a little later, and we supped together very merrily. He thought me the
happiest
of men when I told him I was going to pass the night honourably with my
wife
and daughter...but here I must draw a veil over the most voluptuous
night I
have ever spent. If I told all I should wound chaste ears…all the
phrases of
the poet could not do justice to the delirium of pleasure, the ecstasy,
and the
license which passed during that night…We were scarcely dressed when
the duke
arrived. Leonilda gave him a vivid description of our nocturnal
labours…”
Casanova
leaves for Rome
the next day after saying farewell to his friend, the duke,
“…The
poor nobleman, whom fortune had favoured, and whom nature had deprived
of the
sweetest of all enjoyments, came with me to the door of my carriage and
I went
on my way.”
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