Word: casanovas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...civilised man or woman who cannot win some enjoyment from this book," wrote Havelock Ellis about Casanova's Memoirs, "there must be something unwholesome and abnormal-something corrupt at the core." Writing in the Victorian era, Scientist Ellis (Psychology of Sex) idolized Casanova as a free spirit, a man who had the courage to live life fully, and as a shining example of "adjustment"-for Casanova adapted himself so easily to his own desires. Yet there may be more truth in Ellis' exaggerated view than in the more conventional notion expressed in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which complains that...
...Although Casanova's name has become an epithet, the fact that he actually existed is sometimes nearly forgotten, and his memoirs have only been spottily published in English. Previous U.S. editions were either abridged or sold by subscription; the present edition, the first in decades, seems to be the most nearly complete yet available. On the whole, it makes rewarding reading. There is no getting away from the fact that Memoirs is chiefly a record of night errantry, of seductions conducted on a scale that will amaze today's grey-flannel philanderer. But the language is witty...
Indoor Sport. Casanova was born in Venice in 1725, the son of an actor whose Spanish forebears were noted for their adventurousness (one sailed with Columbus) and their illegitimacy. He was still in his teens when he decided that men are, so to speak, either florists or deflorists. His bent was clear, and when his mother enrolled him in a seminary, he was quickly expelled. The second volume of the Putnam edition (the first was issued last spring, and four more will appear at half-year intervals) takes up the rake's progress when he is 23. Casanova...
...idyl ends. The girl's family retrieves her, and she scrawls on a window with a diamond: "You will forget Henriette." Though heartbroken, Casanova goes on to innumerable other adventures. In Venice, he seduces a 15-year-old convent girl, then begins a violent affair with the beautiful nun who is her French teacher-fittingly enough, because she is also the mistress of the French ambassador. And so it goes. Yet he has not altogether forgotten Henriette. Years later, they will meet again. By that time she will be fat and Casanova feeble. As Havelock Ellis pointed...
Great Confession. Volume II ends after Casanova has been imprisoned by the State Inquisitors (possibly for dabbling in black magic), has dramatically escaped and returned to Paris with a year's dammed-up energy...