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Arthur Machen's 'Casanova'

An illustration that accompanied Welsh author Arthur Machen's translation of the memoirs in the 1880's. Machen was the pen-name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, who was usually up for most literary genres: Gothic horror, fantasy, the Occult, mysticism, and although little known today, he influenced many subsequent

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Casanova and Academia

Casanova would not live to see how later generations would discourage the genre of autobiography, seeing it as egotistical. Universities still avoid him like a venereal disease: his memoirs are almost never taught in university classes. In literature departments, the erotic arts are limited to the classes where de Sade,

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Casanova at 63

This portrait of Casanova is said to be around 1788 when he was 63 years old and living in Bohemia at Dux (Duchcov). The engraving below appeared in the front of his only work of fiction, Icosameron (1788), a long and rambling utopian fantasy which had the helpful sub-title of

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Casanova in his Twenties

This is the most well known portrait of Giacomo Casanova; it was painted around 1750-1755 by his brother Francesco Casanova. Casanova was born in Venice in 1725 and, for the first few decades, his home was in the central area of the city, just west of the large Campo Santo

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Casanova's Henrietteʔ

It is speculated that she was Adélaide de Gueidan. This is her in a painting "Adélaïde de Gueidan et sa sœur au clavecin" ("Adelaide de Gueidan and her Younger Sister on Cembalo" (harpsichord) by Claude Arnulphy, circa 1735-40. I have also seen it attributed (wrongly?) to

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Casanova's 'Histoire de ma Vie'

This is a watercolor illustration to a 1932 French edition of Casanova's Histoire de ma Vie, by the influential Auguste Leroux. There is ample historical evidence that in past centuries people had a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one

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Chaucer and Chaumpaigne

One of the most celebrated cases of literary rape (“raptus”) involved Geoffrey Chaucer. In 1380 charges were dropped by one Cecily Chaumpaigne. The document on which the charges were based - “concerning my rape” (“de raptu meo”) - came to light in 1873. Chaucer apparently paid 10 pounds to Chaumpaigne,

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Don Juan

Don Juan first showed up in Tirso de Molina's play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra. Usually this is translated as The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest but "burlador" has been translated as "ladykiller," "seducer," "joker,"

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Don Juan's 20 Proverbs of Evil

1. Sex is Life. Love is not Life. Love is the Abyss. 2. Sex is light, fire, friction, a spiral, exterior. Love is interior, a vicious circle. 3. Sex isn’t just sexual intercourse. Some equate it with the divine. Or the demonic. 4. Sex is not Romance; Romance is

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Fanny Hill

Fanny Hill aka Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland, written and published in London in 1748-49, is generally regarded as Europe's first erotic novel and there seems little doubt that Casanova would have read it by the time he was in London in 1763. Although

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Fellini's 'Casanova'

The film was released in 1976. Fellini was clear that he didn't like Casanova. Above is an image used for the film's soundtrack. Below is a German DVD cover based on the original poster.

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Frank Harris - 'My Life and Loves'

These days if you didn't know this book existed, you'd be hard pressed to ever hear about it. Yet it's one of the great memoirs of all time, full of bawdy sex, wonderful portraits of people and hilarious anecdotes. The first section (volume) was

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Fuseli's 'The Nightmare'

Henry Fuseli, like la Charpillon, was Swiss-born but he moved to London in 1765, well after Casanova's escapades there. Perhaps this painting neatly captures the Charpillon point of view: Casanova as some incubus sitting on her chest. Of course there's a horse in the room too.

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Goya

Goya as a Spanish Casanova They were contemporaries after all... When Goya painted his infamous La maja desnuda ("The Nude Maja") between 1798 and 1800, it would get him in trouble with the Inquisition (in 1815). Though this is his only erotic painting, it reveals the man as

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'I Modi: the Sixteen Pleasures'

Casanova's and Venice's libertinism did not emerge from a vacuum. I Modi (aka "The Positions") is a notorious book of erotica that became famous in 16th century Italy, as much for being banned as for its racy content. After the Church destroyed early versions

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Ireland's The Jealous Wall

The Jealous Wall or Jealousy Wall (shown below), is to be found at Belvedere House and Gardens south of Mullingar in central Ireland. It was built around 1760 by an Anglo-Irish monster straight out of a Gothic novel. That monster was one Robert Rochfort, the influential Earl of Belvedere, who

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Jacques-Louis David's 'The Death of Socrates'

Casanova was fascinated by the Elixir of Life. Did Socrates get there first? Did he drink the hemlock not to die but to achieve immortality and he had failed? Here he is, reaching for the hemlock... Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Socrates (1787).

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Jean-Honoré Fragonard's 'The Swing'

18th century pleasures in the park, as he looks up her dress and she knows it, and the unwitting husband is at the back pushing the swing. This is Fragonard's famous The Swing. In French it is known by the more evocative Les Hasards heureux de l'

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Orgies English Style

The man who best captured the spirit of British orgies in the late 18th and early 19th century was Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) and he seems to have had the experiences to draw on. A keen satirist, he was a good match as an illustrator of books by Henry Fielding, Oliver

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Punch and Judy Shows

The physical fights between Casanova and La Charpillon resemble Punch and Judy shows. Mister Punch - very much a British character - possibly is derived from Pulcinella, a stock character in the fabulous Italian commedia dell'arte that Casanova knew well. An early Wikipedia description of him is quoted

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Statue in London of John Wilkes

It even preserves Wilkes' squint! There are many stories about Wilkes - his libertinism, his political agitating, his ability to offend everyone, and his wit. When the Earl of Sandwich told him he would die either on the scaffold or of the pox, Wilkes replied: "That must depend

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The Bridge of Sighs

A view from the Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Sospiri) in Venice, apparently the last view a convict would have as he entered the Leads Prison. Casanova became famous as the only man to escape from it. Byron gave the bridge its name: “I stood in Venice, on the Bridge

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The Castle of Dux today

Dux (German name) is now Duchcov in the Czech Republic, near the German border. Casanova was librarian there for 13 years until his death in 1798. This is a portrait of Casanova in the library... Not really. This is The Bookworm by German painter Carl Spitzweg (1850).

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The Count of Saint Germain

The Count of Saint Germain was in London in 1760 and it was there he lost the Elixir of Life to the courtesan la Charpillon, or so the theory goes. Casanova encountered the Count later that year in Switzerland and learned what had happened. Casanova determined to prise it from