Knave

CASANOVA--S. Guy Endore--John Day ($5).

On April 2, 1725, in Venice, was born Giacomo Giralamo Casanova, possibly a bastard, probably a most consummate liar, certainly a very exceptional rogue. His father, Gaetan, was ''amorous, but without means;" his mother, Zanetta, an actress, no better than she should have been. Young Casanova's propensities, thus honestly acquired, were opportunist, not to say immoral, and he followed his bent. When he was 72, he wrote his famed Memoirs, The Story of My Life Until the Year 1797.

The young Giacomo was clever, and when the opportunity of a priestly career fell in his way he seized it, extracted from it its advantages of education, social prestige, training in worldly affairs, then went his own picaresque way down the primrose path. At 18 he had already tasted jail because of a "dormitory scandal." Sent on a mission to Constantinople, he became emperor of the island of Corfu, returned to Venice as a gentleman of leisure, enjoyed a nun as his mistress, ran foul of the authorities for selling books on sorcery and was imprisoned in the "Leads" (il Piombi), famed Venetian jail so called because it was in the garret of the Ducal Palace, whose roof was covered with sheets of lead. Eventually he escaped, with the help of a fellow-prisoner, by cutting a hole in the roof, then clambering down and into a window of the palace. He wandered to Paris, London, Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Barcelona, always getting in trouble sooner or later over gambling, women, or trickery. In Vienna he was arrested by the Chastity Commissioners; in Paris he ran a state lottery; in Warsaw he fought a duel with Count Branicki; in Rome he was decorated by the Pope; in Switzerland he spent a week with Voltaire; in Berlin he was offered a mastership in a boys' school by Frederick the Great. When he was finally allowed to return to Venice, his money gone and credit dwindling, he became a spy for the Inquisition; congenitally unable to toe the line, he got into hot water with his holy employers and had to leave Venice once more. Thence his decline was rapid: still a spy (though now on a commission basis, no longer salaried), he fell even lower, and died an obscure literary hack, "prolific writer of forgotten novels, libellous pamphlets, histories, poems, biographies and mathematical works."

Casanova was an imposing figure over six feet tall: "satiric, satanic, sensuous. An ugly man, swarthy, hawklike, with beady eyes . . . thin elongated nose." A charlatan, cardsharp, liar, forger, adulterer, seducer, jailbird, he was still a "student of humanities . . . connoisseur of the arts and sciences, philosopher, dramatist and poet." A worldly man, with few illusions, Casanova had some profound convictions. "It was one of his staunchest beliefs, one that he retained to his dying day, that lack of sexual expression is followed by a mortal illness." Though his memoirs are never wholly to be believed, the two adventures of which he was proudest (the escape from the Leads and the duel with Branicki) seem to have been authentic. Author S. Guy Endore bases his account of Casanova on the Memoirs, then takes the wind out of his hero's sails by pointing out, at the end of each chapter, the biggest whoppers. But Author Endore, a good Casanovist, is a sympathetic interpreter. This is the first of his books. He has translated from the German Franz Blei's Fascinating Women, Hans Heinz Ewers' Alraune (TIME, Nov. 25).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.