Casanova: Inscriptions of Forgetting

Abstract

My interest here is in producing a ‘feminine’ reading of Casanova.¹ This is not to deny the importance of critical writing to date, which has largely been the work of men,² but a woman is less likely to subscribe to the Casanova myth, with all the unsaid things that it entails about notions of sexual identity and even of authenticity. I am thinking here of a remark made by Stefan Zweig: ‘No man who is truly a man can read Casanova’s memoirs without feeling envious’ (1992, p. 208). Even more explicit in this regard is the declaration made by Octave Uzanne at the outset of the critical, historical, illustrated edition of Casanova’s memoirs published by the Éditions de La Sirène between 1924 and 1934, each volume of which was feverishly awaited by devotees of Casanova:

Besides, Casanova seems to women readers a creature of fable. Can such a superman really exist? He appears to them like a sex-obsessed version of the Marquis de Crack, a thoroughgoing liar, a boastful, unbearable coxcomb. They find his memoirs unreadable … It is patent that women readers of whatever class, when confronted with the work of the Venitian Don Juan, whether they be cultivated or uneducated, young workers or old dowagers, primly bourgeois or women of the world, ingenues or perverse courtesans, all seem to consider that our dear Casanova is irritating, boring, soporific. Reading the memoirs, according to our masculine scale of values, which is quite other than that of women, gives us a lofty idea of the dynamogenic power that allowed this man to lead such a vagabond life of passion. We admire him, and for good reason. (1924, pp. 1–li)