Resumo de Casanova - History Of My Life - Giacomo Girolamo Casanova

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was born in 1725 in Venice. He is universally known for his ability to seduce and conquer many a woman's heart. According to his autobiography Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life) he slept with 122 women during his lifetime.

His parents, both actors, wanted him to become a priest, but their hopes were dashed when, at sixteen, he was expelled from the seminary for immoral misconduct. Drinking and love affairs ended his plans to become a priest, but he never gave up his belief in the existence of an immortal God. "What assumes me that I have never doubted Him is that I have always counted on His providence, turning to Him through the medium of prayer in all my moments of distress, and finding my entreaties always answered.? He received a good education, and showed early extraordinary cleverness.

Although Casanova took the role of businessman, diplomat, spy, politician, philosopher, magician, and writer, with over 20 books and several plays credited to his name (including a translation of the Iliad and a history of Poland ? "Istoria della turbolenze della Polonia") ? most of which were generally admired ? for the greater part of his life he was a stranger to work, living largely on his luck, social charm, and the money freely given to him by others. Few who gave him money regretted it.
Casanova enjoyed good health until very late in life - he was five feet nine inches and he had a very dark skin. He contracted his first venereal disease in adolescence and the pox, gonorrhea,' and other venereal diseases marked different periods of his life.

Casanova met in 1749 his great love, the young and mysterious Frenchwoman, Henriette, in Cesena. "People who believe that a woman is not enough to make a man equally happy all the twenty-four hours of a day have never known an Henriette." Henriette left him, returned to his family, and Casanova remembers it in his autobiography as one of the saddest moments in his life. "What is love?" he asked, and compared love to an incurable illness and divine monster.

Casanova is often associated with Don Juan because both of them seduced many women but Casanova is in fact very different from him. While Don Juan is a legend, Casanova is an historical character. Unlike Don Juan, Casanova genuinely loved the women he seduced, often remaining friends with them long after their affair ended.
One of the reasons for Casanova's success as a lover was that he, unlike most eighteenth-century men, paid a great deal of attention to the other gender's pleasure as much as he did his own. He was very modern in his thinking believing that man and women are equal, something unusual in that time. He was bisexual, and had sexual relations with at least four men.
Even if he is known only as a great lover, Casanova was recognized by his contemporaries as an extraordinary person. Prince Charles de Ligne, a great Austrian statesman who knew most of the prominent individuals of the age, thought that Casanova was the most interesting man he had ever met and said of him, "there is nothing in the world of which he is not capable". Count Lamberg wrote that he knew "few persons who can equal him in the range of knowledge and, in general, of his intelligence and imagination".

Histoire de ma vie (Story of my Life) is the autobiography book of Casanova. The book (was wrote in french language) comprises 12 volumes and approximately 3500 pages, covering Casanovas life from his birth to 1774. It is really a great book, beautifully wrote in narratory style with a lot of insight of how the life was then in the 18th century. It is not a novel, Casanova didn?t write about the life of an illustrious character, he wrote about a true character, true facts.
Casanova dies at Dux on 4 June, 1798. According to the Prince de Ligne, his last words are: "I have lived as a philosopdie as a Christian.?

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