Casanova

Definition

1. Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt (1725-1798). An Italian adventurer, traveller, diplomat, historian, mathematician, chemist, composer, playwright, and author of 12 volumes of Memoirs written when he was forty-nine. Histoire de ma vie runs 4,545 pages and covers his sex life only up to the summer of 1774. Although a compulsive seducer of women fearful of emotional commitment, Casanova, unlike the fictitional Don Juan, was not sexually exploitive; he approached his relations with women with an emotional and spiritual intimacy. Casanova was an intellectual associate of James Boswell, Benjamin Franklin, Goethe, Frederick the Great, Voltaire and d'Alembert.

Quote: Casanova. History of my Life . Translation by William R. Trask (1966) Preface:

(1) First line: ' I begin by declaring to my reader that, by everything good or bad that I have done throughout my life, I am sure that I have earned merit or incurred guilt, and that hence I must consider myself a free agent.'

(2) ' Though man is free, he must not believe that he is free to do whatever he pleases. He becones a slave as soon as he decides to act when he is moved by some passion. Nisi paret imperat ('Unless it obeys, it commands.' Horace). He who has the strength to defer acting until he is calm again is the wise man. Such a being is rare.'

(3) Last line: ' For my part, since I have always admitted that I was the chief cause of all the misfortunes which have befallen me, I have rejoiced in my ability to be my own pupil, and in my duty to love my teacher.'

2. Or: casanova / a proper Casanova , a real ladies' man, a great lover, a skilled seducer of many women, especially one who brags about his female conquests. See ladies' man and philanderer for synonyms.

3. A promiscuous man who seduces women to inflate his ego.

4. He's no Casanova , not the lover type.