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Casanova in Bolzano

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The life of writer Sandor Marai has all the elements of a dramatic novel, regrettably a tragic one. Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1900, he had established an enviable reputation in only 30-some years. His nobility, humanism and hatred for the Fascists earned him the enmity of Admiral Horthy's Hungarian regime and later the malevolence of the Communists who were to be in power. All copies of his books were destroyed, and his work was banned forever.

Disillusioned and in despair he left his beloved country, first to find sanctuary in Italy and then in the United States. In 1989 he took his own life never knowing of democracy's return to his native land. Some five years later three of his works were found in French translations. In 2001 we were privileged to have the first English translation of one of his novels, Embers. It was published to great acclaim, as I feel certain that Casanova in Bolzano will be received.

In an opening author's note Marai makes it clear that the only actual event in this story is Casanova's escape from an unspeakably horrid cell in Venice's ducal palace in 1796. What follows is totally fiction - ah, but what fiction it is.

With the assistance of a defrocked priest, Balbi, Casanova makes his way to an Italian village, Bolzano. Once there he demands and is given the finest rooms by an innkeeper who at first distrusts the pair because of their ragged appearances and lack of luggage. But Marai has given Casanova a silver tongue, one which commands, influences, and, of course, woos.

Bolzano is far from what most would consider a safe haven because some years before Casanova had dueled with the duke of Parma for the love of Francesca, then a 15-year-old girl. The Duke got the better of Casanova but did not take his life, rather making him promise never to see Francesca again.

Now, the duke is an old man and has come upon a note Francesca has written to her former lover asking to see him. She, too, has changed over the years. Married to the Duke she is no longer a susceptible teenager but a rather willful woman. Will the two meet?

Throughout his richly told tale Marai treats readers to painterly details and ruminations pertaining to the human condition - desire, honor, love, duty. Here is a novelist whose life was far too short, yet he speaks to us as if he were alive today. And his voice is sublime.

- Gail Cooke

The second Marai novel to be published in English by Knopf. If Embers was primarily about friendship, Casanova is primarily about love between man and woman. It is clear that Marai understood people better than most writers of the twentieth century, or in fact any that come to mind. From his writing, one assumes that Marai must have lived, really lived.

Casanova is Bolzano is not a young man's (or woman's) book. Its insights speak to those who have lived a good chunk of life already, exploring human ambition and disappointment, youth and age, celebrity and exile, and the complicated relationship of love and sex. It's a mature work from a mature writer.

It is also not a historical novel; it has precious little to say about the eighteenth century, or Italy, or even specific characters. The characters in Bolzano are not even "characters," as such-- in fact, the name "Casanova" does not appear once, outside of Marai's introduction (the original Hungarian title is "Vendégjáték Bolzanóban," which also does not mention "Casanova"). It's about people, archetypes.

How does it compare with Embers? It starts off a little more slowly (The NYTimes review called it, "a novel of exquisite slowness and refreshing oddity"), but quickly picks up for one classic Marai scene: two people in a room meeting again for the first time in years.

Who better to read this inspired story of Casanova than the acclaimed Simon Prebble? His English accent and rich tenor add immeasurably to a listener's pleasure. Combine these with his ability to inhabit all make of diverse characters within a single reading and you have an audio book head and shoulders above the rest.

In an opening author's note Marai makes it clear that the only actual event in this story is Casanova's escape from an unspeakably horrid cell in Venice's ducal palace in 1796. What follows is totally fiction - ah, but what fiction it is.

With the assistance of a defrocked priest, Balbi, Casanova makes his way to an Italian village, Bolzano. Once there he demands and is given the finest rooms by an innkeeper who at first distrusts the pair because of their ragged appearances and lack of luggage. But Marai has given Casanova a silver tongue, one which commands, influences, and, of course, woos.

Bolzano is far from what most would consider a safe haven because some years before Casanova had dueled with the duke of Parma for the love of Francesca, then a 15-year-old girl. The Duke got the better of Casanova but did not take his life, rather making him promise never to see Francesca again.

Now, the duke is an old man and has come upon a note Francesca has written to her former lover asking to see him. She, too, has changed over the years. Married to the Duke she is no longer a susceptible teenager but a rather willful woman. Will the two meet?

Throughout his richly told tale Marai treats us to painterly details and ruminations pertaining to the human condition - desire, honor, love, duty. Simon Prebble treats us to a superb reading.

- Gail Cooke

Venice, the 18th century: The days when Venice controlled trade by the sea are long over, and the city has descended into decadence. Carnivale, the annual event celebrated by Venetians, lasts half the year; the elite of Venetian society gamble and drink behind the anonymity of masks. In 1756, Venice was home to the infamous Casanova, a rake who lived the high life to the hilt. Born in obscurity, Casanova managed to befriend a duke and move himself through the ranks of Venetian society. Although not by accounts a physically attractive man, he captivated all kinds of women with his charm and flair.

With a kind of poetical language which is all his own, Sandor Marai wrote this practically perfect novel which attempts to recreate the period immediately following Casanova's escape from a Venetian prison, in which he hid out in a room in the ton of Bolzano on the mainland. A surprisingly passionate man, one tiny event or word from someone brings on a torrent of passionate words from the famous aristocrat, who is startlingly violent in his actions. After sixteen months in prison, Casanova is ready to enjoy the finer things of life, but finds that he has lost his touch. Marai, who wrote Casanova in Bolzano in the 1940's, gives a warm, sensual depth to descriptions as well as a finely-tuned insight into the subject of his narrative.

Going back and forth in time, Marai mixes the present with past memory, and reality with that which can't be touched. He recreates the day when Casanova fought in a duel with the Duke of Parma, five years before over a country girl, a woman he might have been in love with.

The paragraphs in this book are long, and there is quite a lot to take in; but this book is certainly worth the read.

Escaping in 1756, after sixteen months in a Venice jail, Giacomo Casanova, "all seven deadly sins in one accursed body," arrives in Bolzano, where the Doge and the Inquisition cannot reach him. Seeing himself as "that rare creature, a writer with a life to write about," he and a defrocked priest, Balbi, move into a hotel, not far from where the Duke of Parma and his young bride Francesca reside. Casanova was wounded by the duke in a duel over Francesca three years before and has promised never to see her again. When the Duke arrives at Casanova's hotel with a letter from Francesca, asking to see him, the stage is set for the action and a surprising ending.

This is the second of Hungarian author Marai's "lost masterpieces" to be "discovered" and published recently in English, and it bears some structural similarities to Embers, his previous novel. Like Embers, the action takes place largely in one room, where an assertive narrator comments on his life, his rationalizations for his actions, his beliefs, and his future. Observant of even the smallest details about people, the author is far more romantic in his descriptions here, as befits a novel about Casanova, piling up detail upon detail in a narrative which sounds, in places, almost like the grand chorus of an opera (with one incredible sentence consisting of over three hundred words).

As the author catalogues the response of the citizenry of Europe to news of Cazanova's escape, the glories and cruelties of Venice, the enthusiastic reaction of the citizens of Bolzano to the "surgeries" Casanova holds each afternoon to discuss love, and the details of Cazanova's life, he sets the scene for the action which takes place in the second half of the novel. The arrival of the Duke with Francesca's letter, his "deconstruction" of the letter, and the solution the duke proposes to Cazanova set up a morality tale in which Casanova must evaluate his life, his feelings for Francesca, and his definition of love.

Witty and delightful to read, the novel raises thoughtful questions about love and responsibility, but in its details it is not as fully integrated as Embers. The story seems overloaded with heavy descriptions in the first half, lacking the action and, more importantly, the characters' interactions which make the second half so enjoyable and the ironies of the ending so memorable. Mary Whipple

Just a note to add my enthusiastic review of this masterpiece to the others on view, and to point out the richness of George Szirtes' masterly translation. I can think of few books one can read, even in their original language, with this novel's extraordinary evocative power. In reading Casanova, as with Szirtes' other Marai translation, the earlier, lesser and far more youthful novel, The Rebels, I find myself reading half a page, then drifting off into a reverie the text has evoked, returning only when a timeless time has passed: it is as if Marai's extraordinary, passionate density of detail, and the interiority with which he invests it, play a Proustian trick on the reader--the text remains short and highly concentrated, while the reader performs his own feats of extensive Proustification. Bravissimo!

The translation of the excellent Embers, done from the German translation, cannot perform this trick, alas.

In a brief sojourn in Bolzano, Venice, on his way to Munich in 1756, Giacomo Casanova, stops to rest at a local inn. Newly escaped from Leads Prison with Balbi, a defrocked priest, Casanova employs his considerable powers of persuasion to elicit lodging and all manner of material goods to make his stay more palatable. Ensconced in his rooms, word spreads that this master of the secrets of love is entertaining paying guests, offering advice and observations to help others unravel the thorny knots of their relationships and romantic liaisons. For a few coins, Casanova dispenses his invaluable wisdom, waiting for his fate to play out.

Also residing in Balzano at the time are the Duke of Parma and his wife, Francesca. Casanova and Parma have dueled over this woman in the past, Casanova vanquished, never to see his love again. Suddenly, the duke arrives with an unexpected proposition for the banished lover; Casanova is faced with a conundrum that requires him to examine the complicated tentacles of his attachment to Francesca and the nature of love as he perceives it. In flowing prose that evokes both time and place, Casanova embarks upon a personal narrative, musing on every aspect of his emotional attachment to Francesca and a dialog with both the Duke of Parma and the very wise object of his affections, who knows her lover better than he knows himself.

The Inquisition looms large in Casanova's past and possibly his future, should he tarry too long in Bolzano, the duke's reach extensive and pervasive. The reputed lover's flight from Leads is a boon to the gossiping citizens, who follow his progress with enthusiasm and attend his surgeries seeking advice. But even the Inquisition pales beneath the force of Francesca's declaration of love and the clarity of her intent. Francesca's soliloquy makes a mockery of Casanova's obfuscations in denial of truth, an expose more deadly than the sharp point of his dagger. Brought together through the duke's machinations, the lovers engage in a truly memorable encounter. This remarkable feast of wit and the vagaries of love is a fine exercise in the illogic of reason when applied to romance, obsession and the indulgence of grand passion. Luan Gaines/ 2006.

First published in Hungary in 1940, this is the first English publcation of this novel.

The story is an erotic telling of the story of Giacomo Casanova after his escape from Venice's most infamous jail. He goes to Bolzano to rebuild his life and to resume his life of seduction. He picks Bolzano because of his history with the place and this particular lady. The story picks up when her husband, the elderly duke ....

Well you can guess the story from there. It marks the second novel of Sandai Marai that's in print. It also makes you wonder what other great novels were printed in a time, place and language waiting to be rediscovered.

If a book is new to me, I tend to skip the intros, whether the translator's, author's or critic's. I picked CAZANOVA up based on a review I scanned, without reading closely. So it wasn't until near the end of it that I realized "this cannot be a contemporary novel". One of its characters--and a remarkable one--espoused as fine and powerful a description of true romantic love as exists in literature, I felt. The sad thing was, in reading it, I knew this was a dated novel. That notion of romantic love was in that "fine and private place/where none I fear do embrace", as far as I could tell.

This novel is about love. In a sense, it makes a lovely headstone for the notion of romantic love.

After his escape out of a Venetian prison, Giacomo Casanova, the main character in this novel (I highly recommend his `real' autobiography) arrives in Bolzano for a rest. He unexpectedly meets his former opponent-duelist, the Duke of Parma, who married a young girl, Francesca, when she was in love (she still is) with Casanova.
The Duke forces the latter to meet Francesca again for one night and a last confrontation.

Casanova is `a sworn enemy of virtue and morality'. He is the incarnation of the unbridled sexual instinct looking for conquest after conquest: `A flame that burns but cannot warm. Only the thrill of seduction. You are doomed never to be satisfied.' For him, `love is too much'.
The Duke of Parma `lived by violence and will die in vanity.' He had the power to force Francesca to marry him.
Both consider Francesca as merchandise, whereupon a deal can be made. She has a price.
But Francesca responds: `I am life'. Francesca is the incarnation of love: `Love is life'.

However, for Sándor Márai, true love is not from this world.

This novel starts very slowly. The monologues are sometimes too long and not without some melodramatic effects. But it is a very worth-while read.