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Casanova's Homecoming

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Arthur Schnitzler is today a fairly obscure Austrian novelist and playwright of the early 1900's. He's received some attention recently because his novella "Dream Story" inspired Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut". ("Dream Story" is also excellent and can help you understand the movie.) "Casanova's Homecoming", if you can find a copy, is well worth reading--compact, simply told, carefully plotted, thoroughly thought-provoking. It relates a fictitious episode in Casanova's life when he has become an old man of 53. Most of his charm and all of his money are gone, but his cravings and amorality remain. Quite by chance, he comes to visit the home of an old acquaintance who is much indebted to him, and immediately sets out upon a dark seduction. It is a story about growing old, about how one's struggle to remain young can become pathetic and ugly even when it succeeds. Schnitzler likes to write about sex, dreams, coincidence, free-thinking, and deep mysteries of the soul--"Casanova's Homecoming" gets you thinking about all these themes, mainly because it's very hard to ascertain Schnitzler's attitude toward Casanova--does he like him? Loathe him? Pity him? Does he have any feeling toward him at all? After reading this, you may find yourself asking many such questions. This may have been the author's intent: his writing seems designed to provoke questions rather than provide answers. He does it well!