He roamed the vast and changeable universe of 18th-century Europe, a world of dazzling brilliance and shadowy darkness in which countesses and impostors, pimps and princes, soldiers and scholars, priests and actresses, ambassadors and courtesans all crossed paths in the blind pursuit of pleasure, fortune, and knowledge. And as he lived a life richer and stranger than most fictions, the story of his own adventures is naturally the most compelling of those he has to tell. Seducer, gambler, necromancer, swindler, Good Samaritan, spy, swashbuckler, self-made gentleman, entrepreneur, wit, poet, translator, philosopher and general bon vivant, Giacomo Casanova was not only the most notorious lover the Western world has known, but also a storyteller of the first order.

Your response is extraordinary because you know neither the subject nor how to write verse.Download The Story of My Life Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle Let’s go to bed now and speak no more of it. Later that evening, the priest charged with looking after him told him it was a pity that he could not publish the couplet or Casanova’s response. “It was,” he says, “my first literary exploit, and I can say that it was from this moment that my love of the glory conferred upon literature began to germinate, for the applause brought me to the pinnacle of happiness.” In English: “It’s because the slave always bears the name of his master.” In English: “Tell us, grammarians, why cunnus (vulva) is masculine and mentula (penis) is feminine.”Ĭasanova announced that, rather than just translating the phrase, he would prefer to answer the question. An Englishman, who was communicating with the Italians in Latin, which the educated were able to do in the Enlightenment era, wrote down a couplet for young Casanova to read:ĭiscite grammatici cur mascula nomina cunnus/Et cur femineum mentula nomen habet. If you’re trying to figure out why, I leave, for the time being, the subtlest of hints here.)Ĭasanova was in his home town of Venice, with a group of people having supper. (And yes, this is part of the bibliography for my book. I’m reading The Story of My Life by Giacomo Casanova and arrive at the following event, which took place when the boy was eleven years old.

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