Et tu, Casanova BOOKS
SIMON RAVEN
Some years ago, G. P. Putnam's Sons of New York and Elek Books of London combined to put out in several volumes 'the first com- plete and unabridged English translation,' by Arthur Machen, of The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt. Now, however, we have just been presented with volumes one and two (two volumes in one) of Casanova's History of My Life, 'First Translated into English in Accordance with the Original French Manu- script' by Willard R. Trask (Longmans 50s). The rest of Mr Trask's translation will follow later.
What it amounts to, then, is that the Trask translation is disputing the claims of Arthur Machen's to be the first full and genuine ver- sion. Which claim, one asks onself, is the true one? And anyhow, what is the difference be- tween the two texts—is it any more than a mere matter of pedantic niggling? Is there any good reason, in fact, why an owner of the Machen edition should be at the expense of Trask?
So let us go right back to the beginning and sort it all out from there. Giacomo Casanova, a Venetian by birth and taste, decided in his bored and lonely old age to compile his Memoirs—in French. He chose the latter tongue, despite the 'richness, beauty and energy' of his own Italian, because 'the French language is now more widely known than mine' and he was anxious for swift recognition. But soon after preliminary negotiations with a possible publisher bad come to nothing, Casanova was dead, at the age of seventy-three.
He died in 1798. The Memoirs then dis- appear from sight until 1821, when F. A. Brockhaus, founder of a publishing firm which still bears his name, bought the manuscript from a grandson of Casanova's younger sister. Over the next seven or eight years Brockhaus put out a (heavily bowdlerised) German trans- lation; but when he found that this was being pirated and retranslated back into French, he decided to issue the genuine French original However, the prudery of the day required that this, like his German edition, should be severely edited, a task which was given to Jean Laforgue, Professor of French at the Univer- sity of Dresden.
Laforgue made many changes and from a variety of motives. To begin With, he removed or corrected Casanova's grammatical boobs and his 'Italianisms and Latinisms.' So far, so good. Secondly, however, Laforgue felt called upon, as an anti-clerical and child of the revolution, to alter Casanova's work in the interest of progressive propaganda; so that whenever Casa- nova, a Christian and a Monarchist however wayward, wrote e.g. of the Roman Catholic Church, Laforgue was apt to add whole sen- tences of his own in mockery or denigration. But although Laforgue disliked Casanova's politics and religion, he apparently had •a touching desire to protect his author's moral character, to explain and excuse him. To this end fie interpolated little phrases indicating goodwill and virtuous intent where these did not obtain, and often shifted the emphasis of the text in order to make out that this or that deplorable occurrence was either accidental or somebody else's fault.
It was from this text of Laforgue's that Arthur Machen made his supposedly 'com- plete' translation; and the full extent of Laforgue's dishonesty and depredation only became generally realised when the modern firm of Brockhaus at last decided to issue the Edition Integrate of the original as written by Casanova, with no emendations whatever other than the unavoidable ones inflicted on the manuscript by time and chance, which had lopped off occasional chapters. Thus the Edition Integrale (twelve volumes in six, Wies- baden and Paris, F. A. Brockhaus and Librairie Plon, 1960-62) contains the first honest text to be published in any language; and since it is from this that Willard R. Trask's new translation has been made, Mr Trask and Messrs Longman can fairly claim to have pro- vided the first really trustworthy edition in English.
Now, I have already said a good deal about the deficiencies of the Laforgue edition and therefore, by obvious extension, about those of the version which Machen made from it; but in any comparison between this and the Trask version there are two further and very important points to be made.
In the first place, Machen's English is much the more vigorous and fluent. The result is that Machen's narrative, even while suffering from Laforgue's evasions and qualifications, is far more readable and entertaining than Trask's (though we must remember, of course, that so far we have only volumes one and two of Trask, who may improve).
Very well, you may say; not much point at the moment in buying Trask. But—and here is the second vital point in the comparison—Trask does have one enormous advantage: his Casa- nova omits absolutely nothing at all. The Laforgue/Machen text, not content with soften- ing obscenities and imposing hypocrisies, draws a definite line beyond which suppression is total: Mr Trask, on the other hand, has a hero and narrator who is not only wholly genuine in his attitudes (such as they are) but is also unabashed in his candour, let his conduct have been never so criminal or degrading.
Consider the following passage from Machen: 'We entered [the summerhouse], we went to the window, and . . . we saw three nymphs who, now swimming, now standing or sitting on the marble steps, offered themselves to our eyes in every possible position, and in all the attitudes of graceful voluptuousness. Dear reader, I must not paint in too vivid colours the details of that beautiful picture . .
Nor does he; in the Machen version the scene ends there. With Trask, however, we con- tinue as follows : 'This charming spectacle could• not fail to set me on fire at once, and Ismail, faint with delight, not only convinced me that I should not restrain myself but encouraged me to sur- render . . . [and make] the best of the object beside me to extinguish the flame kindled by the three sirens. . . Ismail triumphed when he found that his proximity condemned him to take the place of the distant object to which I could not attain. I also had to submit to his taking turnabout. It would have been im- polite in me to refuse. . .
What further new scenes Mr Trask has in store for us in future volumes is a nice matter for conjecture. Meanwhile, however, it is very pertinent and instructive for all Casanova fans .(among whom I number myself) to ask them- selves this question: when all in Ismail's summerhouse has been said and done, and when all the other fresh examples of bigger and bumper grossnesses in volumes one and two have been taken into account, does the Trask version in fact reveal a Casanova who is in any way radically different from the old one presented by Machen? The answer, on per- formance so far, is (very tentatively) 'no'; for although the Ismail incident is rather an eye- opener, there have always been strong hints, even in the Machen version, that Casanova was not at all averse to dallying with his own sex when it was the only one immediately to hand. That Casanova should now . be shown as overtly bisexual need therefore surprise nobody.
A more important change of opinion about Casanova that could result from Mr Trask's translation is that he may now appear some- what less silly and vain, less concerned with face or 'bella figura,' than one had previously thought. He remains, to be sure, a squalid and ridiculous popinjay by any standard—with his fourth-form randiness, his windy proclamations of passion, his ludicrously inefficient essays in spying or cheating at cards; but at least there is now far less in the way of whining self-justifica- tion and far fewer blowsy exhibitions of fake moral remorse. In short, Laforgue's attempts to make Casanova out a better person only made him look even nastier and more absurd, whereas the Trask translation in its frankness does much to rehabilitate him, despite the • production of hitherto undreamed of sexual tableaux.
Or so it seems to me on the strength of Mr Trask's first two volumes. These cover Casa- nova's birth and. education, his brief and hilarious career in the Church, some cox- combical campaigning in Corfu as an officer in the Venetian army, a visit to Constantinople (where the Ismail affair took place), an inter- lude as a common fiddler, promotion to faVourite in a Venetian nobleman's household, and his subsequent departure from Venice under a whole skyful of ripe clouds. Although there are longueurs (particularly in the dia- logue) which Mr Trask's style does nothing to reduce, by and large the story is blithe and brisk, and much improved, for the reasons I have given, by the adoption at long last or the old horror's pristine and unexpurgated text.
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