Casanova's Return to Venice

Written in 1918 and usually translated as 'Casanova's Homecoming' (a title which better captures the tone of the story), this novella by Arthur Schnitzler is written in prose that, as the useful translator's note at the end states, is 'immaculate, lucid and elegant'.

The story is a simple one - Casanova is late middle-aged, no longer at the peak of his powers and finds himself in Mantua drawn back to his Venice after an enforced absence of over two decades and prepared to do almost anything to return home.

The rest of the story is a picture from within of an amoral individualist within an aristocratic 'shame culture' and prepared to do anything to meet his desires, even if they are waning and certainly not caring whether they are show more destructive.

The story grips as a psychological portrait until about two thirds of the way through when we are forcibly reminded that Schnitzler was primarily a dramatist and the plot becomes a theatrical strategem.

This strategem gets the story where the author wants it to be taken but it lessens the psychological tension and moves us into a literary formalism that loses us some what has been gained in the previous 120 pages.

The momentum is lost, the inner life of Casanova becomes that of any other wilful sociopath and the story ends somewhat peremptorily though not in a way that requires me to offer a spoiler.

Still, the novella is well worth reading for the early insights into the mentality of an aging sex-obsessive whose powers are waning and for superb story telling that engages us in the place and the time. show less

K-4

A sus 53 años, Casanova, casnsado ya de aventuras eróticas y de intrigas políticas, ve cercana la posibilidad de regresar a Venecia.