Casanova in Bolzano

Rating:
Summary: A RICH, COMPELLING STORY
Review:


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

Rating:
Summary: "Ladies of Bolzano! Go into town and declare that I am here"
Review: 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


Rating:
Summary: A Rare Find
Review: 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.


Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: 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.