Casanova

Fülszöveg

Casanova
John SMasters
The real fascination of the career of Giacomo Casanova is often overlooked by those who know him only for his sexual exploits. "Great lover" he was; but he was alsó much more. The bastard son of Veneüan actors, he rose to consort with scholars and eardinals, kings and noble-men; and he wrote one of the liveliest autobiographies of all time. He was lawyer, churchman, gambler, Freemason, musi-cian, impresario, confidence trickster, master of all situations and victim of most. He was one of the most colorful and versatile figures - indeed the arehetypal personality - of the eighteenth century.
The distinguished writer, John Masters, author of Bhowani Junction, Nightrunners of Bengal and Bugles and a Tiger, has made a special study of Casanova's life and times. In this book he recounts Casanova's ex-traordinary exploits with great narrative skill, candor and racy humor, and offers somé new insights into his powerful and complex personality. Here is a... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Casanova
John SMasters
The real fascination of the career of Giacomo Casanova is often overlooked by those who know him only for his sexual exploits. "Great lover" he was; but he was alsó much more. The bastard son of Veneüan actors, he rose to consort with scholars and eardinals, kings and noble-men; and he wrote one of the liveliest autobiographies of all time. He was lawyer, churchman, gambler, Freemason, musi-cian, impresario, confidence trickster, master of all situations and victim of most. He was one of the most colorful and versatile figures - indeed the arehetypal personality - of the eighteenth century.
The distinguished writer, John Masters, author of Bhowani Junction, Nightrunners of Bengal and Bugles and a Tiger, has made a special study of Casanova's life and times. In this book he recounts Casanova's ex-traordinary exploits with great narrative skill, candor and racy humor, and offers somé new insights into his powerful and complex personality. Here is a revealing portrayal of Casanova's forthright honesty and his tantalizing secrecies, his frauds, his bisexual loves, his feats of courage and ingenuity, and his unceasing travels, which traced and retraced the roads of Europe in a never-ending quest for a certain generous splendor of living, seen by but denied to the actors' brat, briefly enjoyed by the mature man in the full flower of his rascally genius, and again denied to the old Casanova, dying in a lonely castle in Bohemia - a pensioned librarian.
There are superb adventures, excitingly told, such as the famous escape over the rooftops from prison in Venice, and many passages of high comedy, such as the cabalistic frauds upon the elderly widow who yearned to be reborn as a boy. In teliing Casanova's life story as objectively and accurately as the known facts permit John Masters's portrait reveals the great lover as a man who illustrates the violent social and morál contrasts of his time.
The narrative is most vividly illustrated with contemporary portraits, prints and specially commissioned photographs of particular scenes which have remained virtually unchanged since Casanova's time. With 48 pages ofcolor plates and more than 130 other illustrations, this is the most exhaustively illustrated biography of Casanova ever published.
4.8 pages of color plates 134 black and white illustrations Vissza