Procrastination
Apr. 27th, 2003 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaSpent this morning reading the memoirs of Casanova, when I should have been doing my taxes, purging house of cat hair on behalf of allergic houseguests, and all the other things that sensible, orderly people do in order to keep Chaos at bay.
Very amusing fellow, Casanova. I like his voice, which is good-humored and tolerant, not salacious. It is an Enlightenment voice: a bit self-indulgent, and charmingly prone to laugh at the memory of his exploits. I like a rake with a sense of humor.
Here is how he managed to get himself disowned by his patron:
...I found myself alone with Teresa, whom I rather admired, though I had never made love to her. We were sitting down at a table very near each other, with our backs to the door of the room in which we thought our patron fast asleep, and somehow or other we took a fancy to examine into the difference of conformation between a girl and a boy; but at the most interesting part of our study a violent blow on my shoulders from a stick ... compelled us to abandon our interesting investigation unfinished. I ran off without hat or cloak and went home; but the old housekeeper of the senator brought my clothes with a letter which contained a command never to present myself again at the mansion of his excellency. I immediately wrote him my answer: "You have struck me while you were a slave of your anger; you cannot therefore boast of having given me a lesson, and I have not yet learned anything. To forgive you I must forget that you are a man of great wisdome, and I can never forget it."
Here he is, in garrison prison in Venice (for selling his mother's furniture to raise money for himself):
On the second of April, the fatal anniversary of my first appearance in this world, as I was getting up in the morning, I received in my room the visit of a very handsome Greek woman, who told me that her husband, then an ensign in the regiment, had every right to claim the rank of lieutenant, were it not for the opposition of his captain who was against him, because she had refused him certain favours which she could bestow only on her husband. She [could not write, but] begged me to write a petition [on his behalf] ... adding that she could only offer me her heart in payment. I answered that her heart ought not to go alone; I acted as I had spoken, and I met with no other resistance than the objection which a pretty woman is alwayssure to feign for the sake of appearance. After that, I told her to come back at noon, and that the petition would be ready. She was exact to the appointment, and very kindly rewarded me a second time; and in the evening, under pretence of some alterations to be made in the petition, she afforded an excellent opportunity of reaping a third recompense.
But alas! The path of pleasure is not strewn only with roses! On the third day, I found out, much to my dismay, that a serpent had been hid under the flowers. Six weeks of care and of rigid diet reestablished my health.
When I met the handsome Greek again, I was foolish enough to reproach her for the present she had bestowed upon me, but she baffled me by laughing, and saying that she had only offered me what she possessed...
So there I am, reading along serenely, doing the coffee-and-oranges-in-a-sunny-chair sort of Sunday morning thing, when I get to the scene in the all-boys religious seminary where our hero has been placed for his further education. Things Happen in the dorms. Well, no surprise, really, but Casanova?? Casanova swings both ways? The archetype of the male predator of women! The model for Don Juan, for heaven's sake.
Nothing is sacred. Hee.
Either that or the 18th century was a lot more Enlightened than all that Age of Absolutism stuff would lead us to believe. Perhaps those frilly shirts and periwigs were Not Just a Style Thing after all. Entirely possible, given what as I have just been reading about Handel. Whew. Who knew?
The past is a very immoral, very shocking place. *mops fevered brow*
Must really go do taxes, the more so as they owe me money, for once. But after that, am planning more slash Beowulf or else slash version of Tennyson's "In Memoriam." It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.
Very amusing fellow, Casanova. I like his voice, which is good-humored and tolerant, not salacious. It is an Enlightenment voice: a bit self-indulgent, and charmingly prone to laugh at the memory of his exploits. I like a rake with a sense of humor.
Here is how he managed to get himself disowned by his patron:
...I found myself alone with Teresa, whom I rather admired, though I had never made love to her. We were sitting down at a table very near each other, with our backs to the door of the room in which we thought our patron fast asleep, and somehow or other we took a fancy to examine into the difference of conformation between a girl and a boy; but at the most interesting part of our study a violent blow on my shoulders from a stick ... compelled us to abandon our interesting investigation unfinished. I ran off without hat or cloak and went home; but the old housekeeper of the senator brought my clothes with a letter which contained a command never to present myself again at the mansion of his excellency. I immediately wrote him my answer: "You have struck me while you were a slave of your anger; you cannot therefore boast of having given me a lesson, and I have not yet learned anything. To forgive you I must forget that you are a man of great wisdome, and I can never forget it."
Here he is, in garrison prison in Venice (for selling his mother's furniture to raise money for himself):
On the second of April, the fatal anniversary of my first appearance in this world, as I was getting up in the morning, I received in my room the visit of a very handsome Greek woman, who told me that her husband, then an ensign in the regiment, had every right to claim the rank of lieutenant, were it not for the opposition of his captain who was against him, because she had refused him certain favours which she could bestow only on her husband. She [could not write, but] begged me to write a petition [on his behalf] ... adding that she could only offer me her heart in payment. I answered that her heart ought not to go alone; I acted as I had spoken, and I met with no other resistance than the objection which a pretty woman is alwayssure to feign for the sake of appearance. After that, I told her to come back at noon, and that the petition would be ready. She was exact to the appointment, and very kindly rewarded me a second time; and in the evening, under pretence of some alterations to be made in the petition, she afforded an excellent opportunity of reaping a third recompense.
But alas! The path of pleasure is not strewn only with roses! On the third day, I found out, much to my dismay, that a serpent had been hid under the flowers. Six weeks of care and of rigid diet reestablished my health.
When I met the handsome Greek again, I was foolish enough to reproach her for the present she had bestowed upon me, but she baffled me by laughing, and saying that she had only offered me what she possessed...
So there I am, reading along serenely, doing the coffee-and-oranges-in-a-sunny-chair sort of Sunday morning thing, when I get to the scene in the all-boys religious seminary where our hero has been placed for his further education. Things Happen in the dorms. Well, no surprise, really, but Casanova?? Casanova swings both ways? The archetype of the male predator of women! The model for Don Juan, for heaven's sake.
Nothing is sacred. Hee.
Either that or the 18th century was a lot more Enlightened than all that Age of Absolutism stuff would lead us to believe. Perhaps those frilly shirts and periwigs were Not Just a Style Thing after all. Entirely possible, given what as I have just been reading about Handel. Whew. Who knew?
The past is a very immoral, very shocking place. *mops fevered brow*
Must really go do taxes, the more so as they owe me money, for once. But after that, am planning more slash Beowulf or else slash version of Tennyson's "In Memoriam." It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.
