Comment by dragandj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragandj | Hacker News Reader

I read Casanova's memoirs in English translation, and the translation to my native language (the original is in French). I cannot recommend it enough. If you are interested, do NOT take an abridged publication (of which there are many), but the complete one: https://www.amazon.com/History-My-Life-Vols-1-2/dp/080185662... (the link is to vols 1-2 of 12).

It's about 3,000 pages written in a great style - very modern and fast paced. Not only Casanova was far from (only) a womanizer that the popular culture made of him, he was a man so ahead of it's time, that his memoirs are so full of wisdom that he would be an enlightened elite even today. He was a businessman, philosopher, con-man, adventurist, spy, politician, and, yes, a womanizer. But, above all this, a man with a very good reflection and understanding of the world, which we can enjoy reading his memoirs.

Agreed. I enjoyed getting a better idea of how people lived back in that era. Casanova, as he presents himself, was a perfect trickster archetype.

For example: He mentions being at a dinner where an actress lamented a lisp that would impede her career. Casanova told her he could cure her speech overnight. The next day, he presented her with a rewrite of the play she was performing, with all the difficult phonemes replaced so she'd her lisp wouldn't be noticed.

My main take away is that he's always trying to look at a situation, rationally see it for what it is, but also playfully imagine what it could be.

It looks like the Gutenberg Project's [0] English copy is the Arthur Machen translation from Jean Laforgue's hatchet job.

Still, it seems a wee bit ludicrous to be paying money for a work created over 300 years ago. Even the translations are still only derived works.

[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2981

The Gutenberg version is abridged, and the translation is also much worse than Trask. I do not consider $20 too much for a 800 page 2-volume book, very well typeset, with plenty of notes, and huge scholarly work put in it to make it accessible to the modern reader.

Trask's translation is wonderful. I think it was Goethe who pointed out the real value of Casanova's memoirs; it gives us a wonderful peek into what upper class life was like in his time.

I can't agree more. Take the time.

Is there a Kindle version?

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