I ain't no Casanova

I watched Casanova last night. Heath Ledger, Eris rest his soul, was in fine form there. portaying the greatest lover in the world as one who was simply looking for love in all the wrong places.

The real >Casanova was, apparently, not the libertine we imagine him to be. Guys tend to think of him as the ultimate stud, loving and leaving them. breaking hearts, and cuckolding husbands. He was a man in love with women, searching for that special someone - falling in love with strong women, ones who could take him on as an equal. Women who actually were strong enough to rise above the restrictions imposed on them by the society of the time.

So he had a lot of lovers, but possibly not as many as some people today. His multi-decade career gave him only 200 notches on his bedpost. This in an era when cuckoldry and seduction were not only socially acceptable, but were raised to a fine art. His exploits would possibly have been mundane even for that time period, if it weren't for the fact that he ended up as a librarian at the end of his life, and actually had the time to write his memoirs. What can be seen on reading them, is that in his life, he was the conquest at least as often as he was the conqueror, the victim almost as often as he was the hunter.

So what, does this have to do with me? Anyone who knows me can tell you. I ain't no Casanova. I may have some small successes, but I am not good enough to pull like he did. I'm simply not that good. But he and I have one thing in common. All we want is to be loved. it was the desire to be loved that led him on his way, and that. I think is the defining characteristic of the man. That he would do things that are stupid, and downright self-destructive in search of true love.

So why does Giacomo Casanova affect me so much? Maybe it's the difference between the man and the myth. The first time I read the Memoirs was a 1970's era book. A highly abridged version that cut out all the real bits and focused on the good bits. It was a sex-book masquerading as literature (not that there's anything wrong with that). But the thing is, I am actually enjoying reading the full-length, unabridged translation, with all his foibles explained than the one I read somewhere in my teens.

I have spent many years looking for acceptance. And I have made the mistake of assuming that by changing who I am to a more acceptable form, I too can gain the acceptance that i crave. I have mistaken love for acceptance, only to find that love tends to fade very quickly when you ask it to accept things. I have mistaken people who use the love and affection I feel for them to gain what they want. I could say that I have seen it all and done it all, but that would imply that there is no more stupidity left for me to commit in the name of love.

So yes, I ain't no Casanova. But then, neither was Casanova. He is not the sexual predator that modern day culture makes him out to be. He's not the patron saint of playas. In fact, he is a man, looking for something that he may never have found. And at the end so are we all. So many of us want to be loved, to be accepted for what we are. And yet, so few of us find that kind of love and acceptance.

I end this, how Casanova begins his Narrative.

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led. How many changes arise from such an independent mode of life! My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless. I have often met with happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God for his mercy. But, by way of compensation, dire misfortune has befallen me in consequence of actions prompted by the most cautious wisdom. This would humble me; yet conscious that I had acted rightly I would easily derive comfort from that conviction.