The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 04: Return to Venice — Reading Notes

Frustrated Desire and the Cold Hand

The opening episode with Madame F—— is remarkable for its explicit choreography of denial. Casanova describes a lover who “condemns herself to the most cruel torture” and then, in a moment of “desperate lust,” bounds upon him only to withdraw at the climax, substituting a hand “cold as ice.” The language is clinical yet feverish: “she fails me, moves off, slips away.” This pattern of arousal interrupted recurs as a structural motif, not merely a bedroom anecdote.

What makes the passage distinctive is Casanova’s refusal to romanticize. He records his own “want of excitement” and her “vexed” reaction with equal candor. The episode ends not with satisfaction but with a promise deferred: “My hand must owe nothing to thine.” The reader is left with a portrait of love as a contest of wills, where pleasure is weaponized and withheld.

The Oracle as a Narrative Device

In Venice, Casanova reinvents himself as a conduit for divine messages. When M. Barbaro asks him to consult his “heavenly spirit,” Casanova coolly produces an answer that condemns the ravisher Steffani to death. The memoirist admits his own surprise at his boldness, but the episode reveals a key technique: he uses the oracle to create outcomes he desires, while maintaining an air of supernatural authority.

The excerpts show him “gaining time” to assess the father’s disposition before fabricating a prophecy. This is not mysticism but stagecraft. Casanova’s power depends on the credulity of his patrons—M. de Bragadin, who believes the oracle infallible—and on his own ability to read social situations. The oracle becomes a plot engine, allowing him to intervene in the countess’s fate without revealing his own involvement.

The Countess and the Web of Secrecy

A young countess, hidden in Casanova’s care, refuses to marry the man who “dishonoured” her. She gives him a written promise of marriage as evidence, and he considers using it to enlist M. Barbaro’s mediation. But Casanova hesitates: revealing that she is under his protection would “injure my protegee.” The line between protector and manipulator blurs.

The countess’s situation mirrors Madame F——’s: both women are trapped by men’s promises and pursued by family. Casanova positions himself as a go-between, but his motives are mixed. He admits that one reason for his hesitation is that he “saw myself on the point of losing her.” The memoir does not resolve her story in the excerpts, leaving the reader to wonder whether his intervention will free her or entangle her further.

Readers should attend to the way Casanova juxtaposes physical and social maneuvering. The same hand that cools desire in Corfu later writes oracular answers in Venice. The volume’s title promises a return, but the excerpts suggest that homecoming is less a destination than a new stage for old games of power, secrecy, and calculated intimacy.

Reading about Casanova’s return to Venice, that mix of cleverness and longing, I found myself thinking of his later years—the quieter ache beneath the escapades. There’s a thread from the countess’s escape to the convent walls in The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 08: Convent Affairs — Background and Themes, each a war between freedom and constraint. Strange how his schemes always circled that same old wound.