Casanova in Bolzano

The second Marai novel to be published in English by Knopf. If Embers was primarily about friendship, Casanova is primarily about love between man and woman. It is clear that Marai understood people better than most writers of the twentieth century, or in fact any that come to mind. From his writing, one assumes that Marai must have lived, really lived.Casanova is Bolzano is not a young man's (or woman's) book. Its insights speak to those who have lived a good chunk of life already, exploring human ambition and disappointment, youth and age, celebrity and exile, and the complicated relationship of love and sex. It's a mature work from a mature writer.It is also not a historical novel; it has precious little to say about the eighteenth century, or Italy, or even specific characters. The characters in Bolzano are not even "characters," as such-- in fact, the name "Casanova" does not appear once, outside of Marai's introduction (the original Hungarian title is "Vendégjáték Bolzanóban," which also does not mention "Casanova"). It's about people, archetypes.How does it compare with Embers? It starts off a little more slowly (The NYTimes review called it, "a novel of exquisite slowness and refreshing oddity"), but quickly picks up for one classic Marai scene: two people in a room meeting again for the first time in years.

If a book is new to me, I tend to skip the intros, whether the translator's, author's or critic's. I picked CAZANOVA up based on a review I scanned, without reading closely. So it wasn't until near the end of it that I realized "this cannot be a contemporary novel". One of its characters--and a remarkable one--espoused as fine and powerful a description of true romantic love as exists in literature, I felt. The sad thing was, in reading it, I knew this was a dated novel. That notion of romantic love was in that "fine and private place/where none I fear do embrace", as far as I could tell.This novel is about love. In a sense, it makes a lovely headstone for the notion of romantic love.

This is the first book I read by Sandor Marai and I am so glad I did. The prose is just brilliant, full of memorable passages and this alone is worth reading this work. The storyline seems so authentic even though it is not based on historical facts and one does not want to put the book down. The many pages leading up the ending are the most beautiful, moving and heartwrenching I have ever read.

Unbelievable what a talent this writer has. This book is very impressive for finding out how other people think and feel, even though they are fictitious characters. It is not only entertaining but very teaching. Very recommendable for any life-coach, psychologist, therapist, priest, rabbi or anybody dealing with the deep insights of us humans.

As advertised

Interesting insights on love and power, but overwritten to the point that I was saying ''enough already'' out loud. However, I LOVED Embers and highly recommend it.

i really gave it an honest shot, but i am not a fan of marai in general. he was a master of making you feel like you are on the hungarian border: lots of tension over what is to come, but nothing comes in the end.

This is a historical fantasy. Other than that Casanova escapes from prison, all the rest is fantasy. So he escapes after a year and a half and he heads back to a town where a beautiful young woman lives that he never conquered. The beautiful girl was 14 when he first met her; she’s 20 now; Casanova is 40; her husband, the Duke, is 72.Casanova tells people his vocation is that of “writer,” as in writing letters to people for money on credit, it turns out. He has a “sponsor” in Italy who sends him money as if he was his son. He does have other sources of income; he sets himself up with his sidekick, the friar (Tuck?), in a tavern and people come to him and pay for advice: men about business and women about love.Knowing that no woman can supposedly resist his charms (even though Casanova is not especially attractive) the fabulously rich husband of the young woman hears he is in town and makes him an “offer.”Meanwhile the young woman hears he is in town and she jumps the gun, sending him a four-word letter. (She learned to write just so she could write to Casanova, although she never did until this letter.) Casanova and her husband discuss the four-word letter in detail for a whole chapter. It turns out she makes him an “offer” too.Both conversations (one with the husband, one with his young wife) go like this (Casanova speaking):“It’s not enough.”“It’s not enough.”“It’s not enough.”“It’s too much.”There’s a whole chapter on his seduction of a tavern girl; another about Venice, his home town, where he was imprisoned, and another about happiness.A few quotes I liked I think show the literary power of this Hungarian writer:”Writing is the greatest power there is: the written word is greater than king or pope.” “…because there is nothing quite as dangerous as a man who will not yield to despotism”“…her home was in the southern Tyrol, in a village that practically gasped for air at the foot of a great mountain, so oppressed was it by the peak, by the condition of the land, and by poverty.”As he lies to women: “She blushed because she sensed the lie…And both of them felt that this lie was in some way a secret truth.”“His deep, rasping voice bore the impress of prison, alcohol, and disease, as well as wayside hovels and the beds of kitchen maids.”“…there is only one great struggle in life and that is between powerful, justified assertion on the one hand and powerful, justified denial on the other.”“…the friar was running round town in a robe that might have been worn by a corpse freshly cut down at a public hanging.”“…he knew humanity’s most painful obligation is not to be ashamed of true feeling even when it is wasted on unworthy subjects.”In the tavern: “To his highly developed ear, the word ‘guest’ was one of the most magical sounds in the world, along with other words like ‘prize,’ ‘prey,’ ‘suddenly,’ and ‘luck’: it was, in short, among the finest sounds a man could wish to hear.”of Francesca, fourteen at the time: “…of whom few had yet heard, though I had heard of her, as a man might hear of some rare plant in a greenhouse, one that grows in an artificial climate, in secret, to flower and become the wonder of the world eventually…”“A kiss is always virtuous but a word about a kiss is always shameful.”Great writing and a good story; a little slow in places, and of his works I’ve read, I still prefer Portraits of a Marriage.

Famously, in 1756 Casanova escaped from Venice's most notorious jail, as if by a miracle, and, with the help of a defrocked priest called Balbi, he escaped the authorities. Travelling to Italy, he took refuge in a hostelry, The Stag. It's here that much of the action of the novel takes place, over the next week or so in Casanova's rooms. It consists largely of lengthy, highly complex, virtuoso monologues - by Casonova himself to Teresa, the young maid he dallies with. and then to Balbi about his philosophy of life; by the Duke of Parma, with whom he once fought a near-fatal duel over the woman they both love, Francesca; and by Francesca herself as she pleads for a life with the libertine - when he appears to refuse her, she purges herself of her all-consuming desire for him. These monologues are brilliant displays of literary skill - equally brilliantly translated by George Szirtes, one imagines; they are one of the chief attractions of this thoughtful, intensely romantic but rather mordant novel.However, given Casonova's colourful, reprobate life, the novel is surprisingly lacking in incident or narrative drive; less a story, it is a more a long, many-faceted meditation on the nature of love between a man and a woman. Our view of Casonova changes during the course of the book, from a sneaking admiration for the daring panache of his escape; to weariness at his dallying with the maid, who luckily is not so innocent as she appears; to contempt for his dealings with Balbi, a dogsbody if ever there was one; to wonder at his role as a kind of eighteenth century psychotherapist to the populace of the village as they come to him with their troubles; to an appreciation of the precariousness of his life, his courage in facing it with such vitality, when the Duke visits him; and above all a sense that he must have hidden depths in the way he deals with Francesca's impassioned pleas for his love and in the extraordinary letter he writes to the Duke that ends the book. Despite all this, we do not really get to know Casanova, we see only facets of him: he remains as elusive at the end of the book, in terms of the essence of his being, as he does at the beginning slipping out of The Leads, the prison that was considered impregnable. This is not a failing on the authors part, it's a recognition that there was something veiled about the figure of Casanova - it is no coincidence that in the crucial penultimate scene between him and Francesca they were both wearing masks and gender-changing fancy-dress costumes. It's not an easy novel to read - some sentences go on for more than a page and are rich in complexity and allusion - it requires concentration and commitment, but it'll amply repay the effort.

This is an interesting book rather than a classic. Having read "Embers" twice some time ago, I looked forward to reading "Cassanova in Bolzano". Sadly it did not live up to my hopes. Sandor Marai is pretty intense stuff, but I guessed more or less immediately where the book was going to go and that it would take a lot of discussion in a short time frame to get there. The long winded debate/monologue between the Duke of Parma and Cassanova becomes tedious and one longs for the physical approach the two antagonists had taken at their previous meeting to put this reader out of mounting misery. Anyone expecting Cassanova to be the beautiful romancer of popular imagination will be disappointed and we should be grateful to Marai for tackling him when past his prime even if still something of a ladies man.The key interest for me is the timing of the book, first published in Hungary in 1940, a time when old arguments were being warmed up and decisions of great national significance were having to be taken in a world of considerable political uncertainty. One is tempted to read a political issues into the writing, but this reader lacks the depth of understanding of Hungarian politics of the time to venture such notions into words.The book is interesting to a degree, even thought provoking but, unlike "embers", probably one I shall not re-read.

A splendid book, beautifully translated (I also did read the original), with a masterful intrigue, keeping the reader interested and anxious to the very last line...Marai successfully re-creates 18th century Italy's atmosphere, while his characters live a gripping, deeply human, emotional, multi-layered (personal and societal) drama. Marai's untimely death (suicide) robbed the world literature of one of its biggest 20th century talents, a most meritory Nobel Prize candidate!

It was a sheer pleasure to read this languidly-paced work of art in today's fast moving world.