Adepts in Self-Portraiture

by Stefan Zweig

  Beyond question he was a man of splendid and most varied gifts! Conscientiously applied in any direction, whether to science, art, diplomacy, or business, they would have sufficed to achieve wonders. Casanova deliberately frittered away his talents upon the purposes of the fleeting moment, and he, who might have been anything, preferred to be nothing — but free. “The idea of settling down was always repulsive to me, and a reasonable course of life never came natural to me.” He cannot endure the prospect of a fixed occupation, whether it be that of well-paid manager of lotteries to His Most Christian Majesty, or that of a manufacturer, or that of a fiddler, or that of author. Hardly has he seated himself anywhere, when he gets bored by the daily routine, trips forth from his cozy nook into the street, and hastens to stake his all upon some new hazard. His true profession, he is convinced, is to have no profession; to give all the arts and sciences a trial by turns, and to change roles night after night like an actor in a repertory theater. Besides, why should he moor himself anywhere? He does not want to have and to hold. A man of impetuous passions, he wants, not one life but a hundred. Since he is a devotee of freedom, since he only wishes to be assured of income and amusement and the joys of love for the hour that has just begun, since he never demands permanent security, he can laughingly dispense with home and possessions, which are nothing more than ties. Had they been written then, he would have approvingly quoted the lines of Grillparzer:

  The thing thou holdest, has thee in its grip;

  And where thou rulest, art in truth a slave.

  Casanova would never be the slave of anything or anyone except chance, which does indeed handle him rudely at times, but is surprisingly good to him as a rule. True to this mistress, he contemptuously rejects anything that could chain him fast, and is a free thinker in the most literal sense of the term. “My greatest treasure,” he says proudly, “is that I am my own master, and have no dread of misfortune.” A manly device, which ennobles him more than does his borrowed title of “Chevalier de Seingalt.” He pays no heed to what others may think of him, but leaps with charming recklessness over the moral hurdles with which they would fence him in, indifferent to the anger of those whom he leaves behind and to the wrath of those whose hedges he breaks down. As he speeds onward, he gets flying views of those who are engaged in fixed occupations; they seem to him ridiculous and contemptible. Nor is he impressed by the warlords, rattling their sabers, and yet yielding to the clamor of their generals. The learned are bookworms. The financiers sit anxiously watching their moneybags, and cannot sleep o’ nights for fear lest their strongboxes should be rifled. No woman can hold him long in her arms; no ruler can persuade him to stay within the boundaries of any one country; no occupation can bind him for more than a brief space. In these matters, too, he breaks boldly out of the Leads, for he will rather risk his life than let it turn sour. All his talents, all his abilities, all his powers, all his courage, and all his genius, he will stake day after day on the table of fortune, his goddess. That is why his existence remains as mutable as running water, now appearing as a fountain sparkling in the sunshine, now as a cascade thundering down into a dark abyss. From a prince’s table into prison, from the easy life of a spendthrift with money in his purse to that of a man who can only get food by pawning his coat, from seducer to souteneur, he moves with lightning speed; and through it all his spirits are mercurial, he is wanton in days of good fortune and equable in days of evil, always full of courage and confidence.

  Courage, that is the keynote of Casanova’s art of life; that is his gift of gifts. He does not try to ensure against disaster, but fearlessly risks his life. Among the thousands whose motto is “safety first,” here is one who hazards all, and takes every chance. Well, we know that Dame Fortune smiles on the bold. She gives freehandedly to the idle and to the impudent where she is a niggard to the diligent; she prefers the impatient to the patient; and thus, upon this one man who is so immoderate in his demands, she showers more gifts than upon a whole generation of his contemporaries. She lifts him up and casts him down again, hurries him from land to land, gives him plenty of exercise. She sates him with women and fools him at the gaming table; she titillates him with passions, and cheats him with fulfillments. But she never forgets him, and never allows him to suffer from tedium. Herself indefatigable, she is a fit partner for this indefatigable man, perpetually finding him new opportunities and new ventures. Thus does his life become diversified, fantastical, kaleidoscopic, as hardly another in many centuries. Thus it is that he, who tells the story of his own life, he who never either was or wanted to be anything real, became an incomparable fabulist of existence — not, indeed, by his own will, but by that of life itself.

  PHILOSOPHY OF SUPERFICIALITY

  I have lived as a philosopher

  CASANOVA’S LAST WORDS

  When life flows in so broad a stream, this always implies a certain lack of spiritual depth. One who can dance on all waters with as much agility as Casanova, must needs be as light as a cork. Thus the essential characteristic of his greatly admired art of life is seen, when we look at it closely, to consist, not so much in a positive virtue or power, as in a negative — in his complete freedom from any kind of moral inhibition. If we take this morsel of humankind, through whom the warm blood of passion streams so ardently, and examine his psychological make-up, the first thing that strikes us is the utter lack of ethical organs. His heart, his lungs, his liver, his brain, his muscles, and especially his seminal vesicles — these, one and all, are vigorous and healthy. But when we turn to study the spiritual sphere, where moral peculiarities and convictions are aggregated to form the mysterious tissue of character, we encounter absolute vacancy. There is nothing of this sort to be seen. With our acids and other solvents, with our scalpels and our microscopes, we shall still fail to detect in this otherwise sound organism even a trace of what is called conscience, of that spiritual super-ego which controls the impulses and senses. In so much firm, pleasure-loving flesh, we cannot find the merest trace of a moral nervous system. That explains the whole enigma of Casanova’s subtle genius. Lucky man that he is, he has only sensuality, and lacks the first beginnings of a soul. Bound by no ties, having no fixed aim, restrained by no prudential considerations, he can move at a different tempo from his fellow mortals, who are burdened with moral scruples, who aim at an ethical goal, who are tied by notions of social responsibility. That is the secret of his unique impetus, of his incomparable energy.

  He voyages around the world, and never wishes to set his foot on firm ground. He is independent of laws, a freebooter, a filibuster, urged onward by his uncontrolled passions. Like other outlaws, he ignores the conventions of society, disregards social regulations, has no respect for the unwritten laws of European morality. What other men regard as sacred or important, is to him not worth a doit. If you try to explain to him the nature of a moral or conventional obligation, he will understand you just as little as a black man understands metaphysics. Do you talk to him about love of country? He is a cosmopolitan who, during the seventy-three years of his life, has never had a sleeping-place of his own, and has lived at the sport of chance; he laughs at patriotism. Ubi bene, ibi patria; where he can best fill his pockets, and can most easily make his way into the bed of any woman for whom he takes a fancy; where he can most easily lead fools by the nose and enjoy all the comforts of life — there he stretches his legs out underneath the table and feels himself at home. Do you ask him to respect religion? He will profess any religion you like to name, will have himself circumcised or wear a Chinese pigtail, if the one or the other brings him the most trifling advantage; and all the time he will scoff at the new creed as heartily as he scoffs at the Roman Catholicism in which he was brought up. What does he need with a religion, he who believes only in the warm joys of this world? “Probably there is no life after death; but if there be, we shall find out in due course.” Thus does he argue, nonchalantly, uninterestedly, disregarding subtleties. Carpe diem, make the most of the fleeting
hour, suck it dry like a grape and fling away the skin; that is his maxim. Cling to the world of senses, to the visible, the tangible, pressing all the juice of pleasure you can out of each instant as it passes. There you have the whole of his philosophy, and it is one which enables him to throw aside with a contemptuous laugh all the bourgeois moral precepts based upon honor, respectability, duty, shame, and loyalty, which would hinder a man from giving free rein to his impulses.

  Honor? What can honor mean to Casanova? He esteems it no more than did fat Falstaff, who said, truly enough, that honor cannot set an arm or a leg, or take away the grief of a wound. Casanova is like the worthy English member of parliament, who once remarked in the House that he was continually hearing of our obligations to posterity, but would very much like to know what posterity has done for us. Honor cannot be enjoyed, cannot be grasped; it serves only to interfere with the enjoyment by interposing duties and obligations. That is enough to show that regard for honor is superfluous, seeing that duty and obligation are to Casanova the most detestable things in the world. The only duty he knows is the duty of feeding his high-strung body full of pleasure, and of sharing that elixir of pleasure with the greatest possible number of women. He never troubles to ask, therefore, whether his own warm fragrant existence has for others a good or a bad, a sweet or a sour taste; whether they regard his conduct as honorable or dishonorable, as worthy or shameful.

  Shame? What an extraordinary word, what an incomprehensible idea! There is no such word in his dictionary. With the frank indifference of a lazzarone, in the full gaze of the public, he cheerfully takes down his breeches, and, with a broad grin, displays his genital organs, cheerfully discloses what another would keep to himself even on the rack, boasts of his rogueries, makes a parade of his very failures, his blunders, his attacks of venereal disorder; and he does all this, not with the mien of one who feels impelled to trumpet the crude truth, as does Jean-Jacques Rousseau, fully aware that his hearers will be amazed and horrified. Casanova is frank and unconcerned because he is not equipped with the nerves that would have enabled him to recognize moral distinctions, because he has no sense-organs adapted to make him aware of moral considerations. If you were to reproach him for having cheated at cards, he would merely answer, astonished at your chiding: “Oh, yes, I did cheat; I was in want of money!” Should you berate him for seducing a woman, he would answer with a laugh: “I gave her a jolly good time!” He would never dream of offering any excuse for having charmed money out of the pockets of the credulous. On the contrary, in his memoirs he approves these misdeeds of his by cynically remarking: “Reason takes its revenge when one cheats a blockhead.” He does not defend himself. He never repents. Instead of wearing sackcloth and ashes, instead of lamenting over a misspent life which is ending in abject poverty and dependence, the toothless old rogue writes with delicious impudence: “I should regard myself blameworthy if I were rich today. But I have nothing left, I have squandered all my possessions, and that is a great consolation to me.”

  He has laid up no treasure in heaven, has not refrained from indulging any of his passions out of regard for the dictates of morality or the welfare of his fellows, he has hoarded nothing, either for his own sake or for others’; and from his seventy years nothing is left to him save memories. Even these memories he would not hoard, but, to our good fortune, has squandered them on us. Surely, therefore, we should be the last to complain of his spendthrift ways!

  To put Casanova’s philosophy in a nutshell, it begins and ends with the admonition: “Live for this world, unconcernedly and spontaneously; do not allow yourself to be cheated by regard for another world (which may indeed exist, but whose existence is extremely doubtful), or by regard for posterity. Do not let finespun theories divert your attention from things close at hand; do not direct your endeavors towards a distant goal; follow the promptings of the moment. Foresight will cripple your activities here and now. Do not trouble your head with prudential considerations. Some strange deity has set us down in our seat at this gaming table of a world. If we wish to amuse ourselves there, we must accept the rules of the game, taking them as they are, without troubling to inquire whether they are good rules or bad.”

  In actual fact, never for a moment did Casanova waste his time in pondering the problem whether this world could have been or ought to have been different. “Love mankind, but love it as it is,” he says in conversation with Voltaire. Do not try to play providence; leave that sort of thing to the creator of the world, who is responsible for it. Do not try to knead the old dough, for you will only soil your hands; it is much simpler, and far more agreeable, to pick out the raisins, daintily. One who thinks too much about others, forgets himself; one who devotes too much attention to watching the course of the world, paralyzes his own limbs. It seems to Casanova quite in order that stupid folk should have a bad time. As for the clever ones, God does not help them, and it is their own business to help themselves. Since we have to live in a crossgrained world, where some wear silk stockings and drive in carriages, while others, with empty bellies, must go afoot and in rags, then, for a reasonably clever fellow, the obvious thing is to make sure that he will be one of the carriage-folk — seeing that a man lives for himself, and not for others. No doubt that sounds extremely selfish; and yet, how can a philosophy of enjoyment be anything but selfish, how can one be an epicurean unless one is indifferent to the welfare of society? He who has a passionate desire to live for his own sake is perfectly logical when he callously disregards the fate of others.

  Indifferent to others, indifferent to the great problems which each new day brings to mankind, Casanova lives his three-and-seventy years in impudent self-satisfaction. If, with his keen eyes, he looks eagerly to right and to left, this is only because he is in search of amusement, and does not want to miss any chances. But he will never wax indignant, will never follow Job’s example of propounding unseemly questions to God Almighty. With an amazing economy of feeling, he takes everything as it comes, without troubling to label it as good or evil. When O’Morphi, a little Flemish drab of Irish extraction, fifteen years old, a girl who sleeps on straw and is ready to sell her virginity for a ducat, becomes a fortnight later one of the mistresses of His Most Christian Majesty, has a palace in the Parc aux Cerfs, is loaded with jewels, and in due course marries a complaisant nobleman; or when he himself, who was yesterday a poor fiddler in a Venetian suburb, suddenly finds himself adopted son of a patrician, has money in his pocket and diamonds on his fingers — these things seem to him curious incidents, worth recording, but nothing to make a fuss about. That is the way of the world, unjust and incalculable. Since it will always be like this, always unjust, always incalculable, why rack your brains trying to discover a law of gravitation? Life is a switchback, and such fantastic ups and downs are its commonplaces. Only fools and the avaricious try to play roulette on a system, thus depriving themselves of the true enjoyment of the game. The real gambler, in life as well as at the gaming table, finds the greatest of all charms in the incalculability of events. Use tooth and claw to secure the best for yourself, “voilà toute la sagesse.” Be a philosopher for your own good, not for the good of humanity. As interpreted by Casanova, this means that you are to be strong, covetous, ruthless, as you clutch the flying moments and make the most of them. For this convinced pagan, nothing but the actual moment counts. The next moment is uncertain. Never does he allow his pleasures to be interfered with by thinking of next time, for this present time makes up his whole world, the here and now which he can grasp with all his organs. “Life, be it happy or unhappy, fortunate or unfortunate, is the only good man possesses, and he who does not love life is unworthy of life.” Only that which breathes, only that which meets pleasure with pleasure, only that which (skin to skin) caressively responds to his hot caresses — this and only this seems, to our confirmed anti-metaphysician, truly real and interesting.

  Thus Casanova’s interest in the world is confined to the organic, to the human. Never in his life
, as far as we can judge, did he contemplate the starry heavens. The beauties of nature left him cold. Flutter the pages of the sixteen volumes of his memoirs. You see a man with keen senses traveling through the most beautiful landscapes of Europe, from Posilipo to Toledo, from the Lake of Geneva to the Russian steppes; but you will never find any reference to the beauties of natural scenery. A dirty little wench in a soldiers’ drinking booth seems to him more important than all the works of Michelangelo; and he finds a game of cards in a stuffy tavern more beautiful than a sunset at Sorrento. Scenery and architecture are sealed books to Casanova, since he lacks the organ which brings us into touch with the cosmos, since he has no soul. Fields and meadows glowing red at sunrise, dew-sprinkled, with the long shadows of the trees lying across them; for him they are but green surfaces, on which the peasants, stupid as their own cattle, toil and sweat that their lords may have gold in pouch. Bosquets and dark alleys, they are some use certainly, for there a man can get out of sight with a woman when he wishes to enjoy himself. As for flowers, they are useful presents when you want to catch a woman’s fancy. But, having eyes only for human beings, he is color-blind to the aimless, the purposeless beauties of nature. For him, the world consists exclusively of towns with their galleries and their promenades, where the carriages drive up and down in the evening; the haunts of lovely women, places beset with coffee-houses in which one can play faro and win money from the other guests; places where there are opera houses and brothels, and where it is easy to find a bedfellow for the night; places where there are good inns in which the cooks poetize with sauces and ragouts, and make music with white wine and red. Only the towns are the world for this man of pleasure, since in them alone can chance provide its manifold surprises, since there alone has the incalculable room to work out its infinitely numerous and entrancing variations.