The History of Venice podcast is continuing their series of episodes from Casanova’s life. I’ve mentioned some in the past, but just because I haven’t highlighted all doesn’t mean they aren’t worth a listen. Please check them out, as they provide an overview of key times in C’s life. Historians Simon and Jess handle these complicated episodes from Casanova’s life with insight, honesty, and nuance. Their analysis of his actions shows broad knowledge of his life and context but also holds him accountable for his actions. In part 7: Metamorphosis, they look into C’s low point in his life when he and his friends pull pranks, some supposedly in fun and some that cross a line (or a few lines). Juxtaposing his bad behavior with a more altruistic event, Simon and Jess analyze this very complicated character.
Here’s their descriptor: “Casanova Part 7: Metamorphosis. In the spring of 1746, Casanova’s life was spiralling into criminality, until one chance encounter at Palazzo Soranzo, in Campo San Polo, changed his world for ever. Find out more about how low he had sunk, and how his fortunes changed, in this week’s episode.”
Palazzo Soranzo, Campo San Polo (image from Wikipedia)
I often have mixed feelings about my study of Casanova’s life. I find him fascinating but not always admirable or honorable. This episode of the History of Venice podcast helps show how we can step back and approach understanding difficult characters and moments from history.
Last summer I spotted these colorful fish near Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio. I was told that a local artists makes them.
Flotsam comes from the French word floteson, meaning to float, and later came to mean any of the detritus that floated away after a shipwreck. Now it also refers to any junk seen as worthless. But clearly this artist took the jar lids, brush bristles, bits of rope and wood and turned them into a cute garden adornment. A very appropriate decoration for an island city.
Okay, the last time I posted a vintage postcard, I told you that my rules about buying postcards include that the card must have a gondola on it. The gondolas are indeed present! But I’ll admit they’re quite small. Much more prominent are the “moors” (I Mori) ringing the bell atop the clock tower at the Piazza San Marco. The people in the Piazza are, oddly, all wearing black it seems. Did they plan this?
Sadly, the postage stamp was missing from this postcard. But the postmaster’s stamp is there. I will admit that I am hopeless at deciphering the postal dates. Please help me out here! Olga writes the date as “2.11” which I’m guessing means November 2 (using European dating protocols). But let me know if I’m misled here.
I asked the French teacher at my school to decode the message, which he translated thus: “Best of friendship to the whole family.”
Lafitole, France, is in the southern part of the country. It’s a eensy teensy place, with a population of 439 in 2020. I wonder how many people lived there when this postcard arrived to Monsieur Montoussi? (Or is that Montoussy?)
Image from Wikipedia. Lafitole is in the bottom left district.
While perusing my school’s library shelves recently, I was startled to see this gondola on a book cover. I snatched that book right up! The book is One Great Lie by Deb Caletti, a prolific author who writes numerous young adult books. One Great Lie follows Charlotte, an American teen graduating high school and heading to Venice for a summer writing program created by her favorite author. It all sounds dreamy, but of course it’s much more complicated than that. As you can guess by the title, some lies are involved.
Here’s a short excerpt from when Charlotte first arrives in Venice by boat: “And then she spots it up ahead–the city of Venice, the leaning, tipping, glowing buildings all squished together, the white dome of Saint Mark’s; all of it so unbelievably old and weird and tattered and remarkable, like some strange stage set. … Her heart is overflowing with emotion, as if it’s filling with water, and she can’t begin to imagine how to ever explain this surreal, intensely magical place to her family.”
Author Deb Caletti (Image from her website)
One Great Lie is one of those books that stayed in my mind when I wasn’t reading it, calling to me to pick it up again. And that’s not only because of the setting–my favorite city–but also because of the compelling story and engaging writing. Characters are thoughtful; following their thinking processes drew me in so that this was much more than just a plot-driven story. And some of the characters were especially delightful, like Charlotte’s new love interest Dante and his mother, the ostensible owner of Alta Acqua Libreria (yes, designed after the beloved Libreria Acqua Alta in Venice’s Castello district).
Here are some of Charlotte’s first impressions: “There’s the most shocking, chaotic, magical bookstore she’s ever seen. It’s stuffed, jammed full. Books are towering and tipping like the city itself. Books are piled in old bathtubs, and more bathtubs, wooden boats, and barrels, Books are stacked and jumbled in a full-sized gondola in the center of the room, and crammed into sinks, and waterproof bins.” The description goes on–but you know it, don’t you? You’ve been there, my dear readers, or seen the photos. The real store owner was the first person in Venice to carry my books in his store, so I’m always happy to promote this remarkable establishment.
So, a great novel and enjoyable read. BUT! That’s not the only thing. My eyes popped to see the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. Each one briefly described a Venetian or Italian woman writer. At first, I saw names I wasn’t familiar with and wondered if Caletti was making them up. But then, not having the patience to wait till I got to each chapter, instead I flipped ahead, finding authors I knew about: Archangela Tarabotti, Modesta Pozzo, Veronica Franco, Lucrezia Marinella, Gaspara Stampa, and the composer Barbara Strozzi. These particular women are all ones I wrote chapters about in my book A Beautiful Woman in Venice, and I’m thrilled that someone else is highlighting their lives and works. Caletti often describes these women as activists and feminists, too, modern terms that we don’t usually apply to the 16th-18th centuries, but they help modern readers imagine a relevant context.
Once I finished the book, I reached out to Deb Caletti to thank her for her novel and to ask about her inspiration. She completed very extensive research into Venice and Italian women writers; on her webpage she details the many topics that fascinated her and includes an interview with Frolic magazine. We definitely have a lot in common, and I’ll be checking out more of her books.
But I have a lingering question: in the novel, Caletti uses a glass boat painting on a main character’s wall as a metaphor for many other feelings and also a title of a character’s book The Glass Ship. Since my mind was already thinking about the Beautiful Women that I wrote about, I immediately thought of the navicella glass ship designed and patented by Hermonia Vivarini, a very early upstart glass maker. Caletti didn’t mention Vivarini in her novel or research. Does she know about the navicella or is this merely coincidence? Maybe I need to write back to her again…
Something about this doorbell reminds me of Burl Ives’ mouth when he’s the snowman in Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Do you see the resemblance? The mustache and beard aren’t quite the right shape, but still…
Normally, I’m not interested in robots inventing content. I don’t seek it out, and I prefer to support human artists and writers. But this image and conversation came across my desk, so I thought I’d share it. This cartoon comes from FlaglerLive. Click on the link to read the whole conversation between the two. (You might need to scroll down the page to get to this piece.)
In real life, Casanova and Voltaire met. Here’s the synopsis of that meeting from the Italian Wikipedia entry (written by Adriano Contini):
The following years were a continuous and intense wandering around Europe. He went to the Netherlands, then to Switzerland, where he met Voltaire in the castle of Ferney. The meeting with Voltaire, the greatest intellectual living at the time, occupies several pages of the Histoire and is reported in great detail; Casanova began by saying that it was the happiest day of his life and that he had been waiting for twenty years to meet his “master”; Voltaire replied that he would be even more honoured if, after that meeting, he had waited for another twenty years. [ 33 ] An objective confirmation can be found in a letter from Voltaire to Nicolas-Claude Thieriot, dated 7 July 1760, in which the figure of the visitor is portrayed with irony. [ 34 ] Casanova himself did not agree with many of Voltaire’s ideas («Voltaire […] had to understand that the people, for the general peace of the nation, needed to live in ignorance», he would say later), and therefore remained dissatisfied, even if he later wrote some words of esteem for the patriarch of the Enlightenment:
«I left very happy to have put that great athlete to the ropes on the last day. But I had a bad memory of him that pushed me for ten years in a row to criticize everything that great man gave to the public, whether old or new. Today I regret it, even if, when I read what I published against him, it seems to me that I reasoned correctly in my criticisms. In any case, I should have kept quiet, respected him and doubted my own judgments. I should have reflected that without the sarcasms that displeased me on the third day, I would have found all his writings sublime. This reflection alone should have forced me to remain silent, but an angry man always believes he is right.>>
I had almost forgotten about the interview. And then, next thing I know, I’m on German radio!
Last winter I was interviewed by Noemi Schneider, a writer and filmmaker creating a special program focused on the life of Giacomo Casanova for Orf. It was supposed to air in April for Casanova’s birthday but was delayed until now. It posted last week on November 18, 2025: “My Life Is My Fabric.”
Image from the radio show link. This scene was from the previous Casanova Experience museum in Venice, which is now closed.
Though I listen to the radio a lot, and I’m used to the format where a person speaks in their language and then a translator’s voice speaks over theirs, it still was so weird to hear that happen to my own voice. They quote me four times, the first one at :52 seconds. Here is the English translation of my parts (in blue), provided by Ms. Schneider.
1 Original sound K (Kathleen Ann Gonzalez): I’m actually …his charm. Narrator OV-1 Kathleen Ann González: I have a weakness for “bad boys” and would definitely have succumbed to his charm.
Narrator CASANOVA (preface, Histoire de ma Vie): I loved women to the point of madness, but I always preferred my freedom. When I was in danger of losing it, I always managed to save myself, albeit by the skin of my teeth. —
Narrator: And this is not only interesting for historians. Casanova scholars come from a wide variety of disciplines, such as American author Kathleen Ann González.
11 Original sound bite K (Kathleen Ann González): He knows… wants to entertain. Narrator OV-12 Kathleen Ann González: He just knows how to tell a really good story. Of course, Casanova journals repeatedly point out that he got his dates wrong. He couldn’t have been in this or that place. But there are also new approaches in research that discover Casanova as a writer who invents stories because he wants to entertain.
Narrator: Of course, in addition to intellectual pleasure, physical pleasure also runs through Casanova’s memoirs, which he describes in all its facets and across all social classes.
18 Original sound bite K (Kathleen Ann González): And then there’s the sex…So it’s exciting stuff. Narrator OV-19 Kathleen Ann González: Of course it’s about sex, and to be honest, there’s a lot of it. It’s written in the way people wrote about sex in the 18th century, of course. But even for today’s modern reader, it’s pretty hot. I remember telling a friend that I was reading the memoirs, and he told me that he had to take a cold shower while reading the book to calm himself down. So it’s definitely an exciting thing.
Narrator Casanova (Histoire de ma Vie) The last struggle had exhausted her strength. I had her make the candle and lifted her in that position to kiss her love chamber fervently, which I could not reach otherwise if I wanted her to devour my weapon at the same time, which struck her to death without taking her life. (…) Now it was my turn to make the candle, and she grabbed me by the hips to support me.
Narrator: Did Casanova really love the countless women?
19 Original sound bite K (Kathleen Ann González): At least based on his writings, I do … wanted them to be happy Narrator OV-20 Kathleen Ann González: At least based on his writings, I believe that he was in love, truly in love, over and over again, many times with different women for different reasons. For Casanova, it wasn’t just about sex; he wanted to improve the women’s lives. If he didn’t want to marry them, he often arranged a better match or another way to support the woman. He often visited them years later and stayed in touch with them. He wanted them to be happy.
I sound like an airhead fan-girl! Yikes! Nothing like the serious scholar I am! Well, I teach high school kids by day and present my work to informal groups, so my usual mode is to do everything I can to engage audiences. That energy came across in my responses to Ms. Schneider, I think. Hopefully it was entertaining for German radio audiences and doesn’t harm the Casanova brand (or my brand!).
In contrast, Schneider also interviewed more serious scholars: Antonio Trampus, author and professor from Ca’ Foscari; Sabine Herrmann, author and curator of the forthcoming Casanova museum in Venice; and Gregory Dowling, author and professor emeritus. Gregory led Noemi on a walking tour of Casanova sites in Venice, and in the radio program, with his voice obscured by the translator’s, it felt like Gregory was whispering Venetian street names in my ear.
The whole show is delightful, as Ms. Schneider brings in multiple voices, fun music clips, and daily background sounds from Venice. It’s all in German, except, of course, for the interviews in English and Italian. My friend Adriano said it’s like slaloming between the languages.
If you can give it a listen, let me know what you think. I’m feeling a little like an imposter and maybe need a little reassurance.
As part of my occasional series “Where Am I?” can you guess where I am standing when I took this photo? Can you name the general neighborhood or even the exact building? Maybe you were there too! Hint: summer 2024.
Well, once I sat down to puzzle tonight, I couldn’t stop. So you get to see the finished image! I love this alternate, ancient view of Venice. And don’t you love the wee boats?
Things are really starting to come together now. I was working on all the trees and large churches.
The box doesn’t actually have a large complete image of the whole thing, so it’s a bit more challenging. I’ll include an image of the box with the final, finished puzzle. Don’t want to give away too much until it’s done!
seductivevenice 