In February 2010, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, with the help of an anonymous patron, purchased the original manuscript of Casanova’s Histoire de ma vie: the most expensive acquisition by the institution to date, and probably the most epic as well. The work, sold by Casanova’s descendants to a German publisher, was thought to have been destroyed during the Second World War, and it was only in 1960 that the first complete version was published in French. With the exception of a few scholars, the manuscript had been forgotten, before one day, in 2007, a mysterious intermediary made an offer to the BNF. Extravagant as it may seem, more than seven million euros was the price to pay to have what was officially labelled ‘trésor national’ back where it belonged.

What? Casanova, the Venetian libertine? Well, not exactly: Casanova the French-writing author, whose memoirs, totaling nearly 4,000 pages, are definitely one of the masterpieces of eighteenth century literature. ‘Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life’, Casanova wrote. The BNF definitely thought it was worth it, and to celebrate this happy ending, it has devoted a very rich exhibition to him: ‘Casanova – La passion de la liberté’ (The Passion for Freedom).

But whereas the big 1998 exhibition in Venice commemorating the bicentennial of his death (‘The World of Casanova: A Venetian in Europe’) was mostly an excuse to talk about the world he inhabited rather than the man, the focus and main lead at the BNF is clearly the beautifully written manuscript: it is through the manuscript that we are given access to its author and its time.

This is obvious from the very first room, which looks like a library, reminding us that Casanova ended his adventurous life as the sedentary librarian to Count Waldstein in the Castle of Dux, Bohemia. The beginning of the exhibition coincides, therefore, with the very end of his life, as if he were born twice, once as a man in Venice, and the other as a writer, on paper. That is also why the exhibition spans ten rooms, mirroring the ten volumes of the book, while the spiral spatial disposition reminds one of the old ‘game of the goose’, a kind of labyrinth that recalls not only Casanova’s constant wanderings but also his passion for gambling and the importance fortune (in every sense of the term) held for him. A clever and suggestive idea that leads the visitor from Venice to Turkey, where Casanova spent some time as a soldier, then to Paris and virtually everywhere in Europe.

Along the way, more than 250 items – paintings, sculptures, objects, letters, fabrics, clothes, jewellery, etc. – coming from both the BNF and other prestigious French or foreign institutions illustrate in a more or less direct way what the manuscript records. Some of these items are really outstanding, such as the Maréchal de Richelieu’s fabric samples, or intriguing, like the portrait of Henriette, Casanova’s greatest love, whose identity is still dubious and controversial. Some are expected, like Guardi’s or Canaletto’s paintings, or picturesque, like the card games and the ‘cheater ring’, and others, like love letters, even moving. The whole allows for an extremely rich if paradoxical portrayal – almost nothing remains from Casanova’s own belongings – of the man and the society he belonged to, played with, and sometimes escaped from.

No wonder that the few rare contemporary portraits of him that are ingeniousy displayed at the very end of the show seem slightly disappointing. For the exhibition also plays on the fantasy Casanova embodies. If one of its greatest merits is to go beyond the superficial image of the womanizer and to underline the variety of his activities, it does not completely avoid certain clichés or simplifications, partly linked to its theatrical scenography. The choice here is quite obvious, since Casanova was born in the city of carnival to actor parents, kept frequenting this world all his life (one of his mistresses was the actress Manon Balletti, daughter of the famous Silvia, Marivaux’s muse), not to mention the all-too evident and automatic link between eighteenth century social life and the stage. It certainly gives the exhibition a visual and aesthetic coherence as well as a global if expected understanding of Casanova’s complex ‘character’, whose various and contrasted (re)interpretations are shown through a series of film excerpts (by Fellini, Comencini, Scola, etc.) that are disseminated among the rooms.

Nevertheless, one may also question the somewhat simplistic use of the theatrical motifs and metaphor here, as they tend to show the glamour of what is seen on stage rather than what happens behind, in the wings. The violence of the world Casanova lived in as well as his economic and social ‘decadence’ are somewhat minimized, as if he could always turn round difficult situations with his wit only – the cruel episode with La Charpillon in London is a good example. In other terms, his exercise of freedom was not always a happy one and often took constrained and more ambiguous forms.

The last room of the exhibition, with its huge, sumptuous table supposedly representing the ‘banquet of life and the senses’ and a scene from Losey’s Don Giovanni repeated in a loop, is particularly disconcerting. It suddenly reduces Casanova to a myth he’s too easily mixed up with, therefore creating an anticlimactic and deceiving misunderstanding in the end. Such (still minor) confusion never appears in the fantastic virtual exhibition available online, nor in the beautiful catalogue co-published by the BNF and Le Seuil, which also pays great homage to the manuscript through more than seventy pages in facsimile. It is probably there – as suggested at the beginning of this review – that the real stakes of the BNF’s initiative lie: to make Casanova (the writer, not the libertine) finally enter the pantheon of eighteenth-century authors, next to Voltaire and Diderot.

The exhibition is expected in Venice this spring in a modified version, and it is likely that in the absence of the manuscript, the meaning of it will change radically. But in France, things seem pretty clear: a new edition of Histoire de ma vie is being prepared and will be published by La Pléiade, the ‘bible’ of French publishers, by the end of 2012, while the manuscript has already been entirely digitized and can now be consulted on Gallica, just like those of Rousseau. Five new manuscripts by Jean-Jacques have just been added on the website as well. Isn’t this factual coincidence a sign of the beginning of Giacomo’s canonization?