Description
Re-visit the life of history's most notorious lover, from childhood to Casanova's daring escape from the State Inquisition's prison. Using eighteenth-century poetic conventions that Casanova himself would have cherished, Kildare Dobbs infuses this renegade's legacy with a modern, witty and very hilarious bite.
About the author
Kildare Dobbs is an award-winning writer and poet who has lived the world over. Born in 1923, in India, Dobbs was raised in Ireland, and educated in Dublin, Cambridge and London. After serving in the Royal Navy during World War II and in East Africa, Dobbs finally migrated to Canada in 1952 and worked in journalism and publishing. His autobiography, Running to Paradise (1962), won a Governor-General's Award, and since then he has published various collections of short stories, novellas and poetry, including The Great Fur Opera (1970). In 2000, he was invested with the Order of Ontario, and installed as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Toronto in 2002. His memoir, Running The Rapids, was published in 2005. Kildare Dobbs now lives and writes in Toronto.
Awards
- Short-listed, ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year
- Long-listed, ReLit Awards, Poetry
Excerpt: Casanova in Venice: A Raunchy Rhyme (by (author) Kildare Dobbs)
Giacomo Casanova
Economy in pleasure is not to my taste.
Awake my lute! and trumpets blow
for one who never could say No!
so powerful his virile charm
a wench would catch him by the arm
and pull him down to kiss and fondle her
in the seclusion of a gondola.
This was a man so much traduced --
though less seducer than seduced --
called monster of Venetian lust
for whom good Christians had disgust
Of all his scolds himself the worst
since in old age he'd boast and curse,
accuse himself, though not to blame
for playing Nature's sweetest game
with naughty females after dinner.
God hates the sin but loves the sinner,
he told himself, so seized the day,
or rather night, and sinned away
and thus assured of heavenly love
delighted in each raunchy move.
The flame of amorous desire
flares briefly like a straw-fed fire
and just as briefly flickers out.
We wonder: What was that about?
Why did we sigh and lose our sleep
and hold our dignity so cheap?
For certain, every nubile dame
rolled in the sack is much the same.
Often our man was set to wed
but freedom was his choice instead:
It's fine to have a loving wife --
but penile servitude for life?
No way! But more, it would be rash
to keep a woman without cash.
For he too often lacked the ready --
Poet, wait up a moment, steady!
Whom do we speak of? Name the man,
describe his person if you can.
Time has pronounced him lovers' king,
at board and bed the hottest thing
whose charm no female could resist --
onto her back as soon as kissed!
Con artist first of all the crew,
both con in French and English too.
He would be handsome, said a peer,
were he not ugly, And we hear
smallpox had scarred his cheeks along;
complexion sallow; features strong;
in person very tough and wiry,
in temperament vengeful and fiery.
Called vain -- the accusation's phony
for what he was, was Macaroni.
He wore such clothes as would assure a
repute for la bella figura;
moreover those who called him vain
had no idea of his brain.
Opulent people almost never
believe a semi-pauper clever.
If you're so smart, sneers Mistress Bitch,
(through golden teeth) how come not rich?
I have to interrupt once more,
give us the name, I must implore!
Maybe we know him, maybe not,
but please don't put us on the spot.
Be straight with us and play the game --
all we're demanding is the name.
His Christian names, if you must know,
were Giacomo Hieronimo,
his last -- I've worked the subject over
but can't find rhymes for Casanova.
except the cockney one displayed --
and I'm not cockney, I'm afraid.
New House, it means, this patronymic,
some joker must have found this gimmick,
as if he said, Heigh ho! my nasty
nature can institute a dynasty.
Editorial Reviews
How exactly did the world-renowned playboy come to be, and what was it that made him tick? Kildare Dobbs's most recent poetry collection, Casanova in Venice: A Raunchy Rhyme, provides insight into these questions and more as he takes readers on a very rollicking and sometimes thought-provoking journey through the great lover's life.
Using Casanova's own Mémoires as the framework for the nineteen narrative poems in this collection, Dobbs provides readers with a broad understanding of Casanova's life -- from his early childhood to his later years, when the myth of the man grew to epic proportions. Dobbs presents Casanova's experiences of abandonment by his promiscuous mother; his adolescent years, when he was surprised by early stirrings of desire; the reversal of fortune, when he saved a senator and became his heir; his arrest and jailing by the Venetian Inquisition; and his later escape. While the collection may be read for the sheer pleasure of the 'raunchy rhyme,' Dobbs's use of Casanova's history fleshes out the history's story, lending additional realism to the tales of his earthly enjoyments with countesses, nuns, and everyone in between.
The 'raunchy rhyme,' as noted in the title, is the supreme delight of Dobbs's collection. Throughout the book, readers watch outrageous trysts develop while listening to hilarious double entendre ('Awake, my lute!') and surprising, memorable rhymes ('fondle her' and 'gondola'). In 'Pheromones,' Dobbs explores Casanova's powerful chemicals: 'Two nuns a hundred yards away: / one whiff -- they're in the family way.' In 'Love of Women,' Dobbs lets readers in on Casanova's affair with the young, 'Countess Countless': 'He loves her truly for her mind / and really exquisite behind / who to behold evolves a pang, / -- it's like a beautiful meringue!' The poet's use of rhythm and rhyme not only moves the narrative forward, but lends an extra kick of fun to the ribald situations Casanova puts himself in.
Throughout the collection, Dobbs immerses readers in beautiful, spare descriptions of Venice as the backdrop of Casanova's tale. In 'Peripeteia,' he writes: 'A summer night -- the rising moon / casts sequins on the dark lagoon.' In 'Apotheosis,' readers are given 'gondolas nodding at their tether / like restive horses crowd together.' On a visual level, the book contains nine beautiful (some titillating) wood engravings by the artist Wesley W. Bates. Additionally, a small line drawing of a different Venetian mask ends each poem, giving the book an extra fanciful touch.
ForeWord Magazine
'The poems are ribald and droll, a cunning linguist in the style of Catullus, Lovelace in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa or Alexander Pope, wherein an 18th-century man of letters and lovers has illicit assignations, languishes in prison at Leads near the Bridge of Sighs, invokes Scarface and talks of syphilis.'
National Post
