Fact, fiction, fabrication

We saw in the introduction how Casanova's autobiographical project differed from autobiography as a genre, with its reading contract and submission to public judgment. Casanova writes life, projecting himself through writing into a renewed experience of life's pleasures. This project implies no contractual relationship with the truth: the author neither necessarily nor deliberately lies, but it's clear that he almost never questions the authenticity of what he recounts, the fidelity of his memory, the sincerity of his presentation. Truth, authenticity, fidelity  this vocabulary is virtually foreign to him.

Laure welcomes Gil Blas as her brother (Gil Blas, 1747)

In other words, the division of what is fact and what is fiction, the distinction between factual and fictional narrative, is not operative for the History of My Life. Casanova did not extend himself in oaths and protestations to tell the truth  nor does he lie : he affabulates. Casanova's writing proceeds by injecting signifiers into everyday discourse. The injection provokes, stimulates and reactivates jouissance. Affabulation consists in this injection : the criterion is not truth but jouissance.

I. Objectivation, subjectivation : the injection of the signifier

Let's take the beginning of Volume III as an example, it's the Cattinella episode. It opens a sequence of just over 200 pages that Casanova wrote twice, and whose two versions we can compare in the Igalens-Leborgne edition. At first, the comparison is disappointing: the second version, longer and less nervous, offers nothing new. It's the same words, the same formulas, but the ellipses of the conversation's removed tone are filled in for the benefit of a more precise, but heavier syntax.

" I get out of a noontime peote at Pont du Lac obscur : I take a chair to go quickly to dinner in Ferrara. I get off at the S.t Marc inn, and go upstairs preceded by a valet who is to take me to my room. " (p. 680)

" a. 1750 my age of 25
I leave my péote around noon at the Pont du Lac obscur : I take a two-wheeled chair to go quickly to dinner in Ferrara : I get off at the inn of S.t Marc, and I go up preceded by the valet who must take me to my room. " (p. 681, changes from the 1st version are indicated in bold)

We can see how Casanova worked : he didn't recompose his story. He corrected his text, starting from the first version he had in front of him. More precisely, he clarified it. It wasn't noon, but around noon; the chair was a two-wheeled chair. Precision objectifies the narrative  indefinites tend to disappear, a peote becomes my peote, a valet becomes the valet.

" Ma péote " is interesting : of course this boat doesn't belong to Casanova. The possessive here comes to color the narrative affectively : my peote, it's the peote that me was transporting, it's also the peote that interests me here in my narrative. In the same way, the introductory addition begins by objectively specifying the date, " year 1750 ", only to immediately afterwards transpose it affectively and subjectively into " my age of 25 /// ans ".

Objectivation, subjectivation : here we touch on the general movement of Casanovian writing, which establishes the circuit of current discourse, then injects in addition, as a supplement, signifier, which only comes there as pure signifier  it was me who was there, it's me who's speaking, and I enjoy speaking.

There's much more at stake here than the process of rewriting : from the outset, the narrative is ordered and composed with a view to this injection of signifier that will bring the extra jouissance. What happens in the inn in Ferrara's Piazza della Pace? Casanova enters the inn, goes up to his room  it's a rapid journey, establishing a rhythm, " je sors ", " pour aller vite ", " je descends ", " je monte ". It is the trajectory of the signifier carried by a speaking subject, an I who speaks and describes a trajectory in the space of his narrative.

Nearby, in the environment of this simple trajectory (Casanova later writes " c'est tout simple "), arises a hubbub, a vague, joyful nebula (" un bruit de gaieté "), life. The trajectory of the je speaking is irresistibly drawn, caught up in the bubbling space of life, the injection is made, and the plot is knotted :

" A sound of merriment coming from an open room excites me to look in to see what it was. I see ten to twelve people at the table. It's as simple as that. I was going my way ; but I feel myself stopped by a Le voilà uttered by a pretty woman who gets up, and runs to me with open arms comes to meet me, kisses me, and says : quite a place setting for my dear cousin ; and have his trunk put in my room. " (p. 681, continuation of previous)

The singularity of the story here lies in the fact that Casanova does not meet Cattinella. The sound comes to him before the image, and the image comes to him before the person is identified. The starting point is excitement. Casanova had originally written " m'excite à voir ", which he then clarifies into " m'excite à y regarder pour voir ". It's he who takes the initiative for this meeting, he who enters this room where no one was expecting him, and where something is going to be improvised, where " the knot of the fable " is going to be tied. Excitement, attraction, intrusion: this is the injection of the signifier. This happens at the level of the signifier : first it's noise, and finally it's an exclamation, " le voilà ".

II. From signifier to stage : the three levels of the scenic device

Then a switch takes place in the medium of representation, from sound to image, from the trajectory of the signifier to the device of a stage. The signifier raises and carries the excitation to pleasure, but this excitation is an excitation to see, to look in order to see: the movement of looking arranges the scene, the objective of seeing installs the perspective of jouissance. Reciprocally, the word that bursts out in Casanova's face, " le voilà ", constitutes an interface : it's a word that says a " voir ", " vois-là ", voilà responds directly to regarder voir.

We see a narrative logic at work here that doesn't necessarily have to do with any historical referent whatsoever. It's not essentially a matter of relating facts  it's a matter of a word that carries a desire for jouissance and injects itself into the given to be seen of a scene. " Regarder voir " sends a stimulus to which responds " le voilà " : stimulus-response, that's the logic of the narrative.

Cattinella's word comes in front of her to stop the trajectory of the signifier (" je me sens arrêté "), i.e. to operate the injection and with it the scenic tilt. The word, then the woman, stands between Casanova and the table of /// twelve guests, Cattinella acts as a screen : she triggers desire by interposing an obstacle. Movement is thwarted : she welcomes it but stops it, she makes it come but she comes in front of it.

Cattinella's trajectory responds to Casanova's, with its succession of verbs in parataxis (gets up, comes to me, embraces me), and the order given, " vite un couvert ", symmetrical to the opening " aller vite dîner ". Even before we understand what is happening and what is about to happen, this interplay of trajectories indicates the reciprocal autonomy of the two protagonists, who decide, in the moment, in the midst of improvisation, to coincide, to collaborate, to conspire in the event.

A scene then unfolds before our eyes  not only was Casanova neither forewarned nor foreseen, but the retrospective narrative has anticipated nothing. On the contrary, movement always precedes characterization  no scene, no trap, no trick has been foretold or prepared. Casanova finds himself introduced, involved in a rolling affair, in a deception that Cattinella set up before him, without him, and in which he might just as well have played no part at all. He begins by believing, and the reader with him, that he is needed to get the courtesan off the hook, in a dead-end plot: " she wants me to play a false character for the convenience of a play of her own composition, which apparently she needed to reach the denouement " (p. 683). This " apparently " sets up a sequel : we finally understand that the outcome was arranged in advance by Cattinella, who had planned to plant the wedding there with her old protector the Count of Ostein (p. 687). In fact, he wasn't needed at all.

For now, Casanova thinks he's needed. For all that, the false cousin doesn't force the hand of " la boldie friponne ". She calls him and calls the shots. Casanova comes in here as an extra, adding to the enjoyment of the fable, the little thrill of randomness and the unexpected that crowns a perfectly orchestrated affair. The linguistic game of injecting the signifier is matched by an imaginary game, which configures an extra jouissance, and a geometrical, visual and scenic game, which orders the representation from the interception of a screen.

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The reader is not forewarned of this : he or she will discover things as the story unfolds, without any game of retrospection on the part of the narrator. We first see before us, and at the same time as the Casanova being narrated, Cattinella distributing the roles :

" Didn't I tell you (she says to a young man coming towards me) that he was to arrive today or tomorrow ? She makes me sit down beside her, and everyone, who had risen to do me the honor, returns to their seats. I'm sure you'll have a good appetite," she says, resting her foot on mine, "here's my future, and here are my father-in-law and mother-in-law. These ladies and gentlemen are friends of the house. Why didn't my mother come with you? At last the moment has come when I must speak - your mother, my dear cousin, will be here in three or four days.
Then, looking more closely at the bold rogue, I recognized her as Cattinella, a well-known dancer, to whom I had never in my life spoken. " (p. 681, continuation of previous)

The three organizational levels of the narrative device manifest themselves successively : the injection is first signified visually, by Casanova's installation at the banquet table and the kick that intimates him to enter the game, to accept without discussion or astonishment the conventions of the scene being played : " my future " indicates that a wedding is about to take place, while " my mother " explains why it's been put on hold. Parallel to what is signified in space, above and below the table, an agreed conversation, a common discourse  is established: according to the /// conventions of hospitality, the hostess suggests that the newcomer eat  " I'm sure you'll have a good appetite. ". This apparently innocuous speech is in fact a triple entendre  the injunction to eat is also an injunction to remain silent, until the game's organizer has given him all the instructions he needs to play his character perfectly  finally, it is the promise of a sexual reward (" the nocturnal reward could not fail me ") : the appetite to be satisfied is also that appetite.

Once the visual device is in place, comes the injection of the signifier itself : " Here at last is the moment when I must speak. " Casanova's words enter the flow of banquet table talk, corroborating and attesting to what Cattinella is saying. It's word on word, foot on foot: the same loop, the same injection. There's a boundary here between factual and fictional narrative, but it's established on the basis of fiction, not fact. The core of the story is fiction, the fiction forged by Cattinella, with every possible marker to indicate to the reader that his story is not to be believed, that everything is false. In this way, the factual dimension of Casanova's story is attested, as it were, surreptitiously and by default. In practice, however, the distribution is diffuse, as the Casanova being narrated lends himself to the game denounced by the Casanova narrating. The fiction bites into the facts, since it is given as fact by a narrator who is staging himself as an affabulant. Casanova's announcement of the arrival of the bride's mother in three or four days' time is an affabulation, confirming Cattinella's fiction to the guests and attesting to it as fact. In this sense, there is an injection of signifier: the false is even truer after the actor who appears has attested to it, and all the more effectively because this actor is improvised.

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III. Plot structure and issues : gratuitousness, eroticization, absenteeism

And yet, is it really the authentication of the fable that is essentially at stake here ? The schemer's case is in no way in jeopardy, and her fable in no way needs authentication. On the contrary, Casanova's impromptu involvement in the game could jeopardize what has been prepared  he could recant, denounce the imposture, or simply play badly and denounce the doldrums in spite of himself  " if the desire to taste her had not come to me, I would have told the assembly that she was a madwoman. " In short, Cattinella has no practical interest in what she's doing: she's doing it for the sheer pleasure of it, she's spicing up her game by giving herself the thrill of extra exposure to risk, and Casanova enters her game precisely for this extra thrill and spice. In this way, we see how the injection of the signifier and additional jouissance are articulated.

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It's only once the scene has been arranged, and after the " moment " of the scene has been verbalized, that Casanova " recognizes " Cattinella. Recognition comes last: " I recognize her for Cattinella, a well-known dancer, to whom I had never spoken in my life. " In a program narrative, this recognition should have come first, conditioning the acceptance of the game, and the moral judgment we can make of it  in a project narrative like Casanova's, recognition is the icing on the cake  and on top of that, it was Cattinella. " She was still young, and very pretty, and what's more famous for her intrigues and vicissitudes. " (p. 685) " And what's more " : the identification of Cattinella, a famous courtesan who made headlines in Venice, is haloed by a perfume of scandal that crowns the whole and brings extra pleasure. This marriage is even more comical, this deception all the more jubilant because it involves Cattinella. Casanova lent himself to the game /// because she was " a pretty woman ", whom he didn't recognize at first ; and what's more, he recognizes her for the Cattinella.

In this device, entirely oriented towards pleasure, what's strangely missing is Casanova himself. He looks, he eats, but he gives himself very little to see. While the Cattinella's words are directed at him, informing him of everything he needs to know for the play to run smoothly, they are ostensibly addressed to all the others: "Speaking to one and then to another, she explained to me the crux of the tale. Cattinella explains herself to him, for him, but not to him. He is, in a way, a sort of crossed-out figure: central, but crossed out.

La Cattinella babbles, furnishing a meal where she's the only one to speak : catinella in Italian, with a single t, denotes a basin  piovere a catinelle, is to pour rain. La Catinella basins them ; she pours out the hysterical flow of her discourse, which she makes purr as a running discourse where comes to be injected the signifier of desire she aims at, the master signifier, the Maestro, which is the identity she assigns to the character Casanova is to play :

" I was the famous Maestro who went to Turin to compose the music at Bartoli's opera where Gafariello sang¹, and the Astrua at the wedding of the Duke of Savoir with the Infanta of Spain. "

The unusual luxury of detail makes it possible to identify this supposed maestro as Baldassare Galuppi, a composer originally from Burano, an island neighboring Venice. The opera referred to here, and actually composed by Galuppi, is La Vittoria d'Imeneo, whose libretto, written by Bartoli, was published in 1750 with engravings depicting the sumptuous sets of the three acts. La Cattinella's fiction is replete with facts  but these facts, far from reinforcing the verisimilitude of the fiction (having Casanova admitted as his brother, his family as rich, and the arrival of his mother as imminent), weaken it, expose it : Galuppi, who was fairly well known, was born in 1706, Casanova in 1725 : the 25-year-old at the table (Casanova opened the story with a reminder of his age) should have been 44. The maestro is an invention that is neither prudent nor plausible, but which excites pleasure : in the record of the Cattinella's speech, but just as much of Casanova's narrative which echoes it, the maestro shines, dazzles and carries off the seduction. He seduces as a possible of jouissance, he contributes to the autobiographical project of seducing possibilities. Not a narcissistic project (Casanova doesn't exhibit himself, paint himself or aim for his portrait), but a seductive one, which on the contrary presupposes an absence of self at the heart of the device.

Casanova is not, moreover, particularly keen on this role of maestro, from which he cautiously protects himself :

" The pretend mother-in-law sitting opposite me fills a glass, and presents it to me. I extend my arm ; but, all in my role, I hold her hand in such a way that she seemed crippled.
-What's that on your hand, Signor Maestro? - A small sprain, madame, which will pass.
Cattinella, bursting into laughter, said she was angry about it, since I couldn't give them a dish of my harpsichord craft.
- I find it singular, I tell her, that this makes you laugh.
- I laugh remembering a command sprain I gave myself two years ago not to dance. " (p. 685)

The mother-in-law who pours the wine for Casanova is a pretended mother-in-law, playing a role ; and conversely, Casanova is all about his role. It's apparently fiction versus fiction. But in fact the mother-in-law is pretended by Cattinella, but, fooled by the schemer, believes she really is his future mother-in-law, and so plays no part ; a /// contrario, Casanova, all in his role as maestro, pretends to have sprained his wrist for fear that someone might order him to play the harpsichord, which he would be quite incapable of doing : he therefore somehow disengages himself from the game he's playing, he allows himself a reserve, a withdrawal from the role he's being made to play, he doesn't play his part completely. From fiction, he brings us back to the fact, that he is not a maestro.

Casanova's merry-go-round, addressed to the supposed mother-in-law, is in fact aimed at Cattinella, to whom Casanova signifies a limit not to be crossed in the game, just as Cattinella's babbling, apparently addressed to the guests, was in fact aimed at Casanova. In this game of foils, the pleasure is then renewed by a new injection of the signifier, this time produced by Cattinella's witticism : " I couldn't give them a dish of my trade " is triple entente again :

Literally, I couldn't show them a sample of my musical talent. Casanova puts himself in the position of not being able to prove he's a musician by playing : he subtracts fact (proof) from fiction (plot).

Figuratively speaking, I couldn't show them what a roué I am. Casanova clears himself of Catinella's game, takes a back seat to the schemer and  : he subtracts the fiction (the plot's initiative) from the fact (the situation created by Cattinella).

Figuratively speaking, I couldn't show them what a roué I am.

Finally, the dish can be understood in the register of jouissance, which it's a question not of giving to them, but of giving to Cattinella. Not giving the dish then endangers both fiction and fact, jouissance in the plot and jouissance promised at its conclusion.

Cattinella thus laughs on the crest of the danger of being discovered. She enjoys this exposure, i.e., this borderline experience where fiction threatens to fall back into fact, but still holds on. The final exchange of lines takes this eroticization of the boundary between fact and fiction to its climax. Cattinella compares Casanova's feigned sprain to one she herself has feigned to escape the constraints of her profession as a dancer. In so doing, she relates the fiction in which Casanova evades to a fact in which she has evaded through a similar fiction: she thus identifies, for the audience listening to them as a third party, the fiction they take to be true (that Casanova is Galuppi, that Cattinella's mother will come in three days' time with " twenty thousand écus in diamonds " to serve as a dowry for the wedding), with the fiction she has orchestrated two years earlier. She gives the clue that it's all a fake, and enjoys with Casanova exposing herself to the limit of being discovered.

The porosity of the boundary between fact and fiction is further evidenced in the transition from the open sequence of acting at the family dinner to the intimate sequence of the tête-à-tête between the courtesan and the seducer :

" After coffee the mother-in-law said that mademoiselle Cattinella must have had to confer with me on family matters ; and that we should therefore be left at liberty. " (p. 685)

In the first version, Casanova had first written " the alleged mother-in-law ", then crossed out the adjective. It must be said that everything happens as if the mother-in-law really did play a role, as if she had consulted with Cattinella to facilitate the smooth running of the plot, which is impossible. Doubtless the duped mother-in-law simply thinks that the cousin and cousin want and need to be alone ; but Casanova in the first movement of writing forgets this fact in favor of the smooth running of the fiction, in which a pretended mother-in-law, a fictional mother-in-law, is quite convenient to order the passage to the next scene.

IV. The combination of facts

Finally, when the two protagonists find themselves alone, Cattinella unveils her batteries, and reveals to Casanova what the denouement will be, /// in which she's sure to come out on top no matter how the duped young man and his family react:

" - Please tell me what the outcome of this farce will be. I foresee it sad, and perhaps tragic.
-You're wrong: it will be comic. I am waiting here for a lover who is the Count of Ostein, brother of the Elector of Mainz. He wrote to me from Frankfurt  he left ; and he must now be in Venice. He's coming to take me to the Reggio fair. I expect him every moment. If my suitor were to play the bad guy, I'm sure he'd thrash him, paying all my expenses, but I don't want him to pay or thrash him. When it's time to go, I'll tell him in his ear that I'll be back, and all will be quiet, for I'll assure him that when I return I'll marry him. " (p. 687)

After the farce's prestiges have been deployed, Cattinella drops the mask and states the facts : she has planned her deus ex machina, and we understand that the whole marriage project thing was just a delaying tactic to keep herself entertained until her protector arrives. The facts that Cattinella states must normally coincide with historically verifiable facts : if Casanova's account is factual (as an autobiography should be), what he presents as fact cannot be fiction.

Fact-checking, by means of archives and correspondence that had to be cross-checked with the statements in the Histoire de ma vie, has occupied Casanovist critics a great deal. The Lacassin edition reports on this work. Casanova claims to have left Venice for Ferrara on June 1^er, 1750 (p. 678), arriving at Pontelagoscuro at noon (p. 680). The scene we have just read therefore takes place in the afternoon of June 1, 1750. Count d'Ostein arrives at St. Mark's Inn in the late afternoon and leaves with Cattinella at midnight (p.689). As planned, they go to the Reggio fair a few days later, where Casanova has preceded them (p.693). They stay there " all the time of the fair " (ibid.).

Or the Reggio fair lasted from April 22 to May 7, i.e. much earlier in the year : the chronology of events in Casanova's account is therefore incompatible with the actual chronology.

On the other hand, Casanova doesn't explain why the Cattinella is in penniless Ferrara, in the Papal States therefore, but on the southern border of the Republic of Venice : the border crossing was precisely by crossing the Po, at Pontelagoscuro, just before entering Ferrara, on the road to Bologna. We know from the archives of the State Inquisition (precisely the one that would see Casanova imprisoned) that the courtesan had been expelled from Venice in 1746 by this route :

" I, Ignazio Beltrame, fante² of the Illustrious and Most Excellent Inquisitors of State, declare that I have transported myself to S. Baldo, to the dwelling of Cattarina Lazari dite Cattinella, whom I seized and took to the Ponte del Lago Scuro ; then, by order of Their Excellencies, I notified her that she should never set foot in the State of S. Marco³, on pain of public withering⁴. " (Annotazione of October 5, 1746)

Is it likely that the adventurous Cattinella, whose debauchery had caused a scandal in Venice, stayed for 4 years in the place where she had been expelled ? Is it not more likely that, having just been expelled, and while waiting for her protector the Count of Ostein (whose existence and stoutness are both attested) to come and fetch her, she came up with this deception in 1746, in which Casanova may or may not have taken part? /// part ?

All these elements lead us to doubt the literal authenticity of the adventure, which Casanova indeed composes from facts, but facts that he recombines, without it being possible to know what the boundary is between recombination of facts (with date errors) and affabulation (with invention of events). Even supposing that the meeting with Cattinella actually took place, did Casanova really play the role of Galuppi, or did the idea come to him because he actually attended, a week later⁵, the Turin performance : " In this capital of Piedmont I found everything equally beautiful. The city, the court, the theater [...]. I heard the Astrua sing, and Gaffarello, and I saw the Jeoffroi dance " (p. 693-5). He may have enjoyed imagining himself as Galuppi (whose name he never pronounces) because Galuppi was from Burano, and Casanova's mother, Giovanna Farusso, born in 1708, had as her stage name la Buranella, no doubt because she was born in Burano. Burano was a very small town, Galuppi was of the same generation as Giovanna Farusso, they both worked for the stage : they were bound to know each other.

At one level, Casanovian narrative proceeds by injecting signifiers  at another level, by combining facts. The injection of signifiers produces the pleasure of the text  the combination of facts provides the material. Facts are attestable  their combination obeys a logic other than that of truth.

Of course, Casanova's memory could have played tricks on him, especially in the enormous mass of characters, facts and events that the History of My Life brews. Dux's archives reveal that he had made up index cards ; but curiously Casanova doesn't mention his difficulties in remembering. The story seems to come to him and flow easily. This is because, either consciously or unconsciously, he borrows paths that literature has already blazed and fictional models that it has established.

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V. Lesage's model : Gil Blas and Laure

For this episode of the Cattinella, a connection with Gil Blas⁶ has been suggested. Lesage's hero had an affair with a Madrid actress, Laure. Some time after their separation, he recognizes her on stage in Granada, in a role as her assistant. He learns that she now calls herself Estelle, and that she is being maintained by a Portuguese lord, the Marquis de Marialva. Gil Blas decides to visit his former mistress the next morning. He finds her at her toilet, in the company of the marquis:

It's a pleasure to meet her.

" I was expecting a bad compliment, when this original actress, seeing me appear, ran to me with open arms, exclaiming : Ah ! my brother, is it you I see ? At these words, she embraced me several times. Then, turning to the Portuguese, she said: "Lord, forgive me if I give in to the force of blood in your presence. After an absence of three years, I cannot see a brother I love dearly again without giving him some sign of my friendship. Well then! My dear Gil Blas," she continued, apostrophizing me again, "tell me about the family. In what condition have you left them⁷ ? "

Laure running with open arms to her supposed brother, who is in fact her former lover, and then kissing him demonstratively and insistently, could have served as a model for Cattinella, who, in Ferrara's Saint Mark's Inn, " runs to me with open arms, kisses me and says... " And Casanova might have sought to conceal the borrowing when, in the 2^th version, he deletes " accourut à moi les bras ouverts ", which echoes Lesage's words, and replaces it with " me vient au-devant ", which formally differs.

Gil Blas /// expects Laure to pretend not to recognize him and to greet him with " a bad compliment " in other words, the kind of flat, cold politeness an actress would give to a foreign admirer. Instead, Laure creates surprise and sets the scene for the romance by exposing and exacerbating the bond between them to the beard of their dupe. She simply substitutes a fraternal bond for the love bond, which is unavowable to her protector, and which he cannot reproach her for. But of course the demonstration of the bond, even if permitted, is more dangerous than its complete concealment, and the thrill of the danger feeds the dramatic tension of the scene.

Casanova doesn't rewrite this scene, but he does play with his topos. From what he tells us, he had never met Cattinella before : so there's no love affair to hide. Yet the set-up of the scene, and the cunning it engages with the duped young fiancé, force connivance and presuppose this affair, which Casanova promises himself, after the fact, to make up for. The erotic complicity of the hidden lovers, for want of having preceded the scene, will have to repair it, reward it. The topical structure of the rouerie is thus mobilized, and diverted, in favor of an on-the-fly device, the circumstantial, random seizure of a mobile, vacant role, and a brief, fixed-term contract. The poetic order of the narrative, with its constraints of coherence and the space of decorous visibility it organizes, is replaced by an aesthetic order, which enjoys the potentialities of these constraints and this space, but reserves for itself at any moment the possibility of changing or departing from the model.

Let's see, in Lesage's text, what these constraints are and what this space of visibility is. It all hinges on the conspirators' conspicuous play at the beard of their dupe:

The dupe's dupe's dupe's dupe's dupe.

" This speech embarrassed me at first ; but I soon unraveled Laure's intentions in it ; and, seconding her artifice, I replied with an air accommodated to the scene we were both about to play : Thank heaven, sister, our parents are in good health. I have no doubt, she continued, that you will be astonished to see me an actress in Granada ; but don't condemn me without hearing me. " (Gil Blas, op. cit., p. 538, continued from previous)

While Gil Blas agrees to play along, Laure gives him a double entente speech, a fictionalized life story that should comfort Marialva, the dupe, and give Gil Blas, the sigisbee, the language elements for the play to be improvised. At the same time, the fiction sketched out by Laure must be a plea to win back Gil Blas, who had left her disgusted by the actress's " such corrupt morals ", " thousand infidelities " and " air of debauchery "⁸. In such a situation, it's impossible to argue with facts that the dupe shouldn't know: instead, it's the comic fantasy of the story Laure has fed him that must win Gil Blas over, through laughter. So when Laure suggests that he should be astonished " to see me an actress in Granada ", in fiction, her brother must be astonished that, a woman of honor and status, she should find herself an actress, while in reality, former lover Gil Blas can be astonished that she has moved from Madrid, the capital, to Grenada in the provinces. The whole comic game lies in this slippage on the object of astonishment, which the actress can make heard through her diction by underlining " à Grenade " like a hyperbate.

The double understanding of Laure's word corresponds to that of Gil Blas 's line:

" I felt such a strong urge to laugh when I heard Laure finish her novel in this way, that I had no little difficulty in stopping myself. But I got through it, and even said to her with a serious air: "Sister, I approve of your behavior, and I'm glad to see you back in Granada, so honestly. /// établie. " (p. 539)

Gil Blas approves of Laure leaving the general lupanar of the Madrid theater; he actually approves of her conduct, since that was the cause of her breakup. But the formula " honestly established ", which the supposed brother has to pronounce in a somewhat naïve way, can only resonate ironically, in the face of an actress who receives him in the company of her lover and protector...

Not only has Laure invented a husband who died on the field of honor, fighting for the Greeks against the Turks, then a landed property, unfortunately confiscated, but she claims to have become an actress to avoid libertinism, which was nevertheless reputed to be the prerogative of the profession ! Here, Lesage mobilizes exactly the narrative spring that Casanova was to take up again: the reference point of the story is not the fact, the verisimilitude if not the authenticity of the fact, but the fundamental, assumed unrealism of the fiction, from which the strategies of exploitation for the purpose of enjoyment are deployed. Laure doesn't tell her story to be believed, if not by the dupe: the story must convince neither Gil Blas nor the reader. What sustains the jubilant pleasure of the game's protagonists here is neither the fiction imagined by Laure, nor any pleasure one might derive from hearing a good story, but the spectacle of the Marquis de Marialva fooled, believing the story and kept in that belief. The game consists in pointing out the implausibility of this " novel ", giving clues to the Marquis that he shouldn't believe it, that is, exposing himself to the ruin of the plot, putting himself in danger of being discovered, the better to enjoy not having been.

.

In all this exchange, then, it's actually Marialva who's giving the show in spite of himself :

" The Marquis of Marialva, who hadn't lost a word of all this talk, took at face value what it pleased don Antonio's widow to spout. He even joined in the conversation. He asked me if I had any employment in Granada or elsewhere. I doubted for a moment whether I would lie; but, not deeming it necessary, I told the truth. I recounted from point to point how I had entered the archdiocese, and how I had left it. [...] The pleasant thing was that Laure, who imagined that I was composing a fable after her own example, burst into laughter that she would not have done if she had known that I was not lying."(Ibid.)

Marialva hears the story of " don Antonio's widow ", who is only a theatrical character, who doesn't exist. The device mixes the space of fiction with that of fact (where an actress dialogues with her former lover to the beard of her protector), and renders indistinguishable the border between fact and fiction.

In the same way, when it's Gil Blas's turn to tell his story, Laure expects him to tell a fiction symmetrical to her own. But Gil Blas has the luxury of telling the truth : the fact here constitutes the highlight of the fiction and, because it's on the verge of compromising it (by revealing to the Marquis that he's dealing, in fact with Asturian nobles, only with wandering acrobats), it enters into the logic of the game and the pleasure of exposure it provides. As a result, to Laure, the fact seems even more fictitious than fiction would have been. The only logic driving the narrative is that of pleasure : " ce qu'il plut à la veuve de don Antonio de débiter ", " Ce qu'il y a de plaisant... ".

Lunchtime arrives and, still braving all dangers, Laure invites Gil Blas to table :

" ... we came to warn that we had served. I immediately wanted to retire to my inn for dinner. But Laure stopped me. What's your plan, brother?" she said. You will dine with me. I won't even let you stay in a furnished room any longer. I want you to eat in my house, and stay there. Bring your clothes with you tonight. There is here /// un lit pour vous. " (p. 539-540)

We can compare this double offer with Cattinella's opening invitation, " vite un couvert pour mon cher cousin ; et qu'on mette sa malle dans ma chambre " (p. 681), even though Lesage, more respectful of propriety than Casanova, finally moves his hero to the marquis's " à qui peut-être cette hospitalité ne faisait pas plaisir " (p. 540).

However, the marquis leaves, and the accomplices explain :

" Saying this, he saluted his theatrical princess, and went out. She immediately ushered me into a cabinet, where, seeing herself alone with me : I'd suffocate, she cried, if I resisted the urge to laugh any longer. Then she fell back in an armchair  and, holding her sides, she gave herself up like a madwoman to immoderate laughter. It was impossible for me not to follow her example  and, when we'd had our fill : "Admit it, Gil Blas," she said to me, "we've just played a pleasant comedy ! But I didn't expect the outcome " (p. 540)

In the same way, after the coffee and the departure of the guests, Cattinella and Casanova find themselves in the room " that she had destined for me adjacent to hers " (p. 685). After the stage comes the bedroom, after the space of visibility where the double entente is played out, the space of invisibility where the spring of cunning is revealed and enjoyment consummated. In Lesage's story, Laure in an armchair " abandoned herself like a madwoman to immoderate laughter "   in Casanova's story, Cattinella on a sofa " abandoned herself to a laugh that she could no longer moderate ". In Lesage, the consummation of enjoyment ends with a good meal  in Casanova, who began with this, Cattinella must pay with her body.

But the difference between the two texts lies not only in the libertine emphasis of the device. In Lesage's work, the denouement is settled and fixed: the Portuguese marquis recruits Gil Blas as his secretary, thereby integrating him into the game⁹. On the other hand, nothing develops between Casanova and Casanova's dupes, nor between Casanova and Cattinella's protector, the Count of Ostein. Casanova was not bound to Cattinella before the scene and the fiction of their reunion  nor will Casanova bind himself to any of the parties involved in the plot she leads.

This absence of connection is materialized in the narrative by the narrator's confinement to his room upon the Count's arrival : " She pushed me into the next room, where after locking me in, she put the key in her pocket. " (p. 687) This closed, adjoining door initially favors the voyeuristic game of scenic break-in : " I then placed myself at the door, whose fortunate crack was the only resource that was to compensate me for the pain I had to endure remaining there all alone. " (p. 689)

Casanova multiplies in the Histoire de ma vie this kind of device¹⁰, which should perhaps be taken more for effects of literary connivance with libertine literature, where they abound, than for a personal singularity of his relationship to jouissance. What's striking here is Casanova's displeasure, trapped and somehow forced to witness a spectacle that is at best boring, at worst repugnant :

" Two whole hours that Cattinella employed in packing bored me to death. The fun only began when candles were carried in, and Cattinella after closing the door went to give tokens of her gratitude, and her tenderness to her big animal lover who received her between his arms that his belly made too short for all he wanted to undertake on her. But in less than a quarter of an hour, this amusement displeased me more than boredom: I have seen things made for the shame of humanity, and for the opprobrium of love. What /// miseries ! The very indulgences of Cattinella revolted me. " (p. 689)

The enormous, half-impotent Count d'Ostein needs stimulation to enjoy, the spectacle of which disgusts Casanova. The promised voyeuristic pleasure comes to naught! The stage set-up was perfect, however, with its open room as a viewing area, and its double system of doors: a front door opening onto the common areas of the inn, the parterre, and a back door housing the hidden cabinet where Casanova stands, the coulisse. While Cattinella closes the front door and pulls back the curtain, Casanova takes advantage of the "happy crack" in the back door to open the voyeuristic spectacle from the wings. Voyeurism should provide Casanova with the extra enjoyment of a donné-à-voir surprised by breaking and entering, coming on top of the first reward on the sofa, coming on top of the market.

What makes the device not work ? We can, of course, give a psychological answer to this question, taking it for granted that what Casanova tells us is the reality he experienced, and that the technical verisimilitude of the story coincides with the real coherence of the facts. We'd say that Casanova doesn't enjoy his position as voyeuristic observer, because Casanova isn't voyeuristic, because that's not how he seeks and finds pleasure. (But nobody forces him to watch!) We could even invoke a certain moral sense on Casanova's part, revolted by the base prostitution to which Cattinella subjects herself. (But Casanova here learns nothing more than what he already knew...)

But if the whole story is a fabrication of Casanova, an affabulation, the psychological justification of the fiction takes a back seat to coherence in the composition of facts and the representational devices it mobilizes. If, as we've suggested, the aim of obtaining additional enjoyment is an essential objective, and even the raison d'être of Casanova's affabulation, it's easy to understand what Casanova's establishment in the back room is all about; it's much less easy to understand, however, why the scenario doesn't work.

.

It's because the extra jouissance must be matched by the injection of the signifier, which brings it about and produces it. In other words, there can be no jouissance without a circuit of speech, where the Casanovian signifier comes to add to it, to mingle with it, to lend its support. Here, Cattinella silences Casanova. In a way, she has been silencing him from the start: on his arrival, he had to shut up and eat; behind his bedroom door, he has to shut up again and is literally forgotten, denied; Cattinella has moved on. The first silence delayed a reply that was all the more jubilant to utter; the second silence prepares no words to utter, to inject into a circuit. The extra jouissance doesn't come about because the injection of the signifier doesn't take place, nor can it be promised.

" I wouldn't have wanted her after what I'd just seen : I was sure she'd have been in despair if she could have guessed I was seeing her. I humiliated myself, thinking that as I grew fat and old, I might one day resemble that Count of Ostein" (p.689, continued from previous)

.

We can understand Casanova's humiliation at being forced into such a situation ; but we can doubt the reasons he gives for it, and indeed only gives in this second version. In the first, he makes no claim that Cattinella is unaware that he is looking at her. How could she not be, when it was she who assigned him this room in the first place, and it was she who locked him in there in the first place? Cattinella, after fooling her fiancé with her protector, fooling her protector with Casanova, fools Casanova himself by enjoying the other in front of him, without worrying about him, to the point of /// forget her in the room and leave with von Ostein without opening the door for her, and even taking the key with him. Cattinella's pleasure, in its very degradation, is what humiliates Casanova, who thought he'd won the day.

Imagining against all likelihood that Cattinella didn't know she was being watched allows Casanova to humiliate a posteriori Cattinella, to retrospectively re-establish control over a device that was in reality of her own making. Casanova then claims that what humiliated him was identifying himself with the fat, old von Ostein: but the fat, old Casanova is the writer Casanova of the 1790s  there's little chance that the twenty-five-year-old would have projected himself, forty years earlier, into such an image. The explanation added in the 2^th version thus betrays the composition of the facts.

Once Cattinella and von Ostein have left, Casanova is let in by the host's son, the duped fiancé, who has to have the lock forced, and then keeps him company at table. The young man persists in believing in the fiction the schemer has forged for him, and Casanova doesn't disabuse him.

" What has she done ? You can tell me.
- I don't dare. - Tell me. - She gave me a kiss. - That's a lot. I would never have believed my cousin capable of that. - She snuck a bottle of Rhine to the prince so we could drink it together. - The prince paid his own way. - Not at all. We wouldn't have wanted it. She would have been offended, for you wouldn't believe how delicate she is.
- What does your father say about her leaving? - My father always thinks badly¹¹ : he says she won't be coming back, and my mother herself is more of his opinion than mine.
- You can see they don't have much spirit. If she told you, she'll probably come back.
- If she had no intention of coming back, she would have assured me of it.
- That's what's called reasoning. " (p. 691)

The extra enjoyment arrives here, and supplements, repairs the humiliation of voyeuristic confinement. Casanova finds pleasure here because in the young man's everyday speech, in the incredible naiveté of his speech, he can inject his signifier, in the form of a double entendre speech whose irony only he and the reader can grasp : " you can tell me " he first slips in the complicit tone of inciting confidence, as if he were on her side even though he has participated in duping him ; a kiss, " it's a lot ", adds the one who has just seen the horrors to which Cattinella lends herself with her German prince he then naturally assumes that " the prince has paid ", without having forgotten what Cattinella told him a few hours earlier about her expense, " but I don't want him to pay it, nor to make him pink " (p. 687) ; Casanova naturally takes the young man's side against the common sense of his father and mother, as a good comedy valet, and concludes with a Molieresque line that is still an antiphrase, " That's what's called reasoning ".

Casanova doesn't construct a scenario of deception  he simply abounds in the discourse, the belief of the young man. He feeds the fictional record in which this discourse is caught, in defiance of the facts. He has no interest in doing so, as this deception, which is not his own, will earn him nothing: he simply continues, free of charge, to play a game he did not initiate and from which he will not benefit. He does it out of indulgence, pleasing his interlocutor, who in return keeps him company at the table. Current discourse is this circuit of pleasant, gratuitous indulgence.

But at the same time, Casanova departs from the record he feeds; he enjoys keeping himself at a distance from it, or rather being both inside and outside of it. Is he mocking the young man? Not really, no. /// Does he feel commiseration? A little. Remorse? Not at all...

Here we touch on the very principle of pleasure that feeds affabulation, in the narrative (the Casanova narrated plays the character of the cousin of the host's son's fiancée) as in the facts (the narrative itself is played out, is not, or not exactly, reality) : affabulation is not a pure production of the imagination, it's a composition of facts. This composition is aimed at jouissance, but an jouissance that the circuit necessary for the injection of the signifier necessarily differs. The narrative can therefore seem to take the path of disappointment, failure and humiliation (as in the despicable episode of Cattinella's pampering of the fat, impotent von Ostein, under the appalled gaze of Casanova, whom she has locked in the cabinet behind her bedroom): this abject detour, in which he loses his grip, serves the kindly, thoughtful, human conclusion, in which the narrator regains control and enjoys his duplicity. There is pleasure only in this improbable coexistence of kindness and deception, the pleasure of enjoyment and its dedication.

Notes

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