by Eugen Zentner
A Casanova in the midst of hip socio-material arrangements
Casanova was a good man! Who would deny this, apart from Dominique Strauss-Khan of course, who is doing everything imaginable these days to replace the much-travelled Venetian as the greatest lecher in living memory. Admittedly, of course, the French lecher also has it thick as a fist behind his ears. It was not for nothing that the public prosecutor's office tried so hard to arrest him so that the former head of the IMF could finally get his urges under control. Between 2008 and 2011, he is said to have celebrated lavish parties in the luxury Carlton Hotel, of all places, which the world public held against him. And so he ended up in the dock, where he stood trial for a long time. While he was once happily drooling in his luxury suite, he now sat in court babbling and sobbing, answering questions until, as the daily newspapers recently reported, the judge released him back into his messed-up life with an acquittal.
Casanova would have smiled disparagingly at the narrow-mindedness with which Strauss-Khan tried to force his amorous conquests. He wanted to become president and womaniser by the grace of God, a drooling wretch in one. "Ugh!", the good Giacomo would have exclaimed if he had seen these strained, tense and disgusting attempts by Strauss-Khan up close. "Who, yes who", he would have said, "who the hell chooses such a tawdry upper-class setting as the Hotel Carlton to court the ladies". Yes, Casanova knew something about the practice of erotic seduction and had an eye for special socio-material arrangements within which he could perform with relish. At least that's what we learn from the numerous stories that writers have left us since the 20th century. In them, he cavorts in Vienna, travels to Geneva or goes to St Petersburg to flirt with none other than Catherine II. A rascal of the finest kind, this Casanova! He is as busy as ever, whether with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler or Hermann Hesse. But he always remains a professional. When it comes to his artful approach practices, he leaves nothing to chance and takes the utmost care, at least when it comes to the selection of exquisite Sites of the Social. Everything else is routine, gentlemanly and off the cuff. Dominique Strauss-Khan would be envious if he were to read the classics.
If you take a look at them, you immediately notice that Casanova prefers to do his mischief in the salons of the European aristocracy, where he does the most fantastic things with the help of colourful types of people, grotesque objects and outlandish rooms. Nobility obliges! And Casanova takes it at its word. In Jeseph Gregor's "Casanova in Petersburg" (1947), for example, he places himself between four women, including the Tsarina, the Frenchwoman Thérèse Valville, a former peasant girl called Zaida and - surprise, surprise - a certain "Protée". He encounters a "bull-necked emperor's skull" as well as another eccentric with a "gleaming golden giant's chest", which is covered in "immense golden epaulettes", and walks from room to room, where he is occasionally gazed at by the "figure of the promising Christ", "Pallas Athena" or the "eyes of the dead tsars". And then, almost every day, he spits out "caviar, eggs and ham for morning tea" - not bad!
Here in the cool climes of the Russian aristocracy, Casanova finds all the exotic ingredients he needs to enchant the ladies: "His masquerade extended not only to the language, which he had acquired admirably quickly. Even he wore the Russian blouse, highly elegant, black and silk. A most striking decoration hung from his neck: a St Andrew's cross made of a single, violet-blue amethyst, sparkling with diamonds." But then he really gets down to business and organises a masked ball with no shortage of scurrilities. When the empress arrives, there are bombastic fireworks, cannon shots roar and "the initial of the ruler's name emerges from a huge aureole of rays". Although the snow is thick, the visitors are surrounded by "sheaves, palm trees and fountains". The festivities are a real treat, and Casanova takes every opportunity to violate the customs of his host country: "In Italy, Russia was to be a guest that evening. It therefore struck some people that the ceremony of welcome that followed was brief, that the tea that followed lasted barely an hour and that for many it could only be taken standing up, while only the highest ranks were seated, and that one could not linger long over the delicacies, which was completely contrary to custom." But Casanova does not leave it at that and goes one better, using the "stimulation of the meal and the alcohol, the splendour of the gold and silver, the shimmer of the cups and goblets, and above all the abundance of flowers" to "further increase the tension". He rotates the staff as he pleases, serves up the food and flirts like a young god. They all don't know what's happening to them, are confused and disorientated, Casanova is the only one who keeps an overview. Good man, as I said. In the end, as always, he leaves the stage as the victor and the female sex simply cannot tear themselves away from him.
If the author had dressed him in skinny jeans and let him grow a thick beard, we would have recognised him immediately, the type that Casanova represented in the 18th century. But as it is, we have to look very closely and utilise our literary knowledge in order to unmask him as a hipster who demonstrates enormous daring in terms of his lifestyle and who flaunts his exploits in public. Casanova's memoirs, effectively the weblog of the 18th century, were published between 1790 and 1798 under the title "Histoire de ma vie" and have since served as a rich goldmine for authors struggling to find interesting material. Among them is Hermann Hesse, who in "Casanova's Conversion" (1906) also sends the pick-up artist on a journey of conquest, but equips him with hip accessories. The womaniser wears a "gold watch adorned with stones", handles a "silver toilet knife" and takes turns snorting "sometimes from a gold can, sometimes from a silver can". He also cuts a bella figura in "delicate silk stockings" and "Dutch lace", which he casually contrasts with "beautiful pistols" to make his appearance look even cooler with this feminine-virile crossover. In any case, the two sisters he gives "lessons in the ars amandi" in Fürstenberg do not seem to have missed the mark with his daring appearance. His challenge to a duel, which he sends by post to three officers at the same time before travelling on to Switzerland, is no less serene. What is really hip, however, is that Casanova even sees an original setting for his sedating performance in the sacred and brittle monastery "Maria-Einsiedeln" near Zurich, where he stays at the end of his long journey.
Over the course of his career, his eye for opportunities and possibilities arising from unconventional socio-material arrangements sharpened to such an extent that, as can be read in Arthur Schnitzler's "Casanova's Journey Home" (1918), he was increasingly inclined towards transgressive excursions and tried his hand in a wide variety of milieus: "at ruling courts, in aristocratic castles, at bourgeois tables and in notorious houses". He likes to use "the story of his marvellous escape from the lead chambers of Venice" as a lead story, with which he immediately demonstrates his non-conformism. Even Mozart, with whom the Venetian hipster makes the acquaintance of in Prague according to Jesef Mühlberger's "Casanova's Last Adventure" (1931), feels the effects of this. While the young musical genius wants to impress Casanova and takes him as a role model for the opera "Don Juan", the experienced gallant is bored with his counterpart and sees him as nothing more than a mainstream composer whose works are "copies" and "shadows". When it comes to the big performance, the whole town is in an uproar: "It's all because of this man's music, this goblin, this blender!" But Casanova keeps his nerve. Instead of listening to or watching this low-level pop, he prefers to go to a trendy neighbourhood, the "Little Venice of Prague", to fully indulge in "the sweet poison of southern love adventures".
The coolness with which Casanova degrades the seemingly sublime; the nonchalance with which he defies class boundaries, switches back and forth between several women of different social backgrounds and knows how to win them all over equally, but in the same breath also takes down all rivals in a duel, gives him the aura of a superlative hipster. He is wild, the Casanova, spontaneous and committed to the present. He cares little for morals and is the most radical individualist of his time, a unique arranger of the heterogeneous and contradictory, who both decontextualises and recontextualises and strives to distinguish himself by constantly creating a new, hip setting for his fling. In such an atmosphere, it doesn't take long for the sparks to fly. This is made clear by an incident in St Petersburg, where the cunning seducer initiates a liaison with Zaida, the former peasant girl, and visits her in the palace for this purpose. The rooms and the ambience in which the two flirt are reminiscent of deliberately trashy hipster bars in Berlin's Neukölln district, which endeavour to ironically instrumentalise bad taste. There is talk of a "desolate room" in which Casanova carelessly flirts with his lover amidst "greasy tablecloths", "plates", "leftover food" and "half-empty bottles" and is not at all bothered by the fact that the air is "completely impregnated with foul-smelling smoke". In these rancid walls of St Petersburg's aristocratic underground, the adventurer clearly feels at home and does not hesitate to heat up the atmosphere to such an extent that his beloved loses her temper: "Zaida had grabbed a full bottle of champagne that was still in the cooler and hurled it at her lover with full force, but had missed him."
Here, people are still spirited without having to drink a lot. But this changed around 1950, when Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, the new personifications of the "White Negro", as Norman Email called the hipster of the time, charged the game of seduction with such a Dionysian charge that the standardised socio-material arrangements in which it had previously taken place began to burst. Casanova's ears would have fluttered. The two beatniks are raging with a thirst for adventure and, like their predecessor, are driven to go on extended journeys. They spared neither effort nor expense to let off steam sexually. No journey is too long for them, no obstacle too great. Any hardship, no matter how harsh, is welcome. Illinois, California, Arizona, Texas, even Mexico, they go everywhere, cross the whole of North America and seduce like crazy. However, they don't need Hesse or Schnitzler to mould their libidinous experiences posthumously into a literary form - they do it themselves. Kerouac traces his triumphal march in the novel "On the Road", which was published in 1957 and shook up an entire generation. It describes how Kerouac's alter ego, a talented party nomad, follows the principle of "sex, drugs 'n' jazz" and, despite his permanent delirium, manages time and again to gather hot-blooded women around him who are equally attracted to intoxication. There's no doubt about it: there's also some sweet talk here, but it's just slurred. What has changed significantly, however, are the socio-material arrangements in which the toxic lover tackles his conquests.
While it was once real estate that the seducing hipster chose as the setting for his activities, the game of seduction now often takes place in various forms of transport. Goods trains, Greyhound buses and flatbed lorries are suddenly enjoying great popularity and are becoming hip objects that are just as popular as drugs. Kerouac favours marijuana in particular, which he can't get enough of. In "On the Road", it has to be a "huge Corona cigar from the herb" for the subsequent debauchery to take its usual course. But when the glutton does stop to win over the female sex on immovable ground, he does so in unusual places such as campsites or shacks, where he is accommodated together with other seasonal workers. And since the womaniser has a soft spot for bebop, he also visits African-American jazz clubs where he flirts with women of other skin colours - an absolute novelty for America in the 1950s. In this way, he not only involves new objects in the game of seduction, but also new participants who were not yet involved in Casanova's amorous adventures. Kerouac, the hip Casanova of the 1950s, is a child of his time, which is characterised by racism, conservative values and cultural restrictions. Rebelling against this social order becomes the existentially most important motto of the seductive hipster, who establishes himself as such by creating a provocative setting for his amorous adventures. For Kerouac, a delicate affair must therefore always have a shock effect, it must break the mould and express non-conformity in a radical form.
The only one who knows how to enhance this is William S. Burroughs. He not only shocks the whole of society, but also himself and his own organism, which is on the verge of collapse with every new excess. Just like his beatnik friend Kerouac, he sees alcohol and marijuana as inspiring stimulants, but also likes to be fuelled by opium, morphine, LSD and heroin to get him going on his frivolous journeys of conquest. And these take him much further afield than Kerouac, so that Burroughs sleeps off his daily high on almost every continent. From the east coast of the USA, he travelled to Mexico, where he gained men as new participants in his affairs and finally became the dominant hipster because he turned the practice of seduction into a bisexual adventure. It is therefore only logical that Burroughs wants to establish the new game in Europe as well. Casanova's children should see what a modern lecher is capable of. They should experience at first hand the creativity with which the hip seducer of today goes about his work, with what a desire for distinction he takes on the legacy of the former womaniser and shakes up the usual socio-material arrangements. After Burroughs had demonstrated North America's cultural superiority in Paris, Berlin and London, he travelled to the Moroccan city of Tangier to give his toxic debauchery with both sexes an exotic flair. Only then does the world tour come to an end. The wild goings-on to which he devoted himself for years were processed by the experimental beatnik in the autobiographically based novels "Queer" (1952) and "Junkie" (1953), the quintessence of which, however, is "Naked Lunch" (1959), a drastic piece of prose in which Burroughs gives an idea of the unsavoury forms the excesses took on his long tour.
Among the admissions of the hip seducer, it can now be noted, are lengthy journeys, which he uses to open up strange socio-material arrangements for the performance of his seduction practice and thus to shape individual love adventures into a unique work of art. This makes him seem hip, from which he draws his cultural superiority. But he is also a literary self-promoter who increasingly fictionalises his triumphs - from a diachronic perspective. While Casanova still processes his experiences in authentic memoirs, Kerouac and Burrouhgs mix them with fictional elements by writing autobiographical novels. The contemporary hipster also writes - preferably a blog - but in his case the game of seduction itself becomes fiction and only takes place in his head, while the actual deeds have no equivalent in reality. Whereas Casanova and the beatniks still placed the emphasis on seduction in action and only looked for an original setting in order to optimise their performance, the hipster of today directs all his energy exclusively to the socio-material arrangement, which he never stops tinkering with. They are so preoccupied with clothes, chic cafés and other hip people with whom they interact, changing and restructuring the socio-material arrangements so often that there is no time to practise the flirtatious art of conquest, not to mention exhausting journeys. Elsewhere, you quickly lose your hipster status and immediately mutate into an unwelcome tourist who no longer looks hip due to the lack of information. In any case, it's not worth going anywhere else, as you won't find anything other than what you see on your own doorstep every day: the same hipsters, the same bars and the same fashion boutiques. The same thing everywhere. Whether Chicago, London, Sydney or Stockholm, the hipster endeavours everywhere and with full vigour to create an original mix of accessories, spaces and interaction partners and yet always produces the same thing: uniform individuality.
The contemporary hipster has degenerated into an abstraction and exists only as a hegemonic social type without substance, which anyone can become who fits into an individualised socio-material arrangement. What has died out above all is the uniqueness of the person that Casanova and the beatniks used to breathe in and out, thereby giving the hipster a face. This also applies to the art of adventurous seduction, which has become decoupled from hip settings. This is why Kara Simsek's typology of hipsters, published in 2014, includes figures such as the "graphic designer", the "social media guy" or the "fashion editor", but not the hip seducer. You look for him in compendiums of this kind just as much in vain as in reality, which is why you have to turn to fictional works such as those by Schnitzler, Hesse, Kerouac or Burroughs to get an idea of what he looks and acts like.
Should we therefore see Dominique Strauss-Khan's wild parties as an attempt to make the hip seducer socially acceptable again? You could take a chance. But it's still not convincing. The choice of the Carlton Hotel makes the erotic berserker appear anything but hip, no matter how hard he tries. The tasteless attempt proves once again that the hipster of today either lacks the skill of elaborate seduction or the stylistic confidence in terms of setting. There's no question that we miss the complete hipster, the original universal genius in all respects, a windy rogue that nobody embodies as perfectly as the adventurer from Venice. Without a doubt, he was a good man - the Casanova!
Eugen Zentner, Dr phil., is a fellow at the DFG Research Training Group "Self-Formations" at the University of Oldenburg.
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