The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 15: With Voltaire

In this lively installment of the famed memoirist’s chronicles, he returns to the European salons for a spirited exchange with the great Enlightenment writer Voltaire. Their dialogue crackles with wit as the older philosopher tests the younger’s loyalty, humor, and knowledge of literature, while two English gentlemen enter, adding polite diplomatic banter. The conversation soon turns to the tangled web of language and taste, with the memoirist defending the purity of Italian against the French‑inflected prose Voltaire admires.

References to figures such as Algarotti, Newton, and Fontenelle illustrate the cosmopolitan network of ideas swirling around them, and their debate about sonnets, Horace, and fitting thought into fourteen lines reveals the era’s literary passions. Through these exchanges, the memoirist shows his restless curiosity, noting that true learning comes from wandering and observing rather than from dry histories. The witty repartee leaves listeners with a taste of the intellectual camaraderie that defined Enlightenment salons, promising more anecdotes of travel, philosophy, and occasional scandal as the memoir continues.