For centuries they exerted the same knee-trembling pull on collectors and curators as their rakishly charming author had on the women of 18th-century Europe. But the international battle to pull off the ultimate literary conquest ended in Paris today as the French national library announced it had acquired the original manuscripts of Giacomo Casanova's memoirs.
In what is believed to be the most expensive manuscript sale ever, a mystery donor purchased the 3,700 yellowing pages on behalf of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) for a price which has not been made been public but is believed to be in excess of €5m (£4.4m). The papers, transferred to the BNF on Monday in 13 protective boxes, are the uncensored, uncorrected basis of what went on to become the Venetian lothario's legendary Histoire de Ma Vie (Story of My Life).
The manuscripts, over which Casanova slaved in the years before his death in 1798, have been seen by a mere handful of experts, having been kept under lock and key for most of the past two centuries and considerably altered to form the versions widely available in print.
But they could soon be accessible to the general public. The BNF plans to digitalise them as part of its online library, and to display them in an exhibition next year.
"This is the most significant purchase the BNF has ever made in terms of monetary value," said Bruno Racine, the library's director, who has worked for the past two years to push through the deal in the utmost secrecy.
"Casanova's memoirs have become universally known but they have been censored … and even changed. These manuscripts are the authentic and definitive original."
Racine would not give any details about the identity of the anonymous sponsor that came forward with the €5.25m requested. According to French press reports, the donor was a business which had volunteered the funding when other sponsors pulled out due to the recession.
The sale was first mentioned to the BNF in the autumn of 2007, when Racine received a phone call from France's ambassador to Berlin informing him that a "mysterious emissary" wanted to talk to the library about the manuscripts. The contact turned out to be a representative of the prominent German publisher Brockhaus in whose possession the pages had been since 1821, when Casanova's family sold them.
Hubertus Brockhaus told the German news agency DPA he was "delighted" to transfer the work – written entirely in the author's second language of French – to the BNF.
"I wanted to make [the manuscript] accessible to the public," he said.
The tightly handwritten papers are justifiably famous for their gripping tales of seduction and skulduggery. But parts of the story of how they have come, over 200 years after their author died, to finally be shown to the public are themselves fitting for a text Racine describes as "mythical".
The pages survived the second world war bombing of Leipzig, during which the Brockhaus offices were destroyed. Having found the work miraculously saved on the floor of his cellar, Frederic-Arnold Brockhaus arranged for it to be smuggled out of the city in a US military truck in 1945.
Due to the nature of the content, which details conquests of over 100 women, possibly several men and at least one nun, the originals fell victim to a series of alterations by over-zealous editors and it was not until 1960 that a full version was printed in French.
Words of love
"One morning she came to my bed bringing me a pair of white stockings she had knitted herself; after dressing my hair, she told me that she had to try them on me to see if she had made any mistakes … The Doctor had gone to say his mass. Putting on the stockings, she said that my thighs were dirty and at once began washing them without asking my leave … Bettina carried her zeal for cleanliness too far, and her curiosity aroused a voluptuous feeling in me which did not cease until it could become greater. Thus calmed, it occurred to me that I had committed a crime and that I should ask her forgiveness …
"The company of this angel made me suffer the pains of hell. Though constantly tempted to deluge her face with kisses … I scrupulously avoided taking her hands; for me to have given her a single kiss would have blown my edifice sky-high, for I felt that I had become as inflammable as straw. When she left I was astonished that I had won the victory; but, my appetite for laurels being insatiable, I could scarcely wait for the next morning to come so that I might renew the sweet and perilous battle. It is shallow desires which make a young man bold; strong desires confound him."
