Marginalia On Casanova

A philosopher in the guise of a rake. In this wild, dazzling work of literary reinvention, Hungarian modernist Miklós Szentkuthy uses Casanova’s memoirs as a springboard for something far stranger: a swirling meditation on eros, memory, disguise, vanity, and the metaphysics of seduction.

Blending fiction, philosophy, and improvisation, Marginalia on Casanova is less a commentary than an ecstatic interruption—part reverie, part performance, part private theatre of ideas. Szentkuthy’s prose is electric, erratic, and baroque, drawing comparisons to Joyce, Borges, and Pater, but like nothing else in modern literature. First published in 1939, it launched a one-man avant-garde in Budapest and remains one of the most intoxicating debuts of the twentieth century.