THE ADVENTURE
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characteristic proof of this is that Casanova (as ma.y be seen from
his memoirs), in the course of his erotic-adventurous life, every so
often seriously intended to marry a woman with whom he was at
the time in love. In the light of his temperament and conduct of
life, we can imagine nothing more impossible, internally and ex–
ternally. Ca.sanova not only had excellent knowledge of men but also
rare knowledge of himself. Although he must have said to himself
that he would not be able to endure marriage even for two weeks
and that the most miserable consequences would follow such a step,
his perspective on the future was wholly obliterated in the rapture of
the moment. (Saying this, I mean to put the emphasis on the mo–
ment rather than on the ra.pture.) Because he was entirely dominated
by the feeling of the present, he wanted to enter into a future rela–
tionship which was impossible precisely because his temperament
was oriented to the present.
In contrast to those aspects of life which are related only
peripherally-by mere fate-the adventure is defined by its capacity
to have necessity and mea.ning in spite of its being isolated and acci–
dental. Something becomes an adventure only by virtue of two con–
ditions: that it itself is a specific organization of some significant
meaning with a beginning and an end; and that, despite its accidental
nature, its extra-territoriality with respect to the continuity of life,
it nevertheless connects with the character and identity of the bearer
of that life-that it does so in the widest sense, transcending, by a
mysterious necessity, life's more narrowly rational aspects....
The great forms in which we shape the substance of life are the
syntheses, antagonisms, or compromises between chance and necessity.
Adventure is such a form. When the professional adventurer makes
a system of life out of his life's lack of system, when out of his inner
necessity he seeks the naked, external accidents and builds them into
that necessity, he only, so to speak, makes macroscopically visible that
which is the essential form of every "adventure," even that of the non–
adventurous person. For by adventure we always mean a third some–
thing, neither the sheer, abrupt event whose meaning-a mere given
--simply remains outside us nor the consistent sequence of life in
which every element supplements every other toward an inclusively
integrated meaning. The adventure is no mere hodgepodge of these
two. Rather it
is
that incomparable experience which can be inter-
