Don Juan (Spanish: [doŋ ˈxwan]), also known as Don Giovanni (Italian), is a legendary fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women.
The original version of the story of Don Juan appears in the 1630 play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) by Tirso de Molina. The play includes most of the elements found and later adapted in subsequent works, including the setting (Seville), the characters (Don Juan, his servant, his love interest, and her father, whom he kills), moralistic themes (honor, violence and seduction, vice and retribution), and the dramatic ending in which Don Juan dines with and is then dragged down to hell by the stone statue of the father he had previously slain. Tirso de Molina's play was subsequently adapted into numerous plays and poems, of which the most famous include a 1665 play, Dom Juan, by Molière; a 1787 opera, Don Giovanni, with music by Mozart and a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte largely adapting Tirso de Molina's play; a satirical and epic poem, Don Juan, by Lord Byron; and Don Juan Tenorio, a romantic play by José Zorrilla.
By linguistic extension, from the name of the character, "Don Juan" has become a generic expression for a womanizer, and stemming from this, Don Juanism is a non-clinical psychiatric descriptor.
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Pronunciation
In Spanish, it is pronounced [doŋˈxwan]. The usual US English pronunciation is , with two syllables and a silent "J", but today, as more English-speakers are becoming influenced by Spanish, the pronunciation is becoming more common. However, in Lord Byron's verse version the name rhymes with ruin and true one, and traditionally the name was pronounced with three syllables, possibly or , in England at the time and by later critics. This would have been characteristic of English literary precedent, where English pronunciations were often imposed on Spanish names, such as Don Quixote .
Synopsis
There have been many versions of the Don Juan story, but the basic outline remains the same: Don Juan is a wealthy Andalusian libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. He takes great pride in his ability to seduce women of all ages and stations in life, and he often disguises himself and assumes other identities in order to seduce women. The aphorism that Don Juan lives by is: "Tan largo me lo fiáis" (translated as "What a long term you are giving me!"). This is his way of indicating that he is young and that death is still distant—he thinks he has plenty of time to repent later for his sins.
His life is also punctuated with violence and gambling, and in most versions he kills a man: Don Gonzalo (the Commendatore), the father of Doña Ana, a girl he has seduced. This murder leads to the famous "last supper" scene, where Don Juan invites a statue of Don Gonzalo to dinner. There are different versions of the outcome: in some versions Don Juan dies, having been denied salvation by God; in other versions he willingly goes to Hell, having refused to repent; in some versions Don Juan asks for and receives a divine pardon.
Earliest written version
The first written version of the Don Juan story was a play, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest), published in Spain around 1630 by Tirso de Molina (pen name of Gabriel Téllez).
In Tirso de Molina's version Don Juan is portrayed as an evil man who seduces women thanks to his ability to manipulate language and disguise his appearance. This is a demonic attribute, since the devil is known for shape-shifting or taking other peoples' forms. In fact Tirso's play has a clear moralizing intention. Tirso felt that young people were throwing their lives away, because they believed that as long as they made an Act of Contrition before they died, they would automatically receive God's forgiveness for all the wrongs they had done, and enter into heaven. Tirso's play argues in contrast that there is a penalty for sin, and there are even unforgivable sins. The devil himself, who is identified with Don Juan as a shape-shifter and a "man without a name", cannot escape eternal punishment for his unforgivable sins. As in a medieval Danse Macabre, death makes us all equal in that we all must face eternal judgment. Tirso de Molina's theological perspective is quite apparent through the dreadful ending of his play.
Another aspect of Tirso's play is the cultural importance of honor in Spain of the golden age. This was particularly focused on women's sexual behavior, in that if a woman did not remain chaste until marriage, her whole family's honor would be devalued.
Later versions
The original play was written in the Spanish Golden Age according to its beliefs and ideals. But as time passed, the story was translated into other languages, and it was adapted to accommodate cultural changes.
Other well-known versions of Don Juan are Molière's play Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre (1665), Antonio de Zamora's play No hay plazo que no se cumpla, ni deuda que no se pague, y Convidado de piedra (1722), Goldoni's play Don Giovanni Tenorio (1735), José de Espronceda's poem El estudiante de Salamanca (1840), and José Zorrilla's romantic play Don Juan Tenorio (1844). Don Juan Tenorio is still performed throughout the Spanish-speaking world on 2 November ("All Souls Day", the Day of the Dead).
Mozart's opera Don Giovanni has been called "the opera of all operas". First performed in Prague in 1787, it inspired works by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Alexander Pushkin, Søren Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw, and Albert Camus. The critic Charles Rosen analyzes the appeal of Mozart's opera in terms of "the seductive physical power" of a music linked with libertinism, political fervor, and incipient Romanticism. After seeing a performance of Mozart's opera, Pushkin wrote a story in the form of a play, not intended for the stage, "The Stone Guest" (Каменный гость) in a series "The Little Tragedies" (1830). Alexander Dargomyzhsky composed an opera using the exact text of Pushkin for the libretto (unfinished at the composer's death 1869, completed by César Cui, 1872).
The first English version of Don Juan was The Libertine (1676) by Thomas Shadwell. A revival of this play in 1692 included songs and dramatic scenes with music by Henry Purcell. Another well-known English version is Lord Byron's epic poem Don Juan (1821).
Don Juans Ende, a play derived from an unfinished 1844 retelling of the tale by poet Nikolaus Lenau, inspired Richard Strauss's orchestral tone poem Don Juan. This piece premiered on 11 November 1889, in Weimar, Germany, where Strauss served as Court Kapellmeister and conducted the orchestra of the Weimar Opera. In Lenau's version of the story, Don Juan's promiscuity springs from his determination to find the ideal woman. Despairing of ever finding her, he ultimately surrenders to melancholy and wills his own death.
Cultural influence
Don Juan fascinated the 19th-century English novelist Jane Austen: "I have seen nobody on the stage who has been a more interesting Character than that compound of Cruelty and Lust".
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard discussed Mozart's version of the Don Juan story at length in his 1843 treatise Either/Or.
In 1901, Finnish composer Jean Sibelius wrote the second movement of his second symphony based on the climax of Don Juan. The piece begins with a representation of Death walking up the road to Don Juan's house, where Don Juan pleads with Death to let him live. Also, the 1905 novel The Song of the Blood-Red Flower by the Finnish author Johannes Linnankoski has been influenced by Don Juan along the protagonist of the story.
The protagonist of Shaw's 1903 Man and Superman is a modern-day Don Juan named not Juan Tenorio but John Tanner. The actor playing Tanner morphs into his model in the mammoth third act, usually called Don Juan in Hell and often produced as a separate play due to its length. In it, Don Juan (played by Charles Boyer in a noted 1950s recording) exchanges philosophical barbs with the devil (Charles Laughton).
In 1911, Ukrainian writer Lesya Ukrainka wrote poetic drama The Stone Host about Don Juan. As the author herself determined, it's about the victory of the conservative principle over the split soul of Donna Anna, and through her – over Don Juan. The traditional seducer of women became a victim of the woman who had broken his will.
In Spain, the first three decades of the twentieth century saw more cultural fervor surrounding the Don Juan figure than perhaps any other period. In one of the most provocative pieces to be published, the endocrinologist Gregorio Marañón argued that, far from the paragon of masculinity he was often assumed to be, Don Juan actually suffered from an arrested psychosexual development.
During the 1918 influenza epidemic in Spain, the figure of Don Juan served as a metaphor for the flu microbe.
Folkloristics
In folklore studies, the theme of a human living recklessly inviting a dead person or skull for dinner is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 470A, "The Offended Skull".