Don Juan (Spanish:[doŋˈxwan]), also known asDon Giovanni (Italian), is a legendary fictionalSpanishlibertine who devotes his life toseducing women.
The original version of the story of Don Juan appears in the 1630 playEl burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) byTirso 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, byMolière; a 1787 opera,Don Giovanni, with music byMozart and alibretto byLorenzo da Ponte largely adapting Tirso de Molina's play; a satirical and epic poem,Don Juan, byLord Byron; andDon Juan Tenorio, a romantic play byJosé Zorrilla.
Bylinguistic extension, from the name of the character, "Don Juan" has become a generic expression for awomanizer, and stemming from this,Don Juanism is a non-clinical psychiatric descriptor.
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InSpanish, it is pronounced[doŋˈxwan]. The usual English pronunciation is/ˌdɒnˈwɑːn/, with two syllables and a silent "J", but today, as more English-speakers are becoming influenced by Spanish, the pronunciation/ˌdɒnˈhwɑːn/ is becoming more common. However, inLord Byron's verse version the name rhymes withruin andtrue one, and traditionally the name was pronounced with three syllables, possibly/ˌdɒnˈʒuːən/ or/ˌdɒnˈdʒuːən/, 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 asDon Quixote/ˌdɒnˈkwɪksət/.
There have been many versions of the Don Juan story, but the basic outline remains the same: Don Juan is a wealthyAndalusianlibertine 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!"[1]). 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.[2]
His life is also punctuated with violence and gambling, and in most versions he kills a man: Don Gonzalo (theCommendatore), the father ofDoña 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 toHell, having refused to repent; in some versions Don Juan asks for and receives a divine pardon.
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 inSpain around 1630 byTirso de Molina (pen name ofGabriel Téllez).[3]
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 thedevil is known for shape-shifting or taking other peoples' forms.[2] 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 anAct 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 evenunforgivable 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 medievalDanse Macabre, death makes us all equal in that we all must face eternal judgment.[2] Tirso de Molina's theological perspective is quite apparent through the dreadful ending of his play.[2]
Another aspect of Tirso's play is the cultural importance of honor in Spain of thegolden age. This was particularly focused on women's sexual behavior, in that if a woman did not remainchaste until marriage, her whole family's honor would be devalued.[4][2]
The original play was written in theSpanish 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.[3]
Other well-known versions of Don Juan areMolière's playDom Juan ou le Festin de pierre (1665),Antonio de Zamora's playNo hay plazo que no se cumpla, ni deuda que no se pague, y Convidado de piedra (1722),Goldoni's playDon Giovanni Tenorio (1735),José de Espronceda's poemEl estudiante de Salamanca (1840), andJosé Zorrilla's romantic playDon Juan Tenorio (1844).Don Juan Tenorio is still performed throughout the Spanish-speaking world on 2 November ("All Souls Day", theDay of the Dead).
Mozart's operaDon Giovanni has been called "the opera of all operas".[5] First performed in Prague in 1787, it inspired works byE. T. A. Hoffmann,Alexander Pushkin,Søren Kierkegaard,George Bernard Shaw, andAlbert Camus. The criticCharles Rosen analyzes the appeal of Mozart's opera in terms of "the seductive physical power" of a music linked withlibertinism, political fervor, and incipientRomanticism.[6] 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 byCésar Cui, 1872).
The first English version of Don Juan wasThe Libertine (1676) byThomas Shadwell. A revival of this play in 1692 included songs and dramatic scenes with music byHenry Purcell. Another well-known English version isLord Byron's epic poemDon Juan (1821).
Don Juans Ende, a play derived from an unfinished 1844 retelling of the tale by poetNikolaus Lenau, inspiredRichard Strauss's orchestral tone poemDon Juan.[7] This piece premiered on 11 November 1889, in Weimar, Germany, where Strauss served as CourtKapellmeister 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.[8]
In the filmAdventures of Don Juan starringErrol Flynn (1948), Don Juan is a swashbuckling lover of women who also fights against the forces of evil.
In 1951 theBrazilian writerGuilherme Figueiredo wrote a play entitledDon Juan.[9]
In 1952, theSpanish writerJacinto Benavente published his playHa llegado Don Juan.[10]
The Spanish writerGonzalo Torrente Ballester told his version of the legend in the 1963 novelDon Juan.[11]
Don Juan in Tallinn (1971) is an Estonian film version based on a play by Samuil Aljošin. In this version, Don Juan is a woman dressed in men's clothes. She is accompanied by her servant Florestino on her adventure inTallinn, the capital of Estonia.[12]
InDon Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman (1973), a French-Italian co-production,Brigitte Bardot plays a female version of the character.[13]
Don Juan DeMarco (1995), starringJohnny Depp andMarlon Brando, is a film in which a mental patient is convinced he is Don Juan, and retells his life story to a psychiatrist.
Don Jon (2013), a film set inNew Jersey of the 21st century, features an attractive young man whose addiction to online pornography is compared to his girlfriend's consumerism.
Don Juan fascinated the 19th-century English novelistJane Austen: "I have seen nobody on the stage who has been a more interesting Character than that compound of Cruelty and Lust".[14]
The Danish philosopherSøren Kierkegaard discussed Mozart's version of the Don Juan story at length in his 1843 treatiseEither/Or.[15]
In 1901, Finnish composerJean Sibelius wrote the secondmovement of hissecond 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 novelThe Song of the Blood-Red Flower by the Finnish authorJohannes Linnankoski has been influenced by Don Juan along the protagonist of the story.
The protagonist of Shaw's 1903Man 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 calledDon 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 1912, Ukrainian writerLesya Ukrainka wrote the verse dramaThe Stone Host (Ukrainian:Kaminnyi hospodar), a modernist reworking of the Don Juan legend in which Donna Anna rather than Don Juan becomes the central figure.[16] Rozumnyj interprets the play as a conflict between Don Juan's ideal of unlimited personal freedom and Donna Anna's drive to power on the one hand, and the "stone", conservative ideal of law and order embodied by the Commander Don Gonzago on the other;[17] in this reading, the supernatural intervention of the Commander marks the eventual triumph of his ethical code over both protagonists. Other critics such as Robert Karpiak, Clarence A. Manning and Wolodymyr T. Zyla have stressed that Ukrainka offers one of the earliest woman-authored reinterpretations of the Don Juan myth and presents Don Juan not as a triumphant seducer but as a figure caught and ultimately destroyed in the designs of others, especially Donna Anna.[18]
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 endocrinologistGregorio Marañón argued that, far from the paragon of masculinity he was often assumed to be, Don Juan actually suffered from an arrested psychosexual development.[19]
During the1918 influenza epidemic in Spain, the figure of Don Juan served as a metaphor for the flu microbe.[20]
The mid-20th-century French authorAlbert Camus referred to Don Juan in his 1942 essayThe Myth of Sisyphus. Camus describes Don Juan as an example of an "absurd hero", as he maintains a reckless abandon in his approach to love. His seductive lifestyle "brings with it all the faces in the world, and its tremor comes from the fact that it knows itself to be mortal". He "multiplies what he cannot unify ... It is his way of giving and vivifying".[21]
In the 1956Buddy Holly single "Modern Don Juan", the singer gains a reputation for being like the libertine in his pursuit of a romantic relationship.
Swedish film directorIngmar Bergman wrote and directed a comicsequel in 1960 titledThe Devil's Eye in which Don Juan, accompanied by his servant, is sent fromHell to contemporarySweden to seduce a young woman before her marriage.
Anthony Powell in his 1960 novelCasanova's Chinese Restaurant contrasts Don Juan, who "merely liked power" and "obviously did not know what sensuality was", withCasanova, who "undoubtedly had his sensuous moments".[22]Stefan Zweig observes the same difference between both characters in his biography of "Casanova".[23]
in 1970 Faroese author William Heinesen released his short story"Don Juan fra Tranhuset", in which a character embodying Don Juan is washed up on the Faroe Islands in Torshavn and begins to seduce the women of that town.
In the 1910 French novelThe Phantom of the Opera byGaston Leroux, the titular character (also known as Erik) had spent much of his life writing an opera,Don Juan Triumphant, refusing to play it forChristine Daaé and telling her that it was unlike any music she ever heard and that when it was complete, he would die with it, never sharing it with mankind. Following the unmasking scene, Erik refers to himself as Don Juan as he confronts Christine, verbally and physically abusing her as he uses her hands to gouge his face, exclaiming "When a woman has seen me – as you have – she becomes mine ... I'm a real Don Juan ... Look at me! I'm Don Juan Triumphant!"
Don Juan is also a plot point inSusan Kay's novelPhantom, which expands onGaston Leroux's novelThe Phantom of the Opera. The titular character was referred to as "Don Juan" in his childhood, a nickname given to him by Javert, a man who exploited Erik as a child. Later in life, he began writingDon Juan Triumphant, spending decades on the piece, whichChristine Daaé heard after hiding in her room after removing Erik's mask.
In the1986 Broadway musical adaptation ofGaston Leroux's 1910The Phantom of the Opera, the character of the Phantom writes an opera based on the legend of Don Juan calledDon Juan Triumphant.
Don Juan is mentioned in the 1980Broadway musical adaptation ofVictor Hugo's 1862 novelLes Misérables, in which the characterGrantaire states thatMarius Pontmercy is acting like Don Juan.
The former Thai QueenSirikit once told reporters that her son Crown PrinceVajiralongkorn, now King Rama X, was "a bit of a Don Juan".
Don Juan is referenced in Star Trek the Original Series, season one episode 16 "Shore Leave".
"Don Juan" isCockney rhyming slang for a 2:1 degree classification.[24]
RapperFuture referenced Don Juan in the title and lyrics of his song Magic Don Juan (Princess Diana) on his 2024 albumWe Don't Trust You.
Infolklore studies, the theme of a human living recklessly inviting a dead person or skull for dinner is classified in theAarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 470A, "The Offended Skull".[25][26]
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