`ən, Span. dōn hwän), legendary profligate. He has a counterpart in the legends of many peoples, but the Spanish version of the great libertine has become the most universal. At the height of his licentious career, Don Juan seduces the daughter of the commander of Seville and kills her father in a duel. When he later visits a statue of his victim and jeeringly invites it to a feast, the statue comes to life and drags Juan off to hell. The earliest-known dramatization of the story is El burlador de Sevilla (1630), attributed to Gabriel Téllez, who wrote under the pseudonym Tirso de Molina. Molière's Le Festin de Pierre (1665) and Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (1787) are perhaps the most famous treatments of the theme. Among the many other literary works that use the unscrupulous gallant as the hero are Byron's Don Juan, Espronceda's El estudiante de Salamanca, and Shaw's Man and Superman.Don Juan
Fictional character famous as a heartless womanizer but also noted for his charm and courage. In Spanish legend, Don Juan was a licentious rogue who seduced a young girl of noble family and killed her father. Coming across a stone effigy of the father in a cemetery, he invited it home to dine with him, and the ghost of the father arrived for dinner as the harbinger of Don Juan's death. The legend of Don Juan was first written down by Tirso de Molina, who gave it an original twist in his tragedy The Seducer of Seville (1630). The story was subsequently taken up by many other artists including W.A. Mozart, in the opera Don Giovanni (1787); Molière and George Bernard Shaw, in plays; and Lord Byron in his long satiric poem Don Juan (1819–24).
Don Juan
Don Juan
the hero of many works of literature and art. Don Juan is a pleasure-loving cavalier and a violater of moral and religious standards, devoting his life to a search for sensual pleasures; he is the creation of a medieval legend.
One of the first literary treatments of Don Juan is the play by the Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina entitled El Burlador de Sevilla (1630); his Don Juan, a vain seducer of women, was so socially typical that he attracted the attention of many writers, composers, and artists. Moliere’s comedy Dom Juan (1665) resounded with scourging, antifeudal satire. The hero of W. A. Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (1787; libretto by L. da Ponte) is a self-willed dreamer, a seeker after the eternal feminine. Such an interpretation was developed in the 19th century by romantic writers (E. T. A. Hoffmann and A. Musset, for example). In Byron’s narrative poem Don Juan (1819-23), Don Juan is not so much a flighty bon vivant as he is a rebel in pursuit of personal freedom. In the humanistic treatment by A. S. Pushkin (The Stone Guest,1830) he is an egoist who tramples upon human laws and is therefore doomed.
REFERENCES
Nusinov, I. M. “Istoriia obraza Don Zhuana.” In lstoriia literaturnogo geroia. Moscow, 1958.Weinstein, L. The Metamorphoses of Don Juan. Stanford, 1959.
Saint-Paulien. Don Juan: Mythe et réalité. Paris, 1967.
M. A. GOL’DMAN
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