La freccia e il cerchio
anno 4, numero 4, 2013
pp. 61-63

Francisco Jarauta
Don Juan’s Baroque mask

   In one of his insightful observations, Jean Rousset writes: “Let’s consider that man devoted to simulation and ostentation, the man who pretends to be different from who he actually is, in other words, let’s consider the actor, a person who wears masks. Let’s combine him with a penchant for instability and a proclivity to metamorphosis and here we have a basic outline, albeit inaccurate, of Don Juan, the figure that shaped the seventeenth century.” To be sure, Rousset is clearly referring to Tirso de Molina’s characterization of Don Juan, where elements from several traditions and different formulations are brought together and blended according to a complex, or sometimes to a simple, idea such as in El burlador de Sevilla.
   Here, we detect three key concepts underpinning the story of Don Juan: first, we find the typical character of Spanish golden age theatre, namely the gallant gentleman in search of pleasure and romance; second, we find the folklore theme such as the invitation foreshadowing the imminent death, and the dead speaking; third, we find one of the major themes in European Baroque, inconstancy. Each of these elements features in European theatre in several ways but Tirso was the dramatist who introduced Don Juan as a fullfledged and structured character. He turned his Don Juan in one of the key figures of modern literature and, possibly, in a myth that has been reinterpreted through time until present day with the same enthusiasm aroused by characters such as Don Quixote or Faust.
   The aura accompanying these figures does not simply arise from myth. It stems from the wide spectrum of interpretation suggested by each of these three characters. They express and represent certain conditions of modern experience and their historical configuration such as the tension between history and cultural imaginary. They also represent the tension between history meant as a sequence of events, and that shadow line left by history itself and then articulated by cultural imagery and literature.
   It is not an easy task to unravel the process leading to the reinterpretations of Don Juan and the thousands of revisitations that followed. As if it were an obsession – M. Sauvage points out in the essay “The Cas Don Juan” in issue 4 of Obliques – the figure of the Burlador challenging fate managed to blend, within the context of modern literature, elements of the ancient tragedy with elements that later on, in modern and contemporary tragedy, would give voice to the human condition when facing fatality in its extreme form, death.
   At any rate, Don Juan’s echoes in Europe and their later developments – mainly from Molière’s Don Juan to the Don Giovanni by Mozart-Da Ponte – formed one of the most critically acclaimed “literary constellations” as they gave rise to endless lectures on the topic and its implications.
   It would be enough to draw on the already classic repertoire of AE Singer, L. Weinstein, R. Sender, M. Nozick or B. Wittman, among others, to understand not only the complexity of the possible readings, but also the richness of variations that the theme of Don Juan provided to literature and to modern and contemporary thought: in order to understand the significance of the impact of Don Juan, we should embark in a complete journey through time and through several variations touching upon the works of Kierkegaard Byron, Pushkin, Shaw, Juan Zorrilla, Gregorio Marañón, Max Frisch, Bertold Brecht, Gide, André Delvaux or Ingmar Bergman, among others. A long list that, in its complete form, shows the extraordinary success of a theme that has become, as Jean Rousset claims, a myth of Western literature.
   It would be enough to draw on the already classic repertoire of AE Singer,
L. Weinstein, R. Sender, M. Nozick or B. Wittman, among others, to understand not only the complexity of the possible readings, but also the richness of variations that the theme of Don Juan provided to literature and to modern and contemporary thought: in order to understand the significance of the impact of Don Juan, we should embark in a complete journey through time and through several variations touching upon the works of Kierkegaard Byron, Pushkin, Shaw, Juan Zorrilla, Gregorio Marañón, Max Frisch, Bertold Brecht, Gide, André Delvaux or Ingmar Bergman, among others. A long list that, in its complete form, shows the extraordinary success of a theme that has become, as Jean Rousset claims, a myth of Western literature.
   To be sure, there are two main reasons behind the success of Don Juan. The first reason relates to the dramatic structure of Tirso’s work which, has we have said, combines all the above-mentioned elements deriving from literary sources already well developed. In his essay on Don Juan and the music of Mozart, Kierkegaard makes an intriguing comment noting that the origin of Don Juan’s theme can be traced back in its Christian roots and, specifically, in the medieval theme of Don Juan. “Christianity introduced sensuality in the world the very moment he prohibited and denied it.” Don Juan calls for all the things that have been excluded from culture and human experience.
   The second reason has to do with the dramatic structure itself: it becomes the target of a debate that, particularly during the seventeenth century acquires a great significance yet it is not a peculiar topic of modern European culture.
   It is important to point out that Tirso’s Don Juan is closely linked to another major theme, that of the Condenado por desconfiado, in which the theological arguments of predestination, grace and salvation of the soul play a key role, and will be later reinterpreted through a number of variations. Nowadays it would be impossible to suggest a reading of this theme without considering the theological discussion that took place in those years concerning, among other issues, the human condition in the modern era. This was one of the strongholds of theological debate during the Counter-reformation, driving the development of the philosophical thought of Pascal, Molinos, Malebranche and others.
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