DON JUAN is a legendary and mythical personage like Dr. Faustus. The two have been made the representatives of two different tendencies, both proceeding from the same principle—from the principle, namely, of unbelief and godlessness, which neces sarily turns self into either a god or a beast—the principle of subjectivism, or selfishness become dominant. in Faust, expression has been given to the subjective idealism of the Germanic nations, their tendency to subtle speculation and a rationalism antago nistic to faith. In D. J. appear the practical materialism and refined sensualism of the Romanic peoples. add the tendency of blind belief in a corrupt catholicism to pass into unbelief.
Although Faust and D. J. have thus the same source and the same termination, yet, tits they proceed from opposite poles, they stand in contrast to each other, and, as was• natural, have found different vehicles of expression—Faust in poetry, D. J. in music. The ideal of the D. J. legend is presented in the life of a profligate who gives himself up so entirely to the gratification of sense, especially to the most powerful of all the impulses, that of love, that he acknowledges no higher consideration, and proceeds to murder the man that stands between him and his wish, fancying that in so doing he had annihilated liis very existence. Partly in wanton daring, partly to allay all uneasy misgiving, he then challenges that spirit in which he disbelieves to demonstrate to him its existence in the only way he holds valid—namely, through the senses. When this actually happens, when the spirit proves its existence and power by animating the marble statue which he had, with daring mockery, invited as his guest, and summoning him to the final tribunal, compels him to acknowledge the supremacy of spirit, and the worthlessness of a merely sensuous, godless, and immoral existence, it is all over with him, he is crushed, and sinks into hell.
This ideal career is aptly enough localized in one of the most luxurious cities of the once world-monarchy of the Saracens—viz., Seville—and the characters wear the names of the ancient noble families of the place. The hero of the story, D. J., is described as
a member of the celebrated family Tenorio, and is represented as sometimes con temporary with Peter the cruel, sometimes with Charles V. The chief aim of his sinful career is the seduction of the daughter of a governor of Seville, or of a nobleman of the family of the Ulloas. Being opposed by the father, he stabs him in a duel. He then forces his way into the family tomb of the murdered man, within the convent of San Francisco, causes a feast to be prepared there, and invites the statue which had been erected to his victim to be his guest. The stone guest appears at table as invited, com pels D. J. to follow him, and, the measure of his sins being full, delivers him over to hell. At a later period, the legend came to be mixed up with the story of a similar profligate, Juan de Mardis, who had in like manner sold himself to the devil, but was at last converted, and died as a penitent monk in the odor of sanctity.
The genuine legend of D. J. was first put into form by Gabriel Tellez (Tirso de Molina), in El Burlador de Sevilla y Convivado de Piedra. This drama was transplanted to the Italian stage about 1620, and soon found its way to Paris, where numerous versions of it, among others Moliere's Featin de Pierre (1669), made their appearance. It was brought on the English stage by Shadwell under the title of The Libertine (1676). In the end of the 17th c., a new Spanish version of Tellez's play was prepared by Antonio de Zamora, and brought on the stage. It is this version that forms the ground work of the later Italian versions and of Mozart's opera. It was first put into an operatic form by Vincenzo Righini in R Convitato di Helm (1777); the text of Mozart's Don Giovanni was written by Lorenza da Ponte (1787). Through this famous opera the story became popular all over Europe, and has since furnished a theme for numbers of poets, playwrights, and writers of romance. A. Dumas has a drama, Don Juan de Maranna; Byron's Don Juan follows the name, and in so far the character of the original; and Prosper Merimee's novel, Les Ames du Purgatoire, ou lee Deux Don Juan, is founded upon it.
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