Byron's Donjuan: *«M Am, from Seville and Spain to Avoid the Is No Direct Scandal: • Imitation of the Original in Byron

Summary the susceptible sixteen year old because, as Byron points out, "What Byron's Don Juan tells ofthe man call gallantry, and the gods adventures and conquests of adultery, is much more common thehero. But, although there where the climate'ssultry".2 To her credit, she did resist a little to the are some elements in common temptation: "a littlestill she strove,and with the original play on much repented/ And whispering 'I the subject of Don fuan, will ne'er consent', consented".3 But El Burlador de her husband, Don Alfonso discovers Sevilla by Tirso that she was "sleeping double" and Donna Inez has to send her son off Byron's DonJuan: *«m am, from Seville and Spain to avoid the is no direct scandal: • imitation of the original in Byron. She had resolved that he should travei through Ali European climes, by land and sea Resumo To mend his former morais andgetnew Source and Especially inFrance and Italy."' ODon Juan de Byron conta as aventuras econquistas doherói. Then beginshissecond adventure.He suffersshipwreck and after hunger Mas, apesar de teralguns ele and exposure inan open boat(spiced mentos em comum com a peça withcannibalism), he eventually lands Imitation original sobre Don fuan, on a small Greek island which is ruled El Burlador de Sevilla de Tirso over by Lambro, a successful pirate deMolina, nãopareceseruma and slave trader. He is found on the imitação direta destapeça. beach by Haidée and so to his third adventure. The two young people become lovers and while her father Don juãn de Byron: fonte e wasaway fromhis baseand home,the imitação 1. INTRODUÇÃO two have an idyllic romance marked Don Juan is an unfinished bu naturalnessand innocence. Butthe satirical põem insixteencantos father returns unexpectedly, thus written by Byron between 1819and causing the death of Haidée and the selling of Juan as a slave in William Valentine Redmond' 1824 andwasleft uncompleted atthe time of his tragic death in Greece, Constantinople. Gulbeyaz, thewife of where he died from disease while the sultan, buys htm with an idea of fighting for the independence of his keeping him as her secret lover. second fatherland. Thestoryrecords However, Juan resists the seduction six major episodes, and contains as although he does have an aíTair with many verses as six of Shakespeare's one of the women of the seraglio, plays. He starts by describing with Dudü. Eventually he escapes fromthe malicious good humour Juan's Turks and enlists in the army of the childhoodand thestrangeeducational Russians who at that moment were at system employed by his mother, the warwith theTurks. His fifth adventure priggish Donna Inez (so like Byron's follows as he contributes to the own mother) to keep him sexually capture of Ismailand he is then sent purê. Despite her efforts,Donna Julia, bytheRussian general with a dispatch with the "darkness of her Oriental announcing thevictory. This he takes eyes",1 and despite her close to St. Petersburg and becomes the friendship with the mother, seduces • Universidade Federal de Juizde Fora. Estudos Germânicos Belo Horizonte V. 10 N°l p.85-91 DEZ. 1989 Byron's Don Juan: SourceandImitation 85 lover of the notorious queen, successandhe wroteto hispublisher, I wanta hero:anuncommon want, Catherine II, who hadaspeciai liking Murray, "I have sold, on the day When every yearand month sends forth a newone for young foreigners. Because of publication, a thing perfectly Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant, of a deterioration in his health, unprecedented, 10.000 copies.6 In The agedlscovers he is not the trueone; Catherine sendshim offto England on 1816, he had sold the booksellers, in Of such as these I should not care to a diplomatic mission. While mixing oneevening atdinner, seventhousand vaunt withsociety, he attracts the attention copiesof ChildeHarold andasimilar 111 therefore take our anclent frlend Don Juan.' ofthree women: the lavish Duchess of sale of thePrisonerofChillon. Don Fitzfulke, Lady Adeline Amundeville, Juan soldbadly and,even amonghis Byron takes Don Juan as his hero wifeofapolitician, andAurora Raby, closest friends, therewas opposition flippantly and it is necessary to study a beautifui young Catholic heiress. to its publication. Hobhouse, Moore, the real originsand the true character The first of these disguised asa ghost Kinnaird and others had advised of Byron's old friend. makesherselfhisloverjustbeforethe against the publication of Canto 1on põem breaks off. the grounds of its blasphemy, its bawdry anditspersonal satire against 2.TIRSODEMOLINA The five women in the põem are people especiallySouthey. clearly distinguished one from The literary creator of the another. Julia issentimental and very Despitethe reception at the time charaaer DonJuanTenoriowasTirso self-deluding whileHaidée issimple, of publication, Donfuan hascometo de Molina, the pen name for the natural and affectionate. Dudü is be recognised asthe masterpiece of religious Fray Gabriel Telléz,member shy and undemanding while her Byron.T.S.Eliot, who hasshaped the ofthe order ofthe Mercês,who lived unsuccessful mistress isdomineering criticai opinionofthiscentury,states: in Spain from 1584 to 1648. Hewrote before and vindictive after her "Ali things worked together to make over 300 plays besides living a very frustration. Catherine of Rússia is Don fuan the greatest of Byron's activelife as a religious superior and insatiable and the English Duchess is poems".7Jump, aleading authority on chroniclerandwe have still over85 of playful and ableto use unusual means Byron and the Romantic period, also his plays in manuscript (a high to obtain her ends. However, Don agreeswith this opinion: number for anauthorof this period). fuan is not justa love story: it is also He was one of the three great For those who do not insist upon too full of action and adventures — purposeful an organisatlon and to strict playwrights of the Golden Age of a shipwreck, a period of slavery, an economy, Don Juan is Byron's Spanish Renaissance drama and battlesand various diplomatic and masterpiece. Untidily andunpredictably, contrasts clearly with the other two social occasions and an apparent lt shows us life as viewed by a brilliant Lope de\fega andCalderón. Lope was supernatural haunting. exponent of worldly commonsense. interested in intrigues and presented He is disillusioned and sceptlcal; characters with national connotations Byron had, however, a much impatient of cant, robust, high-spirited, andhumane.8 and in his plays was more more ambitious plan for the põem preoccupiedwiththe portrayal ofthe than this. He assured Murray, his At the present time, the majority of physical appearance than with the editor in a letterthat he intended a vast critics accept the comicepic põem as stage personality of his characters. comic epic hismasterpiece. Calderón, on the other hand, was I meantto take him the tour of Europe, However due to the insularity of much more reflexive and dealt withaproper mixtureof siege,battle and English criticism, very little attention with a notional and metaphysical adventure, and to make him finish has been paid to the source of this presentation of his characters so that as Anarcharsis Cloots In the French they became abstractions. Tirso de revoIution.Tohowmanycantosthismay põem. Great attention hasbeen given extend, Iknow not, not whether (even if to the narrator and his relationship Molina, in turn, was interested in Ilive)Ishall complete it.Butthiswasmy with Byron, tothe Italian origin ofthe the psychological study of the notion: I meant to have made him a ottava rima, totheironyandsatire and characters in his plays and the vital CavalierServante inItaly, and acausefor impulses which made them act. His a divorce in England, and a sentimental to the autobiographical elements of "Werther-faced man" InGermany soasto the põem. But little attention isgiven personalities are therefore muchmore showthedifferent rldicules ofthesociety to the source ofthe title "DonJuan". real men andwomen than those ofthe ineachofthosecountrles.' Even Byron is very blasé in his other two. But Donfuan was not nearly as reference to the name given to the Tirso de Molina is remembered in popular as the previous poems of hero: a speciai way for the brilliance of Byron. Tbe Corsair was an amazing his female characters: Ruth, Tamar, 86 Revista de Estudos Germânicos jezabel, Maria de Molina and Marta: of the play of Tirso and updates the characterisation, the element of Don this isastrange quality forthe religious studies of the great Farinelli and Juanas the conqueror of women,the who lived an exemplaryreligiouslife J. Bolte. He points out that like so local colour of places and of course and had no love affairs, unlike the many literary characters, Don Juan the brilliance and beauty ofthepoetry. othertwofamous contemporanies. He was born out ofthe folklore legends also goes down inthehistory of world andfertilised bythecreative genius of The findings ofPidal and Mackay literature as the man who gives a greatwriter. Thefolklore origin was made obsolete the search for an literary expression tothemyth ofDon obviously a version of the legend historical figure who might have Juan, one of the four great myths of which existed in Sevile about the inspired Tirso in the creation of the European literature, the other three "convidadode piedra" and not as had character of DonJuan.Thetheory of being Hamlet, Fatist andDonQuifote. beenclaimed a version ofthe legend Gregorio Maranon about the Conde of DonJuan had had a long existence as of Leonicio nor the "Convite a

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