PhilosopherJay

I didn't want to hijack Blastula's interesting Don Juan vs. Jesus thread. Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan is interesting because he was an apparently fictional Holyman who was widely believed to be an historical person.

The other Don Juan first appeared in El Burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and His Guest of Stone) by written by a Spanish monk, Fray Gabriel Téllez (1581?-1648), under the name of Tirso de Molina. Like Castaneda's Don Juan, he is now widely believed to be fictional.

Still, just as with Jesus, there is an active debate if Tirso de Molina's Don Juan was based on a real historical personage. The most likely model was the Spanish poet Don Juan de Tassis y Peralta, 2nd Count of Villamediana (1582-1622).

According to Wikipedia:
Lovethepoem.com adds a bit more to the biography that wiki leaves out.
The original date of Tirso de Molina's play is unknown and could have been performed anytime between 1605 to 1629. The year 1616 is usually given as the most likely year of the first performance.

Don Juan de Tassis y Peralta seems to have been the right age for the character to be based on him - he would have been 34 years in 1616.

Tirso's play, according to the Dictionary of the literature of the Iberian peninsula, Volume 1 By Germán Bleiberg also relies on the motif of "Double invitation" where a brass young man invites a spirit to dinner and later the spirit invites the young man to visit him. The acceptance of this second invitation usually leads to the man's death as it does in the Tirso de Molina's play.

The original title of the play was apparently "tan largo me lo fiais" (There is plenty of time to repent). The play was a warning to young men who thought that they could seduce women and then not pay for it by confessing and repenting later in life. Don Juan is dragged to Hell before he can repent.

Despite being only 400 years old, we cannot say with certainty that Don Juan was based on a specific historical personage or if he is simply a type that Tirso de Molina dramatized for moral purposes.

We might note also that Don Juan is portrayed as a trickster (taking delight in tricking young women into sex) and Jesus is also portrayed as a trickster (taking delight in proving the authorities short-sighted, hypocritical or wrong, as well as performing magic tricks).

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Gorit Maqueda

The main differences between Jesus and Tirsos's Don Juan are (regarding the thread's topic):

• The majority of mainstream scholars believe that Jesus existed, but Don Juan didn't. (Different scholars in each case, I suppose.)

• If Don Juan were shown to have existed, people would say 'So what?', and would continue to watch the play with the same interest (or lack of).

PhilosopherJay

Hi Gorit Maqueda,

According to a 1908 article in the Journal of American Folklore by Samuel Waxman, Spanish critics maintain that he was based on an historical character. They place him in Seville (where the Tirso de Molina's
"Burlador de Sevilla" play takes place) in the 1300's. Waxman is skeptical. He argues that there is no historical evidence to support it.

In the play, the chief character's name is Don Juan Tenorio. Tenorio was a common name in Seville. However, no mention of such a person has been found in any history book. Neither Cervantes (who lived in Seville for a time) or Lope De Vega, the two greatest Spanish writers before Tirso, makes any mention of him. While a "Don Juan" type may have existed in Seville, there is no historical connection with the name.

Juan de la Cueva, a native of Seville, wrote a play called "La Infamador" in 1581, which Waxman believes is based on the same legend as Tirso's play.
The libertine Leucino in Cueva's play is essentially the same character as Don Juan in Tirso's play.

In Cuevo's play Leucino claims that he can seduce any woman in Seville. His friend challenges him to seduce Eliodora, a chaste virgin. The Gods Venus and Morpheus are on Leucino's side, but Diana and Nemesis oppose him.
He fails and decides to abduct her. Eliodora kills his servant in the attempt. Leucino accuses her of murder. She is about to hang when Diana saves her. The judge orders Leucino thrown in the River.

Waxman notes that there is no distinction between the Gods and people in Cuevo's play.

Waxman believes that Tirso went back to the same source legend of a great seducer in Seville and made two important changes. First, there are seductions of four women instead of one as in Cuevo's play. Secondly, Tirso has introduced the stone statue legend into the story. Don Juan teases a stone statue of a man he killed by inviting him to dinner. The statue shows up and invites Don Juan to dinner. (This is actually part of the "Double Invitation" Motif, I mentioned in my previous post.) The play was actually called El Burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) indicating the two legends it was mixing together.

The play became popular in Italy with numerous versions and performances. It made its way to France where, Moliere wrote his version Dom Juan or The Feast with the Statue (Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre). His play was the first to actually use the name "Don Juan" in the title. Moliere was also the first to change the character into an atheist. Ironically, although Moliere was associating bad morals with atheism, religious critics had the play stopped after 15 performances because they thought it was eulogizing an atheist (Wikipedia)

Apparently we now have three origin theories of Don Juan.
1) based on Spanish poet Don Juan de Tassis y Peralta, 2nd Count of Villamediana (1582-1622).
2) Based on a Don Juan Tenorio who lived in the early fourteenth century in Seville.
3) Based on a type of person or legend in Seville, first noted by Cueva in the late 16th century.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

mountainman

Hi PhilosopherJay,

Thanks for this fascinating tangentiation on the comparison of the literary legends of the recent version of Don Juan with the literary legends of Jesus. Having read the Don Juan books, or some of them at any rate, decades ago, I was vaguely aware that the name had a prior history,but had no idea of it's depth until you posted this.

It is an excellent example of the way myths organically develop. It would be of great service if we had access to records, and data and evidence to enable the tracking of the legends of Jesus back to the possibility of an historical figure, in a comparable manner that we are able to track the emergence of the figure of Don Juan.

Best wishes,


Pete

PhilosopherJay

H Pete,

Yes, the problems with tracking the Jesus legends is much greater because we are dealing with a much more primitive society than in the case of Don Juan. In the case of the Don Juan legend we should remember that we are dealing with a legend only 400 years old.

The printing press had been around for over 100 years, increasing the speed of literary information dissemination a thousand times over copying writing by hand. We also should note that Spain was possibly the richest country on Earth in the 1500's, stealing more gold and precious resources from the Americas than any other nation. Before the defeat of the Spanish Navy by the British in 1588 at Gravelines, it was the dominant military power in the world. In contrast Jerusalem was about as far away from Rome as one could get in the Roman empire.

Seville was only 536 kilometers/333 miles from Madrid the capital. While Jerusalem was 2308 kilometers/1434 miles from Rome.

According to Wikipedia:
According to Novelguide.com "The population peaked at over 100,000 at the end of the sixteenth century, making Seville one of the three largest metropolises of Europe and the single most populous city in Spain." In 1600, London's population was estimated at 200,000. Jerusalem in the first century had a population of 80,000 (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...9673-2,00.html), although apparently 100,000-250,000 could be added during holidays.

While we can pinpoint the legend of Don Juan as starting in Seville, we really can't say where the legend Jesus Christ started.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay