Many men are called Don Juans today, often not fully understanding the meaning of this word. Don Juan, meanwhile, thanks to which it appeared, is an eternal hero of world literature and cinema. What is its real history and how to spell this name correctly?
Who is don Juan?
First of all, it is worth deciding on the meaning of the common word "don Juan", which occurred on behalf of Don Juan. The meaning of this term is a man who is constantly looking for love affairs.
In a broader sense, this name means a charming person who loves, and most importantly knows how to seduce women. That was the legendary Spanish nobleman Don Giovanni.
The meaning of phraseology and synonyms for it
The most common synonym is a womanizer. True, it is not always appropriate, because a womanizer is a person who loves female attention and wants to seduce the fair sex. However, the real Don Juan was not like that.
The meaning of phraseology, which came from this name, is a man eager to conquer not only the woman’s body, but also her soul. But in return, he does not at all strive to give his heart to her.
In fact, Don Juan is a kind of hunter, for whom a woman is a game, representing only sports interest. While a womanizer is a man who is unable to remain faithful to one woman, he can very well sincerely love each of his passions.
Other lovers of breaking women's hearts are known in world history, whose names eventually turned from proper nouns into common nouns, which are synonyms for the word “don Juan”.
This is the hero of the book of Samuel Richardson "Clarissa" - Robert Lovelace and adventurer-writer from Italy - Giacomo Casanova. All these words, descended from these names: “Lovelace”, “Casanova” and “Don Juan” - have a similar meaning. In rare cases, the names themselves - Lovelace, Casanova and Don Juan - are synonyms.
There are also other terms with a similar meaning - "ladies man", "rake" and the newfangled "playboy".
Don Juanism
This is the name of the male psychological state in honor of a legendary person named Don Juan.
The definition of Don Juanism is as follows: this is the clinical condition of a man when he strives for a constant change of women and is unable to see anything more than satisfying his sexual desires in relations with them.
From the point of view of modern psychology, Don Juanism is no longer a sign of a man’s full life, as was considered in the past, but rather a deviation from the norm, which does not allow him to build normal relations.
Historical prototype
The common noun "don Juan" came from the name of the Spanish nobleman don Juan (Guan) Tenorio, who lived in the XIV century. and distinguished by incredibly lecherous behavior.
Being one of the most brilliant gentlemen in Seville, he not only dishonored countless women, but also became famous for participating in numerous duels and fights, from which he often managed to emerge victorious.
Despite the active indignation of the public, the hero avoided well-deserved punishment, because he was patronized by the king of Castile, Pedro I the Cruel. Moreover, evil tongues claimed that the monarch himself often became a participant in Tenorio's amorous pastimes.
Once the king and his friend kidnapped the daughter of the respected Commander de Ulloa, killing her father, who tried to stop them. This event was the last straw, and the Seville monks took justice into their own hands. They lured don Juan to the grave of the murdered commander and dealt with him. And in order to avoid punishment, they started a rumor, supposedly a villain suffered God's punishment, and the ghost de Ulloa dealt with his killer.
Seville legend
However, not only don Juan Tenorio was a prototype of a world-famous literary hero. For residents of Seville, Don Giovanni is also Don Miguel de Manara.
This caballero, according to legend, sold his soul, but over time he realized his sinfulness, repented and atoned for his sins by good deeds.
Gradually, the legends of the two dons merged into one, which formed the basis of most subsequent literary works.
It is worth noting that over the years the character of Don Juan has changed. From an insatiable dishonorable voluptuary, he turned into a seeker of love with elegant manners, who is noble in nature and true to his word, even in the face of death. Also, such an unsightly detail as the fact of rape of the stolen beautiful donna was gradually forgotten.
Character literary story
The first work of art in which a hero named Don Giovanni appears is the play by Tirso de Molina El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra. For its basis, the author took the classic legend of don Juan Tenorio, but embellished it, turning the dishonorable King Pedro I into a just ruler, seeking to punish the insidious seducer and killer.
The play of Tirso de Molina was very successful on stage, but gradually changed. Since the audience was bored to listen to the author’s moral teachings - they were thrown out of the text, and the plot itself was supplemented by a mass of very piquant witticisms.
Gradually, the popularity of plays about Don Juan reached France. The first major change in the image of the insidious seducer underwent in the play by Moliere Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre. Her events were transferred from the past to the contemporary time for the writer, and the hero himself turned from a Spaniard to a Frenchman.
Centuries later, another French writer, Prosper Merimet, devoted the legendary playboy to the novel “Souls of Purgatory”. In it, he departed from the canon and saved the main character and life, and his soul.
In Germany, the most striking adaptation of the legend of the Spanish seducer was written by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, it was simply called: Don Juan. Hoffmann for the first time depicts a hero not as a seeker of carnal pleasures, but as a person who longs for true love and seeks meaning in life.
The British are best known for Byron's poem dedicated to this Don Juan. In addition to the excellent Byron syllable, the author did not make anything particularly remarkable in the image of his hero. In general, he tells a familiar story, but his character, by the fashion of that time, is languishing from longing, like most of Byron's heroes.
Don Juan in Russian and Ukrainian literature
Many Russian writers dedicated their works to this hero. Among them were Pushkin, and Alexei Tolstoy, and Alexander Ivolgin, and Samuel Aleshin.
Apart from all these authors stands Leonid Zhukhovitsky, who dedicated the play The Last Woman of Senor Juan to the legendary Spaniard. Everything supernatural was removed from it, and it is very close in plot to the original legend, except that the main character is still the same Hoffmannian romantic looking for love and understanding.
In Ukrainian literature, the most striking work on Don Juan is Lesia Ukrainka's play The Stone Gospodar. Based on the plot of Pushkin's drama, the writer shifted emphasis, turning the hero into a victim of the ambitions of his beloved Anna.
Don Juan at the cinema
With the advent of cinema, the story of a dissolute seducer, whom the well-deserved punishment of God befell, was filmed. For the first time this happened back in 1898 in Mexico. The picture was called "Don Juan Tenorio".
In total, Don Juan is devoted to more than twenty films, most of which were shot in France.
The role of an insidious seducer was played by such world cinema stars as Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Jean Rochefort, Vladimir Vysotsky, Jacques Weber and Johnny Depp.
How to spell Don Giovanni
This phrase, despite the frequent use in speech, in writing becomes the cause of frequent errors. The most common of these are: Don Juan - a spelling of the term with a hyphen and Don Juan - a confusion with capital letters.
To understand how to spell this word, you need to understand the meaning in which it is used.
- The correct spelling of the name Don Giovanni is both words with a capital letter, if we are talking about the hero of legends, books and films.
- Together and with a small letter, the phrase “don Juan” is written in the case when it is used in the common sense and it can be replaced by the term “womanizer”. For example: "He is such a don Juan (womanizer), I just will not save, although he is still very far from the legendary Don Juan from Seville."
- If we are talking about some other person with the name Juan, and the word "don" plays the role of a title - then it is written with a small letter. For example: "This don Juan de Pantalone is a terrible mess, not at all like the real Don Juan."
Now you know the meaning of the word Don Juan.