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Conflicting Names, Conflicting Laws: Zorrilla's Don Juan Tenorio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Carlos Feal*
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Buffalo

Abstract

The most prominent feature of Zorrilla's Don Juan is theatricality: the character's awareness of incarnating a name or portraying a role that earlier Don Juans created. Don Juan's imposing name clashes with the name of the father (the Commander), triggering a conflict between love and the law. Vis-a-vis this conflict, Don Juan and Ines evolve in opposite directions: Don Juan finally wants to marry, thus accepting the patriarchal dictates that Ines defies by her love for her father's enemy and killer. Ines, therefore, is not the innocent virgin that critics, Zorrilla included, and Don Juan himself envisioned. Another basic tension is that between God and the father. Their supposed alliance is broken by Ines, who, against the Commander's will, intercedes supernaturally to save Don Juan. Paradoxically, in the name of Don Juan, Ines opposes men's law and consequently produces her own defense based on the feminine “law of the heart.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1981

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References

Note 1 See Zorrilla, Recuerdos del tiempo viejo (Madrid: Publicaciones españolas, 1961), i, 148. Among the major sources critics have added to the literary debts Zorrilla lists are Les Ames du purgatoire (1834) by Mérimée and Juan de Marana ou la chute d'un ange (1836) by Dumas. Concerning Juan de Marana, however, the influence may have been mutual; the motif of Don Juan's salvation, a distinctive feature in Zorrilla, does not appear in Dumas until the 1864 edition of his play (in previous versions Don Juan is condemned). See Leo Weinstein, The Metamorphoses of Don Juan (1959; rpt. New York: AMS, 1967), pp. 124–25, and the prologue by Salvador Garcia Castañeda to his edition of Don Juan Tenorio (Barcelona: Labor, 1975), pp. 26–35.

Note 2 Ruiz Ramón, Historia del teatro espaiiol (desde sus origenes hasta 1900) (Madrid: Alianza, 1967), p. 436. Sanchez develops Ruiz Ramón's thoughts in an interesting article, “Cara y cruz de la teatralidad romántica (Don Alvaro y Don Juan Tenorio),” Insula, No. 336 (1974), pp. 21–23. He indicates how Don Juan's theatricality is passed on to other characters: “El dinamismo vital de estos dos directores de escena que son el galán y la alcahueta, estimula a los demás a sentir y moverse en forma complementaria; es decir, a imitarles en este ‘dramatizar’ ” ‘The vital dynamism of these two stage directors, who are the young man and the go-between, stimulates the others to feel and to act in a complementary manner, that is, to imitate the two characters in this “dramatizing” ‘ (p. 23).

Note 3 All quotations are from the edition by García Castañeda. The translation is by William I. Oliver, in The Theatre of Don Juan, ed. Oscar Mandel (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1963), pp. 469–538. I have modified this translation in some places to give a closer rendering of the original text. English translations of other works are entirely mine.

Note 4 “El Don Juan Tenorio pertenece a un género literario que carecía de nombre y acotamiento hasta que Valle-Inclán, genialmente, se lo proporcionó, llamándole ‘esperpento’ ” ‘Don Juan Tenorio pertains to a literary genre that lacked a name or a definition until Valle-Inclán brilliantly provided it with his term esperpento‘ (José Ortega y Gasset, “La estrangulación de Don Juan,” El Sol [Madrid]. 17 Nov. 1935; rpt. in Obras completas, 6th ed. [Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1964], v, 247). It is not surprising that the outright conversion of this theme into an esperpento, achieved by Valle-Inclán in Las galas del difunto (1930), was inspired mainly by Zorrilla's play. See Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, “La esperpentización de don Juan Tenorio,” Hispanófila, No. 7 (1959), pp. 29–39.

Note 5 “Si Don Quijote dice: 'Yo sé quién soy!', Don Juan nos dice lo mismo, pero de otro modo: ' Yo sé lo que representa! … Don Juan se siente siempre en escena” 'If Don Quijote says: “I know who I am!” Don Juan tells us the same thing but in another way: “I know what part I am acting!” … Don Juan always feels he is on stage' (Unamuno, Prologue to El hermano Juan o El mundo es teatro [1929], in Obras completas [Madrid: Escelicer, 1968], v, 714). Although Unamuno speaks of Don Juan in general, his remarks apply to Zorrilla's Don Juan more than to any other.

Note 6 The leitmotiv of Don Juan's list of feats is found in Mérimée's Les Ames du purgatoire and even earlier in a series of works that goes as far back as Il convitato di pietra (1650?) by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini. See García Castañeda's prologue to his edition of Don Juan Tenorio, p. 33.

What Ortega called esperpentismo in Don Juan Tenorio can already be seen in the performances of the commedia dell'arte, with the transformation of Don Juan into a farcical character and the increasing importance of the servant, Arlecchino. See Mandel, The Theatre of Don Juan, pp. 100–04.

Note 7 As Valbuena Prat says: “Don Juan ve ya, en Doña Inés, lo que puede arrancar del pecado, de los brazos del demonio, a su propia alma; y, en efecto, así será, salvándola por ella” ‘Don Juan perceives in Doña Inés that which can tear his soul from sin, from the arms of the devil; and, in effect, it will be thus—his soul is saved thanks to Inés’ (Historia del teatro español [Barcelona: Noguer, 1956], p. 508). It is curious, however, that Valbuena avails himself of theological considerations, leaving aside poetic or symbolic ones, to criticize the end of the play: “lo que no puede admitirse en sana doctrina ortodoxa es el que Dios haga depender la salvación de un alma de la de otra. Precisamente esa es la engañosa tesis con que el demonio había engañado a Paulo, haciéndole creer que se salvaría o condenaría con Enrico en el teológico drama El condenado por desconfiado, cuyo autor secentista sabîa bien lo que trataba y discurría” ‘what cannot be admitted in sound orthodox doctrine is that God rests the salvation of one soul on the salvation of another. This is precisely the deceiving thesis with which the devil had tricked Paulo, thereby making him believe that he would be saved or condemned with Enrico in the theological drama El condenado por desconfiado, whose seventeenth-century author knew well what he was doing’ (p. 521 ).

Note 8 Zorrilla. Leyendas (Madrid: Aguilar, 1945), p. 273. Otto Rank's words can be best applied to Zorrilla's Don Juan: “Don Juan is also in a certain sense the true emancipator of woman. He liberates the young girl from the chains that religion and morality, created for man's advantage, have placed on her, because he does not wish to possess her indefinitely but only wants to make her a woman ([he wants this] especially [for] nuns abducted from the convent)” (my translation from Don Juan et le double, trans. S. Lautman [1932; rpt. Paris: Payot. 1973], p. 165). But Don Juan's later desire to get married indicates something contradictory in the character's nature.

Note 9 As far as I know, Zorrilla's Don Juan was the first to give an important role to the figure of the go-between. A minor precedent is found in Dumas' Don Juan de Marana: Paquita. Elle est un peu curieuse, un peu coquette, un peu vaine. Don Juan. J'ai deux chances de plus que le serpent … Eve n'était que curieuse. Paquita. Et elle n'avait pas de femme de chambre. Don Juan. C'est juste, cela m'en fait au moins une de plus … Paquita. She is a little curious, a little coquettish, a little vain. Don Juan. I have two more chances than the serpent. Eve was only curious. Paquita. And she didn't have a chambermaid. Don Juan. That's right, that gives me at least one more … (Théâtre complet [Paris: Calmann-Lévy, n.d.], v, 27)

Note 10 Isabela…. Quién eres, hombre? D. Juan. Quién soy? Un hombre sin nombre. Isabela. Who are you? Don Juan. Who am I? A man without a name. (Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla, ed. A. Castro [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1932], i, 14–15)

Note 11 “C'est dans le nom du père qu'il nous faut reconnaître le support de la fonction symbolique qui, depuis l'orée des temps historiques, identifie sa personne à la figure de la loi” ‘We must recognize in the name of the father the support for the symbolic function that since the beginning of historic times identifies his person with the figure of the law’ (Jacques Lacan, “Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse,” in Ecrits [Paris: Seuil, 1966], p. 278). While the name of the father supports the figure of the law, Don Juan's name represents love in opposition to that law. The tension between father and lover is thus tension between two names.

Note 12 In his story Don Juan (1813), Hoffmann attributes to the Commander's daughter a feeling of love toward her father's killer. This idea is formulated by the protagonist of the story, after attending a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni. But the differences between Don Giovanni (1787) and Don Juan Tenorio are evident. Anna, in Mozart's opera, seeks revenge against Don Juan. Her love for Don Juan must be a secret, if it exists at all. Zorrilla brings into the open what Hoffmann brilliantly but debatably senses in Anna. For a commentary on Hoffmann's interpretation, see Weinstein, The Metamorphoses of Don Juan, pp. 66–67.

Note 13 “Resulta, pues, que cuando don Juan acude a su vez al convite del Comendador, va ya sincera y hondamente arrepentido. No es ‘un punto de contrición’ lo que le salva; es una conducta mantenida por varios años. La enmienda viene preparándose desde mucho antes; casi desde el comienzo de la obra: desde el instante, a lo menos, en que D. Juan siente su rendido amor a doña Inès” ‘When Don Juan goes to the Commander's dinner he has already repented sincerely and deeply. What saves him is not a “moment of contrition” but his behavior over a period of years. His reform has been taking shape for quite some time, almost since the beginning of the play: at least from the moment when Don Juan feels his devoted love for Doña Inès’ (Narciso Alonso Cortés, Zorrilla. Su vida y sus obras, 2nd ed. [Valladolid: Librerïa Santaren, 1943], p. 345).

Note 14 Of course, the difference is not so easy to establish. As Augusto Pérez, in Unamuno's Niebla, says: “Y qué es estar uno enamorado sino creer que lo está?” ‘And what is being in love, if not believing oneself to be in love?‘ (Unamuno, Obras completas, ii, 589).

Note 15 Don Juan, Pérez de Ayala observes, is Don Juan not because he has conquered many women with lies and false promises but because he has the power to allure even one woman by means of mysterious seduction (“Don Juan,” in Las máscaras, Obras completas [Madrid: Aguilar, 1963], iii, 173–74).

Note 16 In Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's Don Juan (1963), the narrator, mysteriously imbued with Don Juan's personality, seduces two women. But when he falls in love with Sonja, he does not want to resort to Donjuanesque tactics: “mi amor por Sonja era de veras, y me humillaba aquel cortejo con palabras prestadas” ‘my love for Sonja was true, and courting her with borrowed words humiliated me’; thus he says to her: “No volveré, al menos, hasta que pueda conquistarla con mis propias armas” 'I will not return until I can conquer you by my own means.' She answers: “Pero, no comprende que quizá entonces no me gane?” 'But don't you understand that maybe then you wouldn't win me?' ([Barcelona: Destino, 1975], pp. 139, 142).

Note 17 “He [Don Juan] is rather an instrument without will in the hands of woman, who thus achieves her emancipation from the chains of sexual superstition” (Rank, Don Juan et le double, pp. 165–66). The conversion of the seducer into the seduced is fully represented by authors such as Byron, Shaw, and Unamuno.

Note 18 I consider Ortega's defense of Don Juan inadequate. According to Ortega, before Inés rescues Don Juan, he escapes from women because they are frivolous females (hembras casquivanas) and audacious whores (audaces rameras) (“Introducción a un Don Juan,” in Obras completas, vi, 124). Don Juan finds what he is searching for or what satisfies him at a given moment. Besides, the difference between Inés and other women is greatly exaggerated by Ortega.

Note 19 “L'exclusion de ces dernières [les femmes] du domaine des alliances autorise à les assimiler aux commodités, afin de les traiter comme telles. Leur absence du contrat social qu'elles ne sont pas invitées à signer les situe automatiquement dans le camp des objets sur lesquels porte ce contrat. Devenues un élément de prestation, elles sont destinées à être partagées, à circuler dans les veines de la société pour répondre aux besoins formulés par ceux qui la gouvernent, les hommes” ‘The exclusion of women from the domain of alliances authorizes them to be treated as commodities. Their absence from the social contract, which they are not invited to sign, automatically places them in the realm of objects to which the contract refers. Having become a trade object, they are destined to be shared, to circulate in society to serve the needs of those who govern society, men’ (Serge Moscovici, La Société contre nature [Paris: Union Générale d'Editions, 1972], p. 269). Moscovici follows Lévi-Strauss here: “Le lien de réciprocité qui fonde le mariage n'est pas établi entre des hommes et des femmes, mais entre des hommes au moyen des femmes” ‘The bond of reciprocity that founds marriage is established not among men and women but among men by means of women’ (Les Structures élémentaires de la parenté, 2nd ed. [Paris: Mouton, 1967], p. 135).

Note 20 “El hombre verdadero, en cuanto es un hombre maduro, deja de ser Don Juan. … El amor del varón perfecto es estrictamente monogámico o reduce sus preferencias a un corto repertorio de mujeres, general-mente parecidas entre sí” ‘The true man, insofar as he is a mature man, ceases to be Don Juan…. The love of the perfect male is strictly monogamous or limits its preferences to a small repertoire of women, generally women who resemble one another’ (Gregorio Marañón, Don Juan, 12th ed. [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1976], pp. 73, 75–76).

Note 21 Maeztu, Don Quijote, Don Juan y la Celestina, 10th ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1968), p. 97.

Note 22 Don Juan repents before dying by saying: “Piedad, Señor! Si hasta ahora / huyendo de tus piedades, / mi malicia me ha perdido, / tu clemencia me restaure” ‘Pity, Lord! If until now, fleeing from your mercy, my wickedness has ruined me, may your clemency restore me.‘ Zamora's play was published in 1744, but it must have been written several years earlier (perhaps twenty). See Joaquín Casalduero, Contribución al estudio del tenia de Don Juan en el teatro español (1938; rpt. Madrid: José Porrúa Turanzas, 1975), p. 120.

Note 23 Prosper Mérimée. Les Ames du purgatoire, in Romans et nouvelles (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), p. 400.

Note 24 “Summing up. we can say that the patricentric individual—and society—is characterized by a complex of traits in which the following are predominant: a strict superego, guilt feelings, docile love for patriarchal authority, … and a damaged capacity for happiness. The matricentric complex, by contrast, is characterized by a feeling of optimistic trust in mother's unconditional love, far fewer guilt feelings, a far weaker superego, and a greater capacity for pleasure and happiness” (Fromm, “The Theory of Mother Right and Its Relevance for Social Psychology,” The Crisis of Psychoanalysis [New York: Fawcett, 1970], p. 131). Fromm ackowledges Bachofen's Mutterrecht as the source of these ideas.

Note 25 “Il y avait dans l'oratoire de la comtesse de Maraña un tableau dans le style dur et sec de Moralès, qui représentait les tourments du purgatoire. Tous les genres de supplices dont le peintre avait pu s'aviser s'y trouvaient représentés…. D'ordinaire, le petit Juan, toutes les fois qu'il entrait chez sa mère, demeurait longtemps immobile en contemplation devant ce tableau, qui l'effrayait et le captivait à la fois” ‘In the oratory of the countess of Marana there was a painting, in the hard and dry style of Morales, that represented the torments of purgatory. Every kind of torture the painter could imagine was depicted there…. Usually little Juan, each time he entered his mother's quarters, remained motionless for a long time while contemplating the painting, which both frightened and captivated him’ (Mérimée, Les Ames du purgatoire, p. 353).

Note 26 Nevertheless. Otto Rank has pointed out that in some versions of the Don Juan theme—e.g., Lenau, Don Juan (1844); Baudelaire. “Don Juan aux enfers” (1846); and Rostand. La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan (1921)—the role of the accuser belongs to woman: “In addition to the ghosts of the slain men, whose original forms represent conscience in the sense of the father complex (the Commander), there also appear the ghosts of his female victims who … easily substitute for the pursuing and avenging horde of men” (The Don Juan Legend, trans. David G. Winter [1924; rpt. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975], pp. 114—15). But careful scrutiny of the works cited by Rank shows that women as avengers are subordinated to the masculine figures: in Lenau, Don Pedro, who leads these women and causes Don Juan's death; in Baudelaire's poem, the father and the Commander; in Rostand's drama, the Devil.

Note 27 Américo Castro, “El Don Juan de Tirso y el de Molière como personajes barrocos,” in Hommage à Ernest Martinenche (Paris: Editions d'Artrey, 1939), p. 96. has expressed surprise at the Commander, who acts in a manner inappropriate for an agent of divinity. Francisco Fernandez Turienzo. “El convidado de piedra: Don Juan pierde el juego,” Hispanic Review, 45 (1977). 43–60, responds to Castro's objections but in my opinion fails to dispel them completely.

Note 28 In the words of one of Molière's contemporaries: “le foudre est un foudre en peinture, qui n'offense point le maître et qui fait rire le valet” ‘the thunderbolt rings false; it does not offend the master, and it makes his servant laugh’ (B.A., Sr. D.R. [Sieur de Rochemont], Observations sur une comédie de Molière intitulée Le Festin de Pierre [Paris: N. Pépingué, 1665], reproduced by Georges Couton in his edition of Molière, Œuvres complètes [Paris: Gallimard. 1971], ii, 1206).

Note 29 In El curandero de su honra (1926)—which, along with Tigre Juan (1926), constitutes Pérez de Ayala's version of the Don Juan theme—there is a memorable dialogue between the widow Doña Iluminada and her adopted daughter, Carmina. Carmina would like to run off with her boyfriend, but she fears public opinion:

Si el hacer mi gusto fuera, a juicio de la gente, contra la ley …

Qué ley, hija mía?

La ley … La ley … No sé cómo decirlo. La ley de que habla la gente.

Ah. ya! La ley de los hombres. Pero hay, hija mía, otra ley. que es más santa: la ley de Dios. Y esa ley está, en el corazón. Consulta tu corazón siempre, Carmina.

If doing what I want were, in people's opinion, against the law …

What law, my child?

The law … the law … I don't know how to say it. The law that people talk about.

Aha! The law of men. But there is, my child, another law, which is holier: God's law. And this law is in the heart. Always consult your heart, Carmina.

(Obras completas, iv, 702)

Here, it is clear that God's law does not coincide with men's law. Carmina resembles Herminia, who, a newlywed, plans her escape with the Donjuanesque Vespasiano: “como hija de Eva, por imperativo de su feminidad, se rebelaba contra el orden establecido y se proponía destruirlo” ‘like Eve's daughter, commanded by her femininity, she revolted against the established order and intended to destroy it’ (p. 674).

Note 30 Women have not often expressed their opinions about Don Juan, and when they have, their comments have sometimes been very negative, as in George Sand's Lélia (1833). But at other times women have vigorously defended Don Juan, as in the play Le Burlador (1945) by Suzanne Lilar or in Micheline Sauvage's essay Le Cas don Juan (Paris: Seuil, 1953).

Note 31 In preparing this article, Rosemary Geisdorfer, my translator, and I were assisted by a grant from the Research Foundation of the State University of New York; we are grateful for this support. I also thank Henry Richards for his careful reading of the manuscript and his valuable suggestions.