Don Juan is an English unfinished satirical epic poem written by Lord Byron between 1819 and 1824 that portrays the Spanish folk legend of Don Juan, not as a womaniser as historically portrayed, but as a victim easily seduced by women. Don Juan is a poem written in ottava rima and presented in 16 cantos in which Lord Byron derived the character of Don Juan from traditional Spanish folk legends; however, the story was very much his own. Upon publication in 1819, cantos I and II were widely criticised as immoral because Byron had so freely ridiculed the social subjects and public figures of his time. At his death in 1824, Lord Byron had completed 16 of 17 cantos, whilst canto XVII remained unfinished.

Composition

thumb|Frontispiece illustration of a bust of Lord Byron in the 1824 edition of Don Juan. (Benbow publisher)

Byron was a prolific writer, for whom "the composition of his great poem, Don Juan, was coextensive with a major part of his poetical life"; he wrote the first canto while resident in Italy in 1818, and the 17th canto in early 1823.

Byron began to write canto VI in June 1822, and had completed writing canto XVI in March 1823. Given the moralistic notoriety of the satirical, epic poem, John Murray refused to publish the latter cantos of Don Juan, which then were entrusted to John Hunt, who published the cantos over a period of months; cantos VI, VII, and VIII, with a Preface, were published on 15 July 1823; cantos IX, X, and XI were published on 29 August 1823; cantos XII, XIII, and XIV were published on 17 December 1823; and cantos XV and XVI on 26 March 1824. arranged in 17 cantos, written in ottava rima (eighth rhyme); each stanza is composed of eight iambic pentameters, with the couplet rhyme scheme of AB AB AB CC. The ottava rima uses the final rhyming couplet as a line of humour, to achieve a rhetorical anticlimax by way of an abrupt transition, from a lofty style of writing to a vulgar style of writing.

In the example passage from Don Juan, canto I, stanza 1, lines 3–6, the Spanish name Juan is rhymed with the English sound for the words true one. Therefore Juan is spoken in English, as , which is the recurring pattern of enunciation used for pronouncing foreign names and words in the orthography of English.

Premise

thumb|[[Hendrik Scheffer, Don Juan asleep on Haidée's lap, c. 1827]]

Don Juan begins with the birth of the hero, Don Juan, in Seville, Spain. As a sexually precocious adolescent boy, Juan has a love affair with a married friend of his mother. When the woman's husband discovers her affair with the boy, Don Juan is sent to the distant city of Cádiz. On the way, he is shipwrecked on an island in the Aegean Sea, and there meets the daughter of the pirate whose men later sell Don Juan into Turkish slavery. At the slave market of Constantinople, the sultana sees Don Juan up for sale, and orders him bought and then disguised as a girl, in order to sneak him into her chambers. Consequent to arousing the jealousy of the sultana, Don Juan barely escapes alive from the harem.

He then soldiers in the Imperial Russian army, rescues a Muslim girl, and attracts the favour of Empress Catherine the Great, who adds him to the royal court. In the course of Russian life, Don Juan falls ill because of the climate, and Catherine returns him to England, as a Russian courtier. In London, the diplomat Don Juan finds a guardian for the Muslim girl. The narrative then relates Don Juan's ensuing adventures with the British aristocracy.

Synopsis

Canto I

thumb|[[The Shipwreck of Don Juan by Eugène Delacroix, 1840]]

In Spain. Don Juan lives in Seville with his father, Don José, and his mother, Donna Inez. The romantic Donna Julia, the twenty-three-year-old wife of Don Alfonso, fancies and lusts for the sixteen-year-old boy Don Juan. Despite attempting to resist his charms, Julia enters into a love affair with Juan, and falls in love. Suspecting his wife's infidelity, Don Alfonso bursts into their bedroom, followed by his bodyguards who find no-one and nothing suspicious upon searching their master's bedroom, for Juan was hiding in the bed; Don Alfonso and his posse leave the room. Later returning alone to his bedroom, Don Alfonso comes across Juan's shoes and they fight for the woman, Donna Julia. Breaking off the fight with Don Alfonso, Don Juan escapes. To thwart rumours and the consequent bad reputation that her son has brought upon himself, Donna Inez sends Don Juan away to travel Europe, in hope that he develop a better sense of morality. The cuckold Don Alfonso punishes his faithless wife, Donna Julia, by interning her to a nunnery.

Canto II

Exiled from Seville. Don Juan travels to Cádiz, accompanied by Pedrillo, a tutor, and servants. Throughout the voyage, Juan pines for the love of Donna Julia, but seasickness distracts him. A storm wrecks the ship; Juan, his entourage, and some sailors escape in a long boat. Adrift in the Aegean Sea, they soon exhaust their supplies of food, they eat their leather shoes and clothes, and then they eat Don Juan's dog. The sailors turn cannibal and eat Pedrillo. They manage to catch some birds to eat, and a sleeping turtle. They drink sea water and the cannibal sailors go mad and die. They eventually wash up, after the boat overturning in a reef and killing more survivors, and Juan manages to make it onto the land before collapsing. The sight of land stops the remaining few from choosing someone else to eat. Juan and a couple other sailors never commit cannibalism. This Canto is largely based on accounts by survivors of the wreck of the Wager, including Byron’s grandfather, Admiral John Byron, who as a young man had endured the wreck of H.M.S. Wager off the coast of Chile.

thumb|Finding of Don Juan by Haidee, 1873, by [[Ford Madox Brown]]

Juan is the sole survivor of the shipwreck and the escape in the long boat. Upon landfall at one of the Cyclades islands, two women, Haidée and Zoe, the latter being the maid of the former, discover the shipwrecked Juan and care for him in a cave at the beach. Haidée and Juan fall in love, despite neither speaking or understanding the language of the other. Moreover, Haidée's father, Lambro, is a pirate and a slaver who dislikes Don Juan. Haidee knows that if her father knew about Juan, that he would have him enslaved and sent to Constantinople, in the Ottoman Empire. She keeps him in a cave for around a month, and then when her father, goes on a voyage, then she brings Juan out on walks. Haidee teaches him some Greek, and the pair get ceremoniously 'wed' under the stars.

Canto III

The opening stanzas discuss the idea that 'Love and Marriage can rarely combine', and with mentions of the Fall. This Canto was originally merged with IV, but was later split into two.

A digression. To give his political opinions about the Ottoman Empire's hegemony upon Greece, in "The Isles of Greece" section of canto III, Byron uses numeration and versification different from the style of verse and enumeration of the text about Don Juan. On returning to the adventures of Don Juan, the narrator vividly describes a catalogue of the celebrations of the lovers Haidée and Don Juan. At the time of Juan's ship-wrecked arrival to the island, the islanders believed that Lambro (Haidée's father) was dead, but he returns and witnesses the revels and his daughter in company of a man. Towards the end of canto III, Byron again digresses from the adventures of Don Juan in order to insult his literary rivals, the Lake Poets, specifically William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Robert Southey (1774–1843), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834).

Canto IV

On the island, the lovers Haidée and Don Juan wake to discover that her father, Lambro, has returned. Aided by his fellow pirates, Lambro enslaves Juan, and embarks him aboard a pirate ship delivering slaves to the slave market in Constantinople. Haidée despairs at losing her lover, and eventually dies of a broken heart, whilst pregnant with Don Juan's child.

Canto V

The Sultana of Constantinople. At the slave market, Don Juan converses with an Englishman named John Johnson, telling him of his lost love Haidée, whereas the more experienced John tells him of having to flee from his third wife. A black eunuch from the harem, Baba, buys the infidel slaves Juan and John, and takes them to the palace of the sultan. Taking them to an inner chamber, Baba insists that Don Juan dress as a woman, and threatens castration if Juan resists that demand. Finally, Juan is taken into an imperial hall to meet the sultana, Gulbeyaz, a beautiful, twenty-six-year-old woman, who is the fourth, last, and favourite wife of the sultan.

The proud Juan refuses to kiss the foot of Gulbeyaz, but compromises by kissing her hand, grateful of being rescued from enslavement. At the slave market, Gulbeyaz noticed Juan, and asked Baba to secretly buy him for her, despite risking discovery by the sultan. She wants Juan to love her, and then Gulbeyaz throws herself upon his breast. With Haidée still in his thoughts, Juan spurns Gulbeyaz's sexual advances, saying: "The prisoned eagle will not pair, nor I / Serve a sultana's sensual phantasy." Enraged by the rejection, Gulbeyaz thinks of having Juan beheaded, but, instead, she cries.

Before they can progress with their sexual relationship, Baba rushes in and announces to Gulbeyaz and Juan that the sultan is arriving: "The sun himself has sent me like a ray / To hint that he is coming up this way" (V. clviv, 1151). Preceded by an entourage of courtiers, concubines, and eunuchs, the sultan arrives and notices the presence of "Juanna", and is regretful "that a mere Christian should be half so pretty" (V. clv, 1240). In a Muslim culture, Don Juan is a giaour, a non-Muslim. The narrator Byron then comments that "in the East, they are extremely strict, / And Wedlock and a Padlock mean the same" (V. clviii, 1258). This reference seems to be a dig at unsuccessful copulation.

Moreover, the poem's Dedication further pursued artistic quarrels—of subject and theme, composition and style—with the Lake Poets, whom Byron addressed:

Collectively:

Precisely:

About the works of Wordsworth, Byron said Tis poetry—at least by his assertion" (IV.5), Concerning the poem's origins, Byron said that Don Juan resulted from the "humorous paradoxes ... provoked by [the] advice and opposition" of friends and colleagues, rivals and enemies. In a letter (19 September 1818) to the Irish poet Thomas Moore,<!--(19 September 1818)--> Byron spoke of satirical intent: "I have finished the first canto ... of a poem in the style and manner of Beppo [1818], encouraged by the good success of the same. It [the new poem] is ... meant to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. But I doubt whether it is not—at least as far as it has gone—too free for these very modest days."

References

Bibliography

  • Project Gutenberg versions:
  • Don Juan in 16 cantos with notes, complete text of an 1837 publication
  • Don Juan in The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6, edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge
  • Librivox recording of Canto I
  • Librivox recording of Canto V
  • Librivox recording of Cantos XIII-XVI
  • Autograph manuscript of Don Juan from The Morgan Library & Museum