دون ژوان اثر اتو رنک بخش ۹
CHAPTER 9
THE LEGEND OVER TIME
THE DEVIL: I see that you read too much what has been written about you! Rostand1
HAVING traced the psychological motives of the original Don Juan figure from its primal historical roots up through its most recent poetic branches, our remaining task is to pursue the individual artistic modifications of the material from its medieval origin in the Christian conception of sin.
The oldest appearance of Don Juan in world literature is a Spanish comedy, now apparently lost, that appeared at about the end of the sixteenth century. The Burlador is a slightly altered form of this play. For a very long time this work was attributed to the monk Fray Gabriel Tellez, a prolific dramatist who is known by the name Tirso de Molina. More recently, this authorship has been disputed in favor of the great Calderon.2 The question of authorship is not important for us, for in any case we do not know much about the personality of the first poet and creator of Don Juan other than the most general knowledge drawn from his times and his works.3 From these scanty data one can only surmise what may have drawn the rather unknown author to the traditional material of the Stone Guest. This figure had already appeared in the Infamador, by Juan de la Cuerva, which was produced in Seville in 1581, and in the Leontine plays,4 in which the gruesome elements were depicted more flagrantly. In these plays the hero was presented as the usual ruthless, vicious sort, and death simply came to avenge his crimes. In the Burlador, however, the offense to the exalted person is increased; and the punishment is conceived as the instrument of eternal heavenly justice. One could say that the author of the Burlador, living in orthodox times, was motivated by this ethical-religious impulse to rework the traditional material of avenging death. Yet such a motive is both too general and too incomplete to be taken as the basis for an analysis of a poetic individual. Fortunately there is a second and more interesting question that can help us in this difficulty: How was the poet inclined to arrive at the figure of Don Juan and the connection with the legend of avenging death?
Again, this question can be answered only on the basis of an intimate knowledge of the personality of the first poet—knowledge that is unavailable to us. We believe, however, that the solution has rather easily fallen into our lap already, as an unexpected further yield from our analysis of the motif [of avenging death]. It is only a matter of applying to the whole of the poem the "principle of elucidation" of poetic form which we established in the pursuit of a single motif. The primal crime that we find embodied in the fantasy portrait of the Don Juan figure has yielded to our analytic understanding of the primal human anxiety about avenging death. In other words, the first Don Juan poet (whether or not he might have been a historical personality) has given us the psychological meaning of the vengeance of death, and has embodied this meaning in a dramatic figure that is both eternal, and yet, as we have seen, capable of metamorphosis. Because of a strong personal and social5 sense of guilt acting from within, he has fantasized, in addition to the traditional punishment, the crime that psychologically corresponds to it.® Indeed, from the primal situation itself, we have even succeeded in freely deducing the form of Oedipal orientation7 that characterizes Don Juan exactly: the most extreme mocking of the dead with an invitation to the banquet, as well as the serial form of sexual objects.
Thus the Burlador presents a complete reworking of the original material in the direction of the most extreme fantasy wish. He is, as it were, the heroic figure, standing at the beginning of the "poetic" accounts of individual psychology.8 The later poems, in contrast, appear to correspond to the subsequent legendary elaboration in different ways—not only in the breakthrough of the originally repressed elements on the one hand, and in the artistic interpretation of these elements on the other, but more importantly in a progressive devaluation9 of the material that corresponds to the conquering of the guilt feelings, the denial of which represents the original Don Juan type.
For the Burlador is precisely the "blasphemer" who scoffs at conscience as it is represented in the comical figure of his servant, and whose tendency to devalue all social and spiritual values that are opposed to himself even reaches to a euphemistic denial of death, with which he tries to pledge a hearty brotherhood.10 Consequently, the psychological sense of this action would be to show that although man has the ability to endure heroically all other powers, he founders on the inner inhibitions that are manifested in his ego ideal, his conscience, his guilt feelings, and his anxiety about retribution. We have noted the ways in which the further development of the material clarifies this punishment tendency by means of the accumulation of offenses, "and in fact almost all Don Juans in the first half of the nineteenth century . . . are little more than common criminals" (Heckel, 1915, p. 68). Certainly connected with this development is the fact that the intrinsically lustful fantasy wish of unrestrained erotic impulse steadily gives up its primitive qualities and lack of restraint. The development finally leads to a characterological death and thus extinction of the original type, which threatens to founder on a sense of guilt that has become overpowering, quite in the way that neurotics founder on guilt feelings. At such a point only the poet's art of interpretation helps, by unburdening the character through a process of devaluation of the guilt feelings and by making possible a pretended existence for a time.
After all that we have learned about the psychological conditions of dramatic production, we are not surprised if the process of artistic elucidation of a theme often recalls the analytic interpretation. The artistic-synthetic presentation of the Don Juan material culminates in Mozart's immortal masterpiece. Here the sense of guilt breaks through so powerfully that it leads on the one hand to its clearest manifestation in the father complex (the Commander), and on the other hand to the complete inhibition of the libido (which was originally unrestrained) for the forbidden maternal object. The result of this second effect is that the whole series of women remains unattainable for the hero.
The poetic shaping of the material actually shows us that when it reaches the point of elucidating the unconscious psychic content, it is no longer capable of any further development in that direction. Thus the true psychological interpretation of the Don Juan figure begins at that point. Heckel dates this beginning from Ε. T. A. Hoffman (1813) in Germany, and in France, under the influence of Hoffman, from Alfred de Musset (1832). At the end of the nineteenth century it culminated in the prevailing view "that sees in Don Juan no longer the great criminal, but rather a fighting and struggling human being whose faithlessness arises from his quest for the ideal woman and his overpowering impulse life" (Heckel, 1915, pp. 64-65 [Rank's emphasis]). Heckel called this view "the first psychological explanation of the Don Juan problem," because for the first time it asked and tried to answer the question, iiHorW did Don Juan become what he is?" (p. 70). One could almost term the answers to the question psychoanalytic, in that they reduce the heroic lie to purely human features, though to be sure in the light of a romantic explanation. Thus the psychological interpretations of the nineteenth century destroyed the real character of the hero, and this result surely explains the fact that Hoffman's analysis of Don Juan aroused so much strong opposition, even in his devoted biographer Ellinger (1912).
It is interesting, then, to pursue the ways in which the poetic attempt to explain the Don Juan character really corresponds to the analytic process of interpretation, with the one difference that poetic explanations seek to use the results of interpretation for the presentation of a new motif. In this way we learn how the poets advance the development of a character that is already in literature and we gain the impression that they obviously succeed at such a challenge by the same technique that the first Don Juan poet adopted, i.e., that they try to derive the psychological motivation out of their own unconscious. Therefore, we shall not be surprised to find that here and there scattered parts of the original motive reemerge in these widely proliferating fantasies about Don Juan. If one were to pursue the process in detail, one could almost formulate sets of motives designated by the terms "anamnestic,"11 "etiological," and "symptomatological," according to the respective author's interest in childhood memoirs, effects of environment, or maladjustments resulting from it.12 To the first set belongs, for example, the detailed descriptive record of Don Juan's childhood in the eleven-volume novel by Felicien Mallefille (1852).¾ this account, the hero was endowed in childhood with abundant fantasy and a precocious love life, which made love seem unsatisfying to him at an early age. As a prototype of the etiological motivation, one would cite the poem of Byron (1819-24), who had the hero grow up under the influence of an overly affectionate mother and an unfaithful, plainly "donjuanesque" father, about whose escapades the mother kept a "catalogue." The identification with the father then finds poetic expression in the first romantic adventure of the sexually unenlightened hero with an obviously unfaithful "mother figure."It con
tinues in the heroically-tinged rescue of the principal character by a tender loving woman.13 In his presentation of another typical Oedipal destiny, Julius Hart (1881) had the hero deceived and betrayed in his first pure love. Holtei (1834) pushed this deception, with all of its analytic consequences, back to the first deception in love by the mother. He made the hero the fruit of his mother's fall from virtue—a fact that is known to him and that serves as the motivation of his character ("Surely you would not demand that I should be one of the elect, since you have told me that I am your bastard son?").
If we see the Oedipal motive emerging in the etiology, then logically the symptomatology should show the same characteristics. What does a Don Juan, who has developed in this way, do then? In his youthful drama Les adieux de Don Juan [Don Juan's farewell] (1844), Count Gobineau borrowed from Byron the overly affectionate mother who warps her son. As an analytic consequence, the first passion of elementary sensuality was kindled with Donna Claudia, the beautiful wife of Don Sancho, who was the hero's brother and who himself had meagre natural endowments. Because of this tragic love adventure, Don Juan was compelled to leave the house of his parents and satisfy his desires for the pleasures of love elsewhere. We find the same primal heroic motif—the hero in a conflict for the wives of his brothers—earlier in Dumas; Alfred Friedmann later made it the basis of his play, Don Juans letzes Abenteuer [Don Juan's last adventure] (1881). This motif, which derives from the community of brothers and which in Mozart still finds an echo in the common possession of the same woman by master and servant (Amphitryon motif), also appears in the description of the aged Don Juan by the Swedish dramatist Almqvist (1854). Here the dependence on the primal form of the motif is clearer: Ramido, the young son of Don Juan, was denied the good fortune of love because each of the four young girls who attracted his heart turned out to be the daughter of Don Juan. Ramido fled from the beloved sisters in bitter disillusionment. The tragedy by Paul Heyse, Don Juans Ende [Don Juan's end] (1883), can be understood in the same sense of primal restitution; complete with all of the requirements of a romantic drama of destiny, the old Don Juan appeared as a competitor with his own son for love.
It seems that as the subject matter has grown older, so also has the depiction of the aging Don Juan grown in popularity among the poets. Such descriptions make it clear that an impulse toward devaluation is a consequence of the psychological problem of the aging Don Juan, and this devaluation increasingly wins the upper hand. The devaluation involves not only the mere humanizing of the hero, but rather reaches a point of involuntary ridicule that finally falls into conscious caricature.
In terms of their characteristics, all of these versions belong to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, according to Heckel's description (1915, pp. 142#.). "A naive age, less inclined to psychological brooding, never came to the point of raising the question common to all of these plays: What will become of Don Juan when he grows old?" For the first time, Theophile Gautier conjured out of the grave the ghost of the aged Don Juan in his Comedie de la Mort [Comedy of death] (1838). With false hair, false teeth, and an enfeebled body, the mouldering roue laments his youth that was dissipated in debauchery. Not much different is the end of the Don Juan of the Portuguese writer Guerra Junqueiro (1874). Don Juan Barbon, a one-act play by Gustave Levavasseur (1848), seems almost farcical. Confined to bed by gout and arthritis, the one-time lover of women has to experience his pupil Don Sancho cheating him out of his wife and seducing his daughter—in strict accordance with the talion law. In defending the honor of his house with his sword, Don Juan falls at the hand of his superior opponent. Jules Viard (1853) also gives the aged seducer the prize for absurdity. The only love that is still available to him is the kind that is to be had for money, and he fails miserably in an attempt to seduce the fiancee of his son. His own son gives him a beating, and in the end he only succeeds in being shut out of his house by his wife and son.
Here we see the theme of the aging Don Juan brought down to his fatherhood and his disturbed relationship to his children. Although these features are distorted into ridicule by the bourgeois mind, they are not a departure from the deeper psychological motivation; for the last ramification of the tragic guilt feelings is manifest in them in the form of the retaliatory revenge of the second generation. As the problems of guilt and punishment are cheapened and made superficial—in Lavedan (1902)14 the hero perishes in a paralysis—it is unmistakably clear that a psychological presentation of these problems has reached the limit of presentation. When the hero goes beyond that limit, he has taken the feared step from the noble to the ridiculous. If it were necessary to cite examples, one could list here all of the very many bad Don Juan versions; for no poet has succeeded in mastering the material in a fully artistic way.
At this point it is interesting to study the origin of another development that culminates in the conscious devaluation and ironic treatment of the hero, a theme that really shifts the comic-criticizing role of the servant back to the master himself. In the German popular theatre of the eighteenth century, of which only one play has come down to us,15 the predominant element was already a rather rough and vulgar comedy, in comparison to which the serious scenes were insignificant; the puppet plays can also be mentioned as a similar example. The main content of these plays is the coarse jokes of Hanswurst or Kasperl, who play the role of Don Juan's servant. This certainly involves a primitive thematic counterpoise to the terrible murder and punishment scenes that, in contrast, appear at their most extreme height in the eighteenth-century horror plays. "Regularly until 1772 in Vienna, during the week following the Festival of All Souls, there played Don · Juan oder das Steinere Gastmahl [Don Juan or the Stone Guest], of which we know nothing more" (Heckel, 1915, p. 18); and even in present-day Spain, Zorilla's famous play Don Juan Tenorio (1844) is produced in all of the theatres of the country every year during the fortnight after November i, just as Raupach's play Der Muller und sein Kind [The miller and his child] is performed in Austria.1®
The portrayal of the banquet that the Commander gives for Don Juan in the mausoleum of the Tenorio family, in which the table is decorated with serpents, bones, and fire, and ashes and fire are set out as food and drink, is somewhat unpleasant to our feelings; still less can one reconcile oneself to the ghosts and skeletons of Don Juan's victims who inhabit the cemetery in this scene, and in the end fall upon him. (Heckel, r9i5, p. 58)
Corresponding to this oppressive sense of guilt, the hero is painted in the darkest of colors. He is a criminal, absolutely unrestrained by any thoughts of conscience, who would fashion an eating utensil out of the bones of those who perished through his fault.17 If we compare the showy cemetery ghost in Raupach with this very primitive element, then we can estimate both the quite terrible growth of the sense of guilt and also the devaluation that is necessary to its relief.
In this connection there emerges a new motif, perhaps original, but in any case one that has been altered in a sentimental direction. We can trace it back to the earliest literary development. 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, quite in the sense of our interpretation, easily substitute for the pursuing and avenging horde of men. This feminization of conscience often goes along with the comical and self-ironical elements, as for example in Lenau's otherwise thoroughly serious poem. Under the leadership of Don Pedro, many of the abandoned women, even with their children, intrude upon the seducer in order to take revenge upon him. Similarly, in Baudelaire's poem Don Juan aux enfers [Don Juan in hell] (1846), there appear the accusing voices of his victims, dressed in tattered clothes, baring their flabby breasts to him. The aged father, trembling, shows the dead to the wicked son who had scoffed at his grey hair. Sganarelle laughingly demands his wages. Also in Rittner's drama (1909), the conscience of the hero betrays him to the defrauded servant, by whom he is cut down without offering resistance. Drawn by a secret power, as if in a dream, his victims then assemble around his body. His brother, a sober professor, has the room emptied of the women. Only one—his last love, and the wife of Leporello— stays on and kisses the dead hero on the lips, so that while both rejoicing and at the same time startled, she calls out, "He has returned my kiss!"
In the marionette theatre versions, the burlesque element is particularly important in Friedmann's drama (1881), where the author:
obviously in order to prove the identity of his hero with the Don Juan of legend, has him and Leporello discuss the adventures he had had in the well-known Don Juan plays (Mozart, Zorilla, Grabbe). Leporello reflects: "What has become of the Annas and the Elviras now? The Zerlinas and Masettos? The commander and all the marionettes that we once had dancing on the strings of our passion in the puppet theatre that we called our youth?" And Don Juan replies mournfully: "Fathers of families, Leporello. Fat mothers, Leporello. Grandmothers who rock their grandchildren on their trembling knees;—Guests for the society of worms who mutually invite each other to a feast; or, if they were thin and haggard, to herringbanquets of worms after their frantic carnival under the land of the moles." (Heckel, 1915, pp. 132-33)
In the Don Juan of Bernhardi (1903), the hero himself appears in an even more thorough devaluation, as the actor of his own role just before he returns to his home at the end of the play.
It is the annual fair, and a "brand-new play" called Don Juan's Adventure is to be given by one of the troupes that has appeared. However, when the heroine was supposed to appear, her partner waits for her and tries to help matters with some very inept extemporizing—in vain—and the audience begins to be restless. Finally the director appears and makes the surprising announcement that the original of the hero, unrecognized, has been at the performance, has won the affection of the actress, and has eloped with her. Relying on Don Juan's inconstancy, the director boldly invites the public to a repeat performance of the comedy, "First in order to become acquainted with the actress, who now appears in a more interesting light through her relationship to the amorous knight Don Juan, and also to be present at the abduction of Esmeralda from the theatre." (Heckel, IQ15, p. 103)
Both of these last two versions make use of Don Juan's literary existence: his adventures take place only within the well-known plays, certainly for the sensationalism of the audience. Such an existence shows the tendency to devaluation in the service of the psychological interpreta tion, a tendency that recognizes the lying fantasy wish behind the heroic Don Juan character. The most recent Don Juan work, Edmund Rostand's posthumous dramatic poem La derniere nuit de Don Juan [The last night of Don Juan] (1921), which was first published in Paris in 1921 and was produced in the spring of 1922 at the Theatre Porte-Saint-Martin, shows a devaluation that is consciously even more thorough. The famous Thousand and Three appear as nothing but shadows of the underworld, brought up by Satan, who trouble the conscience of the worldly Don Juan. With almost Shavian irony, his punishment is that he does not end up in the great hell, but rather in a little hell of painted canvas in the marionette theatre. As a puppet, he has to act out eternal adulteries, while his heroic pride demands the approaching hellfire of literature. After all he is a Don Juan who is certainly aware of his fame and who knows the respect he owes to his evil fame and his literary tradition. He is intentionally drawn by the poet in a rather unreal way, as his own successor or shadow, as it were. The prologue of the play returns to the scene that otherwise serves to end Don Juan tragedies—the Commander descends into hell, and Don Juan follows him pensively, at each step murmuring the name of another woman. The stone avenger is filled with admiration at such magnanimity—just as in the Shavian dream hell—and wants to pardon him. However, a gigantic hand rises out of the background and points its finger at the condemned one.
It is Satan, and Don Juan mockingly asks him for another interval of ten years to continue his dissolute life.18 The play itself is set in Venice at the end of this interval. Set free from the vengeance of hell, the hero has lived riotously. A puppet artist passes by and performs an unusual comedy with his fingers: Punchinello parodies the famous seducer Don Juan, who then jokes with the puppets and teaches them his principle of scorning the devil himself. The puppet wagers that he cannot do it any more, and Don Juan shakes the wooden hand in agreement on the wager. Then the puppeteer reveals himself as the devil come to claim his victim, but Don Juan invites him to a sumptuous meal and in the course of the conversation proudly shows him his list. Satan tears it into pieces, which are then transformed into a flotilla of dusky gondolas as they fall into the lagoon. In a vast procession, the shadows of the Thousand and Three abandoned victims arise from the flotilla and surround him more and more closely. The devil, who increasingly takes over the role of Don Juan's own conscience, puts him to a test. This test consists of recognizing the soul of a particular woman from a few whispered words, for Don Juan denied that he only recognized the woman's body. And now begins a long dialogue of pathetic dimensions between the defendant, whose arrogant pride is shaken, and the shadows, who slowly and relentlessly destroy his illusions, one after the other. He has known only masks; always they have lied to him, and he himself wanted those lies, for the woman appears to the man as he wishes her to be. The avenging women reveal to him how pitiable his imagined seduction technique had been: the women conquered him, and if he left them, it was
because the unadmitted fear of having to remain with one of them drove him to it. Finally, a more distinct white shadow emerges. In her eyes are tears of sympathy that pour out the torment of the man who is never satisfied and who is always seeking anew a woman. This white shadow, a symbol of the ideal and an emanation from all the other shadows, was in each of them and Don Juan could easily have found it with a little love. However, he had let all these opportunities pass and now suffers from his sterility. In a psychological way, this conscious devaluation of the Don Juan type pulls apart the last shreds of his heroic character bit by bit, and forces the bold conquering hero to capitulate before a host of sentimental memories of love that distress his conscience. This is truly Don Juan's last night, his real literary end!1®
NOTES
1 [From Rostand's La derniere nuit de Don Juan (1921), second part. Don Juan has just described his courage and indifference to laws and customs. The devil replies, "Je crois quetu lis trop, ce qu'on ecrit sur toi!"]
2 [The Burlador had been generally attributed to Tirso until this authorship was challenged by Farinelli (1896) and some other scholars. In his comprehensive study of the origins of the play, Wade (1969) argues that Tirso was beyond doubt the author. He apparently wrote two slightly different versions:the Burlador and £Tan largo me Io fiats? The latter was rediscovered in 1878; for some time its authorship was uncertain and so it may be the "oldest presentation" to which Rank refers.]
3 [If Tirso was indeed the author, then recent scholarship has established many more important details about his personality and his times (see Wade, 1969; Winter, 1973, Chapter 6). Tirso was probably born in 1584, and was probably the illegitimate and unrecognized son of the Duke of Osuna, Don Juan Tellez Giron. He had a sister who was both as clever and as unhappy as he was. He often used his plays to give advice to those in positions of power, to serve as propaganda, and to attack important and prominent people. Perhaps for these reasons, he was declared "a danger to public morals" in 162 5, and was forbidden to write further plays. He probably wrote the Burlador in 1616, while spending time in Seville, prior to his departure for the New World on a mission for his order, the Mercedarians. The theme of the powerful, deceiving, and exploiting woman is quite prominent in his other plays. Every one of these details is quite consistent with Rank's analysis of the artist, in this book generally and in the next chapter specifically.]
4 [Weinstein (1959, pp. 10-11) discusses the extent of overlap of these plays with the Don Juan legend.]
5 \ Sixkulareri\
6 [I take Rank's point here to be that the first poet was aware of the legends of punishment by avenging death, and that his inner sense of guilt led him to construct, in fantasy, a crime— serial seduction of women—that would be appropriate to or deserve" such a punishment.]
7 [Rank changed "Oedipal crime" to "orientation" in the proofs of B.]
8 ["Individual psychology," in the sense of the evolution from "group psychology," as it existed in the primal horde. See Freud's use (1921, pp. 135-36).] 9 [Entwertung]
10 [Mit dem er lustige Bruderschaft zu trinken versucht. The German phrase also means the ritual in which acquaintances switch from the formal second-person pronoun ("Sie") to the intimate pronoun ("du").]
11 ["Anamnestic" refers to the recollection of relevant events that occur prior to the onset of an illness or disorder.]
12 [The last clause is added in version G.]
13 It is noteworthy that ancient primitive elements are embedded in this romantic, heroic idyll. Thus the real theme of the famous second canto about the storm at sea is cannibalism.
14 Le ?narquis de Priola. [The marquis of Priola]. It is characteristic that the French push the hero down to the level of ordinary humanity, while in moralistic England, even Byron's Don Jiian is rejected; and that neither before nor since would the tabooed material be treated in an undistorted way.
15 Donn Joann, ein Schauspill in 4 Atefzigen, by Herr appen Beter Metastasio, which has come down to us through a transcript by Franz Kastner in 1811. See Werner (1891), as cited in Heckel (1915, p. 18). [This play was performed by the men who worked in the transport system on the river Salzach and lived in the town of Laufen. During the winter months, they organized travelling theatrical troupes to earn money. Singer (1965, p. 42) says that the attribution to Metastasio is wrong.]
16 \Bei WToJ]
17 [When his courage is challenged, Don Juan says of the corpses, "I am man enough to make dishes of their skulls." Zorilla, Don Juan Tenorio, part 2, act 1, scene 6.]
18 The forgivingness of the Commander is already found in Zorilla, and certainly not in an ironic sense.
19 [Rank changed "his real psychological end" to the present wording in correcting the proofs of B. In the Rank papers, there is a scrap of paper with the following words: "Rostand— fingers! Masturbation fantasy! Hand out of the grave]" and another: "Hand reaches toward him out of the grave!"]
