380
PARTISAN REVIEW
Juans, beardless or with little pointed beards, whom we see prome–
nading about in salons or on the stage. The minute care of his at–
tire, and in some cases its provocative exaggeration, further em–
phasize the un-virile appearance of the typical Don Juan.
Our hero's incapacity to feel any of the pains of love is also
quite typical of unselective virility. It is worthy of note that
there
is not a single instance of a Don Juan ever being deeply afflicted,
or wounded to the depths of his being-though
his vanity may have
suffered at
times-because his beloved left him or betrayed him.
He
is born with the knowledge that "he who lives by the sword shall
die by the sword." Jealousy is alien to
him.
Once Don Juan has en–
joyed a woman, he wants simply to get rid of her, so that she will
not get in the way of future conquests.
If
some other man helps
him at this point, by attracting the lady's attentions, so much the
better. Consequently, rivals exist for Don Juan only until he has
enjoyed a particular woman; once he has had
his
will with her,
they are his rivals no longer.
This accounts for the traditional Don Juan's urge to travel. One
might live for years, now, amid the huge and shifting populations
of modem cities, and indulge with impunity in the donjuanesque
game of seducing and abandoning many women in succession. But
a hundred years ago, even in such capitals as Paris, Rome, or Madrid,
life became untenable for his sort of conqueror after a very short
time. The complications arising from each seduction and desertion
forced them to seek out fresh fields for conquest, some distance away.
So the indispensable instrument of Don juan's activity was his horse,
a creature swift as the wind; and each adventure ended in a gallop.
In Tirso de Molina's play, Don Juan says to his servant, "Get the
two mares ready, for all my exploits depend upon their flying feet."
Each of his adventures was performed in a different place: Naples,
Tarragona, Seville, Lebrija. The same thing is true of real Don
Juans. Casanova's
Memoirs,
apart from being a collection of smutty
anecdotes, is an endless narrative of his travels around the Con–
tinent. The nomadic existence of the Diplomatic Corps may account
for the fact, which has been pointed out time and again, that there
are so many Don Juans in it.
Also typical of the true Don Juan is his delight in scandal, and
his deliberate display of
his
amorous triumphs. He exaggerates, even
