THE COUNT OF VILLAMEDIANA
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invents them, as adolescents do. Secrecy, on the other hand, is a
necessary condition of great love. Scarcely any of the really deep
things that have passed between men and women have ever been
known by others. That is why we still know very little about love.
In the center of the marketplace Don Juan describes his conquests
to any who will listen. And he does this partly because his crude
nature delights in airing his triumphs, be they spurious or genuine;
and also because scandal is the best bait for new adventures.
Finally, the classical Don Juan is typified by his amorality in
matters of love. Don Juan is essentially a trickster. Any means are
fair which may result in a seduction. He regards any necessary sleight–
of-hand and deceit simply as fun. His morality is merely the Machia–
vellian maxim, "The end justifies the means," applied to love. The
true Don Juan is not deterred by any of the things which protect
a woman against most men: innocence, marriage, difference of class
or of religion, or the consideration of how a particular adventure may·
harm other people. Of course, in periods of transition, such as our
own, there are no prejudices to be trampled on, and no convent
walls need be climbed. Which, as I have said, accounts for the
current pallor of Don Juan's personality.
The SPanish legend and Don Juan.
Having re-stated my
theory, let me now examine the two aspects of the problem of Don
Juan which I mentioned above, and which are the real object of this
essay. First, the essentially Spanish nature of Don Juan. Is Don Juan
really Spanish, as everybody, public and critics alike, believe?
One of the authors who has written with most point about the
problem of Don Juan, Gendarme de Bevotte, says that Don Juan
is the only Spanish hero whom the whole of Europe has made its
own. This is not, let me say in passing, entirely true, for Don Quixote
is universal in the same sense as Don Juan is. And if Spain has given
human mythology two figures of this stature, her contribution is im–
mense: Faust is the only other of comparable universality. Yet I
hope to show that although Don Juan, as far as the legend is con–
cerned, was born in Spain, he is hardly Spanish at all. I will be
told that
all
great human prototypes acquire .their symbolic stature
precisely because of their universal relevance, which surmounts all
differences of nationality and of race. In the case of Don Juan, how-
