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PARTISAN REVIEW
for the pleasure of plundering and then setting forth on a fresh
conquest. The relation of Machiavellianism to donjuanism deserves
a more detailed study than I can attempt here. I must, however, men–
tion, that the earliest known embryo of the theatrical Don Juan is
Count Leoncio, in a play by the Jesuits of Ingolstadt, in 1615. This
appalling libertine and defiler of everything sacred was a follower
of Machiavelli. The playwright considered this detail so important
that he included it in the rather lengthy title, which read: "The His–
tory of Count Leoncio, who, corrupted by Machiavelli, came to a
miserable end." Don Juan has never forgotten the corrupting lessons
he learned from Machiavelli.
It is utterly unjust to compare Don Juan, as is often done,
with the Spanish conquistadores. With the
condottiere,
yes, but not
with the conquistador. For the latter was hard, strong, sometimes
cruel, but filled with a righteous idealism completely lacking in the
condottiere.
Which is why the
condottiere
left only the most ephe–
meral of legends, whereas the Spanish conquistadores left an in–
delible mark wherever they set foot.
Donjuanism invaded Europe just as Renaissance architecture
did. It reached Spain, as it did other countries, and took root there,
especially in Madrid, for the Spanish Court was at that time the
capital of the largest state in Europe, and the vital influences from
all over the Continent converged there. Madrid, in fact, swarmed
with Don Juans, and the chronicles and news-sheets of the period
are stuffed with the adventures of those exalted and immoral noble–
men, nearly all of whom had been educated in the great university
of unscrupulous behavior that was Italy. Any of them could have
served as a model for Tirso de Molina.
Why Don Juan was born in Spain.
Actually, the same
thing happened in the other Courts of Europe.
If
the Don Juan of
literature was born in Spain, rather than in France or in Italy, that
is
because of a circumstance which nowadays is quite obvious. Since
Don Juan is a rebel against the existing social and religious orthodoxy,
it is apparent that his rebellious exploits would be more heroic, more
spectacular, in Spain than anywhere else. For the powers against
which he rebelled, God and the State, were stronger in Spain than
elsewhere. In no other European country could Don Juan's rebellious-
