Don Juan is who? The meaning of the phrase

Today many men are called Donjuani, often not fully understanding the meaning of this word. Don Juan, meanwhile, thanks to which it appeared, is the eternal hero of world literature and cinema. What is his real story and how to correctly write this name?

Who is a Don Juan?

First of all, it is necessary to determine the meaning of the common word "donjuan", which occurred on behalf of Don Juan. The meaning of this term is a man constantly looking for love adventures.

In a broader sense, this name means a charming man, loving, and most importantly able to seduce women. This was the legendary Spanish nobleman Don Juan.

The meaning of phraseology and synonyms for it

The most common synonym is a womanizer. True, it is not always appropriate, because a womanizer called a man who loves a woman's attention and wants to seduce women. However, this was not the real Don Juan.

The meaning of phraseology, derived from this name, is a man who wants to conquer not only the body of a woman, but her soul as well. But only in return he does not at all want to give her his heart.

In fact, don Juan is a kind of hunter, for whom the woman is a game that represents only sporting interest. While a womanizer is a man who can not be faithful to one woman, he can sincerely love each of his passions.

World history, other amateurs are known to break the hearts of women, whose names have changed from their own into common nouns, which are synonymous with the word "donjuan."

This is the hero of the book of Samuel Richardson "Clarissa" - Robert Lovelace and adventurer-writer from Italy - Giacomo Casanova. All these words, derived from these names: "Lovelace", "kazanova" and "donjuan" - have a similar meaning. In rare cases, the names themselves - Lovelace, Casanova and Don Juan - are synonymous.

There are also other terms with a similar meaning - "ladies' singer", "rake" and the newfangled "playboy".

Donzhuazm

This is the name of the man's psychological state in honor of the legendary person named Don Juan.

The definition of Don Juanism is the following: it is the clinical condition of a man when he aspires to a constant change of women and is incapable of seeing in relations with them anything more than the satisfaction of his sexual desires.

From the point of view of modern psychology, donism is no longer a sign of a full-fledged life for a man, as was considered in the past, but, on the contrary, a deviation from the norm, which does not allow him to build normal relations.

Historical prototype

The nominal noun "donjuan" came from the name of the Spanish nobleman don Juan (Guan) Tenorio, who lived in the XIV century. And characterized by incredibly dissolute behavior.

Being one of the most brilliant cavaliers in Seville, he not only dishonored countless women, but also became famous for his participation in numerous duels and fights, of which he often managed to win.

Despite the active indignation of the public, the hero avoided well-deserved punishment, because he was patronized by the King of Castile - Pedro I the Cruel. Moreover, evil tongues argued that the monarch himself often became a participant in the amusements of Tenorio.

One day the king and his friend kidnapped the daughter of the esteemed commander de Ulloa, killing her father, who tried to prevent them. This event was the last straw, and the Seville monks took justice in their own hands. They lured don Juan to the grave of the murdered commander and dealt with him. And in order to avoid punishment, they let out a rumor that the scoundrel had been overtaken by God's punishment, and the ghost of de Ulloa had dealt with his murderer.

The Seville legend

However, not only don Juan Tenorio was a prototype of the world-famous literary hero. For the inhabitants of Sevilla, Don Juan is also Don Miguel de Manara.

This caballero, according to legend, sold his soul, but eventually realized his sinfulness, repented and redeemed his sins with good deeds.

Gradually, the legends of the two dons merged into one, which formed the basis of most of the subsequent literary works.

It is worth noting that for centuries the character of Don Juan has changed. From an insatiable dishonorable sweetheart, he turned into a seeker of love with graceful manners, who is noble in nature and faithful to his word, even in the face of death. Also, such an ugly detail was gradually forgotten, like the fact of rape of a stolen beautiful Donna.

Literary history of the character

The first work of art, in which a hero named Don Juan appears, is a play by Tirso de Molina El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra. For its foundation, the author took the classic legend of don Juan Tenorio, but embellished it, turning the dishonorable King Pedro I into a just ruler, seeking to punish the deceitful seducer and murderer.

The play of Tirso de Molina enjoyed great success on the stage, but gradually underwent a change. Since the audience was bored to listen to the moral teachings of the author - they were thrown out of the text, and the plot itself was supplemented with a mass of very piquant witticisms.

Gradually, the popularity of the plays about Don Juan reached France. The first serious change in the image of the insidious seducer underwent in the play Moliere Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre. Her events were transferred from the past to a modern time for the writer, and the hero himself turned from a Spaniard to a Frenchman.

A few centuries later another French writer, Prosper Merimee, dedicated the novel "Souls of Purgatory" to the legendary playboy. In it, he departed from the canon and retained the protagonist and life, and his soul.

In Germany, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann wrote the most striking adaptation of the legend of the Spanish seducer, it was called simply: Don Juan. Hoffmann first depicts the hero not as a seeker of carnal pleasures, but as a man yearning for true love and seeking meaning in life.

The British most famous poem by Byron, dedicated to this Don Juan. In addition to the excellent Byronian syllable, the author did not make anything particularly remarkable in the image of his hero. In general terms, he tells a familiar story, but his character in fashion of that time languishes with anguish, like most of Byron's heroes.

Don Juan in Russian and Ukrainian Literature

Many Russian writers dedicated their works to this hero. Among them were Pushkin, Alexei Tolstoy, Alexander Ivolgin, and Samuel Aleshin.

Apart from all these authors is Leonid Zhukhovitsky, who dedicated the play "The Last Woman of Senator Juan" to the legendary Spaniard. It removes all the supernatural, and it is very close in the story to the original legend, except that the protagonist is still the same Hoffmann romantic seeking love and understanding.

In Ukrainian literature the most striking work devoted to Don Juan is Lesja Ukrainka's play "The Stone Gentleman". Taking as a basis the plot of Pushkin's drama, the writer shifted the accents, turning the hero into a victim of ambitions of his beloved Anna.

Don Juan at the cinema

With the advent of cinema, the story of a dissolute seducer, who suffered the deserved God's punishment, was filmed. For the first time this happened in 1898 in Mexico. The painting was called "Don Juan Tenorio".

In total, more than twenty films have been devoted to João, most of them shot in France.

The role of the insidious seducer was played by such stars of world cinema as Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Jean Rochefort, Vladimir Vysotsky, Jacques Weber and Johnny Depp.

How correctly spelled "Don Juan"

This phrase, despite frequent use in speech, on the letter becomes the reason of frequent mistakes. The most common of them: "Don Juan" - is the writing of the term through the hyphen and "don Juan" - confusion with capital letters.

To understand how to correctly write this word, you need to understand the meaning in which it is used.

• The correct spelling of the name Don Juan is both words with a capital letter, when it comes to the very hero of legends, books and movies.
• In conjunction with a small letter, the word combination "donjuan" is written in the case when it is used in the noun meaning and can be replaced by the term "womanizer". For example: "He is such a Don Juan (a womanizer), he simply does not save, although he is still very far from the legendary Don Juan from Seville."
• If we are talking about some other person with the name João, and the word "don" plays the title role - it is written with a small letter. For example: "This Don Juan de Pantalone is a creepy, unruly woman, quite unlike the real Don Juan."

Now you know the meaning of the word Don Juan.