Don Juan and Faust

Abstract

There is no doubt about it: when we first meet these two interesting characters they are both on their way to Hell. Faust got there in 1587, Don Juan somewhere around 1616 though the date of his arrival is somewhat disputed. But by 1832 Faust is on his way to Heaven, and in 1844 Don Juan is following him with an intermediate stop in Purgatory, the change of flight plan being in each case due to the Eternal Feminine. Both legends, therefore, originally had the same conclusion, and in the course of time both arrived at a different similar conclusion. On the face of it there would not seem to be much similarity between the carefree, whoring, aristocratic Latin and the care-sodden, brooding, academic German. And indeed for some time the two legends developed separately, differing in basic essentials: no pact for Don Juan, no statue for Faust; no Helen for Don Juan, no Donna Anna for Faust; and as a companion in adventures, Leporello (under various names) in the one instance, but Mephistopheles in the other. For Faust an academic milieu with brief trips to court, for Don Juan a court milieu with brief holidays in the country, but no time at all wasted at a university. With Faust a strong interest in the supernatural, with Don Juan an excessive interest in the natural. And yet both, when we first meet them, face the same fate : eternal damnation. In the case of Faust the reason was that he foreswore God and made a pact with the devil; in the case of Don Juan the reason was that he ignored God and lived a life of self-gratification in seduction and murder. The motivation behind Faust's pact with the devil is explicitly stated in the anonymous Frankfurt Faust Book of 1587; the reason why Don Juan acts as he does in Tirso de Molina's play of 1616 (?) is never stated. Faust's motives seem to be loftier: he is seeking knowledge inaccessible to him by normal channels. The power that drives Don Juan would seem to be more obvious, one might even say vulgar, but what is he really trying to achieve, if anything? Faust is clearly trying to achieve something, and goes through a series of different experiences in search of it; but Don Juan pursues a somewhat repetitious course, and one might expect him to get tired of the monotony, since the sequence of his seductions does