Soon thereafter the poem falls apart, however-dissolving into an endlessly long aside, in which the main action is lost. Byron appears to have begun with a fairly concrete idea in mind, and the first three or four cantos are brilliant fun. That is to say that it is full of holes and an awful lot of wind blows through it. This epic poem has a loose and baggy structure. Perhaps tastes did not change as much as we are prone to believe. It seems strange, then, that of all the great English Romantic poets, it was Byron who was arguably the most famous and influential. His most obvious literary forebear is not Milton or Donne, but Pope-another witty versifier. Indeed, the verse is so prose-like that it is hardly even poetical. There is nothing sentimental, meditative, or wistful in this long poem. His poetry is witty, snappy, sharp, irreverent, and lean. Though a member of the Romantic age, Byron does not strike me as a Romantic poet. Instead, Don Juan is an attractive young boy with a good heart who runs into a lot of trouble, mainly because every woman who sees him wants him. He does not lie to get his way, he does not have a wisecracking servant, he does not kill the fathers of his victims, and he does not meet his end at the hands of a living statue. Byron’s Juan, however, is usually the seducee rather than the seducer. The protagonist is, indeed, an attractive young man from Seville with a formidable sexual appetite. Nonetheless, Lord Byron’s use of the legend is free to the point that it may as well have been discarded entirely.

After speaking in French verse and singing in mellifluous Italian, the infamous seducer of Seville lived on-though much altered-to speak iambic pentameter in Lord Byron’s comedic epic.

Molière’s powerful version may be the most famous for the theater, and Mozart’s opera is considered to be among the greatest works of music even sounded. After its first setting by Tirso de Molina-still a classic of the Spanish stage-it has been adapted innumerable times. The legend of Don Juan appears to be one of the most productive stories in all of literature. Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter, In the Heat: Elche… on Alicante & the Island of…Ģ023: New Year… on In the Heat: Elche & … Jaca: A Slightly Uns… on A Highly Unsuccessful Jou… Reflections on Readi… on Ancient Cities: Istanbul

Don juan poetry