Episode 316: “Don Juan” by Moliere, Acts 2-5

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On The Literary Life podcast this week, Angelina and Thomas are back with this second episode on the play Don Juan by Moliere. After sharing their commonplace quotes for this week, Thomas kicks off the discussion of the play with a definition of the farce and how it applies to this play. They share more notable passages of Don Juan as they highlight related literature and stories from across Europe, the archetypes and stock characters represented by Sganarelle, and the value of the comedic form. They also talk about other works that were influenced by this play.

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Commonplace Quotes:

When Newton saw an apple fall, he found
In that slight startle from his contemplation--
'Tis said (for I'll not answer above ground
For any sage's creed or calculation)--
A mode of proving that the earth turn'd round
In a most natural whirl, called 'gravitation;'
And this is the sole mortal who could grapple
Since Adam, with a fall or with an apple.

Lord Byron, from “Don Juan”

Horace, peering round the sofa in hope of a clinching ace, answered without heat. ‘Aristotle–or perhaps it was Plato–was a shopkeeper–or perhaps the son of one: I forget. And your own namesake, dear Mike, the sage of Périgord, was a fishmonger. And you are a nasty, unwholesome, misshapen, degenerate, and altogether lousy scion of outworn privilege. And the increasing unpleasantness of your personal habits, your thick and incoherent utterance, your shambling gait, and above all your embarrassing and indeed painful inability to talk sense have long since convinced David and myself–though we have striven to conceal it–that you are already undermined beyond human aid by the effects of retributive disease. And you tailor–whose taste perpetually astonishes me, let me add–would be grateful for any blood-money you might raise on Umpleby: it would help feed the eight children your bad debts are deriving of sustenance.’
Michael Innes, from Death at the President’s Lodging

Books and Links:

Tartuffe and Other Plays by Moliere (trans. by Donald Frame)

Death at the President’s Lodging by Michael Innes

Pensées by Blaise Pascal

The Life and Death of Mr. Badman by John Bunyan

Don Juan aux enfer (Don Juan in Hell)

by Charles Baudelaire, trans. by Roy Campbell

When, having reached the subterranean wave,
Don Juan paid his passage from the shore,
Proud as Antisthenes, a surly knave
With vengeful arms laid hold of either oar.

With hanging breasts between their mantles showing
Sad women, writhing under the black sky,
Made, as they went, the sound of cattle lowing
As from a votive herd that's led to die.

Sganarelle for his wages seemed to linger,
And laughed; while to the dead assembled there,
Don Luis pointed out with trembling finger
The son who dared to flout his silver hair.

Chilled in her crepe, the chaste and thin Elvira,
Standing up close to her perfidious spouse,
Seemed to be pleading from her old admirer
For that which thrilled his first, unbroken vows.

A great stone man in armour leaped aboard;
Seizing the helm, the coal-black wave he cleft.
But the calm hero, leaning on his sword,
Had eyes for nothing but the wake they left.

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