Don Juan: Darstellung und Deutung (review)

216 BCom, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Winter 1 983)«absolutely . . . organic part.» Likewise he touches on an extensive number of plays—seventeen in the course of fifteen pages—to illustrate how the equally characteristic «idioms of silence» find expression through the testimony of artful objects. Frequently, these generate a conversion in the original image or in the problematic sitter who recognizes the depiction of his faults. El segundo Escipión is ter Horst's primary example of such self-conquest, i.e., a «second self» attained through the inspiration of a portrait. While admitting the moral and philosophical implications of this procedure, ter Horst stresses that Calderón's separation of a character into perceiver and perceived constitutes a rarely recognized aesthetic impulse essential to his theater. This volume of essays thus provides a wide range of perspectives on Calderonian drama, including the myth plays, the comedias novelescas and de capa y espada, the autos, and the ever-debatable La vida es sueño. Along with other collections commemorating Calderón's tercentenary, it is an invaluable reference work for any comediante. An index of the works, playwrights and critics discussed would have added to its usefulness as a research tool. It is an attractive publication featuring a portrait of Calderón on its glossy black and orange cover as well as notes on the contributors and their pictures inside . Susana Hernández-Araico California State Polytechnic University WITTMAN, BRIGITTE, ed. Don Juan: Darstellung und Deutung. Wege der Forschung, vol. CCLXXXII. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976. XVI + 447 pp. Dr. Brigitte Wittman began collecting the articles for this selection («Don Juan in Performance and Interpretation») in the early 1970s, but the volume was held up for many years in press. Its principal purpose—to bring together in German translation the best articles written on the Don Juan theme in the last fifty years—has paradoxically placed the anthology beyond the grasp of its largest potential readership: the Hispanists of the world interested in Tirso de Molina and José Zorrilla who do not read German. The MLA An- Reviews21 7 notated Bibliography of Tirso de Molina Studies (1979) edited by Williamsen and Poesse mentions only one review to date of Dr. Wittman 's collection, and their brief entry describing this volume («a comparative study based on a diachronic and synchronic analysis of the Don Juan theme») is inadequate for a book of this quality containing nearly 500 pages of fine print. Many of the 28 essays, however, first appeared in Spanish, English, French or Italian and may be consulted in the originals. The essays fit, in the editor's scheme, into five broad categories: 1) chronological reception studies of the Don Juan theme or the Mozart opera according to country (USA, Russia, Germany); 2) methodologically diverse interpretations of individual reworkings and/or discussion of special problems; 3) philosophical surveys; 4) sociological studies; and 5) psychological interpretations. Though the contributions are arranged in chronological order of composition, the first one, by Elisabeth Frenzel, is a reprint of a competent lexikon article (1970), which draws the broad lines of the Don Juan versions from 1630 till the present. Of the remaining 27, J. Ortega y Gasset's «Introducción a un Don Juan» (1921) is available in his Obras completas (1955), vol. V, 121-37. Otto Rank's essay on«The Figure of Don Juan» (1922) provided the basis of his subsequent book, also entitled Die Don-Juan-Gestalt (1924). This discusses the Mozart opera, and argues in Freudian terms that the Doppelgänger or literary double motif is linked to the ego ideal by Leporello's rôleplaying in Don Giovanni's place. This splitting is also an embodiment of madness, and a contrast to the folk motif of the live hero's participation at his own funeral. C. A. Manning's «Russian Versions of Don Juan» first appeared in PMLA 38 (1923), 479-93; and Gregorio Marañón's celebrated «Notas para la biología de Don Juan» in the Revista de Occidente 3 (1924), 15-53.«Don Giovanni, all Women and the Wedding-day» (1928), by the German-Jewish composer Ernst Bloch, studies the Mozart opera (1787) and asks how far...