“Don Juan, or Love for geometry” Frisch in brief
The action takes place in Seville in the “era of beautiful costumes.” Father Don Juan, Tenorio, complains to his father Diego that his son, a twenty-year-old young man, absolutely not interested in women. His soul belongs entirely to geometry. And even in a brothel, he plays chess. This conversation takes place during the masquerade, preceding the wedding of Don Juan and Donna Anna, the daughter of Don Gonzalo, the commander of Seville. Don Gonzalo promised his daughter Don Juan as the hero of Cordoba: he measured the length of the enemy fortress, which no one else could do.
A masked pair enters. The girl kisses the hands of the young man, assuring that she recognized them; she saw Don Juan playing chess in a brothel, and she, Miranda, fell in love with him. A young man assures me that he is not Don Juan. Seeing the real Don Giovanni behind the column, Miranda runs away. Don Juan confesses to the young man who turns out to be his friend Roderigo, that while he is free,
Enter the father of Diego and Donna Anna without masks. After a brief conversation with the priest, in which the girl confesses that she is afraid to marry, she jumps over the balustrade, through which, shortly before, Don Juan jumped, and disappears in a dark park to not meet with Don Juan.
Miranda, meanwhile, sobs before Celestine, the owner of a brothel, confessing to her in a frenzied love for Don Juan. Celestine is angry and says that whores “do not trade heartily” and should not fall in love, but Miranda can not overcome herself.
The next day Donna Ine, bridesmaid, combs Donna Anna, who is sitting in a wedding dress. All the hair of that one is wet, grass and earth fall into them. Donna Anna tells Donna Ine that a young man met at night in the park, and for the first time she knew love with him. She alone considers her as her fiancé and looks forward to the night, as the young people agreed, to meet again in the park.
Don
In the pre-dawn twilight, Don Juan sits on the stairs and eats partridge. Barking can be heard in the distance. Don Roderigo enters. He wandered through the park all night hoping to find a friend while he jumped from bedroom to bedroom. At the pond he saw his bride, she sat motionless for hours, then suddenly broke off and wandered along the shore. She is sure that Don Juan is on a small island, and it can not be dissuaded. Roderigo believes that Don Juan needs to talk to her. Don Juan now can not talk about feelings that he does not feel. The only thing that he now feels is hunger. Hearing the noise of footsteps, the friends hide.
Three cousins enter, they are all in blood, ragged and exhausted. Don Gonzalo learns from them that they had no other way out and they killed the dogs, because the dogs attacked them. Don Gonzalo is furious. He intends to take revenge on Don Juan also for the death of dogs.
Don Juan is going to leave the castle immediately, because he is afraid of the “quagmire of feelings.” He admits that he reveres only before geometry, because before the harmony of lines all the feelings that so often confuse people’s hearts are shattered to dust. In geometry there are no whims, of which human love is composed. What is true today, is fair tomorrow, and everything will remain the same fair, when it will no longer be. He leaves and is sure that his fiancée will be comforted by the other, and says goodbye to a friend that he spent the night with his bride, Donna Ines. Roderigo does not believe. João says he’s joking. Roderigo admits that if this were true, he would have killed himself.
A woman comes down the stairs, dressed in white, her face hidden by a black veil. Don Juan is surprised why she came, because he threw it. He informs her, thinking that before him is Donna Anna, that she spent the night with her mother, then visited the second bedroom, then the third. All the women in the arms of the man are the same, but the third woman had something that everyone else will never have: she was the bride of his only friend. Donna Ines and Don Juan to the most roosters tasted the sweetness of their own baseness. Roderigo fled in confusion. Don Juan sees that Donna Anna still believes in his love, and forgives him. Don Juan is now convinced that they have lost each other in order to meet again, and now they will be together all their lives, husband and wife.
Don Gonzalo enters and reports that Don Roderigo had just killed himself, and before his death cursed Don Juan. Don Gonzalo wants to fight Don Juan, but he, shocked by the news, angrily dismisses the sword of don Gonzalo, as from an annoying fly. Don Gonzalo, struck by a lightning stroke, dies. Father Diego enters, holding the body of the drowned Anna Anna.
Another bride takes off the veil, and Don Juan sees that it’s Miranda. He asks to bury the poor child, but he does not baptize and does not cry. Now he is no longer afraid of anything and intends to compete with the heavens.
In the next act, Don Juan is already thirty-three years old, by this time he killed many of the men who were watching him and were climbing the sword themselves. The widows hunted Don Juan, so that he would console them. His fame rattles throughout Spain. All this Don Juan was disgusted, he decides to change his life, invites the bishop and persuades him to give him a cell in a monastery with a view of the mountains, where he could calmly engage in geometry. In exchange for this, he proposes to dissolve rumors throughout the country that he, Hell of Sin, has devoured Hell. For this he prepared all the scenery: he bribed Celestine, who changed into a statue of the commander in order to take Don Juan by the hand and go down with him to the prefabricated hatchway, where the smoke would go, and invited the witnesses – several seduced ladies. The bishop turns out to be Don Battasar Lopez, one of the deceived husbands, and convinces the ladies who came, that everything that is happening before them is a pure spectacle. They do not believe him and are baptized in fear. The rumor about the death of Don Juan is happily carried throughout the country, and Don Lopez, who tried to prove the lie to no avail, is laying his hands on himself.
Don Juan is forced to accept the proposal of Miranda, now the Duchess of Ronda, the owner of the forty-four-room castle, to marry her and live behind the fence of her castle, so that no one will see him. In the end, Miranda tells Don Juan that she will have a child from him.
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