What is the difference between don juan and casanova

He is manipulative in everything he does in order to get the pleasure he wants -- just like the literary stereotype of the heartless woman. This is very subtle in Spanish and Italian versions of the story, but undeniably there. It comes out in full force in the major English version of the story, though, that of Byron.

Indeed, it becomes so obvious in Byron's version that it's impossible to avoid. Byron's Don Juan the J is an English and not a Spanish J is described in overwhelmingly feminine terms; when he is compared to legendary and mythological figures, it is usually to female ones; and it goes so far that Don Juan ends up wearing women's clothing in order to sneak into a sultan's harem.

And one of the things that is noticeable in Byron's Don Juan, since Byron spends so much time on the mode of seduction, is that Don Juan doesn't actually do much. He is almost completely passive all the way through. Byron's Don Juan seduces by taking such a passive stance that women are forced into the role of the sexual aggressor: they respond to him in the ways associated with male lust because he sexually objectifies himself so completely; they chase him because he does nothing but make himself chase-able.

Women find him irresistible because he makes himself the woman of the relationship, i. It's generally thought that there's more than a little of Byron himself in his Don Juan, and we see exactly the same thing in the author, albeit not so blatantly. Byron was a handsome man admired for his almost feminine features; Camille Paglia notes somewhere that almost every painting we have of Byron depicts him in poses usually reserved for women with beautiful necks.

His friends described his voice as extremely pleasant, but more effeminate than you would expect; he was extraordinarily charming but also hysterically emotional in ways that reminded his friends of an exaggerated stereotype of a woman.

He was very fussy about his appearance. He used curling in his papers to make his naturally curly hair even curlier, was so terrified of becoming fat that he almost certainly was anorexic, and may have been bulimic as well. And he was, of course, a womanizer. This sort of elaborately effeminate but still male heterosexuality, marked just barely off from the stereotype of femininity by biology and a focused athleticism derived solely from necessity, is a perfect fit; if we did not know better we might think Don Juan a loose copy of Byron himself.

There's a longstanding literary trope about the danger of a woman falling in love with herself. Perhaps the purest form of this is Milton's Eve. Newly created and newly awake, Eve looks around and discovers her equal when she accidentally looks into a pool.

Because she is brand new and doesn't understand the concept of a reflection yet, she is delighted at the beauty and vivacity of her new companion. God informs her of her mistake and tells her that her true companion is coming; she looks up, sees Adam -- and finds him a little disappointing. Of course, being completely innocent, she quickly learns to enjoy him for his own sake and love him for all the things she is not, but it is also a foreshadowing of the weakness -- it is not yet a flaw -- that will eventually be her downfall: her attention can be drawn by a sufficiently attractive image of herself, and this is precisely what the Serpent will exploit, by giving her a mental image of herself that is splendid and telling her that she can be that if she will only taste a bit of fruit.

Eve's circumstances are unusual; only in her case can the trope be that blatant, because only she can look at her own image with complete innocence and no self-doubt. But more complicated variations of the trope are easy enough to find. But it is precisely this trope on which the character of Don Juan builds: women are seduced by him because the fall in love with the image of woman -- feminine, but also passionate, unrestrained, devoted to pleasure -- that they see in him.

They want to be with him because they want to be him. And, of course, he is narcissistic: what he delights in when he looks in his lover's eyes is not his lover or her eyes but how impressive he looks reflected in them. Thus she pursues herself as reflected in him as he pursues himself reflected in her. Seduction becomes a sort of interpersonal narcissism, in which Don Juan is irresistible to women because in terms of literary stereotypes he is exactly what a woman would be if a woman just happened to be a man.

It should go without saying that this is all literary convention and trope, not rigorous psychology; poets may make things up, and when what they say corresponds to reality it is sometimes not because they have deep insight but because we are imitating poetry. The difference between Casanova and Don Juan, then, is the difference between seduction by mind games and seduction by passionate rapport, between reason and passion; what they share is that they are both excessively devoted to pleasure.

What they also both share is failure: Casanova fails to find his destiny, thus ending up as a famous nobody; and Don Juan fails to find himself, thus ending up in hell. Posted by Brandon at PM. The budding seducer answered wisely: "Because the servant takes the name of his master.

The Casanova, as a type, is not as cold-hearted as the Don Juan; instead, he loves women, adores their charms, and just cannot get enough of them. He cannot limit himself to any one woman, but needs to express his love to many. He does not drop one lover to go on to the next conquest, as is the case with the Don Juan, but prefers to retain his lovers.

The distinction, so often blurred in everyday usage, could not be more clear. The Don Juan is primarily interested in the chase, the lure of the hunt. He prides himself in being a skilled hunter, and the woman is simply the prey, the hunted. He is not so terribly interested in the women themselves. This is the picture we get from the literature on the Don Juan, and in the real world, there are certainly many men who fit this description.

The Casanova is more concerned with having a love story, albeit often a short one. But he is in search of love, or at least is able to delude himself that this is his main goal. As an example of a modern-day Casanova, let's take Rick, an acquaintance of mine from university. He's a tall, slender, dark gentleman who devotes most of his time to seducing women.

And loving them. For he truly adores women, that's how he spends most of his time. He has dabbled in philosophy, and even a few odd jobs, but his main interest in life is pursuing the eternal feminine. It's not that he has any special power with women, he explained to me one day, but his success is due to his persistence. He simply spends more time on the pursuit of female beauty than other men.

The rule seems to be, if at first you don't succeed, try with another one. So he exerts himself day after day, picking up women, and eventually will find one who falls for his line. Other men give up too easily, or don't have the time to devote to this endeavour, but for Rick it's the major portion of his life.

But seduction was never characteristic of me, for I have never seduced except unconsciously, being seduced myself. In Rousseau he recognized the type of man who could never really laugh about himself; I would not be surprised that if Casanova could have met Don Juan, he would have seen in him also a considerable lack of irony and humour.

To laugh and to make others laugh, it seems to be of the essence for making true love. As two types they do have an Identity , even if later generations of authors may have played with these. Yet, before and after the act he was looking for the individual uniqueness in each of them, conversing and laughing together. On the journey to that town he stops for a visit at the house of an old friend.

There he meets Marcolina, a young woman of a heavenly beauty as well as a mathematician, who is in love with a soldier. This woman simply ignores him completely, reducing him to a virile nonentity.

Casanova decides that he must have her, and it is at this point that Schnitzler, perhaps consciously so, produces his mistaken identity: The hero Casanova is transformed into… a Don Juan. When, after the act, morning light enters the room and Marcolina gets up, she perceives the old man she has unknowingly bedded.

Casanova knew how she saw him, for he saw himself disfigured in imagination, just as he had seen himself yesterday in the bedroom mirror. From Schnitzler, this is all the more an instance of literary cruelty, as we know Casanova to have been a real man, having become also fictional only after writing his Life [1] , yet always remaining a gentle man as well as a gentleman, something not to be said of Don Juan. When, in one of the last scenes, the Chevalier de Seingalt is accosted by a most beautiful widow who invites him into her house and into her bed, Casanova refuses her gently, saying that he is very much honoured by the compliment of her invitation, but would rather spare her a disillusion and himself an even greater one.

The picture of the Don may be, as I argued above, ambiguous in some places, yet on the whole he is presented as a self-righteous bastard. The scene may be a bit cruel as he is informing Donna Elvira, whom Don Giovanni has already discarded and who is hopelessly pursuing her former lover, that she must not think she has been his only woman. It is almost as if we listen to good old Giacomo de Seingalt, who is remembering them all. La lista may be seen as an example of a 17 th -century tableau , reifying the objects that are displayed; that would still be Don Juanesque.

Handwritten manuscripts of the libretto were found in the possession of Casanova, who also knew his music. Sources, obscure or unknown as they may be, told of their cooperation.

I move that Casanova, while helping Da Ponte write his libretto, managed to put something of himself in that opera, as it were softening the Don, yet in this manner producing my second case of mistaken identity.

La Lista is not Don Giovanni; it is Casanova. Time and again, we see reciprocal seduction reduced to sheer power play. As such power may also be involved in MeToo cases, quite often in the disguise of blackmail, this remains a tricky thing to judge.

Could it be that precisely writing his own life story makes him even more fictitious? Yet, fictitious as he may be, he will always remain the ideal-typical contrast with that other type: Cruel Don Juan.

Could it be that precisely the writing of his own life story makes him even more fictitious? Sierksma was born in Friesland, a 'county' in the northern part of the Netherlands with its own language which he does not speak and with an obstinate population to which he both belongs and does not belong. Not easily satisfied with answers nor with questions, he turns his wry wit to a number of philosophical and historical issues.

His aim in writing: to make parts of the objective world light up in his personal perspective - not my will, thine! Not being a thief, he has no cook, one wife, some children, one lover and three cats.

The reader, interested in my writings on aesthetics, literature, and sociology, may want to open Academia.