Les Trois Don Juan

by Guillaume Apollinaire

Extrait: ...en religion le nom du comte de Marana

140 pages, Paperback

Published April 21, 2008

About the author

Italian-French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, originally Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, led figures in avant-garde literary and artistic circles.

A Polish mother bore Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, this known writer and critic.

People credit him among the foremost of the early 20th century with coining the word surrealism and with writing Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1917), the play of the earliest works, so described and later used as the basis for an opera in 1947.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillau...

Reviews

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short book is divided into three independent stories, each dealing with a different version of the legend. The first part is "Don Juan Tenorio ou le Don Juan d'Espagne", a rather eclectic version which begins by conflating several versions (probably owing the most to Mozart's Don Giovanni), follows Zorilla's play very closely (even to the words, although abridged) for the story of Doña Ines, and then returns to Mozart for the final scene. The second part, "Don Juan de Maraña ou le Don Juan des Flandres", contrary to my expectation, had a completely different plot than the Dumas play, although the ending is similar and there are a few reminiscences. The third and longest part (about half the book) is "Don Juan d'Angleterre ou le songe de Lord Byron", which is a very abridged (it leaves out most of the satire of the English episode) but otherwise close prose translation of his poem. Although the first two parts were interesting (and the third part might have been if I hadn't just read Byron) I doubt this would be reprinted at all if it weren't by Apollinaire.