Don Juan - His Own Version: A Novel by Peter Handke: book review

Don Juan – His Own Version (2004, English translation 2010) is set in 17th century France in Port-Royal-des-Champs, southwest of Paris, in a country inn with no guests. The anonymous narrator is the innkeeper, chef, reader, and failed businessman.

Don Juan is a fictional character – a Spanish lover and womanizer – in the 1630 Tirso de Molina novel ‘El bulador de Sevilla’ – The Trickster of Seville.

In this novella, Don Juan arrived in May, hurtling over the wall and into the gardens of the inn – without any luggage. He was escaping the wrath of two lovers on motorbike. The innkeeper knows immediately that it is the famous Don Juan. He stopped for a meal, and stayed a week.

During the week Don Juan recounts his stories about women. He begins in Tbilisi, Georgia, at a wedding, coming face-to-face with the bride, and continues with women in Damascus (Syria), Ceuta (a Spanish region near Morocco), Holland, and Norway. The innkeeper says that ‘Don Juan was no seducer. He had never seduced a woman. He had certainly run into some who had accused him of doing so.’ But neither were the women the seducers – there was no seduction involved – amorousness just happened!

Don Juan, who sighs a lot throughout his storytelling, was aware of his power with women, but insists that it was not in his appearance, but in his eyes – his gaze. One look and women were smitten. And not only women – their brothers, fathers, and uncles took quite a liking to the Don too.

What do readers learn about Don Juan? It did not occur to the famous lover to count the number of women, he had other cultural interests (such as theatre, concerts, and social engagements), and he was continously on the move, travelling from one country to another, staying little more than a week at a time.

What do readers learn about the women involved, briefly, with the great Don Juan? All of the women were ‘natives of their respective countries … all radiated something dark, even menacing … all of unspecific age … each of them was on the lookout for the man who would be worthy of her … [ready] to leap into action ‘in the twinkling of an eye’ … they all had the capacity to become dangerous’ and all were wearing white.

Don Juan’s driver comes to pick him up at the end of the week. The narrator’s inn was suddenly surrounded by six or seven women – all wearing white! The innkeeper concludes that Moliere’s and Mozart’s versions of Don Juan ‘were all false’ because the Don Juan that he knows is certainly a very different character.

This is a 101-page novella, with a succinct, tight writing style, full of descriptive language – from the labiate flowers (having lip-like parts) to the bar in Ceuta – the ‘edge of the steep promontory where the African continent fell off, high above the channel, where the tavern keeper was a former Mr. Universe, still somewhat higher in rank than the local beauty queen, and for the benefit of Don Juan, his only guest, the man rippled his muscles one after the other.’ It’s an interesting account of the great attraction for the great lover.

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).