ABSTRACT
In many discussions of Don Juan’s character, he gradually comes to stand for a human type who can be described and analysed more or less independently of the literary works in which he figures and which, strictly speaking, alone create and define him. Kierkegaard offers a quite different interpretation. He, like Hoffmann, was led to reflect on Don Juan through Mozart’s music; indeed, he repeatedly declares that the Don Juan legend is the musical theme par excellence and finds its best expression in music. Many of the discussions of the ‘Don Juan type’ in the present century have come from psychologists and psychoanalysts. The most discussed interpretation of Don Juan from the point of view of psychological theorizing is that by the Freudian, Otto Rank, who had the dubious distinction of being singled out for attack by Montherlant.
