Don Juan · Chapter
Canto I explained
The narrator introduces Don Juan's birth and upbringing under his mother Donna Inez, who strictly controls his education and social environment.
What happens
The narrator introduces Don Juan's birth and upbringing under his mother Donna Inez, who strictly controls his education and social environment. At sixteen, Juan is handsome and well-mannered, and the narrator introduces Donna Julia, a married woman of Moorish descent, who becomes the object of Juan's first romantic entanglement. The canto also includes extensive digressions on fame, mortality, and the poet's own reflections on aging and lost youth.
Themes in this chapter
Hypocrisy and Cant
Donna Inez's strict moral education of Juan is undercut by the narrator's ironic commentary, and the poem satirizes societal pretensions about virtue and education.
Satire of Society
The narrator mocks literary critics, contemporary poets, and the moralizing tone of society, particularly through the 'ten commandments' of poetry and the bribing of a reviewer.
Mortality and Transience
The narrator reflects on aging, lost youth, and the futility of fame, using the example of Cheops' pyramid to illustrate the ephemeral nature of human achievements.
Characters to notice
- Don Juan
Introduced as a child, raised strictly by his mother, and at sixteen described as tall, handsome, and active.
- Donna Inez
Juan's mother, who controls his education and social circle, ensuring he is kept from worldly influences.
- Donna Julia
A married woman of Moorish origin, introduced as a beautiful acquaintance of Donna Inez, who will become involved with Juan.
- Don José
Juan's father, mentioned as having been an ill-sorted match with Donna Inez.
Key passages
“What is the end of Fame? ’tis but to fill / A certain portion of uncertain paper: / Some liken it to climbing up a hill, / Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour;”
Fame is ultimately meaningless, just filling pages with words, like climbing a hill whose top is hidden in mist.
The narrator dismisses the pursuit of fame as futile and ephemeral.
“What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt’s King / Cheops erected the first Pyramid / And largest, thinking it was just the thing / To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid; / But somebody or other rummaging, / Burglariously broke his coffin’s lid: / Let not a monument give you or me hopes, / Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.”
Human hopes are vain; even the great pyramid of Cheops could not preserve his memory, as his tomb was robbed and nothing remains.
The narrator uses the example of Cheops to illustrate the transience of human ambition and legacy.
“My days of love are over; me no more / The charms of maid, wife, and still less of widow, / Can make the fool of which they made before— / In short, I must not lead the life I did do; / The credulous hope of mutual minds is o’er, / The copious use of claret is forbid too, / So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, / I think I must take up with avarice.”
The narrator declares his romantic and hedonistic days are behind him, and he now turns to avarice as a more suitable vice for his age.
The narrator reflects on his lost youth and the shift from passion to more sober, if less noble, pursuits.