Don Juan, hero of modernity

Abstract

If Benjamin is right when he assures that to live Modernity it is required an heroic constitution, the figure of Don Juan is perfectly apt to that. From Tirso de Molina to José Saramago, passing by Molière, Mozart, Hoffmann, Balzac, Baudelaire and Camus, this serial lover condemned to hell has crossed the centuries without losing his breath or not being modern. As dandy, libertine, dissolute, conqueror, reflexive seducer, absurd man or simply Giovanni, his attitude is usually based on the law which gives him the reputation of trickster from Sevilla: the refusal in accepting the Ecclesiasts moral teachings as life conduct.