After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvia Townsend Warner (1938)

I have come to love the writing of Sylvia Townsend Warner – her short fiction is wonderful and her novels all so different to one another they defy categorisation. An intelligent, inventive feminist writer and a weaver of wonderful stories, Sylvia Townsend Warner is someone who continues to fascinate me.

After the Death of Don Juan is an unusual novel – I think I knew that before I read it, and perhaps why it has remained on my tbr for so long. It is very readable nonetheless, a colourful, vibrant novel with a strong sense of place. It was a novel that was born out of Townsend Warner’s concern for what was happening in Spain in the 1930s. The novel was published while the Spanish Civil War was underway and the year before hostilities broke out across the world.

“‘What are you looking at Ramon? What do you see?’

‘So large a country,’ said the dying man. ‘And there in the middle of it, like a heart is Madrid. But our Tenorio Viejo is not marked. I have often looked for it. It is not there, though. It is too small, I suppose. We have lived in a very small place Diego.’

‘We have lived in Spain.’”

After the Death of Don Juan is an allegorical novel set in the seventh decade of the eighteenth century it combines legend and history with rich storytelling to produce something that I recognise would not be to everyone’s taste. (Goodreads reviews are not hugely favourable).

The story opens in Seville, among a group of aristocratic grandees. In this seventh decade of the eighteenth century Don Juan has disappeared. Snatched – so the story goes – by demons, in retribution for his attack on Dona Ana’s father. Don Juan’s own servant was witness to the event. Dona Ana’s father had been fatally wounded by Don Juan in the fight. Grieving for her father, Dona Ana finally marries her betrothed Don Ottavio – though her mind seems more taken up with the fate of Don Juan. Has he really been taken by demons? the story though fantastic is believed true by some – or has he fled to pursue his notorious ways elsewhere?

Dona Ana leads an entourage to the remote Spanish village where Don Juan’s father lives to deliver the terrible news in person. With Dona Ana on the long journey are Ottavio – who reluctantly agreed to the plan – their priest and Dona Ana’s duenna. They also take various attendants including Leporello, Don Juan’s servant, now taken into their employ – the man who apparently witnessed the bizarre and horrifying demise of his former master. The journey to Tenorio Viejo takes seven days, fuelled by Dona Ana’s obsessional pursuit of Don Juan – whether dead or alive, an interest which is rather more earthly than spiritual.

“Morning came, but could not kill him. Not damned, not even dead. The more she thought of it (and she thought of nothing else) the more convinced she became that Don Juan was alive. A man of such strength, of such aristocratic dominance, how should he be killed by a valet? No body, no stain of blood: only a table knocked over, some broken crystal and crockery, and Leporello’s story.”

Travelling across vast estates, over mountains and through villages the group finally reach Tenorio Viejo and become the guests of Don Saturno, Don Juan’s father in his castle. Townsend Warner’s sharp humour is in evidence in the portrayal of events at the castle. The visit which was meant to be short – becomes much longer – with everyone rather uncomfortably trapped together when the wimpishly pathetic Ottavio hurts his foot and is laid up in bed.   

Here Sylvia Townsend Warner turns her attention to the villagers – showing us the difficult lives of the peasants many of whom are dependant in some way on the largesse of Don Saturno. There is already the beginnings of a dispute over irrigation between some of the peasants and the castle. Townsend Warner does manage to breathe some life into these peasant characters, that her aristocratic characters don’t quite have, the olive growers, a miller, and his daughter a schoolmaster – those committed to religious devotion – and a sacristan who guards the door into the church, relishing the small amount of power his duties give him. It is these people the author is clearly more concerned with; I think it’s no accident that her aristocratic characters are more one dimensional. One especially memorable character from the village is Celestina the miller’s daughter, who hoards the money her father gives her for the saying of masses for his silk-worms. She wants the money to pay her dowry to the convent – where she intends to go as soon as she can to escape the marriage that she fears will be forced upon her. This society depicted here is practically a character in itself – one that is vivid and complex and troubled – and feels very authentic.

When the truth of what did or did not happen to Don Juan is revealed it sets in motion a chain of climatic events and an uprising among the peasants. A siege of the castle is attempted – which can only end one way.

A thoroughly unusual but very enjoyable novel – which perhaps could only have been written by Sylvia Townsend Warner.