Don Juan is one of Byron's representative works, which shows Don Juan's kindness and justice. Through his various romantic adventures, he described all kinds of figures, famous mountains and rivers and social customs in European society, with a broad picture and rich content, which can be called a treasure house of art. Byron said in Don Juan that he would write a hundred chapters of the poem. However, after he wrote a small part of Chapters 16 and 17, he went to Greece to participate in the war. The contents of the existing books are as follows.
In Seville, a famous city in southern Spain, there lived a big noble named Don Jose. He is rich and has a good reputation. Don Jose's wife is also of noble birth. She is not only beautiful and virtuous, but also knowledgeable. She can speak many foreign languages and is widely respected among women in high society. They love each other very much, but they gave birth to a son named Don Juan in middle age. Unfortunately, Don Jose died prematurely. His wife is determined to train her son into a great man, teach him military, art, natural science and so on, and especially educate him to pay attention to feudal ethics.
Don Juan was lively and lovely when he was a child and a handsome man when he grew up, which is rare among aristocratic children. He is romantic by nature and likes to importune with girls. Morality has no influence on him at all. At the age of 16, he had sex with the lady Donna Julia, which caused an uproar in the upper class. For Don Juan's safety, his mother had to send her son to Europe.
The ship was hit by a big storm on its way to Italy, damaged and gradually sank. Some sailors were desperate and asked Don Juan to give them a lot of wine to drink, so that they would suffer less when they sank into the sea after getting drunk. Don Juan rejected their demands, lambasted them as animals, and said that men should die like men. He forced and supervised the sailors to repair the cabin and drain the accumulated water, but the ship finally sank. After squeezing into the speedboat carried by the big ship, he struggled to save the flight attendant who fell into the water and the puppy left by his father.
After the rescued ship drifted at sea 12 days, there was nothing to eat on board and the sailors began to eat people. They drew lots to decide who would eat, and Don Juan's teacher was unfortunately drawn. Don Juan couldn't bear to eat his teacher. He eased his hunger by chewing bamboo chips.
He struggled in the sea and swam to the Clardy Islands. He was rescued by a beautiful young girl and hid in a cave by the sea. The girl's name is Haidian (or translated as Hyde), and she is the daughter of the Greek pirate Lambro. The men she usually meets are pirates or fishermen. They are ugly and rude. Now there is a beautiful young man in front of her, which almost fascinates her. Soon, they moved in together.
Soon, there came the news that Lambro was accidentally killed in a robbery at sea. When his father died, he had no worries, so Haidian decided to marry Don Juan openly. Haidian and Don Juan held a grand wedding. Pirates and people warmly congratulated and drank all night.
As they entered the bridal chamber together, Lambro suddenly appeared. He ordered his entourage to knock Don Juan down, put him on a boat and escort him to Constantinople, a big city in Turkey, for sale. Constantinople has the largest slave market in the world, auctioning slaves from Europe, Asia and Africa from morning till night every day. The so-called slaves are pirates, civilians, prisoners of war, tourists, etc. caught by colonialists, tribal leaders and officers of various countries.
Don Juan was young and strong, and was taken away by the black eunuch in the Turkish palace. He paid a high price for him, disguised as a woman, and sent him to the harem for a queen to enjoy. Turkey was polygamous at that time. The sultan (king) had thousands of wives, and the queen and princess all hid some men. However, Don Juan was bent on missing the innocent and pure Haidian. Finally, he managed to escape from the palace and defected to the Russian army.
Don Juan clearly knows that neither side of the war is a good thing. He thinks that Russian despots are much worse than barbarians. But he loved honor, fought very hard, made great contributions, and got the attention of Russian commander-in-chief suvorov. His ideas are contradictory. Although he killed many Turks fiercely, he saved a 10-year-old Turkish girl from the butcher's knife of brutal Russian Cossack soldiers. He paid high tribute to the actions of the Turkish Sultan and his son who were killed in the Six-Man War.
After the Russian war in the Turkish capital, suvorov intends to send Don Juan to Petersburg to tell the czar the good news. Don Juan went to Russia with an orphan girl rescued from Turkey.
Russian Tsar Catherine (that is, Catherine II) lived a dissolute life and thought that Don Juan was more handsome and stronger than all her lovers, so she left him in the palace for her own enjoyment. Don Juan not only waited on the female czar in the harem, but also stayed with the maid. After a long time, Don Juan was extremely weak and fell ill, so the female czar no longer needed him.
According to the doctor's advice, let him leave the cold Petersburg for a period of time and go abroad to travel and recuperate in the warm south (such as Italy). At that time, Russia was planning to form a military and political alliance with Britain in order to prevent Napoleon from using the war to promote national democracy and protect feudal autocracy. At this time, the female czar thought of Don Juan and decided to send him as a diplomatic envoy to Britain for negotiations. So he left Russia with an orphan girl from Turkey.
Don Juan originally hated Britain, saying that Britain "once gave freedom to all mankind, but now it wants them to put on shackles and even imprison people's hearts" and invaded North America, India and other places. In order to compete for maritime hegemony and dominance in Western Europe, Britain and Spain fought many wars in three or four years. Finally, Spain was defeated, lost its colonies in South America and North America, and became a small country. As a Spanish aristocrat, Don Juan naturally hates Britain.
He was determined to tell the British people the truth of the reaction when he arrived in England. However, when he landed on English soil, what he saw changed his view. Everything left a good impression on him, and he thought it was a free paradise.
Just when he really envied British society, suddenly a gang of robbers stopped him and forced him to stay and buy money for the road. He took a pistol out of his pocket and killed 1 gangster. The other four ran away with their tails between their legs. From then on, he changed his mind and felt that there were no honest people on the streets of London, and the most magnificent hotel was just a comfortable nest for swindlers in the diplomatic community.
After being introduced to the king of England, he found that ministers are completely "animals without the slightest smell of human beings", parliament is a specialized tax collection agency, the chaebol are the real masters of Britain and European countries, and the Kingdom of Great Britain is just "a super zoo".
Don Juan was accepted by the British upper class and went in and out of West End of London where the nobles and the rich lived every day. He said that this area is the most sinful place in Britain, and people here "regard love as half glory and half career". His behavior is just the opposite of his understanding. He hooked up with many aristocratic women here and had a good time.