Analysis of Don Juan Aux Enfers (Don Juan In Hell)

Quand Don Juan descendit vers l'onde souterraine
Et lorsqu'il eut donné son obole à Charon,
Un sombre mendiant, l'oeil fier comme Antisthène,
D'un bras vengeur et fort saisit chaque aviron.

Montrant leurs seins pendants et leurs robes ouvertes,
Des femmes se tordaient sous le noir firmament,
Et, comme un grand troupeau de victimes offertes,
Derrière lui traînaient un long mugissement.

Sganarelle en riant lui réclamait ses gages,
Tandis que Don Luis avec un doigt tremblant
Montrait à tous les morts errant sur les rivages
Le fils audacieux qui railla son front blanc.

Frissonnant sous son deuil, la chaste et maigre Elvire,
Près de l'époux perfide et qui fut son amant,
Semblait lui réclamer un suprême sourire
Où brillât la douceur de son premier serment.

Tout droit dans son armure, un grand homme de pierre
Se tenait à la barre et coupait le flot noir;
Mais le calme héros, courbé sur sa rapière,
Regardait le sillage et ne daignait rien voir.

Don Juan in Hades

When Don Juan descended to the underground sea,
And when he had given his obolus to Charon,
That gloomy mendicant, with Antisthenes' proud look,
Seized the two oars with strong, revengeful hands.

Showing their pendent breasts and their unfastened gowns
Women writhed and twisted under the black heavens,
And like a great flock of sacrificial victims,
A continuous groan trailed along in the wake.

Sganarelle with a laugh was demanding his wage,
While Don Luis with a trembling finger
Was showing to the dead, wandering along the shores,
The impudent son who had mocked his white brow.

Shuddering in her grief, Elvira, chaste and thin,
Near her treacherous spouse who was once her lover,
Seemed to implore of him a final, parting smile
That would shine with the sweetness of his first promises.

Erect in his armor, a tall man carved from stone
Was standing at the helm and cutting the black flood;
But the hero unmoved, leaning on his rapier,
Kept gazing at the wake and deigned not look aside.

— Translated by William Aggeler

Don Juan in Hell

When, having reached the subterranean wave,
Don Juan paid his passage from the shore,
Proud as Antisthenes, a surly knave
With vengeful arms laid hold of either oar.

With hanging breasts between their mantles showing
Sad women, writhing under the black sky,
Made, as they went, the sound of cattle lowing
As from a votive herd that's led to die.

Sganarelle for his wages seemed to linger,
And laughed; while to the dead assembled there,
Don Luis pointed out with trembling finger
The son who dared to flout his silver hair.

Chilled in her crepe, the chaste and thin Elvira,
Standing up close to her perfidious spouse,
Seemed to be pleading from her old admirer
For that which thrilled his first, unbroken vows.

A great stone man in armour leaped aboard;
Seizing the helm, the coal-black wave he cleft.
But the calm hero, leaning on his sword,
Had eyes for nothing but the wake they left.

— Translated by Roy Campbell

Don Juan in Hades

He found the wide bark rocking in the Stygian breeze
And came aboard, having first paid Charon what he owed.
A beggar, somber and haughty as Antisthenes,
Seized the long oars with a revengeful gesture and rowed.

Writhing and tearing open their garments while he crossed,
A crowd of disappointed females, herded there
Along the bank like victims for a holocaust,
Filled with a soft and bestial moaning the dark air.

Sganarelle laughed triumphantly, demanding his wage;
Don Luis, still wrathful, pointed with a palsied hand
To the unruly son who mocked him in his old age,
Calling to witness the dead throngs upon that strand.

She whom he wed in church and loved a little while,
Elvira, thin and trembling in her black robes of grief,
Seemed to implore of her betrayer a last smile
In memory of his first ardor, noble and brief.

The knight he murdered and whose ghost he had rebuked
Stood now, a tall and cuirassed helmsman, at the stem;
But the calm hero, leaning upon his rapier, looked
Absently into the water, ignoring all of them.

— Translated by George Dillon

Don Juan in Hades

When the hidalgo reached the subterranean seas,
And, with an obol, paid Charon's accustomed score,
A gloomy beggarman, proud as Antisthenes,
With strong revengeful hands seized either trailing oar.

With sagging breasts and gray unfastened gowns, a crowd
Of women writhed in