Tarek Hassan
Mozart
20-April-2016
Mozart's Don Giovanni and the fear
of freedom
By Tarek Ali
Hassan
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
An unparalleled insight into the
sexuality of the human male!
Mozart Don Giovanni is one of the greatest works of art. Through the genius of
Mozart equally lavished on all his characters. The music, the vocal line and
the drama unfold the miracle of a daring psychodynamic analysis of human
sexuality and of the deepest recesses of human nature
A treatise on male human sexuality
using Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Music, vocal line structure and drama as an explorative vehicle
(Stipulating the reader to be well acquainted with Mozart’s greatest
Operas).
Perspectives and psycho-dynamic explorations savoring some of the riches of
Mozart’s Operatic cycle (the greatest symphony on earth:
The Marriage of Figaro (a living loving micro-cosm of human society) the first
movement
*Don Giovanni (the existential drama of the life and sexuality of the
discordant male human animal) the second movement
Cosi fan Tutte(the jocular antidote to dogma and isms for all time) the
Scherzo
The Magic flute (salvation and resolution of drama through escapism or through
choosin growing into and passing the trials of fire and water) Finale
An overview of Mozart’s Don Giovanni
The profound psycho-emotional insights in this work are infinitely rewarding
for the seeker not only because of the drama itself and the intricate subject ;
human sexuality of which we know very little but because of the infinitely
layered insight of genius with Mozart’s equal dedication and commitment
lavished on all his characters as they express themselves through the unfolding
of the music, the vocal line and the miracle of living drama in ways that seem
to penetrate the layers of human defenses into the deepest subconscious
motivation and energy.
Well before Freud and Jung and Reich and well beyond the face value of the
liberetto sizzling with Da Ponte’s genius, we have a process of musical
psychoanalysis of the most profound nature unfolding to penetrate the most
impregnable areas of the human psyche, emotions and motivation.
Why do we know so little about human sexuality?
The significance of that musico-dramatic penetration into human sexuality is
focused as we contemplate that from beginning of recorded history a wide gulf
had developed
between the biological evolutionary forces that led to the development of Homo
sapiens and the social evolution that Homo sapiens created at his /her
inception with the birth of the first conscious sexually differentiated
animal.
The difference between female sexuality and male sexuality is enormous yet the
male is disadvantaged in that it had to be the primodorial Mother Creatrix the
giver of all or most subconscious formative knowledge who was to feed the male
with the attitudes and postures that defeat his own sexuality and distort his
self perception while supporting the female (at least the part of female
sexuality that is advantageous to procreation and rearing of children ).
When men effected with a vengeance the artificial and superficial patriarchal
revolution -- late pre-history-- ( see Isis and Raa from the Osiris drama web
site). The apparently triumphant males further complicated matters by adopting
many of the dictates of the matriarchal era as their own. Even when the male
deities were established and the female deities cruelly and ruthlessly
destroyed, the new patriarchal masters maintained in deep unconsciousness many
of the dictates of the primordial matriarchs. They even brainwashed the new
patriarchal world to see these dictates as signs of male superiority and dominance!!
The most notable amongst these anti-male adaptations was to be the institution
of monogamy and the monogamous marriage institution together with the subtle
falsification of human male sexuality into an eternal revolving of male around
the female as supreme idol and ideal.
The other profoundly anti-male old matriarchal rule incorporated unconsciously
into the male dominance patriarchal era, has been the taboo affecting
auto-sexuality and homosexuality. Awful as this taboo is to the female it falls
short of annihilating her being. The results of the taboo on homosexuality and
auto sexuality on the male have been devastating and annihilating. Deprived by
the primordial matriarch of intimacy with self and with other males, males have
historically and at so many levels sought deeply yearned for intimacy with self
and other males in war and torture or spastic hero worship of tyrants and
dictators.
War, tyrant worship, violent sport and torture have been historically the only
sanctioned intimate physical interaction between males. Biologically and
anthropologically there has been no mechanism understand natural human
sexuality. If you are a male you always had the green light to relate
physically to other males if you were killing them in war or torturing them
into submission or confession or forced work as captives. All that was to be acceptable
without a second thought to have a physical relation with another male in love
continued to be one of the ultimate taboos, the horror of horrors, the crime of
crimes. The recent slight liberalization towards a physical love deeply
suppressed knowledge of self and of same, contributes little to the lighting up
the closely barricaded areas of self knowledge and same knowledge as the
gradual liberalization is quickly sucked into the trap of socially ordained a
priori patterns of behavior
We are never allowed a virginal insight into the sexual nature of man -- or of
woman for that matter -- at best we have occasional glimpses into the primal
biological forces heavily twisted, manipulated and modified by social and
political conditioning, distortion and amputation. Scientists are locked into
the insoluble cobwebs of socially engendered stereotyping into heterosexuality
or into homosexuality as a mirror image perversion even into socially
engendered liberal auto sexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality. Most
scientists working on sexuality and human nature have had their research
compromised by a priori assumption that the socially engendered stance towards
sexuality is the basic, primordial and natural reference point.
Don Giovanni poses the enormous challenge embodying the knowledge that the
socially evolved male sexuality is not natural male sexuality. Don Giovanni is
a male challenging the Procrustean bed tailored for male sexuality over
millions of years. We experience with Mozart, Don Giovanni’s challenge to the
norm in the form of heterosexual monogamy and the heterosexual marriage
institution. Don Giovanni's challenge reveals the weak , oppressed and
dependent female betraying to us the dynamics of her advantage in making and
maintaining the socio-political world as it is and in manipulating the
direction of social evolution in lines counter to the expression of natural
male sexuality which by its nature is closely linked to the concept of
freedom(Viva la liberta, end of first act). In this particular drama women are
observed blatantly perpetrating the formula they reserve for the male viz. to
accept monogamous heterosexuality within the marriage institution or face
destruction. Succumb to that pre-ordained possession or death!
As usual in Mozart's drama giocoso even in all Mozart's drama, there are no
badies and goodies. At all times you are at once laughing , crying and marveling
at the human drama and the human predicament, you don't come out with affirmed
enemies admired heroes and al