ive in life, to bed as many women as from time to time take his fancy. Only when the physical universe of Don Giovanni changes in the banquet scene does he begin to understand "hopeless anguish [that] No mortal man can bear!" (Don Giovanni II.14). By then he is beyond redemption not only because of the way he has used women and because of the impiety he has shown in inviting the ghost of a man he murdered to dine with him, but also because the anguish of being consumed by fires of hell has plunged him into despair; at the final moments of life, despair is, as any Christian knows, an unforgivable sin.
What happens to Don Giovanni is only justice, as the final scene after his descent into hell shows. He may have the ability to flout the justice of hell until the last moment possible, but even Don Giovanni is unable to disregard the acting out of that justice. His disappearance is cause for celebration and revitalization of those he has wronged, and in this sense, Don Giovanni becomes a moral caution to the expedientially libidinous and impious, an
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