"The exploits of a young Don Juan" was written by Apollinaire between 1910 and 1913, that is, at the same time as "The eleven thousand cocks." It is a radically pornographic text, in all probability written on request and for subsistence.

In "El Castillo", setting where the infinite possibilities of satisfaction of the ardor of Roger - the beautiful and precocious protagonist of this work - unfold, Apollinaire develops all his unbridled erotic imagination, at the service of a single purpose: to expose the reader, as if it were a small orgiastic fresco, feelings, desires, perversions, etc. The eroticism of "The exploits of a young Don Juan", with its atmosphere of carnal effervescence, is part of a whole tradition, that of the pornographic genre approached by literary authors.