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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
Much contemporary criticism presents the final speech of Pleberio in Fernando de Rojas’ La Celestina as authorial philosophical pessimism. This view, based upon residual nineteenth-century critical habits, assumes what it claims to demonstrate. Pleberio and his dramatic world appear differently if we begin with the beginning, where other characters create roles for him in their private dramas, in contrast to his ineffective personal role. All the principal characters, Pleberio included, create their world and are created by it. They are united also by their common substitution of metaphors of commerce and exchange for the language of feelings and values. Pleberio the merchant and Celestina the bawd necessarily coexist in the system of La Celestina, as analysis of language and events makes clear. His final protest is an entrepreneur’s confused desperation on facing the world he has made. The last words allude to a context (“Salve Regina”) that reverses this world’s reversals.
1 “Nueva edition de Ui Celestina” (1899). in Ohrus complétas. 3 vols. (Madrid: Aguilar. 1949). Ii. 1033 36.
2 See Emilio Orozco Diaz. La Celestina: Hipótesis parauna inlerpretacion.“ Insula. 12. No. 124 (1957). I. 10: Fernando Garrido Pallardo. Losprohlemascle Calislo ? Melihea. G cl confliclo de su amor (Figueras: Canigo. 1957); Segundo Serrano Poncela, ”El secreto de Melibea.“ Cuatlernos Americanos. 17 (1958). 488 510; Julio Rodriguez Puértolas. ”Nueva approximation a la Celestina.“ Esludios Filolociicos. No. 5 (1969). also in Anuwio tic Esludios Médiévales. 6 (1969). 411 32. (A distinction is made, of course, between a converso theory of internal motivation and interest in the historical role of conversos in Spanish society.) Pleberio's references to his property and mercantile wealth, and the fact that Alisa says she once lived not far from Celestina, might appear to clinch the matter. Unfortunately, the plot of Lu Celestina gives no hint of any social blemish in Melibea that might deter Calisto from marrying her (quite the contrary, in fact); the ghetto was not necessarily coterminous with the red-light district: there were many cases of intermarriage in the 15th century: and great Castilian magnates were indeed shipbuilders and merchant traders (though not shopkeepers or bankers). Finally, since marriage never enters Calisto's mind, he cannot be said to reject it. SecRichard Koneizke. ”Entrepreneurial Activities of Spanish and Portuguese Noblemen in Medieval Times.“ Explorations in Entrepreneurial History. 6 (1953 54). 115–20: Ruth Pike. Enterprise and Adventure : The Genoese in Seville and the Opening oj die New World (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. 1966); Maria del Carmen Cariés. ”Mercaderes en Castilla.“ Cuadernos de Historic/ de Espaùa. 17 (1954). Cicero's inclusion of commerce (”mercaduria en gruesso“) among the noble arts is still quoted approvingly at the end of the 16th century by Alonso Lopez Pmciano, I'hilosophia anligua poetica. ed. Alfredo Carballo Picazo. Biblioteca de Libros Antiguos. Nos. 19–21 (1953: rpt. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Inxcstigacione Cienlilicas. Inslilulo Miguel de Cervantes. 1973). i. 161 62
3 Marcel Proust. Contre Sainte-Beuve : Pastiches et mélanges, ed. Pierre Chirac and Yves Sandre (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). pp. 221 22.
4 Bataillon, La Céléstine selon Francisco de Rajas (Pans: Didier. 1961).
5 Otis H. Green has also read the play from the point of view of authorial declarations of moral intention. Like Bataillon he sees no world view implicit in Pleberio's final words, only the expressions of a foolish and worldly man who fails to take the Christian attitude to disaster (“Did the World Create Pleberio?” Ronumische Forsehunqen. 77. 1965. 108–10).
6 “La oriqinalidad de La Celcstina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires. 1962). pp. 472–73.
7 “The Importance of Pleberio's Soliloquy.” Ronumische Forsehunqen. 78 (1966), 517, 523. 515.
8 Fraker's assumptions also cloud his judgment of intellectual history, notably in his discussion of Alfonso de la Torre and his supposedly non-Christian presentation of the concept of Providence.
9 The Spain of Fernando de Rojas (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. 1973).
10 One may reply to both Fraker and Gilman that it is a commonplace of late medieval philosophy that the natural world operates autonomously through secondary causes. God intervenes only on the spiritual level, hence the sharp opposition between nature and grace that we find in such writers as Thomas à Kempis. I spare the reader an account of the selective readings, manipulations of context, and mistranslation that mar pp. 377 78 of Gilmun's book.
11 A “world of cause and effect” is of course another way of saying the same thing. But Gilman has not discriminated between different semantic (and methodological) fields: cause and effect in the natural world (scarcely vertiginous, since most children internalize it without ill effects), cause and effect in the moral sphere, i.e., of human acts (which is more interesting to writers), and cause and effect in drama as the mechanism by which present action moves toward its necessary future. Motion and direction. Drama is the most teleological of the literary genres, and it is no surprise that Gilman has striven so hard (since The An of La Celestina. 1956) to wrest Rojas' Comedia and Tragicomedia from drama and declare the work “ageneric. with a strong urge toward novel.” For a discussion of the genre of Ui Celeslina. see my Fernando de Rojas (New York: Twayne. 1975). Ch. vi.
12 “Pleberio's Lament for Melibea and the Medieval Elegiac Tradition.” Modern Language Notes, 79 (1964), 140 52.
13 Both Ema Ruth Berndt and Frank Casa see Pleberio as formulating questions from out of his bitter experience, questions which are left unanswered because they are beyond the capacity of Pleberio or Rojas to answer (Berndt. Amor. Muerte y Fortuna en La Celestina. Madrid: Gredos. 1963; Casa. “Pleberio's Lament for Melibea.” Zeitschrift fur Ronumische Philologie. 84. 1968.20 29).
14 Américo Castro: “En 1499 el alma desesperada y evanescente de la Espana judaica se vertia en la inmortal Celeslina. obra del judio converso Fernando de Rojas” (Ui realidad historien de Espana. 3rd éd.. rev.. Mexico: Porriia. 1966. p. 78); “el litgioso y problcmàtico caos de La Celestina” (La Celestina conio contienda litcraria. Madrid: Revista de Occidente. 1965, p. 74). Statements like these are familiar to everyreader of the works of the late Don Américo. Albert A. Sicroff“Fernando de Rojas' impassive God who functions like another Nero, watching Rome burn, unmoved by the anguished cries of young and old” (“Américo Castro and His Critics: Eugenio Asensio,” Hispanic Review. 40, 1972, 13). Manuel Duran: “Pero la conclusion desoladora de I .a Celeslina cs bien nihilisla… . Los personajes se agitaban. en busca de mas vida, y se encuentran de pronto con la muerte” (I.a amhiyuedad en el' Quijate. Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana. 1960. pp. 70 71). A. D. Deyermond: “pessimism and despair are final: they are the point to which Rojas' whole work has been moving. In this speech by Pleberio the Stoic altitude lo death is explicitly rejected, while the Christian attitude is not considered at all” (The Petrarchan Sources of La Celestina. Oxford: Clarendon. 1961. p. 117).
15 This is Kenneth Burke's formula for irony, in A Grammar of Motives, which is extended and glossed in the illuminating book by Bert O. States. Irony and Drama (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. 1971). where it is quoted on p. xii.
16 René Girard. Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (Paris: Grasset. 1961).
17 And confirmed from the standpoints of the physiology, psychology, and philosophy of perception: Richard L. Gregory. Eye and Brain (London: Weidenfeld. 1961). Chs. xi. xii; Rudolph Arnheim. Art ami Visual Perception, rev. ed. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. 1974): Ernst H. Gombrich. Art and Illusion. 2nd ed. Bollingen Series 35, v. (1961 ; rpt. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press 1969); Colin Murray Turbayne. The Myth of Metaphor. 2nd ed. rev. (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1971). Ch. v.
18 Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard. 1945). p. xii.
19 This is not the place to debate the curious reference to “el plebérico coraçon.” in Act i. 1 follow accepted opinion in taking it to refer to Melibea's heart, not to Pleberio's.
20 I Volume and page references are to La Celeslina. ed. Julio Cejador. Clâsicos castellanos (1913; rpt. in 2 vols. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1951, 1954). I have regularized orthography somewhat. Translations are my own. Of the modern versions. I prefer that of John M. Cohen. Celestina or The Spanish Bawd(Baltimore: Peguin. 1964).
21 “Watch what you're doing. Mother, because bad beginnings lead to bad ends. Think of her father, who's brave and noble, and her mother who's fiercely jealous and you—you'd arouse anyone's suspicions.”
22 “I? I'm a Melibean. I worship Melibea, I believe in Melibea. and I love Melibea.”
23 “Let us prepare our souls in time, for it's better soon than sorry. Let us leave our property to our dear heir and provide a husband for our only daughter in keeping with our rank, so that we may depart this world free from anxiety and grief.”
24 “Alisa. my dear, time seems to be slipping through our hands, as they say. The days are running away like the water of a river. Nothing is so swift in flight as life. Death is pursuing and encircling us; we are coming close and shall soon be under his banner, as nature decrees. We can see this clearly if we look about us at our equals, our brothers and our kin. The earth devours them all, they are all in their everlasting home. And since we cannot be sure when we shall be called, seeing such clear signs we ought to take heed and pack our bags for this forced march. Death's cruel summons must not catch us by surprise and unawares. Let us prepare our souls in time, for it's better soon than sorry. Let us leave our property.”
25 “Let the money roll in and the suit can drag on as long as it likes! Money can do anything; it can topple cliffs and cross rivers dry-shod. There's no place so high that an ass loaded with gold can't get up.”
26 “Don't be stingy with what cost you so little. Don't hoard your charms when you can trade them just as easily as money.”
27 “They were reckless and bold, and they'd have to pay sooner or later. The old woman was wicked and deceitful… .It was the will of Heaven that she should end this way in payment for the many adulteries.”
28 “I was wounded by you in my youth, and I passed through your flames. Why did you let me go free and then pay me back for my escape in my old age? I thought I had escaped your snares when I turned forty, when 1 found contentment with my partner in marriage.” Lihrur.se is to be freed from a debt, as well as to escape from captivity.
29 When Malkiel put to herself the question why Pleberio is not a eahullero. a courtier or military man of honor, a figure who would be ‘“more typical” of Castile and its social values. her explanation was that Rojas “se propuso despojar al personaje de todo atuendo circunstancial. ligado a tal ? cual region ? casta, y erigirle. cuando pronuncia la peroracion. En ejemplar de validez humana universal” (p. 474). Once again. the reading of Pleberio the dramatis persona starts from the presumed universal significance of the final speech, instead of the other way about. It also assumes that the role of merchant. man of wealth, is more universal in its validity than others. which I find surprising. In a world opened up to moral scrutiny no profession is neutral or without particular significance, least of all that of merchant in the late Middle Ages. He is still the villain of the parable of Dives and Lazarus, he is still the man whose chances of entering the kingdom of heaven are compared unfavorably to a camel passing through the eye of the needle. In the Spanish Dance of Death. El Mercadero says. when Death confronts him. ‘VA quién dexaré todas mis riquezas ; e mercadurias que traigo en la mar?“ This is the same question that Pleberio puts. Far from being an intelligible spokesman for the universal human condition, the merchant as literary type is a cautionary figure, both in the Christian tradition and in those Roman writers so well known to Rojas’ generation of university students: Horace. Virgil. Seneca. One could easily argue that Pleberio is. following the Gospel type. ? man whose care is too much in the world or that he is a dramatization of those classical images of the trader, insolently defying the forces of nature and o\crwhclmcd by storm and shipwreck. The merchant, of all professions, is the one most deeply compromised in the world by reason of his traffic in its goods, and consequently the readiest hostage to fortune.
30 Bultmann. Tlieology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel. I (New York: Scribners. 1951). 230.
31 Poem no. 24 of Carmina Burana. ed. Allons Hilka and Otto Schumann, i (Heidelberg: Carl Winter's Universitats-buchhandlung. 1930). 44.
32 Charles Muscatine. Chaucer and the French Tradition: A Study in Style and Meaning (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. 1957). p. 132.
33 The first 5 lines are:
Text in the Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse, ed. Frederick J. E. Raby (1959: rpt. Oxford: Clarendon. 1961). p. 196.
