Celestina's Craft: The Devil in the Skein
1984; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 61; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1475382842000361343
ISSN1469-3550
Autores Tópico(s)Medieval and Early Modern Iberia
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: CELESTINA, LA [F. DE ROJAS]EVIL/DEVIL [AS LITERARY/CULTURAL THEME]IMAGERY/METAPHORINQUISITION [IN HISTORY, LITERATURE, CULTURE & SOCIETY]INSTITORIS, HEINRICH (c.1430–1505)MAGIC/DEVIL/WITCHCRAFTMALLEUS MALEFICARUM [H. INSTITORIS & J. SPRENGER]ROJAS, FERNANDO DE (1465?–1541)SEXUALITY [IN HISTORY, SOCIETY, LITERATURE & CULTURE]SPRENGER, JAKOB (1436?–1495) Notes 1. I have used the Malleus Maleficarum, Ed. Rev. Montague Summers (New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1970). 2. The numbers of early editions show that the Malleus had an extraordinary diffusion, especially for a fifteenth-century book. The British Museum has five editions prior to 1500: 1490; 1490; 1494; 1494; 1496. Graesse's Bibliotheca Magica (Leipzig 1843) gives two Nuremberg editions (1494; 1496) and two Cologne (1489; 1494): see Malleus. p. XLI. 3. I quote from Manuel Criado de Val's edition: Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina. La comedia o trajicomedia de Calisto y Melibea; (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1977). The text from pp. 69–70. 4. I follow the conceptual framework established by Peter Russell in ‘La magia como tema integral de la Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea’, Studia Philologica, Homenaje ofrecido a Dámaso Alonso (Madrid: Gredos, 1963), 337–54; rewritten and expanded, this article has appeared again in his book Temas de la Celestina (Madrid: Ariel, 1978), 241–76. 5. Sebastián Cirac Estopañán, Los procesos de hechicerías en la Inquisición de Castilla la Nueva (Madrid: C.S.I.C., 1942), 105. 6. The diabolical power of the hilado to ensnare Celestina's victims was suggested by F. M. Weinberg in ‘Aspects of Symbolism in La Celestina’, MLN, LXXXVI (1971), 144–5 and by F. A. de Armas in ‘La Celestina: An Example of Love Melancholy’, Romanic Review, LXV1 (1975), 282–95. But it has been above all Alan D. Deyermond who, in two brilliant articles, has brought to light the very complex but illuminating implications of this image: in his ‘Hilado-Cordón-Cadena: Symbolic Equivalence in La Celestina’, Celestinesca, I (1977), 6–12, Deyermond shows persuasively how the devil, conjured by Celestina in the thread ‘takes possession of Melibea's will, inflaming her with desire for Calisto’ (7), and possibly passes from the thread to Melibea's girdle and, from it, again, to Calisto's body, inflaming him with lust (8–9). Deyermond has also argued, in a postscript to this article (‘Symbolic Equivalence in La Celestina: A Postscript’, Celestinesca, II (1978), 25–30) that by relating Melibea's avowal ‘comen este corazón serpientes dentro de mi cuerpo’ with the Petrarchan description of the reciprocally devouring vipers of the Prologue, Rojas suggests that the Devil has taken possession of Melibea's body. I could not agree more; in fact, this paper aims to bring to its limits the analysis of the semantic structure of these and other related images and, by placing them in the context of contemporary obsessions (specially of the destructive power of lust, inflicted on humankind by the devil through witchcraft) show, not only the astonishing precision of Rojas’ imaginary world, but also to what extent these metaphors were rooted in a grim soil of fear and anguish that reflected the deepest spiritual and social preoccupation of his society. The connection of this sense of hilado with the narrative thread of the text, as presented by Rosario Ferre in ‘Celestina en el tejido de la cupiditas’, Celestinesca, 7 (1983), 3–16, although suggestive, I find less convincing. 7. Obras Completas. Verso. (Madrid: Aguilar, 1943), 247. These verses contain an obscene verbal game which established a parallel between stitching maidenheads and giving breeches to chicken; chicken is a euphemism for the male sexual organ and the calza to which Quevedo refers here is the bragueta, the sheath which, in contemporary clothing covered the male organ. Quevedo's joke comments on Celestina's double function as a go-between and seamstress: she can provide breeches for chicken (that is to say, convert the female organ into a sheath for the male one) and, then, repair the damage by ‘echar puntos al virgo’ (sewing up the maidenhead). For the meaning of pollo and bragueta see Floresta de poesía erótica del Siglo de Oro, éd. Pierre Alzieu, Yvan Lissorgues, Robert Jammes (Toulouse: France-Ibérie Recherche, 1975), 47, 75. Quoted henceforth as Poesía erótica. 8. For the meaning of calzar as sexual intercourse see Poesía erótica, 71 and 132; see also the excellent analysis of Harry Sieber in Language and Society in ‘La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes’ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. P., 1978) 50–56. 9. The hole referred to is the gueca, a notch cut in the spindle to get hold of the thread. 10. José Luis Alonso Hernández, Léxico del marginalismo en el Siglo de Oro (Salamanca: Secretariado de Publicaciones, 1977), 436. 11. Melibea says here that she fell in love when she first saw Calisto. But, if so, how can Rojas later introduce Celestina's spell? Too much fuss has been made by the critics with regard to this apparent contradiction. I agree with Elisabeth Sánchez that the actual contribution of the spell is to aggravate the passion to the extent that Melibea loses her ability to control it: ‘Magic in La Celestina’, HR, XLVI (1978), 484. 12. Julio Caro Baroja, Las brujas y su mundo (Madrid: Alianza, 1969), 99. 13. My interpretation of this quotation from Melibea differs somewhat from Deyermond's as presented in his ‘Symbolic Equivalence in La Celestina: A Postscript’; as I argue here, and to be absolutely precise, the ‘Loja de castidad que tengo assenta sobre este amoroso deseo’ has to mean that her honour covers (and protects) her sex inflamed by lust as a result of the presence of the serpent in her body. This inflamed sex is the ‘llaga’ that can only be cured with the stitches given by Celestina's needle (Calisto's phallus). In this complex image, Celestina's profession of seamstress is identified, through the thread and needle, with the one of diabolic surgeon. My interpretation has been confirmed by Otis Handy's recent article ‘The Rhetorical and Psychological Defloration of Melibea’ (Celestinesca, 7 [1983], 17–25). 14. For the meaning of ‘root’ (raíz) as male organ see Poesía erótica, 138. Both the ‘needle’ and the ‘root’ appear in the mouth of Celestina (are symbolically present through her speech) ; Melibea will be cured by a ‘root’ as Tolomeo, a servant of Alexander, was cured by the ‘root’ that had appeared to his master, in a dream, in the mouth of a dragon; it is obvious, then, that Celestina, metaphorically bringing with her mouth Calisto's phallus to Melibea, is symbolically identified with the dragon, one of the names of the serpent in the Christian tradition (which goes back to Revelations 12: 7–9).
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