From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
9.1 (1989): 55-62.
Copyright © 1989, The Cervantes Society of America
Rojas' Celestina and Cervantes' Cañizares
ENTRAL
to the characterization of the protagonist of Rojas' La Celestina
—“libro,” for Cervantes, “divino, si encubriera más
lo humano”—1 is her
portrayal as a witch or sorceress. Many critics believe that the Trotaconventos
of Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor is the prototype for
Celestina,2 but Américo
Castro considers Celestina “sin antecedentes y sólo inteligible
y convivible para quien se adentra en lo único de su
realidad,”3 and according
to Michael Ruggerio a fundamental aspect of that reality is witchcraft,
“[the] element in the portrait that lends originality to Rojas'
characterization of Celestina.” As Ruggerio says, “Trotaconventos
was not a witch, nor did she even use sorcery to attain her
ends.”4 Although never giving
witchcraft and sorcery so central a role, Cervantes, too, repeatedly introduced
episodes that exemplify a wide range of magical practices, from the simple
use of a love potion to the worship of the devil that, according to Charles
Lea, distinguishes a witch from a
sorceress.5
Cervantes' inclusion of “magical”
activities in his works testifies to the continuing popular appeal of the
occult in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.6 In Persiles
Cenotia is a witch with many of Celestina's talents, in “El licienciado
Vidriera” Tomás is given a tainted sweet by a morisca
to try to force him to fall in love, in “La gitanilla,” Preciosa
facetiously employs “magic” in her work as an entertainer, and
in Don Quijote there are frequent burlesque references
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to omens and to the use of charms, as well as to enchantments, bewitchings
and astrological divination.
At times, Cervantes' characters employ a mixture
of magic and religion, similar to that in La Celestina, as in “La
ilustre fregona,” when Tomás, like Melibea, promises to give
Constanza a prayer to get rid of her toothache. Such prayers used for cures
were classified as superstitious heretical pacts by some sixteenth-century
religious writers.7 Pipota, in
“Rinconete y Cortadillo” is a Celestinesque figure, and although
there is no “magic” per se in the story, her superstitious
use of religion does resemble that of Celestina. Most, though not all (e.g.,
in Persiles) of the instances of witches and witchcraft in Cervantes'
works involve deceit or burlesque, and his opinion of the powers of magic
over man's free will is clearly expressed in “El licenciado Vidriera”
when the narrator comments on the supposedly bewitched membrillo given
to Tomás: “. . . como si hubiese en el mundo yerbas,
encantos ni palabras suficientes a forzar el libre albedrío; y así,
las que dan estas bebidas o comidas amatorias se llaman veneficios;
porque no es otra cosa lo que hacen sino dar veneno a quien las toma
. . . .”8
Don Quijote agrees: “Bien sé que no hay hechizos en el mundo
que puedan mover y forzar la voluntad, como algunos simples piensan, que
es libre nuestro albedrío, y no hay yerba ni encanto que le fuerce”
(DQ, I, 22). This principled scepticism would be reason enough, perhaps,
for Cervantes never to have involved sorcery or witchcraft in the workings
of his plots, and De Lollis emphasized quite rightly that Cervantes included
the occult in his works strictly as an artistic technique: “Es vano
pedir a Cervantes que llegue a una sistematización en este punto
. . . . Su curiosidad era de artista. Su genio realista,
con que preludiaba lo mejor del romanticismo, le hacía buscar las
expresiones extremas de lo característico, y le atraía hacia
lo anómalo. . . . Con los locos van las brujas
y los brujos . . . El poder alucinador del artista busca
en la superstición un modo de ampliar los confines de la
realidad. . . .”9
Amezúa makes the same point: “había un mundo misterioso,
tenebroso, secreto, en el que convivían extrañas y atractivas
figuras novelables, brujas y hechiceras, nigrománticos y astrólogos,
con prácticas ocultas y juntas nocturnas, que encerraban un positivo
valor novelístico, una novedad seductora, para un escritor tan ávido
de la vida, como veremos en breve, harían lo demás, fructificando
el germen que todas aquellas lecturas habían dejado en su memoria
y fantasía” (p. 455).
Anthony Close has asserted convincingly that
Cervantes learned important elements of his craft from La Celestina,
so it is perhaps not
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surprising that there is evidence of this influence in one of Cervantes'
most fully developed scenes involving a figure who shares important
characteristics with
Celestina.10 Amezúa noted
the striking similarities between the curious scene in “El coloquio
de los perros” where Cañizares tells Berganza of his mother Montiela
and the corresponding account Celestina gives to Pármeno of his mother's
life as a “bruja de mucha fama,” but he dismissed any consideration
of influence as “coincidencias que se explican, naturalmente, por la
similitud de las figuras y analogía de las situaciones que en una
y otra novela intervienen y se plantean” (p. 454). I would suggest that
beneath the surface similarities lies one of those elements of his craft
that Cervantes learned from Rojas.
Early in Act I of La Celestina, Celestina's
strong character is revealed when she retorts to Pármeno's accusations
and criticism of her questionable oficios: “¡tan puta vieja
era tu madre como yo! ¿Por qué me persigues, Parmenico?”
(p. 49).11 It is here that she
initiates her assault on Pármeno's loyalty to Calisto, humiliating
and shaming him by associating herself closely with his mother and with him.
She begins by reminding him: “que mil açotes y puñadas
te di en este mundo, y otros tantos besos. ¿Acuérdaste quando
dormías a mis pies, loquito?” (p. 49). Pármeno recoils
at this thought. In Act III, in dialogue with Sempronio, Celestina revels
in her awareness of her strategy, saying: “acordéle quien era
su madre porque no menospreciase mi oficio; porque queriendo de mí
dezir mal, tropeçasse primero en ella” (p. 69).
These two scenes are a prelude to the scene
in Act VII of the struggle between Pármeno s sense of values and his
pride. It is through the dialogue in this scene that we see Pármeno
weaken in his loyalty and lose his sense of right and wrong, succumbing to
his passions and surrendering his will to the all-powerful Celestina.
Celestina begins with seemingly sincere praise
of Pármeno's mother Claudina with a “tear in her eye” at
the mention of Claudina's name, since, as she reminds him, she was Celestina's
best and closest friend, confidante and colleague. She informs Pármeno
that Claudina was closer to her than a sister. She tells him of Claudina's
brujerías, practiced, according to Celestina, “sin pena
ni temor” (p. 118), stressing the fact that she had no remorse for these
acts. This is Celestina's first assault on Pármeno's pride, and many
more will follow before she has successfully won him to her side. She goes
on to explain that Claudina “se andava a medianoche de cimenterio en
cimenterio, buscando aparejos,” and carefully associates herself with
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Pármeno's mother in phrases such as: “para nuestro
oficio” (p. 118). Claudina had no prejudices in the graveyards, for
as Celestina explains (to further humiliate Pármeno): “Ni dexaba
cristianos, ni moros, ni judíos, cuyos enterramientos no visitava,”
and with a sardonic note adds, “De día los acechava, de noche
los desenterrava” (p. 118). She completes the black painting (one easily
conjures up one of Goya's Caprichos depicting just such a scene):
“Siete dientes quitó a un ahorcado con unas tenaçicas
de pelaçejas, mientra yo le descalcé los çapatos”
(p. 118). She boasts that Claudina “entrava en un cerco, mejor que yo
y con más esfuerço; . . . los mesmos diablos la havian
miedo” (p.118), explaining that Claudina was so powerful “que aun
tenía los demonios atemorizados y espantados . . . con las
crudas bozes que les dava. Assí era ella dellos conoscida como tú
en tu casa; tumbando venían unos sobre otros a su llamado. No le osavan
dezir mentira, según la fuerça con que los apremiava”
(p. 118). At this point Pármeno expresses his feelings of degradation
and bitterness, and admits in an aside: “o la medre Dios mas esta vieja,
que ella me da plazer con estos loores de sus palabras” (p. 118).
Celestina, however, continues to badger him,
emphasizing that Claudina had no equal in her profession; she was truly “la
prima de nuestro oficio, . . . de todo el mundo conoscida y querida;
assí de cavalleros como clérigos, casados, viejos, moços
y niños . . . moças y donzellas . . .”
(p. 119). The implications here are obvious. Celestina is making Pármeno
pay dearly for having called her a puta and hechicera
falsa in Act I.
But her deeper purpose is to drag Pármeno
down to her level through a kind of guilt by association. Pármeno
tries vainly to preserve some scrap of dignity, and after reminding Celestina
of her punishments by the Inquisition, he responds to Celestina's acclaim
of his mother's activities: “Verdad es, pero del pecado lo peor es la
perseverancia . . .” (p. 119). Pármeno will come to
regret the remark which provokes this vindictive aside from Celestina:
“¿A las verdades nos andamos? Pues espera, que yo te tocaré
donde te duela” (p. 119). She then informs him that she went to prison
with his mother, and she revels in giving the details of Claudina's most
debasing public punishments by the Inquisition. Addressing Pármeno
as “Hijo,” she reports “que la prendieron quatro vezes a tu
madre . . . y aun la una le levantaron que era bruxa, porque la
hallaron de noche con unas candelillas cogiendo tierra de una encruzijada,
y la tovieron medio día en una escalera en la plaça, puesto
como racadero, pintado en cabeça . . .” (pp. 119-20).
Celestina delights in mocking Pármeno's
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mother, and hence Pármeno himself. She remarks with irony Claudina's
punishment: “Algo han de sofrir los hombres en este triste mundo para
sustentar sus vidas y honrras” (p. 120). Then with renewed vigor
she triumphantly concludes by revealing what for Pármeno will be a
bitter irony: “y mira que tan poco lo tuvo con su buen seso, que ni
por esso dexo dende adelante de usar mejor su oficio. Esto ha venido por
lo que dezías de perseverar en lo que una vez se yerra” (p. 120),
thus explicitly denying the difference Pármeno had sought to establish
between his mother and Celestina.
In “El Coloquio de los perros” Cervantes
includes a dialogue between Cañizares and Berganza similar to the
one just described in La Celestina. Cañizares praises Berganza's
mother for being a talented witch, and this both embarrasses and humiliates
Berganza. But an important distinction must be made between these two scenes:
Celestina intentionally degrades Pármeno, whereas neither the reader
nor Berganza is ever certain as to why Cañizares says what she says.
Like Montiela, Cañizares regards Berganza as her “hijo,”
having been the midwife at his birth, and the same reference to “nuestro
oficio” is made. Cañizares' praise of Montiela's talents recalls
Celestina's description of Claudina's arts; she praises her as follows:
“Verdad es que al ánimo que tu madre tenía de hacer y
entrar en un cerco y encerrarse en él con una legión de demonios
no le hacía ventaja la misma Camacha. . . . en esto
de conficionar las unturas con que las brujas nos untamos, a ninguna de las
dos diera ventaja, . . .” (pp. 337-38). Like Celestina,
Cañizares boasts that Montiela exceeded her in her conjurations. She
notes that “con conjurar media legión de demonios me
contentaba” (p. 338). Throughout this passage, as in Rojas' parallel
one, Montiela's fama as one of the most talented witches is stressed.
Montiela and her only rival Camacha are renowned as “las dos famosas.”
Cañizares tells Berganza that Camacha “remediaba . . .
las doncellas . . . ;cubría a las viudas . . .
y descasaba las casadas . . . “ (p. 337). Just as in the case
of Pármeno, this praise brings great shame and humiliation to Berganza.
Berganza, in his shame and anger, emphatically admits: “Cada cosa destas
que la vieja me decía en alabanza de la que decía ser mi madre
era una lanzada que me atravesaba el corazón . . .”
(p. 341). Cañizares also makes the point that Montiela persevered
to the end in her profession of bruja, and, like Claudina, “al
fin se murió bruja” (p. 341), indicating that she would have
gone to hell since witches were servants of the devil. Celestina, as a sorceress
(hechicera) counted on being saved with her call for confession at
her “fall.”
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In these parallel scenes, the personalities
of the Celestinas, the male characters, and their mothers, are revealed through
the vivid dialogue. Cañizares' speech has the same effect on Berganza
as Celestina's does on Pármeno. She humiliates Berganza through the
same guilt-association with his mother used by Celestina, but her praise
of Montiela seems sincere, without a plausible motive for the humiliation.
Pármeno changes in the course of the dialogue from an assertive person
of moral authority, critical of Celestina's ways, to one degraded and controlled.
Rojas presents us with a psychological exchange in which Pármeno is
no match for Celestina, whose occupation has sharpened her ability to manipulate
people. She undermines Pármeno's moral integrity and he finally yields
to her power and turns to sin. In fact, he becomes the “hijo” she
insists on calling him (and which he hates to recognize in himself). Berganza
like Pármeno, is shamed and humiliated, but he does not come under
Cañizares' control and no relationship is established.
The episode in La Celestina is vital
to the progression of the plot. Pármeno now joins (for a while) Celestina,
and together they begin to scheme. The scene in “El Coloquio” affects
the plot only in that it reveals, though mysteriously and unsatisfactorily,
why the protagonists are able to speak. The similarities between “El
Coloquio” and La Celestina suggest the possibility of borrowing.
The scene in Cervantes' story has the air of an intercalation arising from
his intrinsic interest in witchcraft and in homage to La Celestina.
These parallel scenes seem to corroborate Anthony
Close's hypothesis that the “conversational episodes, and more generally,
Cervantes's method of presenting character through dialogue, represent a
bold importation into prose-fiction of the procedure of drama, particularly
La Celestina . . . .” (p. 338). He contends that
“a number of characters in Cervantes's fiction can be considered as
direct or indirect descendants of characters in La Celestina,”
and he shows examples of how Cervantes not only repeats character types or
traits, but also repeats the situations with which they are associated in
La Celestina. He concludes by summarizing Rojas' influence on Cervantes'
art of characterization: “Rojas taught Cervantes the difficult art of
how to develop character in the detail and on the scale requisite for a long
novel. No other Golden-age writer before Cervantes . . . shows
the same grasp of character as conceived on this dimension
. . . . The Quixote/Sancho conversations are the most
notable example of metamorphosed situation of dialogue from La
Celestina, borrowing from there not so much their content as their
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form, scale, and manner of development . . . . In
Aristotle's Poetics, character is one of the six parts of tragedy,
together with plot, diction, thought, spectacle, and melody. In the modern
novel, it is the essential part” (p.356). Although Cervantes'
re-creation of the Celestina/Pármeno episode may seem hollow, lacking
the credible motivation of Rojas' development, his rendition embodies a shift
to a more typically Cervantine irony. In Rojas' episode, Celestina is the
ironist, “praising” Claudina in order to shame Pármeno,
while in “El Coloquio” the irony is in the situation, in the different
perspectives of the characters. What is praise for Cañizares is blame
for Berganza.
Some of these techniques of character interaction
exhibited in the previously discussed scenes are transferable in this way
to other situations, as Close's thesis implies. One example is Sancho's rustic
praise of Aldonza in “La Arcadia fingida” scene (DQ II,
58), which so infuriates Don Quijote. One might note incidentally that Quevedo
may also have seen the potential in Rojas' example: the famous letter from
his uncle detailing Pablos' father's “heroic” trip to the scaffold
employs the same type of irony (I, 7).
The similarity between Rojas' and Cervantes'
episodes suggests more than mere coincidence. Some of the lines in “El
Coloquio” copy La Celestina almost verbatim. Beyond the similarities
and the witchcraft, what seems most significant is that Cervantes develops
a paradigm drawn from La Celestina (blame through ironic praise),
but with a significant variation, replacing the intentional irony of a character
with the more typically Cervantine ironic juxtaposition of disparate points
of view, revealing once again not only the subtlety of Cervantes, but the
indirect effect that La Celestina may have had through him on the
creation of the modern novel.
NOTES
1
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. John Jay Allen
(Madrid: Cátedra, 1980) I, 80. Subsequent references are to this
edition.
2
Menéndez Pelayo, Orígenes de la novela, III, pp. LVIII,
LXXXVI, XCIII; Fernando Toro Garland, “Celestina, hechicera, clásica
y tradicional,” Cuadernos hispánicos; 60 (1964), 439-45;
Florentino Castro Guisasola, Observaciones sobre las fuentes literarias
de ‘La Celestina’; A. Bonilla y San Martín,
“Antecedentes del tipo celestinesco en la literatura latina,”
Revue Hispanique 15 (1906), 378; and Barbara Jean Trisler,“A
Comparative Study of the Character Portrayal of Celestina and Other Golden
Age Celestinesque Protagonists,” Diss. University of Oklahoma, 1977,
pp. 2-4.
3
‘La Celestina ’ como contienda literaria (Madrid:
Castilla, 1965), p. 74.
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4
The Evolution of the Go-Between in Spanish Literature Through the Sixteenth
Century (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966) p. 1.
5
The question of whether Celestina practiced witchcraft or sorcery has been
much debated, as has the question whether there was in fact a significant
difference between the terms bruja and hechicera in Cervantes'
time. Charles Lea makes the following distinction between sorcery and witchcraft:
“The culmination of sorcery was witchcraft and yet it was not the same.
In it there is no longer talk of pact with the demon . . . with
the expectation of washing out the sin in the confessional and thus cheating
the devil. The witch has abandoned Christianity, has renounced her baptism,
has worshipped Satan as her God, has surrendered herself to him, body and
soul, and exists only to be his instrument in working the evil to her
fellow-creatures, which he cannot accomplish without a human agent.”
(A History of the Inquisition of Spain [New York: Macmillan Co., 1907],
IV, 206. By this definition, Cañizares is a witch, while Celestina
is clearly not, as Peter Dunn (Fernando de Rojas [Boston: Twayne,
1975] and others have emphasized, and must be called a sorceress, although
Gustavo Correa (“Naturaleza, religión y honra en La
Celestina”), PMLA 77 [1962], 10), Frederick de Armas (“The
Demoniacal in La Celestina,” South Atlantic Bulletin 36
[1971], 35-36), Ruggerio (p. 1) and others explicitly call her a witch. For
the purposes of the comparison I will make here, the distinction is not
particularly important: the activities in which both Celestina and
Cañizares engage are remarkably similar in any case.
6
See Gonzalo de Amezúa y Mayo, Cervantes, creador de la
novela corta española II (Madrid: Castalia, 1958), p. 454.
7
Simancas as cited by Amezúa, p. 186. See also Maestro Pedro Ciruelo,
Reprobación de las supersticiones y hechicerías VII,
No. 111, p. 117.
8
Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares, ed. Harry Sieber (Madrid:
Cátedra, 1980), II, 52. Subsequent references are to this edition.
9
For a discussion of Cervantes' use of magic and witchcraft see Ricardo del
Arco y Garay, “Supersticiones populares” in La sociedad
española en las obras de Cervantes (Madrid: Patronato del IV
Centenario del Nacimiento de Cervantes, 1951); Stephen Harrison, “Magic
in the Spanish Golden Age: Cervantes's Second Thoughts,” Renaissance
and Reformation, IV, i (1980), 47-64; Edward C. Riley;, “Aspectos
del concepto de admiratio en la teoría literaria del Siglo
de Oro,” Studia Philologica: Homenaje a Dámaso Alonso,
III (Madrid: Gredos, 1963), 173-84; Amezúa, pp. 454-55. Cesare de
Lollis, Cervantes reazionario (Instituto Cristoforo Colombo, 1924),
pp. 194-196; Américo Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes
(Barcelona: Noguer, 1972), pp. 94-96.
10
“Characterization and Dialogue in Cervantes's ‘Comedias en
Prosa,’” Modern Language Review 76 (1981), 338-56, and
“Cervantes' Arte Nuevo [de
hazer fábulas cómicas en este tiempo],”
Cervantes 2 (1982), 20.
11
Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina, ed. Humberto López Morales
(Madrid: Cupsa, 1976). Subsequent references are to this edition.
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