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    11 views27 pages

    RGEchevarria Celestina'SBrood

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    Juan Camilo Galeano Sánchez
    Celestina, Barroco

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    Celestina’s Brood Continuities of the Baroque in Spanish and Latin American Literatures Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria Duke University Press Durhom and Landon 1993 Preamble {As [reread this book and inevitably become my own critic and historian, I see that a briefhistory of my critical education may help the reader understand how I came to work the way I do and what itis that unites the essays collected here Like nearly everyone of my generation I began studying liter- ary history and philology in the traditional way. As an undergradu- ate in the 1960s my desire was to know as much as possible about literature, which meant learning literary history and reading as many of the major and minor works as time allowed. Knowing literature then was a largely unproblematic process, organized by the discipline of literary history. Shocked into bilingualism by ex- ile, I had become enthralled with language and language learning and had picked up French and Italian in addition to my Spanish and English. These were the four traditions to which I devoted ‘myself with unremitting passion. I thought it proper to cover the entire range of each of those literatures, which appeared to me like parallel buildings, with a foundation in the Middle Ages, ris- ing up through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Modern Bra, There was no question but that the mod- tems did not measure up to the classics, and less attention was devoted to them. Latin American literature barely entered into the picture then, and the most modern Spanish author we read ‘was Federico Garcia Lorca. I absorbed a good deal of Menendez y Pelayo, sometimes diluted in other historians, and much Lan- son, pressured by a French professor who thought his history of French literature should simply be known by rote. In falian my professors harked back to even earlier eras of pedagogy: In their classes one read Dante word by word and was forced to memorize whole eantiche. The fare was heavy on Petrarch, Boccac- io, with some Manzoni. But no modern poetry. There was no question of engaging in much interpretation of te works by these authors, which were incommensurate monuments, to the under standing of which one made discrete contributions at best. It was 2 Preamble unthinkable to question the authority ofsomeone like Menéndez y Pelayo. ‘My first encounter with close reading and interpretation came ima class with Cambridge Hispanist Edward M. Wilson at Indiana University. One of a distinguished group of English caldeonistas, ‘Wilson dared to read plays like La vidoes sueno [Lifes Dream] with ri ute attention to detail, oblivious or clearly set against received wis- dom, Under his tutelage Calderon's plays, those old chestnuts from backillrao, suddenly came alive as poems of magnificent beauty and subtlety. The wifé-murder plays, which had so shocked Menéndez. y Pelayo and others, suddenly appeared as critiques of the honor code, cast in a poetry of very precise symmetrical splendor. Al- though I had experienced much more in terms of eriticism by the: time I wrote them, the two pieces on Calderon contained in this book are a belated homage to the great teacher Wilson was. With him I learned to distrust the authoritative and authoritarian Spanish historians and critics. At Yale’s Spanish Department 1 was immersed again in Ro- ‘maniscesphilologie, particularly in poetry courses with Gustavo Cor rea, who had been a student of Leo Spitzer, and José J. Arrom, a literary historian in the grand manner, who had devised a historical construct for the study of the whole sweep of Latin American literature. It would be disingenuous to claim that reading poetry with Correa was a pleasant experience, but it was a formative one for sure. With him [ first encountered hermeneutics and read not only Spitzer, but Curtius, Auerbach, C.S. Lewis, and a great deal of cstiliticn, Correa had been a pioneer in myth criticism, and his {interest in theory was a good and timely example. But the way out of conventional Hispanism was through Manuel Durin, a student of Américo Castro who did not share the master's dogmatism, and. whose linguistic and literary range are legendary. A Catalan by birth and conviction, Durin has a cosmopolitan view of culture that provided a bridge for what followed For it was at Yale, of course, in the late sixties that 1, along ‘with not a small number of others like me, experienced the arrival of Structuralism, Regardless of what happened later, criticism has never been the same in the American academy, and the change has been for the good (though not all that issued from Structuralism, was good). The French influence injected philosophical specula- Preamble 5 tion into a tradition that, because of its strong ties to England, distrusted philosophy. In addition, the French maitres penseurs were powerful writers all, from LéviStrauss to Derrida, and particularly in the case of Barthes, Suddenly, academic criticism seemed flat- footed, inelegant, unfashionable. This was more poignant on the Spanish side of things, for the so-called Boom of the Latin Ameri- can novel took place in Paris at the same time as Structuralism and its aftermath were enjoying a Boom of their own on the same Left Bank. An abyss suddenly opened between what had been written, say, before 1965, andl what came after, both in fiction and in criticism. Two Latin American writers of note participated in both. ‘movements: the poet Octavio Paz and the novelist Severo Sarduy, who was a fullfledged member of the Tel Quel group. Paz’s view of Structuralism was more critical than Sarduy’s, but he was still strongly influenced by Lévi-Strauss in particular. Sarduy rode the wave of Structuralism, Post Structuralism, and finally the dispersal of the Tel Que! group as a kind of gadfly. My friendship with him, which dates from 1968, gave me access to all this activity on the Parisian side, while at Yale, and later at Cornell and then again at Yale, I lived the vortex of the American movement. In the United States the Structuralist heyday was short-lived, to be replaced by Deconstruction and various branches of Marxism, ‘The latter, particularly in the case of Latin American literature, spent itself looking for an authentic political arena and analyzing and ‘aunting ordinary works and minor new writers. Deconstruction intensified the speculative, philosophical element that Structural- ism had brought to criticism. 1 was drawn to it mostly through Borges, rather than Paul de Man or Jacques Derrida, and in great measure because Ihad become tired of the scientific pretensions of semiotics and repelled by its cacophonous jargon. Deconstruction seemed to be working from within literature itself, and I practiced it before it hada name. Though I learned more than I probably know from de Man, Derrida, and others, | was drawn eventually to the work of Foucault because he seemed to be the only one who in. cluded literature in a larger discursive economy, one that allowed me to see the novel in a context that was not literary in the narrow sense, butthat also allowed me to see nonliterary forms of narrative as literary. This path led to my Myth and Archive: A Theory of Lain Ameci- «can Nantative (Cambridge University Press, 190) and to essays on the 4 Preamble likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Fuentes. The essays contained here follow a different path and are concerned with somewhat different issues. ‘What Structuralism and its aftermath displaced from the Span- Ish scene was esilstca, with which ithad much in common through Saussure, their common source. Butthe difference in approach and style was fiandamental. Esision analyzed a text to celebrate the linguistic performance of a given subject whose dexterity deter mined his or her value asa writer. In the hands of Damaso Alonso, this method had produced some valuable eriticism, but its pathos and even bathos was insufferable, Structuralism and its sequels, all united by the notion of text, at the very least distanced por performance from individual self, displacing creativity to linguistic fact, psychoanalytic language, or the effects of difference. Even if some of tis disguised a phantasmnie subject who would not say his, orher name, at least the critic did not appear as a mere eulogizer of a creative self, but as someone who set into motion literary lan- _guage to allow itto reveal that which made it work. In Deconstruc- tion this meant showing discrepancies and contradictions, rather than praising the continuity of intention and form. Those of us who have worked on living writers know that this is more often than not far from amusing to them. When applied to the classics in a wadi- tion, it can and has irritated many people. The critical controversies of the past twenty years, as is well known, have shaken up the canon of various literatures. In the case of the Latin American countries, where the connection between the national literature and national ideology is very strong, there are huge battles still to be fought. Younger critics like Carlos J. Alonso, Anibal Gonzalez Pérez, and Julio Ramos, from Puerto Rico, and Bfain Kristal, from Peri, are beginning to carry our very daring work inthis direction, Ramos, has been bold enough to deconstruct Mart. ‘The essays in this book are concerned with two general issues: modernity in the Hispanic literary tradition and the Baroque as the expression of the modern. Celestina is not baroque, to be sure, but the fact that some of the most daring Latin American works today have gone back to it signals that Rojas’ work is the point at which ‘what they consider akin to them began. The book ranges from the ‘awn of modernity in Celestina (1499) to the most experimental re- cent fiction in Spanish: Sarduy’s Cobre (1972) and Fuentes’ Tera Nostra Preamble 5 (1975). In the Baroque the essays attempt to come to grips with ‘what several influential Latin American writers have pronounced to be the first Latin American artistic movement. This concer is articulated most explicitly inthe pieces on Silvestre de Balboa, Juan de Espinosa Medrano, Alejo Carpentier, and Nicolis Guillén. Re- course to the Baroque, the so-called Neobarto, is the recovery of that which appeared farthest from the modern, more aligned with the most retrograde elements of Spanish culture. But the Latin Americans were able to focus on the bizarre elements of baroque aesthetics and discover in them a source as well as a tradition. Picking up on their interests, I deal ultimately with the issue of ‘monstrosity as identity, with the recognition of self as a reflexive perception of difference, and with the broader question of Latin American uniqueness and originality as reflected in literature. In Espinosa Medrano the Inner, the birthmark, is the difference; in Guillen itis his blackness. In Sarduy itis the question of sexual role and takes the form of tattoos and castration. In Calderén it is the ambiguity of the young characters. In Celestina the mark is the scar con the bawe’s face. Monstrosity appears in the Baroque as.a form of generalized catachresis, one that affects language as well as the image of selfand that includes the sense of belatedness inherent in Latin American literature. In my own case the monstrosity lies perhaps in the very use of English, a language that I continue to fee] like a familiar medium not quite my own, the way I imagine the Baroques felt about poetic language. One of the topics T engage here is precisely the relationship between language and selfin the Baroque, which turns out to be language as self, meaning that there is no hidden residue of being afer the linguistic display of baroque postics. Another, related topic, is the constitution of characters in baroque theater and poetry. Thope, of course, that the essays I offer here are judged by how they illuminate a given text or movement, not by how faithfully they adhere to this or that school of criticism. The essays cover about twenty years of work, from my doctoral dissertation in 1970 to the fall semester of 1991, when I finally wrote my article on (Celestina after much procrastination. As a collection, this volume is perhaps more like a map or itinerary of interests and obsessions. than an integral book. Istill rejoice in some of the insights and also recoil before the obvious weaknesses. They all seem mine, how: donot goas fas my very dear Giend conte 0 lle nt bef ighivand a one meen eee oneself; however. [believe this to be true because in doing so one inevitably joins anyway a more general flow beyond the L. This collection, therefore, is like a one-man show, united by the thread of life, more than thirty yeats of which have already been devoted to the study of language and literature. {fhe wic with which racy words and concepis are strung, together inthis book is almost a national catastrophe, ‘because it does not allow one to handle without caution ‘one of our greatest classics —Ramito de Maeztu Fernando de Rojas’ Celestina (1499) isthe most suppressed classic in Spanish literary history, and one of the least known out- side Hispanic letters. An account of the readings to which this disturbing work has not been subjected in the past hundred years, could of itself constitute a monograph. A book in which perverse desire drives the characters, Celestina still awaits a Freudian analysis, as well as an interpretation according to Bataille’ theories linking eros, evil, and literature. A story in which lower-class characters bring about the downfall of their masters, Celestina has yet to be subjected to a rigorous Marxist reading.’ A text in which rhetoric figuresso prominently, Celestina has still to undergo a deconstructive dismantling. While it is true that there has been some incisive commentary recently from what could be loosely termed a post- structuralist perspective, what have prevailed in Celestine studies, beyond the ordinary fact-finding and source-hunting scholarship, hhave been existentialist interpretations, inquiries dependent on Américo Castro's propositions about the role converted Jews played in Spanish cultural history, debates about the sincerity of Rojas’ pious intentions as stated in the prologue, and many discus- sions about the work’s genre. ‘None of the major statements of the century about the origins and nature of the novel deals with Celestina, though Marcelino Me- néndlez y Pelayo included a study of Rojas's work in his Origenes de ka novela and Hispanists see it as a precursor to the picaresque-* But Georg Lukacs, Erich Auerbach, Michail Bakhtin, and Northrop Frye ignore it altogether, as do others, like lan Watt and Julia Kristeva, As a literary model, Celestina has suffered a similar neglect, While Cer. ‘antes has an infinite number of imitators in and outof the Hispanic tradition, and Tirso’s Don Juan spawned a ric literary and musical following, there are few obvious heirs to Celestina after the begin- ning ofthe seventeenth century! In fact; one could say that the last truly worthy follower of Rojas was Cervantes himself'in two of his Novels cemplaes [Exemplary Stories. published in 1613 (see chapter 2 of this book). Except for the work of Menendez y Pelayo, and a few other academics, it was not until the Spanish Generation of°98, which did so much to explore and exploit Spanish literary myths, that Celestina was taken up asa forceto contend with, Even then, the extent ofthe reappraisal was limited. There is a beautfl rewriting in Azorin’s Castilla (1912), where Calisto and Melibea appear as a very domestic married couple with a daughter named Alisa, afier her maternal grandmother, and a nice estate. As is characteristic of Azorin, the emphasis is not on drama or tragedy, but on the tranquil banality of life and the quiet passage of'time. After a loving description of the house and garden, Calisto appearsand watches asa hawk enters the latter, pursued by a young man who meets the daughter. The story told by Rojas in dramatic, even tragicterms, will be repeated as part ‘of nature's plan to replenish the species. In Azorin the disquieting elements at the core of Rojas's work are neutralized. Ramiro de Maeztu, on the other hand, writes a powerfil essay that emphasizes the most disturbing aspects of Celestina, particularly what appear to be its radical immorality and lack of a Christian sentiment, a con- ception of the world so fatalisticas to be post Shakespearian. Rojas, according to Maeztu, is aman who has abandoned the faith of his elders, Judaism, but has not accepted that of his nation, Cathol cism. Ata point in history when he must decide between the two because of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, he writes a work that challenges both religions and exudes despair as well as a complete moral relativism.* But that was the extent of the reap- praisal of Celestina by the Generation of 998 and the thinkers and writers that followed. Azorin never wrote a whole book on Celestina like his La rura de don Quijote. Miguel de Unamuno did not feel compelled to write anything resembling his Vida de don Quijote y Sancho about Rojas's masterpiece, and José Ortega y Gasset wrote no book comparable to his Meditaciones del Quijote about Celestina [vis indeed an ironic paradox thata culture that has produced writers like Juan Ruiz, Rojas, Mateo Alernan, Cervantes, Quevedo, Caviedes, Valle Inclan, and Cela, and that in painting boasts of the likes of Velizquez. and Goya, has had precious few eritics willing to take on the most radical features in those artists’s works, Spanish can boast of a Juan Ruiz, a Rojas, and a Quevedo, but there is no. Nietzsche, Freud, or Bataille. Itis not simply a question of prudish: ness. The repression of Celestine is due to its possessing a quality that Cervantes was the first to note, in the mostoften quoted statement about the work: “Libro, en mi opinion, divi{no] Si eneubriera mis lo huma-{ao} "would bea divine book, in my view/ifit concealed more the human’|’ Take human in its broadest and most caustic NNietzschiean sense to mean a congenital immorality, a depravity so «deep-seated that only through careful suppression or sublimation ‘ean social life endure. Hence, at the origin of modem Spanish literature, in the beginning of what is a rich novelistic tradition, there lies such a shocking, unadorned vision of humankind and of literature itself that it cannot be easily imitated. In fact, except for the many minor works cited by Menendez y Pelayo and others, which tend to wind up as pornography, Celestina is more often than not averted. This is the reason for Ceestina’s paltry brood, and perhaps why the figure only reappears in the most recent and ‘experimental Latin American fiction, particularly in four works: ‘Aura (1962) and Terra Nostra (1975) by the Mexican Carlos Fuentes, “La increible y triste historia de la Cindida Bréndira y de su abuela desalmada" [“The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and. Her Heartless Grandmother’] (1972) by the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Cobra (1972) by the Cuban Severo Sarduy. My ttle is @ pun that plays precisely on the dialectics of infer- tility and dissemination present in Celestina. It alludes to the bawd's, array of potions, ointments, cosmetics, and other drugs with which she brews the philters that will incite others to passion, the para phernalia to restore hymens and change the appearance of bodies in general, as well as the trappings of her witches’ craft. These are skill, substances, and objects that do not lead to reproduction, however, but only to love and pleasure. Though Celestina is often referred to as Mother by her charges, she is childless. She is, at best an aunt, as others call her. Celestina’s role is maieutic, rather than. ‘maternal, but what she helps bring about is only pleasure or pain or 10 Celestina’s Brood both and ultimately death, never life. A mistress of ove, Celestina is hardly the agent of social restoration and continuity. She is the enabler in a commerce of bodies, desires, and reputations that is the opposite and sometimes the parody of the rituals through which society renews itself: courtship and marriage, Celestina’s brew works against the brood. In fact, her brew may very well be intended to heighten our awareness and see through the concert of lies that would make up the foundation of those rituals. Celestina's brew és meant to let loose the demons. Her lack of reproduction is also a most powerful critique or representation. There is no faithful mimesis obtained with the brew. In fact, the brew beclouds the mirror and distor all reflections. The bawd creates an impasse in transmission, an interruption in reproduction, because she is con- cerned only with the process, not with the result. This impasse is fone of the main themes of the work; an impasse within the work that may account for the work's own impasse in literary history, for the scarcity ofits brood. What really is Celestina’ brood? It should be obvious, as my epigraph from Maeztu indicates, that a work as salacious as Celestina could not easily become a national literary monument, particularly at the time (Romanticism) when nation-building Jed to the creation of literary canons. If according to Maeztu, Celestina is a work that taught Spaniards “how to live without ideals” (p. 145)—one, according to Menéndez. y Pelayo, redolent with an “Epicurean pessimism” (8:385)—it could hardly be touted as the expression of national identity, as was Don Quijote, One could hardly expect statues of the old bawd to spring up in Madrid's plazas, alongside those of the mad knight and his squire. Yet, itis lear evidence of Celsina’s powerful appeal that the work endures, even as a kind of subterranean classic, condemned tothe nether regions of academic specialization, My hardly original point of departure here is that Celestina inaugurates literary moder- nity in the Spanish-speaking world, or to use Menéndez y Pelayo's revealing metaphor, that itis the “seed” of modem literature, par ticularly ofthe novel, that most modem of genres. But would add. that Celestina inaugurates modernity by taking at once to its very limits the radical critique of all values subtending modem works. Celestina’s brood is, in that sense, all literature written in the West since 1499, The scarcity ofthe obvious brood is due to the totality and finality of Celexino’s inaugural gesture: a work that has not only ‘Celetina’s Brood 14 ‘opened the dark abyss of modernity, but appears to have filled ital, with its gloom, can haveno heritage. Even the most recent imitators. (of Rojas flinch, as shall be seen a It bears repeating unambiguously that Rojas produced an essentially secular, pessimistic, and drastically negative work at the height ofthe reign of the Catholic Kings. Itisa work that deals with sex, comuption, violence, and general human depravation explicit- ly, and in which the conventional gestures of acquiescence to the generally accepted morality and religious doctrine are so perfianc- tory that only the naive or pious could not see their disingenuous: ness. [tis also a work that eschews genres and styles, an amalgam of traditions, a hybrid of comedy, classical dialogue, tragedy, and senti- mental romance, in which characters who represent the nobility, or atleast the ruling commercial bourgeoisie, commingle not merely with lowerclass types (uch as peasants) but with the dregs of society: whores, pimps, thieves, and thugs. These characters speak untrammeled by modesty or decorum, The protagonist, whose perseverance in evil and essential humanity, in the sense men- Uoned, is such as to elicit admiration, is an old whore and go- between, who runs a brothel and arranges for the illicit sexual dealings of people from all ranks of'society, including the church Previously, tragic characters, or characters with Celestina’s elevated sense of self, were male and noble. It is impossible to exaggerate how innovative it was to have Celestina be the protagonist of this work and not be simply a comic figure. This is the enduring and indisputable breakthrough of Celestine: that tragedy, or as close to tragedy as can be expected in a world no longer meaningful or heroic, is embodied in an old whore and go-between, Celestina’s is the only grandeur in the work, even ifsullied by her evil doings and the tawdriness of her world, In that world, as Dunn has observed, the exchanges between people that constitute human society are largely ruled by greed.” All characters ultimately engage in this commerce, in which it is not only goods, buts Mary M. Gaylord has rightly seen, words, that are the most coveted commodity: “Celestina’s genius lies not only in. 12. Celestina’s Brood her acute sensitivity to the desires of her fellow human beings, but in her recognition of the fact that human desite—physical, sexual, ‘metaphysical—is in large part a hunger for words, a hunger which seeks not only to express itself, but also to satis itself verbally." From this comes Gaylord’s most remarkable insight that Celestina, stands for language, the quintessential mediator: "In the Tiagico- media, language isthe means by which a beginning reaches an end— for Celestina, the manto and cadena; for the servants, sex and money: for Calisto, the possession of Melibea—, butitisalso that which fils the space of the play’s entertainment (entretenimiento, iteally a holding between) and of life. In this sense, Celestina—as the means, the ‘medium, the medianeto—is language” (p. 8). But is Celestina truly a vehicle, a relay in that commerce of goods, bodies, and words? Whats hertrue role in the practice ofthat commerce, and what are its consequences? If commerce rules Celestina, and that commerce is ultimately one of words, conveyors of pleasure and value, then the skein, the girdle, and the chain, those often-discussed objects of ‘exchange in the work, are primarily related to language. They are its emblem. Let us see what they reveal about mediation, exchange, and desire in Celestina Much has been written about the three objects, which evi- dently perform fianctions beyond their ostensible use. The skein is Celestina’s pretext to enter into Melibea's house: the girdle is the article of clothing Melibea agrees to send Calisto to relieve his toothache; and the gold chain isthe final gift Calisto gives Celestina in payment for her services. Of the three, the girdle is the one that most obviously acquires significance beyond its primary use, as it becomes the object of Calisto’ enraptured adoration in a memora- ble scene. But the chain, over whose possession Celestina even- tually dies, is equally important. And there can be litle doubt as to the skein’s relevance the moment one sees tin relation to the other ‘two and takes into account the rest of Celestina's activities, namely mending virginities, in which thread, and other instruments assoc ated with sewing are used. Javier Herrero has unveiled the historical and cultural sources and connotations of the skein and the girdle, linking them to the language of camal love and witchcraft. He sees Melibea's girdle as “simply one more case of this magical binding which was a com: monplace of popular witchcraft in the Spanish Renaissance and Calestina’s Brood 13 Golden Age." A. D, Deyermond has taken the case a bit farther by showing that there is a significant sequence or pattern of exchange: “girdle is exchanged for gold chain, just as skein had been ex- changed for girdle." This pattern would explain for the critic the behavior ofthe characters, who upon coming into contact with the bewitched object, begin to act in ways that are apparently atypical Melibea surrenders soon afier she touches the skein, Calisto goes, berserk when he comes into contact with the girdle, and Celestina, relaxes her wariness when she gets the chain. To Deyermond this pattern accounts for the odd actions of the characters, which are caused by the pact Celestina makes with the Devil: “If... we accept that the Devil entered Calisto's body as soon as he touched the girdle, just as he had done with Alisa and Melibea on contact with, the skein of thread, then his frenzy becomes explicable as part of pattern” (p. 8). And “What of the chain and Celestina? As soon as she has received it asa reward for bringing the girdle to Calisto, she too starts to behave uncharacteristcally” (p. 9) Herrero’ illuminating observations provide excellent contex- tual material and philological commentary, while Deyermond’s show the sequence of an undeniable pattern of exchange, perhaps. even a teleology. But the contextual material on witcheraft and the philological clarification concerning the contemporary meanings of words cannot fully explain how these elements function once Inside the text of Celestina A literary work is not the sum of its sources, nor the total of its linguistic debt, but more often the balance of how those sources and debts perform once taken out- side their original context. To my mind, the witcheraft hypothesis is, ‘weak because it withdraws autonomy from the characters and thus, detracts from the meaningfulness of their actions. If Melibea, Ca- listo, and Celestina are under some sort of spell that overcomes their will and judgment, then the story is not one of human action, buta kind of fairy tale, no matter how tawdry. Besides, Calisto did not need the girdle to rage madly; he does that on his own even before Celestina appears on the scene. And there is no evidence to suppose that Melibea, before Celestina knocks at her door (not for the first time by the way), was a demure virgin whose resistance is weakened by a magic spell. Celestina herself does not have to be bedeviled by the gold chain to act imprudently, Her refusal to part with the chain is simply the culmination of a series of selfish acts 14 Celestina’s Brood that ead her accomplices to slay her. They had planned all along to take the goods from her by force ifnecessary: “que de grado o por fuerza nos dari de lo que [Calisto le diere” (p. 143) [*Who by her will or by force will give us our part of her eamings’]:" Tunderstand that by my reluctance to accept the witchcraft theory 1am leaving open the question ofthe meaning of Celestina’s witcherafi, particularly in the scene in which she invokes the Devil powers, as well as the instances in which she speaks to him soto yae. [seems to me that the function of the Devil and of witchcraft in Celestina is similar to that of the encantadores and the romances of chivalry in Don Quijae, Don Quijote fails once and again to force the world around him to conform to his chivalric notions of how people and reality ought to behave. His code would remove the ough edges fom the objective world and make everything con- form to an ideal and abstract conception based on positive values such as valor, selflessness, and restraint. Celestina’s belief in the powers of the Devil is like Calisto’s mad adherence to the rules of courtly love: itis a fale doctrine and system of behavior that pur- ports to channel, organize, and give meaning to action. Now, this system does not pretend to be based on positive values, as in the case of Don Quijote or the courtly sources of Calisto's behavior, love's labor does not lead here to human perfection. On the con. trary, Celestina’s witchcraft is an antisystem of values and practices that would claim to induce the real world, particularly people, to act according to how they really are, not as they pretend to be. Witcherafi would regulate human exchange according to a truer cchart of valences, one in which selfishness, lust, and aggressiveness prevail. Everything else is the false appearance of things as trans- formed by the accumulation of fear and sanctimoniousness,a gene alogy of morals. Witcherafi provides the recipe as well as the ingre- dients for the brew. And it is this brew that ultimately rules the teaflic of symbols and values in Celestine. = It's clear in the scene of Calisto’s ravings with the girdle that he has taken the symbol for what it symbolizes. His madness is such that Sempronio warns him: "Senor, porholgar con el cordén, Celestina’s Brood 15 no quemris gozar de Melibea” (p. 115) [*Sir, you take so much pleasure on the girdle that you won't want to enjoy Melibea") (p.73). And Celestina, more specifically tells him to treat the girdle assuch: “debes, sefior, cesar tu razén, dar fin atusluengas querellas, tatar al cordén como cordon, porque sepas hacer diferencia de habla, cuando con Melibea te veas: no haga tu lengua iguales la jersona y el vestido” (p. 116) ["you should, Si, put an end to your ie ees sailvestae girdle asa girdle, so that you will be able to tell the difference when you meet with ea let your tongue make person and garment into one”| (p. 74) Celestina, as Dunn and others have seen, has a smlar feihise rationahip with the gold chain. In both cases the person (Melibea) or the thing. (Gold, value, power) desired is taken for that for whieh it stands. Symbolic language in Celestina is undone by both the appearance of | an obstinate and excessive referentiality as well as by an appeal to the literal. To Calisto the girdle is Melibea's body; to Celestina the Berens cla Te net tes enber ay oer through language to the object coveted or to read literally, putting aside’ fe Aeenatrenices that ana havens We we follow Celestina’ advise and take the girdle fora girdle? In Celestina the symbolic or allegorical is still a shield, a re sistance to face the human, which is lodged in the literal. Sempro- no warns Calisto in act 8 to abandon circumlocutions and poetry because very few understand them: “Deja, seftor, esos rodeos, deja sas poesias, que no es habla conveniente la que a todos no es comin” (p. 141) ['Leave off these high-flown phrases, sir, this poet- izing. Speech that’s not common to all, or shared by all, or under- stood by all, s not good speech’ (p. 101). Language in Celestina has a perverse, almost dumb literality that wipes away the accretions of ‘meaning left by delusions, such as courtly love or even religion. But the literal, needless to say is also a trope, a system of figures that invokes the accuracy of the letter, a lack of embellishment, and a freedom of expression, as Sempronio would claim. The literal pre tends to be the opposite of figurative language. A literal reading takes words in their supposed natural or customary meaning and adheres to the ordinary rules of grammar. To interpret literally is, presumably, to follow the words in the strict sense or in an unim- aginative way. To be literal is to be matter-oFfat, prosaic, and focus on the primary meaning of the word or words. Literal may also 16 Celestina’s Brood mean giving the original or earlier meaning ofa word. The literal can be the etymological. Figuratively, then, the literal appeals to the real; itis a call for not going beyond the actual or material facts. It purports to represent reality accurately and in an tnvarnished way. Hence the literal is taken to be truer. But, of course, only figuratively forthe literal is aso a figure. In Celestina words mean too much what they say because the metaphors in the foundation of each are exploded to reach a deeper core of the object itself. The most egregious examples of this process involve, as it often does in Rojas, a rather repulsive literalization of the body. A literalization that reacquires an allegori- cal dimension when the body is shattered and fragmented, like the ‘metaphors that hold it together and cover it. In Celestina the body, stripped of any meaning, is reduced to its most elemental feature: its gravity. Gravity s the most basic andl common quakty of things Objects have weight, whatever their shape, be they beautiful or ugly, useless or functional, beneficial or harmful. There are through (out Celestina repeated allusions to falling used in a metaphoric sense: for instance, to loose one’s status or to be duped by some ruse. Pirmeno says that “quien mis torpemente sube a lo alto, mis aina cae que subio” (p. 69) [*he who most awkwardly climbs on high, fall faster than he climbed". Later Sepronio echoes this by saying that “quien con modo torpe sube en alto, més presto cae que sube”” (p. 104) [*he who in an awkward way climbs on high, falls quicker than he climbed"]. Remembering her formerly “high” position, Celestina laments “No sé como puedo vivir, cayendo de tal estado” (. 152) [*I don't know how I can endure life, having fallen from such a state") Sosia reminds Calisto that ifhe does not look after his own, that is Sempronio and Pirmeno, “de caida vamos” (p. 186) ["weare on our way down’. And Calisto, upon hearing of the death of his servants, exclaims: "Proverbio es antiguo, que de muy alto grandes caidas se dan” (p. 188) ["Its an old saying, that the higher ‘one climbs the greater will be his fll|(p. 147), As we know. at the end of Celestina nearly all the major characters fall to their deaths. Calisto slips and falls off wall, Melibea hurls herself from a tower, and before they are executed, Sempronio and Parmeno jump offa window and nearly kill themselves. There is, of course, an element of tragic irony in the fact that the words the characters use foretell their end, meaning literally more than they understood when they Celestina’s Brood 47 Calisto climbs the wall of Melibea's garden with Tristin and Sosia watch ing: the servants pick up Calisto's body after his fll. (From Celestina, 1514 Valencia edition) used them, But itis also significant that they mean more by drop- ping (as it were) their metaphorical clothing anc coming too close to referentiality in the sense that they seem to literally conjure the action itself: the effect of gravity on bodies. Here the unexpected referentiality of language is closer to comedy than to tragedy. Calisto’ ease is the most grotesque and revealing in this regard. In the scene where he raves while caressing Melibea's girdle, Sem: pronio wars him that “perderds la vida o el seso” (p. 115) ["you will lose your life or your mind” (p. 73). In the Spanish original, how- ——— ever, “mind” is rendered by the literal sso, which means “brain.” This is, of course, an idiomatic expression, where the speaker ‘would not be aware of the literalty of his expression. “Perder el seso” means to lose one’s mind, though literally it means to lose one’s brains. When he falls at the end, however, Calisto literally scatters his brains on the street. His servants have to scoop them up offthe ground. Tristan asks his cohort: “Coge, Sosia, esos sesos de £505 cantos, jintalos con la cabeza del desdichado amo nuestro” (p. 224) ['Sosia, gather up our luckless master’s brains from the stones and put them back into his skull" (p.152).* Melibea, in her final lament, mournfully recalls the scene, adding a further touch: “Puso el pie en el vacio y cayd De la triste caida sus més econdidos ‘sesos quedaron repartidos por las piedras y paredes” (p. 280) ["he put his foot on the void and fell. That sad fall scattered his inner- ‘most brains all over the pavestones and walls" (p. 157). Its repul- sive, yet revealing, that Melibea should refer to the hidden part of Calisto’s mind as being scattered on the street: itis as ifshe were referring to his very soul, rendered visible, and divisible, by this accident. Calisto’s darkest and deepest being—perhaps the seat of his soul—is a mess of flesh splashed on the street and walls. Rojas's shocking materialism seems to know no bounds. Calisto is first reduced to his body, rendered as matter falling through the void, later to the pieces of that body as it crashes against stones, and finally his most recondite being, to something that can be broken and its contents emptied. The core where language dwells, where desire is turned into sounds and figures, is cracked open like a dried fruit or a shell. tis a thing turned into a nothing. Sempronio and Pirmeno also “lose their minds’ in like fash: fon, afier having uttered the same kind of premonitory words. ‘When they demand from Celestina their part of the gold chain Galisto gave her, they feign just having engaged in a fierce fracas to defend their master from some thugs while he lay with Melibea in the garden. The ploy is to play up how much they have done to appear deserving of compensation, To dramatize how excited they still are from the recent fight, Sempronio exclaims: “Por Dios, sin seso vengo, desespperadio” (p. 179) ["By God, 'm half out of my wits with rage!" (p. 139). And a bit later, in the discussion that ensues, Celestina asks Sempronio: “Fstis en tu seso, Sempronio?” (p. 180) [Are you out of your mind, Sempronio?’| (p. 140). Sempronio and. reno, ike their master, are severely injured in their all from a “window in Celestina’s house, According to Sosta: “EI uno Hlevaba todos los sesos de la cabeza de fuera, sin ningiin sentido: el otto. ‘quiebrados entrambos brazos y la cara magullada, Todos llenos de sangre. Que saltaron de una ventanas muy altas por hui del al- {guacil. ¥ asi casi muertos les cortaron las cabezas, que creo que ya no sintieron nada’ (p. 187) ‘one had all his brains hanging out of his head, feeling nothing, The other had both arms broken, his face mashed. Both all covered with blood. They jumped off very high ‘windows to escape from the constable. In that state, almost already dead, they cut their heads off: I don’t think that they felt anything’ (p. 147), Before they are executed according to human law, the servants are punished by physical lw. Their bodies, lke that oftheir master, are subject to gravity’s pull. Here not only are brains again literally revealed, but heads are cut off In losing their minds, Sem- pronio and Pirmeno also lose their heads. This excessive referentility and peeling away of the meta phoric layers of everyday speech constitutes not only a corrosive critique of language and of human exchange in general, but also a ‘way of questioning the very notion of representation. If meu- hor, the foundation of naming things and exchanging informa- tion, value, power, and desire falls so short from its goal, what can be said ofthe other codes based on it? The sameis true ofthe skein, the girdle, and the chain, if seen in the context of the previous discussion about language. Here too the literal reveals a substratum, of violence and bodily injury. The girdle may very well be just a girdle, but what is afterall a girdle, and what does it do? English translation confuses the issue somewhat because one thinks of girdles as rather bulky garments that (mostly) women wear (or wore) to make themselves slimmer orto givea certain desired and desirable shape to their bodies. This is fine for our purposes here, as we shall see, butin fact what we are dealing with in Celestina isa cordén, a cordlike belt that wraps around: the body, such asthe one worn by certain religious orders on their habits. In act 6 Calisto, and Lucrecia in act 9, also refer to the girdle as a ceidero (pp. 115 and 152), a term that brings out an essential characteristic of the garment: to gird, to make tighter, to surround or encircle the body. tis, of course, the function ofa girdle to shape by tightening, by compressing the flesh. Cen, in its broad semantic 20 Celesin’s Brood range, includes a sense of limiting, of reducing. To gird the body is to reduce it by compressing the flesh, only that in the case of the cordlike belt, being narrow, itis more like cutting the flesh. This is so not only metaphorically, but also literally, fone thinks of it in visual terms. A belt cuts the body into halves, or parts; it not only Compacts it, but divides it, Calisto is enthralled by this characteristic of the cordén: “cordon, que tales miembros fie digno de cefir™ (. 114) ['oh girdle, worthy of binding such limbs" (p. 72); “jh bienayenturado cordén, que tanto poder y merecimiento tuviste de ceftiraquel cuerpo, que yo no soy digno de servit” (p. 114) [‘oh, happy girdle, so powerful and worthy to have bound such a body, of which Lam not even worthy of being a servant’] (p. 72); “jh mezquino de mi Que asaz bien me ftera del cielo otorgado, que de mis brazos fueras hecho y tejido, y no de seda como eres, porque ellos gozaran cada dia de rodear y ceiir con debida reverencia aquellos miembros que ti, sin sentir ni gozar de k gloria, siempre tienes abrazados" (p. 115) ["Alas, poor wretch that Iam. Oh my girdle, would that heaven had made you, not of silk, but woven of my very arms, so I might hold each day, with all reverence, those limbs which you unwittingly embrace!" (p. 73) The belt binds, cuts the body, detaches its limbs. Melibea’s body is never seen whole by Calisto, but dismembered by the girdle. This is the circumvented, yet most literal meaning ofthe garment Calisto desires, the symbol he obtains from Melibea through Celestina’: ministrations. The ‘matchmaker's activities do not transmit or translate desire in a neutral fashion as a simple mediator. The language of desire, as rendered by Celestina, is one of aggression, leading not to pleasure but to torn bodies and to death. Itis hardly a mediation, ‘Once one reflects on these connotations of corn, the connec- on between that garment and the body of Melibea afer she jumps off the tower, described by Pleberio as “hecha pedazos” (p. 232) [crushed and broken’} (p. 158), is inescapable. In the same way that to fall turns out to have a perversely literal implication that renders several metaphors comical as well as tragic, the girdle masks the dark side of desire, which isnot only possession of the beloved, but violent consumption of her body through dismemberment and quartering. Suipped ofits symbolic meanings (relic, cure), its meta Phoric origins unveiled (to bind, to cut), the corn shows that what is exchanged in Celesing is not a set of neutral signs that convey Celestina’s Brood 21 Information or desire, but objects by means of which the characters ‘wound, disfigure, and ultimately kill each other. This disfigure- ‘ment, whose emblem is perhaps the ugly scar on Celestina’s face, is part of a general move toward the material by which values are razed in Celestina and signs brought down to marks on the body. Celestina’s scar is a “cuchillada’” (p. 187) in one instance (a wound made by a knife), and in another its “senaleja” (p. 92), an ugly sign. Inscription is bodily, painful, and the product of violence. The perverse referentiality of discourse in Celestina is a reduction of Janguage, and all that it carries with it, (0a level where its lies are exposed, and its capacity to wound revealed. In the case of the chain this process is much easier to document, but itinvolves some complications relating to Celestina's conception of exchange, as ‘well a to the dismemberment of bodies. While convincing Areusa to take on Pirmeno as a lover (she already has another), Celestina launches into a praise of multiples and a diatribe against the number one: ‘Que uno en la cama y oro en la puerta y otto, que sospira por ella «ensu casa, se precia [Elisa] de tener. ¥ con todos cumple y a todos, _muestra buena cara y todos piensan que son muy queridos y eada ‘uno piensa que no hay otro que él solo es el privado y él solo es el que le da lo que ha menester,2¥ ti temes que con dos que tengas, cen as tabs de la cama lo han de descubre? De una sola gorea te ‘mantienes? No te sobrarin muchos manjares! No quiero arrendar tus escamochos; nunca uno me agrad6, nunca en umo puse toda mi sc. Mi pd dot y mk cry my meen ede hay en que escoger. No hay cosa mis perdida, hij, que el mur, que no tab io un bord. Seq ean, aba onde eo ‘onda del gato. Quien no tiene sino un ojo, mira a cuinto peligro anda Un alma sols ni eantanillora un solo aeto no hace hibito; un file solo pocas veces lo encontraris en la calle; una perdiz sola por ‘maravilla uel, mayormente en verano: un manjar solo continuo presto pone hastio; una golondrina no hace verano; un testigo solo noes entera fe: quien sola una ropa tiene, presto la envejece.;Que ‘quieres hija de este nimero de uno? Mis imconvenientes te dite de 1, que aios tengo a cuestas. Ten siquiera dos, que es compania Joable y tal cual este (pp. 129-30) ‘She [Elisa] keeps one in her bed, one at the door, andl third sighing for her, all athe same time. And she dos right by all of them and a2 Celestina Brood = siniles upon them, and they all think she loves them, and each be- Jieves he's the only one and hee favorite and gives her whatever she wants. Ifyou had wo lovers do you imagine thatthe slats of your bed would give you away? How can you support yourself bya single sinall dribble? You'll never have anything to spare. il not want your lefiovers! I never cared for one man alone. Two can do more for you, and four stil more. They've got more to give and you've got more to choose among. The most miserable creature in the world is the mouse who knows only one hole, for it’s sealed up he's got no place to hide in from the ct. The one-eyed man, how dangerously does he travel! A soul alone neither sings nor weeps. A single action doesn't make a habit. You'l rarely see a partridge flying by ise, es pecially summer. You'l hardly seea friar alone inthe treet. What’ so fine about this number one? I could tll you more things ‘wrong with it chan I've got years to my back. Its much beter to have at east wo forthe sake of good company. (pp. 88-89) This trade about the benefits of the plural isin consonance with Celestina's proposition that there is no value ifits not shared: “que los bienes, sino son comunicacos, no son bienes. Ganemos todos, partamos todos, holguemos todos” (p. 64) ["goods that are not shared ate not goods. We'll all make money; we'll ll share it; we'll all be happy together’] (p. 21) She repeats this to Pirmeno: “que de ninguna cosa es alegre posesion sin compania” (p. 71) [°No good thing can be enjoyed without company" (p. 28), and it is the general principle of exchange, of sharing, with which she tries to convince Melibea to give herself to Calisto. In fact, one could say that Celestina is the very embodiment of proliferation. Everything relating to her is multiple. According to Sempronio she has helped tundo and redo five thousand virgins in the city and she has been known to sell the same woman three times asa virgin: “que cuando. vino por aqui el embajador francés, tres veces vendio por virgen tuna criada que tenia” (p. 62) ["When the French ambassador was. here, why, she sold him one of her girls for a virgin three times. running’ (p. 19). Being a go-between, Celestins’s point of depar- ture, her reason for being, isthe existence of two, with which she makes an unholy trinity. Her assault on virginity, particularly her ability to fabricate false ones, is precisely the act of passing seconds {or fists, of denying the importance or even existence of firsts, for they can be faked. Butis Celestina really a purveyor of multiples? As Celestina’s Brood 28 seen in the discussion about language, this is really a more prob- lematie proposition than previously suspected. We can now go back to the chain, where we will find another perverse turn to the literal leading back to the body Here the key ‘word is pantir, that is to say, to share, but also to breakapart, to rend, Co split, to cut. Celestina goes against her own precepts when she refiises to share (to partir) with her accomplices, Sempronio and Parmeno, the gold chain that Calisto gave her in payment: “no quiso partir con ellos una cadena de oro que tit le dste” (p. 188) [Because she wouldn't share with them the gold chain you gave her"| (p. 147). It is, in a sense, as if Celestina were guarding her virginity. In fact she wants to part with nothing of what Calisto has paid her and has connived to make the gifs, after the hundred gold coins, indivisible units, such as a skirt She is slain for transgressing her own economy of exchange by turning the value of the gold chain into something univocal, indivisible, and hence not aptto be shared. Her body is then tom apart, stabbed over thirty times, as if she had to pay with the shreds of her own physical being for not having divided and shared the chain: “De mis de trinta estocadas ha villagada, tendida en su casa” (p. 186) [*Isaw her body lying in her house, stabbed more than thirty times"|(p. 146). Celestina refuses to share and is sheared, not to partir (share) leads to a partir (break up) ofher body. Her fetishistic possession of the chain is parallel to that of the girdle by Calisto; both objects are tured into indivisible and tangible repositories of the value they are supposed to repre- sent. Yet both carry within them the very germ of divisibility, of dismemberment. In the case of the girdle because it “cuts” Meli- bea’s body into parts (lo ie), while the chain, made of links, could have been split into parts (in fact links from gold chains could be used as coins). Celestina’s mediation from one to many is carried ‘out against her will and at the cost of her life. And multiplicity implies a muliplication of the pars of her body. ‘We are seeing the chain, of course, only as an abstract unity that can or cannot be divided up and shared, But, as with the girdle, a chain isa chain, Ina more literal and material sense the chain hasan even more sinister connotation than the girdle. Chains are used for binding and for torture, hence the semantic field of cadena involves, pain and the restraint of freedom, a restraint in the most physical and material sense. When Calisto speaks of his being bound by his love to Melibea he refers to a “dura cadena” (p. 118) ["a strong chain"] (p. 78) to which Celestina replies: “Calla y no te fatigues. Que misaguda es lalima que yo tengo que fuerte es esa cadena que te atormenta, Yo la cortaré con ella, porque ti quedes suelto” (p. 118) (‘Don't worry yourself about it. My file is sharp enough to cut your chain and then you'll be free"| (p. 76). Sharp instruments, binding, cutting, restraining, the chain, like language, like the girdle, are hardly a neutral transmitter of value. Gold turns to blood ‘The skein is the most significant of the three objects because it is related to the thread with which Celestina remakes virginites Celestina’s legitimate occupation is as seller of cosmetics, threads, skeins, and other paraphernalia used in knitting or sewing. But what this activity covers is her clandestine surgical ventures. These procedures, like those involving the girdle and the chain, provoke pain and constitute an assault on the integrity of the body. Celestina sutures the hymens of her victims, mending them sometimes with pieces of other tissues. In his long tirade of the first act about Celestina’s activities, which includes a very detailed itemization of her laboratory, Pirmeno offers the following details about how the ‘old bawd repaired maidenheads: “Esto de los virgos, unos hacia de vejiga y otros curaba de punto. Tenia en un tabladillo, en una cajuela pintads, unas agujas delgadas de pellejeros ¢ hilos de seda en- cerados, y colgidas alli raices de hojaplasma y fuste sanguino, cebolla albarrana y cepacaballo; hacia con esto maravillas”(p. 62) [For the repair of maidenheads she used bladders, or she stitched them up. In a small painted box on a platform she kept a supply of farrier’s needles and waxed silk, and hanging under it she had roots ‘of hojaplasma and fase sanguino, squill and horsetal. She did wonders with all this apparatus"| (p. 18). Simpson’ translation softens the shocking quality of Celestinas surgical kt, Plljeres is not really “furriers," but “anners.” Celestina’s needles, therefore, are like the ones used for sewing leather. But pellecros has a ghastlier connota- tion because pelos the vulgar, disparaging word for human skin in Spanish, as when one says “hide” in English, Much of what is frightening here—as is always the case with leather—is that we are dealing with dead skin, Celestina repairs maidenheads transplant- ing dead skin into the woman’s vagina. Where did Celestina get hher materials? This dead skin comes from pigs bladders, to judge from what Sebastiin de Covarrubias writes under *bexiga” a hun- ‘dred years later in his Tesoro de lo lengua casellana o espaola (1611). He relates how children inflate pig’ bladders and then jump on them to make them explode with a loud bang.'*So Celestina gratis, bits of pig skin onto the former virgins to restore their maiden- heads. One need not dwell on the painfil nature of this oper tion, which is underscored in the text itself: Among the medicinal plants Celestina keeps, the “cepacaballo,” translated by Simpson as * squill." is said by Cejador y Frauca to be used, according to con- temporary sources, to stop the bleeding of open wounds, when the crushed leaves are applied locally, and then drunk as an inf- sion cures internal wounds in the abdomen and bladder.” It isa well-known fact that Covarrubias boasts in his Tesoco of an emblem, ofhis for vigo whose legend reads: “Nulla reparabilis arte” (p. 1010), ‘One wonders, without wanting really to know further details, if Celestina’ eraft was not part of popular lore, instead of medical fact. Be that as it may, the literal operation of restoring maiden- heads is indeed a painfal cure, even in the very thread used to suture, for in Spanish “hilo” derives from the Latin “filam,” the sharp edge ofa cutting instrument." The wax on the thread used by Celestina was intended, one assumes, to make penetration easier and cleaner. As with the girdle and the chain, there is not only bodily harm involved in Celestina’s activities—a rendling ofthe body—but disfigurement. The metaphorical use, to repair, conceals a literal wounding. Celestina subjects her charges to bodily disfigurement in the process of refiguring them so that they can reacquire value in society. Virginity not only values purity, but its a pure value, con- cocted out of nothing by male fantasies, probably tied to images of the mother. Celestina restitutions unveil the arbitrariness and fan tasy ofthis value by reducing it to its tawdry physical fact: virginity is piece of skin that can be replaced, even by a dead one. Celestina’s literal addition underscores the arbitrariness or socially contrived value of what the added piece of dead skin stands for, which is obviously the phallus. Celestina’s added pig skin is a phallus, which by ts very fraudulence (Freudulence) underscores the fraudulence of the other, “real” phallus it imitates and mocks and that is socially produced. Mary S. Gossy has perceptively seen the subversiveness of hhymen-mending in Celestina because it exposes the patriarchal fic~ 26 Celestina’s Brood tions that buttress society. ‘The mended hymen is, then, a text woven by Celestina as a counterfiction. Therefore, “The subversive confusion of meaning ceases when Celestina is killed ‘can no longer create fictional virgins, weave her fictive hymen, text. The inevitable result of ths fat is that Melibea's hymen is ere vocably decided. She has sex with Calisto and there is no one to help them slip through the rigidities of meaning that the dominant textual order imposes on that act, With Celestins’s death, difference inthe text and meaning outside or beyond the dominant discourse become inaccessible. Calisto and Melibea die, yas erorem, because their error cannot be written over. ‘The threads that held them up to move are cut, and both of them fall 10 theie deaths. Their ability to move, to be inthe process of fiction, depend on a seamstress to make text for them. When her catalyzing action ceases to be, so do they.” ‘The metaphoric association between patched up hymen and liter- ary text is a power insight, particularly if we add to it what has. been shown above about the sadistic element involved in each “refiguration.” But Calixto and Melibea do not die because there is no one to mend the latter's hymen, but because in Celestina’s world (and text) fiction is based on the destruction of others and the reduction ofall values to their sheer material representation. There is no room to mourn Celestina in such a world, for she is the purveyor of pain as well as of fiction, of death as well as of pleasure. ‘There is no untold story in Celestina that is not prey to this destruc- tive dialectic, unless one is willing to concoct a flimsy fiction about Celestinas beneficence. Once told, every untold story will be based ‘on another untold story, ifby that one means a story of subjection. ‘The mended hymenisa text, even an emblem ofthe text of Celestina, but as such itis made up by puncturing, rending, bleeding, and a general disfigurement. ‘This turn to the material to the bodily as the last resort, the true mediator, leads back to Celestina herself: Ifshe stands for logos and at the same time debunks logos, itis inevitable that she will suffer the same fate asthe characters whom she destroys and the language {through which she destroys them. She will be physically rent apart, penetrated, split, like the metaphors through which language has, stripped away its figurative layers and impeded the process by which desire and language would lead to a general sharing. As Celestina’s Brood 27 Melibea leaps from the tower. (From Celestine, 1514 Valencia edition) subject and object of this literalization, Celestina is reduced to her ‘material cipher, which isan old, sterile, and consumed body, finally, ripped apart by her own charges. Celestina, as language, is not a mediator but an interrupter, not a go-between but a get-in-be- tween. She facilitates the process of exchange, but only for the sake of the process, which tums out to be a violent activity whereby destruction is brought about, Her commerce is not of goods, value, values, or even language, but of brutality and destructiveness. This ulimate devastation and denial even of the material is dramatized in one of the most important scenes in Celestina, the banquet orga- nized by Pirmeno at the whorehouse to celebrate his “seduction” of Areusa Itis one of the scenes where Rojas allows most visibly the mediation of tradition ‘The importance of this scene is made clear in several ways First, from a purely formal point of view, the banquet takes place at the very center ofthe original sixteen-act comedia, that is o say in acts 8 and 9, While this symmetry is upset by the addition ofthe five acts that make up the tragicomeda the banquet remains central to the plot: itisa converging point as wellasa climax of sorts. The banquet marks the moment at which Pérmeno’s acceptance of Celestina’s and Sempronio’s way of life and his willingness to be an accomplice in their scheme against Calisto is celebrated. In fact, the banquet celebrates the bond between Pirmeno, Sempronio, and Celestina, uniting all the servants against their masters. This is evident also 28 Celestina’s Brood when Lucrecia appears to betray the tas ofPeberio and Alisa by acting asa messenger between Melibea and Celestina The banquet also marks Melibea’s capitulation, which isthe coded message that Lucrecia brings to the brothel. The banquet is the culminating scene inthe plot because, from now on, the orderthat Celestina has wrought begins to unravel, and those who rejoice in pledging their allegiance wind up killing her: Is in this respect and probably with all due disrespect, trly a lst supper. In terms ofthe plot, however, itis the pledge of manual allegiance that is sealed atthe banquet. But the significance ofthe banquet in terms ofthe unfolding ofthe plot is merely a first indication of ts muliple resonances in the work The banquet scene in Celetina is drawn from a long tradition whose history and significance has been studied by Mikhail Bakhtin in his remarkable Rais and His Work* Bakhtin has emphasized that the origin ofthe banquet as the “mighty aspiration to abun- dance and toa universal sprit... evident in each ofthese images. It determines their forms, their positive hyperbotism, their gay and triumphant tone” (p. 278) In the banquet, the boy saree... ov tks: slows, devours, rend the wor ap sence and grows atthe wor expense The encounter aman wih the world which kes plac ae the

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