La Celestina: Bilingual edition: Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea

By Fernando de Rojas and De Rojas Fernando

Book Overview

In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed west and stumbled upon an unknown continent that came to be called America. Seven years later The Comedia of Calisto and Melibea (or as it later became known, La Celestina) was published in Spain, and instantly became a national best seller. More than sixty editions appeared during the following century, and the work became so popular that, as one scholar has said: "There could have been no one who was capable of reading who did not read La Celestina." La Celestina, published anonymously in 1499, in later editions revealed the author as one Fernando de Rojas, a descendant of Jewish converts to Christianity and student at the University of Salamanca, who tells us that he "found" the first act and completed the rest of it during fifteen days of vacation from his studies. It first appeared with sixteen acts, and later with twenty-one, the additional acts being written at the request of the author's friends. Rojas finished his studies and became a lawyer in the nearby town of Talavera. He married, had several children, eventually became Lord Mayor of the town, and died in 1541. To our knowledge he never wrote another work. This novel, written in dialogue form, is considered one of the great masterpieces of Spanish literature. Composed during the rich flowering of the Renaissance, La Celestina contains not only references to figures of Greek and Roman culture, but also shows the influence of courtly literature. Alongside this, and towering over this, is a plot that carries with it tragedy of the type found later in Romeo and Juliet, along with ribald comedy. There is, for instance, the hilarious scene where the shy servant, Parmeno, addresses the prostitute, Areusa, with courtly phrases: "My lady, God keep your charming presence." And she replies in the same tone: "Gentle Sir, I bid you welcome." All this just before he hops into bed with her. Later the stable-boy, Sosia, acts much the same way with this same prostitute that he sees as a very beautiful woman. He describes his meeting with her: "bless me but I was ready to give it to her two or three times. Except that I was overcome with shame... When she moved around, she gave off a smell of musk perfume, while I stank of the manure I had on my shoes." Centurio, the cowardly braggart, explains to the girls the entire "repertoire" of swordplay ("seven hundred and seventy types of death") that he could use to take revenge on Calisto, and as soon as they leave, he finds a way to do nothing at all. And then come the tragic elements that begin with the murder of Celestina, the beheading of Calisto's servants, the accidental death of Calisto, and Melibea's speech to her father before she leaps to her own death on the stones below. La Celestina was almost immediately translated into French, Italian, German, English and Latin. The success of this work has continued down to the present day, with new translations appearing in Czech, Croatian, Hebrew, Dutch, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Russian during just one twenty-five year period in the twentieth century. The present edition gives the text in Spanish and in English on facing pages. The Spanish text is based on the orthography of the printings of Burgos, 1499, Toledo, 1500, and Valencia, 1514, and is richly illustrated with woodcuts taken from those early editions. Included are endnotes explaining the copious proverbs and classical references found interspersed throughout the text.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0692369554
• ISBN13: 9780692369555
• Release Date: January 2015
• Publisher: Svenson Publishers
• Length: 450 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

From Falstaff to Figaro and Beyond ...

... all the European literature of 'lovable' old rogues and sly servants owes something to this fundamental classic of Spanish literature. Published in 1499, a century before Don Quixote, half a century before Lazarillo de Tormes, La Celestina has been regarded as "the first European novel." It could just as well be taken as the last Renaissance classical dialogue, however, since its structure owes more to the neo-Platonists and Humanists like Eramus or Pico della Mirandola than to any earlier prose. It's either a novel-in-dialogue or a very long play. The site of its first scene, a private garden in Salamanca, is still revered and maintained as a tourist attraction for Spaniards. "Celestina" is an old bawd, a fat lusty, greedy brothel-keeper, restorer of maidenheads, procurer of virgins, maker of love potions. The two sly servants of the lovesick nobleman, Calisto, have been acquainted with her since their childhoods; they know the best and the worst of her. Melibea, sole daughter of a family of note, is the object of Calisto's infatuation and of Celestina's wiles. The whole affair is rollickingly funny, in the raunchiest vein of Chaucer or Boccaccio, until the cascading tragedy of the conclusion: a murder, an execution, a fatal accident, and a suicide all in the last few pages. As you'd expect in a Renaissance dialogue, there are extended philosophical discourses, some astringently ironic, some sincerely worldly-wise. Leslie Byrd Simpson has given us quite a readable, enjoyable translation into modern but not slangy English. If you can't read Spanish at all, this is the little edition to get; if you have some Spanish and choose to struggle, I'd recommend one of the bi-lingual editions, and if your Spanish is good, well, chances are you've already encountered La Celestina. Spanish in 1499 retained a lot of the flexibility of word order of its Latin roots; you'll find verbs at the ends of sentences and other such inversions, but the vocabulary and inflections are closer to modern Spanish than 15th C English is to modern American. In any format, in any language, it's a book you ought to know, and it's only a fraction of the length of Don Quixote!

Excellent work.

The book is EXCELLENT by Catedra which analyzes the 'obra' in detail. Excellent book and great story by Rojas and his crtizers.

A forgotten and ignored classic

Celestina is amusing, ironic, and while the prose and dialogue is long and descriptive, it is never boring- I really enjoyed this play.

A forgotten and ignored classic

Celestina is amusing, ironic, and while the prose and dialogue is long and descriptive, it is never boring- I really enjoyed this play. A note to the person who claims to be the author: Celestina was written in 1499, and it is widely assumed the author lived circa the same time. So, congratultions on your 500th birthday. :)

It captures the essance of good and evil in love.

Fernando De Rojas captures the truth of the love between man and woman in a time when novels were rarely written. This book plays out of a drama that inhabits the first concepts of the tragedy of love. It is what books like Romeo and Juliet are compared to.