my cart my cart |

Penguin.com (usa)

Let's Get Started with Celestina

Notes from Kathy:

 

Hello, everyone, and hooray for getting started again with the Penguin Classics Book Club!  I thank you all for hanging on while the location got changed to Penguin’s own website, and I look forward to many interesting discussions here.

 

As Penguin has announced on their website earlier, we will be discussing Celestina  by Fernando de Rojas.  I hope interested people have all had a chance to get and read a copy of this title, and since the announcement has been out for several weeks, we’ll get started right away with the discussion.  Also note that you don't have to register as a user on the new Community website in order to read the blogs, but you do to be able to post comments.

 

For those who are new or returning, I just want to remind everyone that we try to avoid spoilers here.  In general it’s a kindness to post a “Spoiler Alert” at the top of your comment if you are giving away plot details that some readers may not yet have gotten to.  For Celestina it’s not really an issue; I’m going to assume that everyone’s read the whole book, short as it is.

 

I’d like to start, as we often do, with first impressions.  For me, what I noticed first was Celestina's structure, one that initially seemed awkward compared to most novels today.  With such a sparse amount of non-dialogue, it took a fair amount of focus to keep in mind who was speaking which line (it was a lot easier the second time through).  I’m not used to having to pay attention to that, since most novels are much more explicit in attributing dialogue among the characters.  But I began to realize that in fact the dialogue was well structured and included all the clues I needed to keep track.  And then I started thinking about the whole context of Celestina, when it was written.  Celestina is pre-novel as we are used to novels. 

 

Once I was willing to consider Celestina on its own terms, not in the context of a literary genre that didn’t exist when it was written, I started thinking about how people would have read it when it first was written.  And I began to make a conscious effort to use my imagination to supply the details that today’s novels tend to provide explicitly.  I tried to visualize people and settings and actions that were implied, and found myself imagining some wonderful pictures.

 

What are your reactions to the way Celestina is structured?

 

-- Kathy Gursky

Comments

Please log in to enter comments.

  • Just to clarify what Kathy mentioned. Celestina wasn't written to be performed as a play but to be read by a professional reader who read to a group of listeners who were presumably illiterate or preferred a 'performance' experience of the text.


     I translated it this way because it felt it would bring contemporary readers closer to that experience - but now performed by the individual imagination of each reader. So often Celestina is translated and brutally cut back for the stage. It's not a failed play, more a magnificent experiment in the novel form before there was such a thing as the modern novel.


    On another tack, I first read it at school when I living in a small provincial town and I was struck by the way Rojas captures the small town life, where everyone knows each other, the good and the nasty things...


    Translating it almost forty years later, I was driven by the rich mix of language and the wit and originality of a character like Celestina and her bevy of friends. Where's the novel that can rival the portrayal of a woman of her age? And over five hundred years ago! 


     

    peter, 2 years ago | Flag

  • Just to clarify what Kathy mentioned. Celestina wasn't written to be performed as a play but to be read by a professional reader who read to a group of listeners who were presumably illiterate or preferred a 'performance' experience of the text.


     I translated it this way because it felt it would bring contemporary readers closer to that experience - but now performed by the individual imagination of each reader. So often Celestina is translated and brutally cut back for the stage. It's not a failed play, more a magnificent experiment in the novel form before there was such a thing as the modern novel.


    On another tack, I first read it at school when I living in a small provincial town and I was struck by the way Rojas captures the small town life, where everyone knows each other, the good and the nasty things...


    Translating it almost forty years later, I was driven by the rich mix of language and the wit and originality of a character like Celestina and her bevy of friends. Where's the novel that can rival the portrayal of a woman of her age? And over five hundred years ago! 


     

    peter, 2 years ago | Flag

  • I appreciated La Celestina's structure, because it dropped me into a different culture and time without the usual narrator to interpret and explain things.   While I was often confused, I liked that there was so little between me and the characters.  I am a retired cultural anthropologist and this structure created an experience like when I was observing people in a different culture.  Then, as in this book, I would hear people's conversations and try to understand what their relationships were, and what their words meant to them and said about the workings of their world.  The structure made for a fast paced, high energy experience of De Roja's world and I'm looking forward to a second reading.    

    Mystified, 2 years ago | Flag

  • Hi all,


    I was just thinking I should mention one aspect of this blog that may be different from a number of others, and that is that it's not daily!  I generally have a new discussion post up once a week or so, and that depends on how discussion is going as well as my schedule.


    Since this is just getting started again, it will probably take a bit of time to build up our discussion base again so comments may be slow in coming.  [Thanks, Sherry and Darlene for jumping in right away!]  Plus I will be out of town till Sunday afternoon, so no new discussion topic till then.


    I do want to comment on the play-like aspect of Celestina.  As I understand it, it has been presented in play format (movie also?) and certainly lends itself to that.  From an interview I heard with Peter Bush, the translator, the original story would probably have been read aloud to a group of listeners by a professional reader much of the time, and I can see how it would lend itself to that approach as well.  I suppose we could try reading it aloud ourselves and using different voices to distinguish the characters!

    kgursky, 2 years ago | Flag

  • The structure irritated me at first also. It is not a book that you can read a few pages and then come back to later because you lose track of who was saying what. Wasn't it at one point a play? The dialog marker from the structure of a play would certainly have kept it clear who was plotting what.

    Darlene1300, 2 years ago | Flag

Inappropriate Flag

Flagging notifies the Penguin Community webmaster of inappropriate content. Please flag any messages that violate the Terms of Service. Please include a short explanation why you're flagging this message. Thank you!

If you believe this content violates the Terms of Service, please write a short description why. Thank you.

Inappropriate Comment Flag

Flagging notifies the Penguin Community webmaster of inappropriate content. Please flag any messages that violate the Terms of Service. Please include a short explanation why you're flagging this message. Thank you!

Email Friends

Your First Name (optional)

Email Addresses (comma separated)

Import friends

Message to Friends (optional)

Are you human?

Or, you can forward this blog with your own email application.

Terms of Use and Privacy Policy