On the Sources of the Plot of Corella's «Tragèdia de Caldesa»

Rosanna Cantavella

The aim of this paper is to deal with some points in the plot of Roís de Corella's Tragèdia de Caldesa, the fifteenth-century Catalan work which is directly linked with the European tradition of sentimental romance.

Joan Roís de Corella (1435-97), the learned Valencian writer, became a Master in Theology and wrote many secular and religious works in verse and prose¹. His most studied works are those which deal with human love, his lyric poems and his amatory romances. The latter are usually inspired by Ovidian subjects, the Heroides or the Metamorphosis. But the most popular one, the Tragèdia de Caldesa (probably 1458), is not set in classical times but in the Valencia of the author's day, and does not have as its characters classical heroes or ancient ladies, but a woman called Caldesa (cald, calda meaning 'hot') in one of the versions of the title, and the narrator himself, for this is a work written in the first person².

The Tragèdia de Caldesa has been divided into twelve paragraphs (paras) or headings, ten written in prose and two in verse³. Its plot in proportion to the length of the work, is minimal and hidden amid a rhetorical forest of complaints where the greatest hyperboles prevail. It has been remarked that the story told in the Tragèdia is, in its bare bones, remarkably like that of Chaucer's Troylus and Criseyde (Kelly 1993: 211). I shall summarize it here:

Its protagonist starts his story complaining bitterly about a terrible crime, a felony which, in a very Senecan way, should induce chaos in Nature, maybe even the end of the world, and which causes him to be in more pain than the souls in everlasting hell (para. 1). After that, he shows us the coordinates of the action (the place is the city of Valencia, the time is now, after the death of king Alfonso the Magnanimous, probably summer 1458), and starts his story: for a long time he served an «ínclita donzella, en bellea sens par, en avisament passant totes les altres, ab gràcia e singularitat tan extrema»⁴. Finally, the maiden responds fully with her love (para. 2).

They are very happy for a while, but this is not to last. One day when he knocks at her door, she says she is waiting for somebody with whom she has to dispatch some business, so he must wait a little while for their love games (para. 3). He then waits in the bedroom, locked in by his lady. Although it is the afternoon, it is dark in there, as if the sun had hidden itself to avoid seeing «tan deshonest crim» (para. 4). The hours go by, and he is harassed by his anguish; he looks through a little window, from which he can see a man walking calmly up and down the front courtyard of the house as if he is waiting for «algú altre», and when people call at the door, he opens it and says the maiden is occupied with very important affairs (para. 5).

The narrator appeals now to the sympathy of the «oints», and prepares himself to tell the core of the story: finally, at twilight he sees his lady coming out of a room into the courtyard, ushering along another man in a very amorous way, showing «mostres d'amor extrema», which the narrator avoids describing «perquè la fi de la present sol esguarda en fer palès quant la granea de ma desaventura les altres totes avança». Their last farewell is «en estil de semblants paraules: "Adéu sies, manyeta!"», and their mouths close in a «deshonest besar», whose sound hurts the narrator in the same way as the damned will be hurt by the voice of Jesus at the end of the world (para. 6)⁵.

Finally she bows goodbye to her lover in such an exaggerated way that «sol la gonella féu estalvi lo seu genoll esquerre no tocàs la dura terra, senyalant ab la sua bella cara tristor no poca de la sua absència». Then she approaches a well and «ab la freda aigua assajà apartar la sua afable cara la color e calor que, en la no sangonosa, mas plaent e delitosa batalla de Venus, pres havia». After that she goes to the narrator's room, unlocks the door and «fengí alegria de la mia vista, tanta com havia mostrat vera dolor, al que en extrem amava, de la sua partida». But her red and white face is «maculada», because her recent lover was «en extrem no conforme al delicament de tan tendra donzella»⁶. She lies to him again, and the narrator begs God to let himself be crucified again to redeem «tan profana culpa». Then he gets ready to utter the following verses (para. 7).

In unit 8, the poem is composed of two 14-line stanzas of stramps or blank verse, and here the narrator expresses, in a series of hyperbolic images, a wish for the end of the world and his own total annihilation «si Déu permet mos ulls vos puguen veure», and «si és ver vos diguí mai "Senyora"».

It should be observed that, in spite of his own interdict, the narrator again uses the word «senyora» soon afterwards. So «l'ínclita senyora» learns that he knows «la granea de sa culpa», and cries and sobs, while answering with the following lines in a gentle and harmonious voice (para. 9).

In verse unit 10 (a similar 14-line stanza), the lady utters her mea culpa. She confesses her guilt as abominable, and considers herself unworthy even of hell. She will regard her death as sweet if he wishes to kill her; but, if he prefers, she will live to endure hard penance: she will wear a hair shirt, she will become a pilgrim, and she will imitate Mary Magdalen, washing his feet in her tears.

After such a humble response, he is torn by contradictory desires: he would give his life for her redemption; he would drink the waters of Lethe to forget everything, and he wishes the lady could be divided into parts, so that he could keep her «gentil persona ab tan subtil enteniment», and her «falla e moble voluntat, de falsa estima guiada, cercàs un cos lleig e diforme, en part d'aquell qui indignament l'havia tractada» (para. 11)⁷. The protagonist, then, is sorely tempted by the idea of forgiving her.

In this contradictory mood, he leaves. And now, «acceptant la ploma, que sovint greus mals descansa», he is writing this story with his own blood, «perquè la color de la tinta ab la dolor que raona se conforme» (para. 12)⁸.

Therefore this is a work written in a plaintive tone, but built on a not unprecedented story: the protagonist witnesses his lover's unfaithfulness. About the other man we know almost nothing; he is noble or at least rich, because he is escorted by a servant, a Leporello who waits for him (para. 5)⁹, and he is not handsome but «en extrem no conforme al delicament de tan tendra donzella» (para. 7). So the rival is an ugly gentleman —a scarred knight, for example. Now that we have learnt that Corella was always a clergyman, not a converted knight (Chiner 1993), and since Corella puts himself in the place of the protagonist, we could consider it an important point in the story (a gentle lady prefers an ugly man, although rich or a knight, to the cultivated cleric who can write such elaborate prose).

However, the story's main subject is not this one, but rather the protagonist's disappointment with love, and in particular with the idea of fina amor. The narrator says that «la fi de la present sol esguarda en fer palès quant la granea de ma desaventura les altres totes avança» (para. 6). Nevertheless, the perceptive reader or listener is bound to realize that he could have brought his «desaventura» on himself, because he had his affair with the maiden in the first place (para. 2). And, in Corella's moral philosophy, «amor és tal que, si us obre la porta, / tard s'esdevé que pels altres la tanque»¹⁰.

The homogeneity of this moral in Corella's works on human love has been pointed out by Badia, who analyses it and concludes that Corella always states «la doctrina que associa indissolublement l'amor, el fracàs, la decepció i el desengany»¹¹. According to him, human love is always destructive or fatal. Therefore his approach to human love becomes a skilled version of the orthodox Christian position condemning the idealization of this passion (Badia 1988: 170).

In this line, Corella's reelaboration of Ausiàs March's literary topics is most significant. March's strong imprint in Corella appears very clearly in the Tragèdia de Caldesa from its beginning, for its first paragraph has been revealed as an Ausiasmarchian cento. March's well known hyperbolic discourse is simulated here, and some of his lines are virtually reproduced (Badia 1993b: 73-77, 90-91). Annamaria Annicchiarico has followed this line of argument, identifying numerous coincidences in both authors. I am especially interested in one of her references: pointing out Caldesa's intellect and immodesty at the same time, Annicchiarico (1991-92: 78 n. 51) reminds us of these Ausiasmarchian verses:

	Vós, qui bastant sou per un món regir,
	¿porà's bé fer que ameu l'home pec? [...]
	Mas vostre cos per ventura es delita
	usar dels fruits que na Venus conrea!
	Mas vostre seny deuria haver ferea
	de fer tals fets (e gents n'han ja sospita).

(Poem 47, ll. 13-14, 29-32; Ferraté 1979)

Annicchiarico's intuition was brilliant, because poem 47 as a whole, and not only these lines, could be considered among the models of the Tragèdia de Caldesa. In its first stanza, Ausiàs March wonders why the end of the world has not started yet. In stanza 2 he explains that the laws of love are now disjointed, for in spite of the Aristotelian law («tot amador ama per son semblant», l. 11), his lady, who is very intelligent, is however inclined to feel lust for an unrefined man. The poet is stunned and can hardly believe it (stanza 3). If it is true, he hopes the lady will burn in hell, or that she will truly repent. But instead of showing repentance, she is enjoying sex with somebody unworthy, although her sense should forbid it (stanza 4). So because of that, the poet will not keep it secret, he will talk about it, and those who hear him will sympathize with him and admonish Nature for consenting to this lawless love (stanza 5). In the final tornada, the poet equally blames passionate love («folla amor») and the contemptible loved one who delivers herself to lust because of it.

So in March's poem 47, as later in Corella's Tragèdia de Caldesa, there is an apocalyptic start, which is then explained as the poet's expression of affliction or indignation at the sight of his beloved as a creature both intelligent and lustful, and finally the poet declares that he has to talk about it, to put his suffering into words. We can presume that, if Corella's work was really written in the summer of 1458, and as the two writers were relatives (Chiner 1993), Ausiàs March, who died in 1459, could well have known the Tragèdia de Caldesa.

It seems to be a deliberate paradox that Corella builds an anti-amorous discourse shaped on a work which is indebted to the purest razo¹². And the razo is at the origins of medieval erotic pseudo-autobiography¹³. It has been finally established that Corella was not necessarily reporting a personal experience here (Badia 1993b), though he says «I» in a way which allows identification between real and literary biography, «és a dir, com sempre s'havia fet: dels trobadors i els seus epígons catalans, al fragment narratiu del De vetula adaptat per Metge [...], al Libro de buen amor, a la Vita nuova» (Badia 1993b: 89-90)¹⁴. Corella's work is also a recognized heir of the literary pattern of Boccaccio's Fiammetta (Badia 1993b). The generic relationship between Fiammetta's «elegy» and Caldesa's «tragedy» has also been considered (Badia 1993b: 87 n. 22; Annicchiarico 1991-92: 69 n. 29). As to the Corellan idea of tragedy, which is basically understood as a lament by its author, who combines the main medieval conceptions of this genre, see Kelly (1993: 211-15) and Pujol (forthcoming).

Therefore the Tragèdia de Caldesa is connected with the European sentimental romances produced at the time owing to its pseudo-autobiographical discourse, its exclusively amorous plot, and its tragic vision of human love¹⁵. As in the Fiammetta and other sentimental texts, the story happens in a real place, at a time close to its audience's day, and like most European sentimental pieces it has an exemplary moral. Even the usual sentimental epistolary references, which seem to be lacking in the Tragèdia de Caldesa, are not far away: besides the fact that there were two literary letters written by Corella to Caldesa (now lost, see note 8), there are two internal references to the Tragèdia text as «la present», an expression generally used to refer to a letter which is being written¹⁶.

But even for the sentimental genre, it is an odd piece because of its plot. Nobody dies, there are no duels, and the tragedy consists only of the fact that the protagonist's female beloved has another male lover at the same time. A priori, this plot seems more prone to a comical treatment in a medieval society. Even all the play of doors being locked and unlocked, of windows through which to peep at people, is more reminiscent of the Decameron than the Fiammetta¹⁷.

In spite of appearances, however, this was not the first time that a Catalan audience had heard such a story in a plaintive mood. Josep Pujol has recently shown the diffusion throughout the Crown of Aragon of a very particular version of the Bernart de Ventadorn razo of «Can vei la lauzeta mover» (Pujol 1995). We must remember that this famous canso deals with the troubadour's complaints because his lady does not love him any more. The version which I am interested in is the following, preserved in a fourteenth-century manuscript (Biblioteca de Catalunya 146):

Et el s'en parti e si s'en anet a la duchesa de Normandia, qu'era joves e de gran valor e s'entendia en pretz e en honor et en bendig de lausor. E plasion li fort las chansos e·l vers d'En Bernart, et ella lo receup e l'acuilli mout fort. Lonc temps estet en sa cort, et enamoret se d'ella e ella de lui, e fetz mantas bonas chansos d'ella. E apelava la B[ernart] 'Alauzeta', per amor d'un cavalier que l'amava, e ela apelet lui 'Rai'. E un jorn venc lo cavaliers a la duguessa e entret en la cambra. La dona, que·l vi, leva adonc lo pan del mantel e mes li sobra·l col, e laissa si cazer e[l] lieg. E B[ernart] vi tot, car una donzela de la domna li ac mostrat cubertamen; e per aquesta razo fes adonc la canso que dis: Quan vei l'alauzeta mover.

(Pujol 1995: 226)

Pujol has shown that this could very possibly be one of the sources of chapter 283 in Tirant lo Blanc, «Ficció que féu la reprovada Viuda a Tirant», pointing out that even the name of the suspect black servant, Lauseta, is reminiscent of this razo. Pujol cannot forget the strong influence of the Corellan work in Martorell's Tirant and relates this version of Ventadorn's razo to the style of razo in the Tragèdia pointed out by Badia, «sense que calgui en aquest cas suposar cap dependència» (Pujol 1995: 230). His caution is sensible, as Corella is too clever to let us clearly see his source (except when he wishes to, such as when it is Ausiàs March or Ovid). But just because of that, we should consider every possibility. The razo quoted above was used by fra Rocabertí, by Francesc Ferrer and by Martorell, and preserved in a Catalan manuscript, so Corella could have known it (Pujol 1995).

In this same spirit, I would like to point out a place where a plot similar to that of the Tragèdia is sketched. It is a French demande d'amour, preserved in at least two late fifteenth-century manuscripts:

1. Beau Sire, s'il estoit ainsi que ung homme aymast vostre amye, je vous demande lequel vous aymeriez myeulx, ou que vous l'encontrissiez a l'entree et il en venist et vous y entrissiez, ou qu'il y entrast et vous y yssissiez?

Dame, j'auroye plus chier qu'il en yssist et je y entrasse, car je ne pourroye estre joyeux ne avoir la paix de mon cuer, s'il estoit demouré avec ma dame, et je le sceusse. Et se je y estoye demouré et il s'en fust alé, j'auroye espoir de tout deffaire ce qu'il auroit fait et dit par couvertes et soubtiles parolles.

2. La Damoiselle: «Sire chevalier, je vous demande, se vous amiez dame ou damoiselle, et un autre aussy l'amast pareillement, lequel ameriez vous le mieulx: ou que veïssiez l'autre issir de la chambre d'elle, quant vous y entreriez, ou qu'il y entrast, quant vous en ysteriez?»

Le Chevalier: «Damoiselle, que l'autre en yssist et que je y entraisse; car se je lui veoie entrer et j'en ississe, jamais n'auroye joye en mon cuer, tant que a elle parlé auroie»¹⁸.

Roís de Corella was familiar with the genre of demandes d'amour. He gave the right answer with the right explanation to a demande in his debate with the Prince of Viana, even though he finally agreed with his lord (Cantavella forthcoming). This debate was held on a date close to the Tragèdia, probably between July 1458 and July 1459 according to Riquer (1964, III: 298), and in any case before 1461, when the Prince of Viana died.

As we can see, in the demande quoted, the gentleman chooses to enter the lady's chamber when his rival leaves, and not the other way round. In this way the lover can dissuade her about his rival. In the case of the Tragèdia plot, we have a variant: the protagonist is already inside when his lady receives his rival. But anyway when his rival leaves he can talk to the lady and make her change her mind, not exactly «par couvertes et soubtiles parolles», but rather very bluntly, as we learn from the verse, although the result is the same, to influence her. And she seems to be very much influenced when she asks for death or for penance, even though (or precisely because) she is presented as the epitome of inconsistency.

This demande reveals that the comings and goings of a lover and his rival in his lady's house was a theme liable to be used in the fifteenth century not only as literary subject-matter, but also in a social jeu de salon. Now if we see the Tragèdia de Caldesa plot in the light of this possible source, we can reaffirm that it was far from being an ingenuous autobiographical story.

We learnt from Badia (1993b) and Annicchiarico (1991-92) that Corella liked to play with Ausiàs March's poetic love themes. We have seen that the structure of the Tragèdia is closely parallel to that of March's poem 47, but even more exaggerated. We have also seen that Corella could have been familiar with the razo where Bernart de Ventadorn witnessed his lady's unfaithfulness (as suggested by Pujol 1995). I have added a jeu de salon subject as another possible convergent basis for its plot. Nor should we forget a more generic suggestion by Rico (1982). (See also n. 7, above).

Therefore it can be concluded that, besides its recognized rhetorical artistry, the Tragèdia de Caldesa also shows a very rich elaboration in the convergence of various possible sources for this apparently simple plot, a plot which provided Corella with his literary persona as a fool for love. It was a plot which would confer the authority of an alleged personal experience upon his later literary lessons on the dangers of love, just as Jaume Roig would do in the Espill¹⁹.

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