121
La Cel.i. 17; 13. This does not imply that Rojas was interested in Petrarch as a vernacular poet: the matter is discussed in Chapter IV.
122
La Cel. i. 17: 13.
123
Rojas prefaces the comment with Dize más adelante... (i. 17; 13), thus transposing the order of these two parts of Petrarch's Preface.
124
Its only rival for scant originality is Melibea's enumeration of unnatural murderers.
125
Rojas's translation is: 'Que quiere dezir: «En verdad assi es, e assi todas las cosas desto dan testimonio: las estrellas se encuentran en el arrebatado firmamento del cielo, los aduersos elementos vnos con otros rompen pelea, tremen las tierras, ondean los mares, el ayre se sacude, suenan las llamas, los vientos entre si traen perpetua guerra, los tiempos con tiempos contienden e litigan entre si, vno a vno e todos contra nosotros»'. As D. W. McPheeters points out ('The Corrector Alonso de Proaza and the Celestina', HR, xxiv (1956), 24), the Latin text given by Rojas differs at three points from that in the 1496 Opera (McPheeters uses the 1501 Opera): it omits esse before propemodum, it makes venti precede gerunt, and in the Heraclitus quotation it has fiunt for fieri.
126
Rojas says that 'si no paresciese conseja de tras del fuego yo llegaría más al cabo esta cuenta' (i. 19; 14). Petrarch does continue, with stories of dogs' courage in attacking larger animals.
127
This assumption is supported by the presence in the Prólogo of an index borrowing; see p. 146 (the fourth borrowing).
128
This list is in the Petrarchan tradition of antithesis, which is evident in the Latin works as well as in the Canzoniere, though not to such a great extent. Rojas's use of it, in the mouth of Celestina, is more favourable to love than is the original Petrarchan context. A similar series of antithetical terms, unambiguously hostile to love, is in Marino's Adone, vi. clxxiii, and is cited and examined by Dámaso Alonso, Estudios y ensayos gongorinos (Madrid, 1955), 212.
129
An indication that Rojas knew the text od De Remediis throughly is given by his series of borrowings on the vulgo (ii. 33-34; 196). Two of them come via the index, but neither this sententia from De Remediis, i. 12, nor the one from i. 42 (see below) occurs in the index, and Rojas must have known the text well enough to find them quickly when he wanted them.
130
Cejador says this is a común refrán, but this does not mean it cannot be a Petrarchan borrowing. th eproverb is not exclusively Spanish, and Petrarch himself describes it as vetus proverbium. The use os such a saying in La Celestina is in any case likely to enhance its popularity.