Death in the Afternoon. Ernest Hemingway
does not care to discuss the bullfight. She liked it; she is now looking at the bullfighters and never discusses things she has enjoyed even with her most intimate friends. We talk about it because there were a number of things you say you did not understand.
When the bull came out did you notice that one of the banderilleros ran across his course trailing a cape and that the bull followed the cape driving at it with one horn? They run him that way always, at the start, to see which horn he favors. The matador, standing behind his shelter, watches the bull run by the trailing cape and notices whether he follows the zig-zagging cape on both his right and his left sides, this showing whether he sees with both eyes and which horn he prefers to hook with. He also notices whether he runs straight or if he has a tendency to cut ground toward the man as he charges. The man who went out with the cape in both hands after the bull had been run, and cited him from in front, standing still as the bull charged, and with his arms moving the cape slowly just ahead of the bull’s horns, passing the bull’s horns close by his body with a slow movement of the cape, seeming to keep him controlled, in the folds of the cape, bringing him past his body each time as he turned and recharged; doing this five times and then finishing off with a swirl of the cape that turned the man’s back on the bull and, by cutting the bull’s charge brusquely, fixed him to the spot; that man was the matador and the slow passes that he made were called veronicas and the half pass at the end a media-veronica. Those passes were designed to show the matador’s skill and art with the cape, his domination of the bull and also to fix the bull in a certain spot before the entry of the horses. They are called veronicas after St. Veronica who wiped the face of Our Lord with a cloth and are so called because the saint is always represented holding the cloth by the two corners in the position the bullfighter holds the cape for the start of the veronica. The media-veronica that stops the bull at the end of the passes is a recorte. A recorte is any pass with the cape that, by causing the bull to try to turn in less than his own length, stops him brusquely or checks his rush by cutting his course and doubling him on himself.
The banderilleros are never supposed to use both hands on the cape when the bull first comes out. If they use only one hand the cape will be trailed and when they turn it at the end of a run the bull will turn easily and not sharply and brusquely. He will do this because the turn of the long cape gives him an indication of the turn to make and gives him something to follow. With the cape held in both hands the banderillero can snap it away from the bull, flop it brusquely out of his sight and stop him dead, and turn him sharply so that he twists his spinal column, lames himself, has his speed cut, not by being worn down, but by laming, and make him unfit for the rest of the fight. Only the matador is supposed to use two hands on the cape during the early part of the fight. Strictly speaking the banderilleros, who are also called peones, are never supposed to use two hands on the cape except when bringing the bull out from a position he has taken and refused to leave. But in the way bullfighting has developed, or decayed, with emphasis increasingly placed on the manner of execution of the various passes rather than their effect, the banderilleros now do much of the work of preparing the bull for killing that was formerly done by the matador; and matadors without resources or science, whose only ability is their plastic or artistic talent, have their bulls, if these offer the slightest difficulty, prepared, worn down, dominated and everything but killed by the skilled and destructive cape of an experienced banderillero.
It may seem foolish to speak of almost killing such an animal as a fighting bull with a cape. Of course you could not kill, but you can so damage the spinal column, twist the legs and lame the animal and, by abusing its bravery, force it to charge uselessly again and again, each time recorting it ferociously, that you may tire it, lame it, and deprive it of all speed and a great part of its natural forces. We speak of killing a trout with a rod. It is the effort made by the trout that kills it. A catfish arrives at the side of the boat in full possession of all its force and strength. A tarpon, a trout or a salmon will often kill himself fighting the rod and line if you hold him long enough.
It was for this reason that banderilleros were prohibited from caping the bull with both hands. The matador was supposed to do all of the preparation for killing and the killing himself. The picadors were to slow the bull, to change his tempo, and to bring down the carriage of his head. The banderilleros were supposed to run him at the start, to place the banderillas quickly and in such a position as to correct any faults of hooking if they existed, and never to do anything to destroy the strength of the bull, in order that he might come intact into the hands of the matador who was supposed, with the muleta, to correct any tendencies toward hooking to one side or the other, to place him in position for killing and to kill him from in front, making him lower his head with the red serge of the muleta and killing him with the sword, driving it in high up at the top of the angle between the two shoulder blades.
As the corrida has developed and decayed there has been less emphasis on the form of killing, which was once the whole thing, and more on the cape work, the placing of the banderillas and the work with the muleta. The cape, the banderillas and the muleta have all become ends in themselves rather than means to an end and the bullfight has both lost and gained thereby.
In the old days the bulls were usually bigger than they are now; they were fiercer, more uncertain, heavier and older. They had not been bred down to a smaller size to please the bullfighters and they were fought at the age of four and a half to five years instead of three and a half to four and a half years. Matadors often had from six to twelve years of apprenticeship as banderilleros and as novilleros before becoming formal matadors. They were mature men, knew bulls thoroughly, and faced bulls which were brought to the highest point of physical force, strength, knowledge of how to use their horns and general difficulty and danger. The whole end of the bullfight was the final sword thrust, the actual encounter between the man and the animal, what the Spanish call the moment of truth, and every move in the fight was to prepare the bull for that killing. With such bulls it was not necessary to give emotion for the man to pass the animal as deliberately close to him with the cape as was possible. The cape was used to run the bulls, to protect the picadors, and the passes that were made with it, by our modern standards, were exciting because of the size, strength, weight and fierceness of the animal and the danger the matador ran in making them rather than by the form or the slowness of their execution. It was exciting that the man should pass such a bull at all, that a man should be in the ring with and dominate such an animal furnished the emotion rather than that he should deliberately, as now, try to pass the points of the horn as mathematically close to his body as possible without moving his feet. It is the decadence of the modern bull that has made modern bullfighting possible. It is a decadent art in every way and like most decadent things it reaches its fullest flower at its rottenest point, which is the present.
It is impossible, day in and day out, to fight bulls that are really bulls, huge, strong, fierce and fast, knowing how to use their horns and old enough so that they have their full growth, with the technique that has been developed, starting with Juan Belmonte, in modern bullfighting. It is too dangerous. Belmonte invented the technique. He was a genius, who could break the rules of bullfighting and could torear, that is the only word for all the actions performed by a man with the bull, as it was known to be impossible to torear. Once he had done it all bullfighters had to do it, or attempt to do it since there is no going back in the matter of sensations. Joselito who was strong (Belmonte was weak), healthy (Belmonte was sickly), who had an athlete’s body, gypsy grace and an intuitive and acquired knowledge of bulls that was never surpassed by any bullfighter; Joselito for whom everything in bullfighting was easy, who lived for bullfighting, and seemed to have been made and bred almost to the measurement of what a great bullfighter should be, had to learn Belmonte’s way of working. Joselito, the heritor of all great bullfighters, probably the greatest bullfighter that ever lived, learned to torear as Belmonte did. Belmonte worked that way because of his lack of stature, his lack of strength, because of his feeble legs. He did not accept any rules made without testing whether they might be broken, and he was a genius and a great artist. The way Belmonte worked was not a heritage, nor a development; it was a revolution. Joselito learned it, and during the years of their competition, when they each had around a hundred corridas a year, he used to say, “They say that he, Belmonte, works closer to the bull. It looks as though he does. But that isn’t true. I really work closer. But it is more natural so it doesn’t look so close.”
Anyway, the decadent,