Bullfight

I like bullfights.

I saw my first bullfight in Madrid. Before that trip, I read Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon, his book about that art. So when I sat in the stands of the bullring, and as I watched the ritual of the corrida unfold beneath me, I had a sense of what was going on.

Without that sense, a bullfight would seem to be only an appalling cruelty. One would naturally think, "Why doesn’t the matador just go into the ring with a pistol, and shoot the poor bull in the brain? Same outcome, less suffering!" Point taken.

Except that there is a ritual significance to the bullfight. From it’s emergence hundreds of years ago, it has symbolized the triumph of the urbane (the matador) over the wild (the bull).

Today, urbane up to our noses, we might miss the importance of the urbane. But to the sometimes rustic watchers of bullfights, this urbanity means no less than the goodness of the modern world, with its suave pleasures and its sophisticated cooperation among people so that they can live in the comfort of a smoothly-functioning society. A bullfight draws the rustic up the ladder of social cohesion. To the already-urbane, it’s reassurance of the rightness of what is.

I don’t know that Hispanic culture has a strong notion of yin and yang. But it’s present in the ritual of the corrida. Because, even as it is symbolic of the triumph of the urbane, it culminates in killing and death.

Killing and death are realities that we share with our most-fanged ancestors. So a bullfight exalts the modern world, but it’s rooted in what is primitive and in what is fixed in our reality from the origin of our kind.

People say that bullfights are cruel. They are. But here’s the thing: the cruelty is part of the point. In the art of the bullfight, the watcher remembers that what is good and urbane is costly and bought by blood.

I don’t want to oversimplify. Many things bring modern societies to modernity. There is the rule of law; there is the press; there is education; there are the slowly, painfully evolving political institutions; and there is trust in those institutions – among other things. But even in our own history, there is also brother spilling the blood of brother. There are families trusting their sons and daughters to God and the U.S. military, not knowing that a reunion will happen in the land of the living.

Just like the rustic must become more urbane, the rustic and the urbane must remember what they come from and what perilous reality they might return to. Times of peril come. They come to nations, they come to families, they come to persons. The corrida is remembrance of that.

Perilous times call for courage. In a corrida, the matador is courageous for the crowd. He takes the risks. His literally takes his life in his hands. I have not seen a matador die, but matadors die. I have seen matadors injured, sometimes seriously. It’s not uncommon.

Matadors are courageous to a greater or a lesser degree. Hemingway wrote of a matador beloved of the crowd who was, to Hemingway, a fraud. He had a paunch that he sucked in when the bull passed by. Then, just after the bull passed, he would slack his gut so it looked like he had let the bull’s horns pass closer than he really had. Hemingway must have had a keen eye.

If you see a corrida, in addition to looking for how near the matador lets the horns pass, you should gage the matador's bravery by his feet. A brave matador’s feet are planted and do not move as the bull passes by. A weak matador can’t control his feet; he stutter-steps back away from the bull as the bull passes under his cape. It takes courage just to get in the ring with a huge, horned, wild, killing creature; but a matador must have more than just the courage that it takes to get in the ring. When a matador gives a good performance, its key component is his bravery.

One matador found that he could not control his feet. In frustration, he fought the bull from his knees, so that he literally could not jump back – even when he needed to. That proved to be fatal.

Matadors must have courage. Courage is also the key virtue of a good bull. People think that a bull that paws the dirt with its hoof is brave. It’s not. That’s a bull that’s bluffing. A brave bull doesn’t need coaxing; it charges the cape; or, later, it charges the cape and the sword. It’s easier to fight a brave bull than a cowardly bull. Part of the skill that a matador must have is to know how to make a bull charge, even if it wants only to stand and paw the dirt.

Another skill that a bullfighter must have is the ability to kill well. A bullfighter might himself – not his assistant – plant the barbed bandarillas in the bull, and he might do it skillfully. His cape work with the bull might be beautiful and flawless. But these will matter little if he lacks that special skill that it takes to lunge his body over the horns of the bull, and to plant his sword to the hilt between the bull’s shoulder blades, missing the bull’s spine. If it’s done well, the crowd is jubilant. If it’s done sloppy, the crowd whistles – a grave insult. If it’s done poorly, or if the matador has bad luck, the bull’s horn might penetrate the matador’s body.

You never know how you’ll react to a bullfight. At my first bullfight, I sat next to a middle-aged woman who had been coerced to go there by her friend. She expressed sympathy for the bulls. During the corrida, I explained as best I could what was unfolding before us. At the end, I asked her what she thought about what she had seen. She thoughtfully answered that it was "interesting".

And yet. A friend of mine grew up absorbing books about the great matadors of history. He went to his first bullfight with high expectations. His first bullfight was his last. He found it to be appalling and cruel and nothing more.

Perhaps one difference between people who thrive at bullfights and those who don’t is in their toleration for the cruel -- not cruelty for the sake of cruelty, but cruelty in the service of social cohesion and courage.

Or people might differ in their toleration for the sad. Because Hemingway said something that might be surprising. That lover of bullfights said that after a bullfight, the fan should feel a little sad.

I’ve taken my twin brother and a few friends to bullfights in Tijuana. None hated it. Only one loved it and went back. Before you go, you can’t know how you’ll react. And as a cultural event alone, it’s worthwhile going, if only once.