'El Sol es el Mejor Torero'

Leading the Arts section of the New York Times Thursday was the headline: “In a Spanish Province, a Twilight of the Matadors.”

The article outlined what might just be the final performance—ever—of a bullfight in the Catalonia region of Spain. The great and mysterious matador Jose Tomas (he of the double-barreled first name), once retired at the height of his fame and prestige, packed the 19,000 seat Plaza Monumental, the first sellout there in over 20 years. But outside the dust and the brick of the plaza, the Catalan Parliament is considering a referendum that would ban bullfighting in the region, which includes the capital, Barcelona.

Bullfighting is considered a Spanish tradition, and the Catalans of the region are largely opposed to being seen as Spanish. For them, it is both culture and politics. They have, in recent years, gained plenty of momentum and support from animal rights activists, who for reasons of their own decry the long, bloody history of the bullfight.

Now, I do not pretend to fully grasp and understand the Spanish or Catalan people, and my own knowledge of bullfighting is limited. I have never attended such a spectacle, as they are not held here in our country. However, if they were, I would very much wish to see one.

And should the Catalan Parliament pass this referendum, I would mourn the loss.

For it seems to me that what we stand to lose, this brutal, violent sport, is not what it appears at first, certainly not to the outsider, the non-Spaniard. I fear that it's disappearance might only be understood in distant retrospect, on a day and at an hour when we no longer recall what living is for and all that we remember is a fading echo of something that once reminded us we were alive.

You can count on one hand the places you can go to see a violent death.

Our theaters, what Bradbury called the “cave of winds,” do not count. For the winds that blow here are not real and do not scratch at the skin or tangle in the nose or sting at the eyes. Neuroscientists have shown that the areas of the brain activated when watching film are the same activated during sleep. The brain processes film as a dream. Literally. And thus our notion of filmic catharsis vanishes before our waking eyes as we come to understand that death on screen never was and never can be a rehearsal for death.

Actual death, especially violent death, is an experience your brain cannot hedge around. And while prescribing such viewing sounds morbid, there is something to be said for it within the bullfighting ring. For inside the ring, death is given meaning through ritual.

Bullfighting reminds us coldly and without any doubt that we will die, and that the color of life is red. It reminds us of what we wish most not to see and not to know, that every breath is fragile and someday those breaths will become ragged and run out.

The average person does not want to contemplate the end. In fact, the average person will do almost anything they can to prevent contemplation. This condition grows ever worse as years pass, when the fearlessness of youth gives way to the uncertainty of old age.

But a great deal of our disease with death comes directly from the fact that we have removed all references to it in our daily lives. We have no contact with it, and as with everything unknown we fear it all the more because we do not know it.

Consider:

Almost none of us hunt. What used to be a regular, daily interaction with death is gone. Someone else kills our food for us, and the vast majority of us do not know how that death occurs or what it looks like (and what little we do know comes almost exclusively from animal rights groups, who portray only the worst and most extreme cases which support their cause).

We do not even put down our own pets. We bring them to veterinary clinics so someone else may kill them for us.

We do not handle the bodies of the dead. Specialists take our loved ones away, clean the bodies, dress them for funeral, take them away and put them in the ground. We have no part in this, and thus we who possess the most duty to those who have died reject our obligation and turn it over to someone else.

We put our near-dead in housing facilities where we do not have to look at them, and once out of sight they remain also out of mind. Our fear of death is so strong we can not even face the reminder of our mortality the elderly bring with them.

We pass laws granting animals similar rights as humans, not out of an honest appeal to the sanctity of life, but because we can not bear the reality that for us to live something else must die.

It is nature's law that all that live must die, but we shield ourselves so completely from this truth that it creates psychosis. It creates undeniably bizarre and irrational behavior, such as sentencing minors to twenty years in prison for killing cats.

Worse, it creates a culture in which we cannot come to terms with truth, and the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

Bullfighting is a candle in the dark. It stands as a last remnant of an earlier time when death walked more comfortably among us, and we knew its face better because we could not so easily turn away.

The ritual of death within the bullfighting ring, however, is only half the story. Death is the tale, but the matador provides the context.

Proper bullfighting is an enactment of the proper way to live. The proper bullfight, and a true matador, illustrate courage in the face of danger, grace in the face of death, calm and poise and control of emotion when it is needed most, and honor in flawless execution. There is no pride in fakery over true form, no honor in showmanship over character, no dignity in ends outweighing means.

Killing the bull is not the point. The point is an honorable death, which can only be achieved by honorable and correct form.

The bullfight, though it brings us face to face with death, is not about death.

It is about life. About how to live knowing that we will die.

To live correctly, rightly, so that we may meet death with grace.

So I hope the Catalan Parliament chooses wisely, and that if it does not such decisions to not spill over to other regions where the bullfight still holds on. For too often we try, in our ignorance, to abolish the very tools which we need most to live and to live well. Too often, because something is not pretty or because it is upsetting we believe it cannot be good.

But goodness and beauty should not be confused to be the same thing, nor good intentions and wisdom.

“The spectator going to a bullfight for the first time cannot expect to see the combination of the ideal bull and the ideal fighter for that bull which may occur not more than twenty times in all Spain in a season and it would be wrong for him to see that the first time. He would be so confused, visually, by the many things he was seeing that he could not take it all in with his eyes, and something which he might never see again in his life would mean no more to him than a regular performance. If there is any chance of his liking the bullfights the best bullfight for him to see first is an average one, two brave bulls out of six, the four undistinguished ones to give relief to the performance of the two excellent ones, three bullfighters, not too highly paid, so that whatever extraordinary things they do will look difficult rather than easy, a seat not too near the ring so that he will see the entire spectacle rather than, if he is too close, have it constantly broken up into bull and horse, man and bull, bull and man -- and a hot sunny day. The sun is very important. The theory, practice and spectacle of bullfighting have all been built on the assumption of the presence of the sun and when it does not shine over a third of the bullfight is missing. The Spanish say, ‘El sol es el mejor torero.’ The sun is the best bullfighter, and without the sun the best bullfighter is not there. He is like a man without a shadow.”

--From “Death in the Afternoon” by Ernest Hemingway