In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

BOXING 51
jealousy, but defeat makes the bullfighter even more attractive to Brett
than his triumphs at the corrida:
It seems the bullfighter fellow was slttmg on the bed. He'd been
knocked down about fifteen times, and he wanted to fight some more.
Brett held him and wouldn't let him get up. He was weak, but Brett
couldn't hold him, and he got up. Then Cohn said he wouldn't hit him
again. Said he couldn't do it. Said it would be wicked. So the bullfighter
chap sort of rather staggered over to him. Cohn went back against the
wall. "So you won't hit me?" "No," said Cohn, "I'd be ashamed to."
So the bullfighter fellow hit him just as hard as he could in the face,
and then sat down on the floor. He couldn't get up, Brett said. Cohn
wanted to pick him up and carry him to bed. He said if Cohn helped
him he'd kill him, and he'd kill him anyway this morning if Cohn
wasn't out of town. Cohn was crying, and Brett had told him off, and
he wanted to shake hands. (Hemingway, 210)
In the ritual of bullfighting, victory and defeat do not exist. And
although they do exist at the championship level of boxing, victory and
defeat are not what the fascination with boxing is all about. Rather,
boxing is about "Sein zum Tode" ("being-toward-death") and "Vorlaufen
zum Tode" ("anticipation of death"; Heidegger, par. 7ff.). [see
Immanence = Transcendence (Death)] Boxing has the potential to make
death present to the spectators and, if Heidegger is right, it may thus help
free them from multiple fears by which they unconsciously try to avoid
the awareness of death in their everyday lives (par. 51,53). Death is an
integral part of man's physical life, since it brings that life to an end, and
the anticipation of death therefore cannot be a function exclusively of
the mind. This is an aspect of the existential analysis of death that
Heidegger does not discuss. In order to imagine death, one must have
the experience of exposing one's body to the threat of its destruction.
Could this be why spectators are in awe of prizefighters, whose bodies
bear the traces of almost lethal violence? Might this explain why journalists
openly express their disappointment with a title bout that does
not end in a knockout? "It was a disappointing transfer of a heavyweight
title in one respect. The battle did not end in a knockout. Indeed, through
its ten rounds the struggle held not even a knockdown. This was due to
the fact that Tunney is not a finishing or destructive hitter" (New York
Times, September 24). The spectators' sympathy never belongs to those