In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

BULLFIGHTING 57
the famous toreador Rafael, known as "El Gallo," insists that nobody
will ever be able to control the bull completely and thus that sudden
changes of fate are inevitable. All of his unique knowledge about bulls
and bullfighting could not protect Rafael's brother Joselito, who is already
canonized and remembered as the greatest toreador of all time,
from receiving a fatal goring: "You don't know anything. It's all a
question of luck. My brother knew more than anybody, and look at him
now" (Blanco y Negro, 143). On the other hand, the final stage of the
bullfight obliges the matador to provoke, for one last time, an outburst
of the bull's potentially lethal force-and this very movement becomes
lethal for the bull because it enables the bullfighter to plunge his sword
into the animal's neck. Romero, the young bullfighter in Hemingway's
novel The Sun Also Rises, masterfully enacts this oscillation between
seeking death and imposing death: "He profiled directly in front of the
bull, drew the sword out of the folds of the muleta and sighted along the
blade. The bull watched him. Romero spoke to the bull and tapped one
of his feet. The bull charged and Romero waited for the charge, the
muleta held low, sighting along the blade, his feet firm" (Hemingway,
229). Emphasizing even more strongly the dual nature of the death
element-a threat for the bullfighter which he turns into the animal's
death-Henri de Montherlant describes how Alban, the hero of Les
Bestiaires, exposes himself to lethal danger with a first, unsuccessful
estacada, before he successfully deals the final blow to the bull's body:
For a moment, he saw the ray of light, his sword, between his hand and
the bull's back, glittering with golden blood, like the longer ray that,
coming from the sun, struck the very body of Mithras. The shock
knocked his body over onto the bull's left flank, and resonated in his
wrist, making him think that he had broken it. He rolled over on the
ground and stood up again, holding his wrist ... The beast pushed the
sword away. He picked it up without confusion, knowing that this was
nothing but a slight hitch and that the next thrust would be decisive ...
He fell on the animal like a falcon, and then stood up, reeling, his hand
on his heart, which was choking him. He stood before the beast and
gasped for breath. The fight was over now." (Montherlant, 224)
Until the last gesture in a corrida, man's domination over nature must
include the danger of becoming nature's victim. In an interesting analogy
with boxing, illustrated by the frequent boxing metaphors in de scrip-