lucky gorings

“What he’s got is one of those lucky gorings.” His gloved hand pointed to the straight line of the torn flesh. “It’s as good a goring as one could wish for if you were wishing for a good goring. The bad ones are the ones that tear in and change angles. Those are the messy ones, the dangerous ones. But I don’t want you to think this is nothing. It is the result of foolishness. Not the beast’s, but the man’s. The beast is led into the ring – the man walks in himself.”


Shadow of a Bull by Maia Wojciechowska

Tercio: third; the bullfight is divided into three parts, the tercio de varas, that of the pic, tercio de banderillas and tercio del muerte or third of death.


Ernest Hemingway. Death in the Afternoon. Simon & Schuster. 1932. p.454

rebellion against death

Killing cleanly and in a way which gives you aesthetic pleasure and pride has always been one of the greatest enjoyments of a part of the human race.... One of its greatest pleasures... is the feeling of rebellion against death which comes from its administering. Once you accept the rule of death thou shalt not kill is an easily and a naturally obeyed commandment. But when a man is still in rebellion against death he has pleasure in taking to himself one of the Godlike attributes; that of giving it. This is one of the most profound feelings in those men who enjoy killing.


Ernest Hemingway. Death in the Afternoon. Simon & Schuster. 1932. p.232, 233

It is impossible to believe the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure, classic beauty that can be produced by a man, and animal and a piece of scarlet serge draped over a stick. If you do not choose to believe it possible and want to regard it all as nonsense you may be able to prove you are right by going to a bullfight in which nothing magical occurs; and there are many of them; enough always so you will be able to prove it to your own satisfaction. But if you should ever see the real thing you would know it. It is an experience that either you will have in your life or you will never have. However, there is no way you can be sure you will ever see a great faena in bullfighting unless you go to many bullfights. But if you ever do see one, finished by a great estocada, you will know it and there will be many things you will forget before it will be gone.


Ernest Hemingway. Death in the Afternoon. Simon & Schuster. 1932. p.207

The Spaniards say, torear es parar, remplar y mandar. That is, in real bullfighting the matador should remain still, should measure the speed of the bull by the movement of his wrists and arms holding the cloth, and should dominate and direct the bull's course.


Ernest Hemingway. Death in the Afternoon. Simon & Schuster. 1932. p.152

The best bullfight to see first would be a novillada and the best place to see a novillada is Madrid.


Ernest Hemingway. Death in the Afternoon. Simon & Schuster. 1932. p.35

The bullfight is not a sport in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the word, that is, it is not an equal contest or an attempt at an equal contest between a bull and a man. Rather it is a tragedy; the death of the bull, which is played, more or less well, by the bull and the man involved and in which there is danger for the man abut certain death for the animal.


Ernest Hemingway. Death in the Afternoon. Simon & Schuster. 1932. p.16

At the first bullfight I ever went to I expected to be horrified and perhaps sickened by what I had been told would happen to the horses. Everything I had read about the bull ring insisted on that point; most people who wrote of it condemned bullfighting outright as a stupid brutal business, but even those that spoke well of it as an exhibition of skill and as a spectacle deplored the use of the horses and were apologetic about the whole thing. The killing of the horses in the ring was considered indefensible. I suppose, from a modern moral point of view, that is, a Christian point of view, the whole bullfight is indefensible; there is certainly much cruelty, there is always danger, either sought or unlooked for, and there is always death, and I should not try to defend it mow, only to tell honestly the things I have found true about it. To do this I must be altogether frank, or try to be, and if those who read this decide with disgust that it is written by some one who lacks their, the readers', fineness of feeling I can only plead that this may be true. But whoever reads this can only truly make such a judgement when he, or she, has seen the things that are spoken of and knows truly what their reactions to them would be.


Ernest Hemingway. Death in the Afternoon. Simon & Schuster. 1932. p.1

AFICIONADO: one who understands bullfights in general and in detail and still cares for them.

Dangerous Summer by Ernest Hemingway, 1960. p.209

regular apointment with death

He knew all these things coldly and completely and our problem was to reduce the time that he had to think about them to the minimum necessary for him to prepare himself to face them before entering the ring. This was Antonio's regular apointment with death that we had to face each day. Any man can face death but to be committed to bring it as close as possible while performing certain classic movements and do this again and again and again and then deal it out yourself with a sword to an animal weighing half a ton which you love is more complicated than just facing death. It is facing your performance as a creative artist each day and your necessity to function as a skillful killer. Antonio had to kill quickly and mercifully and still give the bull one full chance at him when he crossed over the horn at least twice a day.


Dangerous Summer by Ernest Hemingway, 1960. p.141

Of course, bullfighting has elements of brutality, but so does surgery, hunting and the income tax.


James A. Michener, Introduction to Dangerous Summer by Ernest Hemingway, 1960. p.18

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.


Erica Jong (American writer and feminist, 1942)