Let’s face it. Fencing is a dead activity. At no time in my life will I ever be called upon to fight a duel, let alone a duel with swords. As a combat art, fencing is a technique without a purpose. So, other than to be pretentious (which is an end in itself) why do I learn, study and practice the fighting styles of a bunch of dead white dudes?
I’m going to discuss this problem through an analogy to languages (another passion of mine, by the way). In this way, I hope to diffuse some of the emotion that seems to gather around this topic and hopefully make my argument a little more clear.
Dead languages such as Latin are called so because they are no longer spoken in the general course of life. They are no longer dynamic, living entities capable of change, development and growth. Living languages, on the other hand, are in a continual process of evolution as their speakers interact with each other to negotiate meaning and understanding. New concepts are adopted from outside the language and new forms are invented to adapt to changing conditions.
Context is the key difference. In what sets of circumstances is the language practiced? What alternatives communication strategies or other languages are applicable to these contexts?
Latin under the Roman Republic and Empire was a dynamic, evolving beast. Even during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it maintained itself as the language of education, science and religion. New words, phrases and manners of expression in the language were invented to accommodate changes in social and political thought and the sciences. Only with the devlopement of popular media such as the mass printing of books and newspapers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and radio and television in the twentieth was Latin toppled from its pedestal in favour of the vernacular.
Anyone today who studies Latin either does so out of nostalgia for the past or to use the language as a tool for some current endeavour.
The first group aim produces study groups who are concerned with the proper and correct (real or perceived) form of the language. Using the language can become entirely secondary to “understanding” it. At the end of a life time of study, you can stand tall and say proudly something along the lines of “I understand 100% correctly how Cicero spoke.” Good for you. To the outside world, you have achieved nothing other than becoming a hermit.
The second group aim to give the language a living context, a reason for existance and, more importantly, a way of attracting new blood into the fold of those who want to learn Latin. For the purists, usage of the language may not always conform to that of the great writers of Antiquity. It may destroy many of the features which the purists find most attractive. In the end, you may claim that you have introduced the language to many more people than the purist and that through your actions others have gained appreciation of Latin impossible without immediate contact with the language.
What does this mean for historical swordplay?
In brief, unless we can find a living context which we can wrap around historical fencing, it is dead. Studying the Masters and doing no more is nothing but navel-gazing. Even the annual displays of technical prowess so common at medieval and renaissance fairs do nothing to answer the fundamental question asked by the public: “Why do you do it?”
To my mind, competition is the obvious response. I kind-a hope it’s not the only answer but I can’t imagine another at this point (becauase I am a navel-gazer by inclination). Competition makes learning swordplay a dynamic and purposeful activity. It takes the teachings and techniques of the Masters and puts them to the test in a similar way to how they would have been tested during the period.
In this way, we answer the public’s question. Why? So we can use the techniques we study in a vital and living context.
More importantly, we have something to offer in return. It is only by showing others that what we do has value can we hope to inspire our passion into the next generation.
Give the suggestion of *competition* as key, surely any arguments for and against any sport could apply to that of fencing.
I was surprised at the occasionaly defensive and beleagured tone here, particularly in lines like:
- “diffuse some of the emotion that seems to gather around this topic”
- “It is only by showing others that what we do has value can we hope to inspire our passion into the next generation.”
People don’t tend to feel they have to justify all manner of, on the face of it, absurd activities involving intense competition over various shaped balls (although I’ve been taken aback by the way this changes over time: for every year after my 20s that I admit to still playing soccer I am met with increasingly confused and even hostile responses, as if I’m confessing to some criminal pursuit). Generally sport is seen as a healthy social and physical pursuit – and that’s where I would have placed fencing.
And if you add ‘historical’ to the fencing, you’ve got the added bonus of having a link to a huge and immensly popular body of literature and history. Medievalism (albeit often in the laughable veneer of many a fantasy novel) is alive and selling by the shrinking rainforest, and while pre-industrial events did happen, ahem, some time ago, there are myriad contemporaries keen to discuss and study them right now. Indeed, in the last (and I predict in the next) twenty years, more time, interest and discussion has been consistently poured into something like the Crusades than in some transiently ‘relevant’ popular TV show (what *was* all the fuss about Grey’s Anatomy or whatever?).
It’s a huge indictment on our impoverished culture, but when I play soccer I don’t have the added bonus of being able to relate this to so many novels that I’ve read or events that I’ve researched (although it does give me a passport to engage in football conversations with a vast number of interested people worldwide).
You didn’t mention another aspect that I think is cogent; that of *craft*. In any sport there is something intrinsically beautiful and satisfying about a technique flawlessly executed. The perfect through ball, the ideal faint, the beautifully timed counter. Surely much of sport is searching for these absolutes, and praising them in others. To watch a master dancer, musician, fencer or footballer is pleasure itself, particularly if you have some appreciation of how good they are because of your own experience in that field. Of course you want to look into what previous exponents have to say, and who better to talk of fencing than someone who lived in a time where their lives often depended on their skills?
I wonder – who is attacking historical fencing that sees you feel the need to defend it? Is it related to the passing the baton concern – is the next generation too concerned with AFL or Halo, so numbers are dwindling at the local tourney? Does the popularity of swordplay in film give you hope, or is ‘Crouching Tiger’ something that causes anyone who’s actually plied a sword to cringe and shake their head?
Perhaps it’s because there’s no shortage of players, or perhaps it’s basic selfishness, but I can’t say that whether the sports that I’ve enjoyed continue has ever really concerned me. Football is titanic (the world cup makes the olympics look like a backyard cricket match). Then again, I played a lot of squash in the 80s and 90s, but courts everywhere are being turned into gyms and climbing walls. Maybe a little sentimental sigh, but I can’t say it’s kept me up at nights.
Hey, none of this is meant to be critical, but I thought you might enjoy *some* response (I just about always enjoy getting comments), and I hope this musing goes somewhere towards that.
Yes, I love the comments. They don’t happen frequently enough even though I know the numbers of people (not huge numbers but always surprisingly large) who read my blog.
Maybe I’m not beleaguered or defensive but simply frustrated. For instance, there’s a number of longsword historical fencing groups in and around Brisbane. None of them talk to each other and I find that truly bizarre. We’re a small hobby/sport/etc as it is and these artificial barriers impoverish all.
The revival and re-creation of western martial arts is a passion of mine and a large part of it is the interaction with our forebears and with what is increasingly being called the western tradition. I do want to see this continue into the future. This is another variant of a topic I know we’ve discussed before: how to interest kids in literature and history. I want people to understand our shared history and shared culture. I find that those without such an interest or understanding shallow and petty. Arrogant? Elitist? Possibly but I’m too old to concern myself with their opinions.
On consideration, there’s two aspects of the hobby/sport/etc. No everyone who participates is or should be interested in either to the same degree.
1) history and literature: working out what the masters meant to say in their texts by in-depth knowledge of the language and context of the period (unsurprisingly, this is one that does it for me).
2) combat craft: developing a competent and coherent martial style and understanding under what circumstances it works and when it doesn’t (competition helps here in particular).
The second aspect requires the first in order to work out what to do: “OK. I’m holding a sword. What now?” The first requires the second in order to refine which possibility of the range of meanings in the text is bio-mechanically and martially effective. When the two aspects interact well, the symbiosis produces magic.
Underlying all of this, to my mind, is the notion of a community of like-minded individuals. The fact that some people who claim to love that which I love do not feel the same way, saddens me.