Summer of blood in the bull-rings

Press, 14 December 1985, Page 20

Summer of blood in the bull-rings

The Dangerous Summer. By Ernest Homingway. Hamish Hamilton, 1985. 134 pp, illustrations, glossary. $26.95.

(Reviewed by

Joan Curry)

You would have to be callous to enjoy this book. You would have to be able to ignore the subject and simply appreciate the writing. You would have to be able to block off that part that makes you civilised, that part that makes you compassionate. You would have to have a taste for blood coupled with a tendency to be roused by the excitement of crowds. In short, you would have to enjoy bull-fighting. The book is an account of a summer spent in Spain by Hemingway, his wife, and various companions. They travel through the country attending corridas to watch matadors and picadors and banderilleros torment los toros to death. The special excitement of this particular dangerous summer is the rivalry between two leading matadors, Antonio and Luis Miguel, in a series of

bloody encounters between man and beast. For this rivalry to keep its edge and for honour to be satisfied, it is necessary that the traditional bullfight is not contaminated by unscrupulous practices. That is, the bull should be given a fighting chance. He must not be tampered with to reduce his effectiveness in the ring. He must not have the tips of his horns cut off and the rest filed and shaped so that they look intact but feel tender and vulnerable. He must not be a weak, young bull made to appear full grown and muscled by grain feeding. He must not be a strong, frisky bull who enters the ring unsteadily because someone has dropped a heavy weight on to the small of his back, or because he has been doped or bled. He must not be a weak or sick or half-blind beast, normally given to novice matadors to practise on. Hemingway was a purist when it came to bullfighting, it seems. He

disapproved of the ’ trend towards adjusting, the odds in" favour of the man, “bullfighting almost destroyed by abuses, by the picadors bleeding the bull half dead, putting the cutting steel of the pic into the same hole and twisting and turning it, pic-ing into the spinal column, into the ribs, any place they could destroy the bull rather than try to pic him properly to tire him and steady him and bring his neck down so he would be able to be killed properly.” For Antonio and Luis Miguel, therefore, the contest must be properly dangerous and the bulls must be real bulls, strong and brave and defiant. The picadors stab and twist, and the horses they ride must do as they are told, even when they are hurt The banderilleros stick their bright darts into the bulls and dance away. Antonio and Luis Miguel and the other matadors, but especially Antonio and Luis Miguel, are clever and brave and graceful and are often wounded. The bulls die.