IS GREAT STRENGTH GENIUS?

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7416, 30 May 1902, Page 2

IS GREAT STRENGTH GENIUS?

A STRONG MAN MOM RUSSIA (By MARY NUGENT^ in tie " Daily Mail."l A wonderful enduring dreary this dream of man's to be strong 1 Every civilisation has seen it, but it * s rather at the close of a race's development, when man, intellectually and morally, has got about as far as he can get without takinig oft' once more from the very ground, that strength is most worshipped. With us to-day the signs are not wanting that to be strong is become a feverish passion. Never, surely, were there so many systems open to Englishmen as at this moment. Everybody publishes "results" after three^ after eiz^ after eighteen months' training, and it can be admitted that chests will open and the biceps does bulge in agratifying manner. You can make yourself a shapelier human, being; you can carry yourself . better and replace " pudding" with "beef," and! it is a happy event to the eager amateur that he can welcome the birth of a new .muscle about every six weeks. But how widely different from all this is strength — real, magnificent, nature-strength? It stands quite- as far. away from induced development as " ge'nius " stands from mere " brains." Strength, such as I mean, is one of the forms genius takes when it expresses itself physically. It knows not why or how it is — it_simply is. That is the irritatinig quality it shares with genius. STRONG MEN BORN, NOT MADE. But putting the physically cultured amateur quite aside ? and looking now at the professional " strong man z " lam disposed to suspect an immense difference also in the mentality of the " made " strong \jnau and) the born strong man. The made strong man 13 usually stupid; the born,- strong man is not necessarily stupid at all. He hag not 'had to force' one part of his development and thus starve the other of its due nutriment. The man who makes himself into a " strong man " robs from" his intellect the force — perhaps the very blood — that would go to develop this. It is not merely that he does not take time to study with his brain because he is busy training his muscles — for there is a certain moral development of brain that goes on in normally-occupied people quite apart from what they " study." It is that his devotion to his muscles and their draft upon his powers retards even this normal development. ■ The brain not only does not grow — it shrivels or becomes absorbed. Take such a man', as George Hackenschmidt, now appearing at the Tivoli Music Hall. He shows you natural-born, strength* in all its wonderful supremacy. He has not made ihimself strong ; he woke up, so to speak, six yea/9 ago and 'found himself strong. This seems to me far more excitiing than to have laid on layer after layer of muscle by painstaking effort. I know that one ought not to say so. There is a convention that what man consciously does is much more to be admired than what man unconsciously dtoes. This convention arises from the habit man has of constantly magnifying his own achievement, so that his insignificance in comparison with Nature shall not overwhelm him quite. But to have come straight from Nature's workshop gives, whether with beauty, wits, or strength, a charm that no applied craft or artifice can ever equal. We acknowledge it with wit and beauty, where it is more frequently the case ; why not with strength, where it is nowadays much rarer? THE RUSSIAN LION. There is a -tremendous fascination to me in looking at the things Nature has done alone — all 'by herself. Tfie only man-made thing that impressed me to the same .extent as; a Nature-work was the xock temple of Abou-Simbel, with the !four seated .giant figures carven in red sandstone looking over Nile's broad riband and the red Nubian sand ; but then Nature had' helped, man very largely there. . In England it is usual to Regard admiration of the strong man as a rather unrefined taste. It is, therefofte, useful, I think, to discriminate between the adlmiration of the made* " strong man " and the born "strong man." . I have seen both, and my admiration in the one case, if th* subject is not too repulsive for ma to have it at. all, is a totally different feeling from my admiration, in the other. When the Russian Lion comes upon the stage you see something unique. His is so perfect a figure, from the classio point of view. Only twenty-four years of age, with (his fair hair cut " en brosse," his face reminds you (although he springs from a very different class, for Ms relatives are in the Russian Army and Na<vy) of the simple, good-tempered peasants gathered in- a 'gazing ttoong outside every railway station in Russia. He, hailing from the. bleak and mist-hung Baltic shores, has all the naivete of manner and pose of & creature who is natural, wiho ihas mot had! to think N and labour to "become." Hia arms bang loosely, ids hands up-curving 1 ready for the clutch, standing only sft Sin, his 50;n cheat is yet not at all excessive, and his legs — that terrible difficulty with the machine-made "strong man" — are magnificent. He has none of the-rnanner.'s of tftie professional. His quiets bow — of the head only— to the audience is the bow of the smart young officer in Petersburg at this moment. EXPERT CRITICISM. "I cannot understand," he says, "your men here ; they have such tremendous muccular development— and yet they, are sot weak." A serious indictment of our systems, this. . "And they are so slow! Touch, them" — to* gives a flick of his Jxand— "and they seem to stagger backward. A strong man should leap andl always arrive at a ♦ready.'" : He illustrates this, and you are reminded 1 of some great cat at play. Quaintly, enough, Hackenschmidt much admires our "muscular charts," as some of these men- are called. He may even hanker after a figure irv which one could chalk the name of every muscle upon the muscle itself — but if h$ Ivaid it, good-bye to his physical beauty and his athletics. For he is an all-round nthlet-e. He can make 1 "grand circles" on the bar, he can throw back-somersaults; most marvellous of all, ho can jump anore than his own height. Now that is real weigliit-lifting 1 , a.nd the only kind that is of practical use. Hackensebmidt weighs something Tiadicr. sixteen stone, and he can pick that up. and' carry it over a.n obstacle close on 6ft from the ground; . ; Yet he las little to say of systems, not because Jie will not tell you what hii town; is, but be has sot got one. He runs a pood deal, he loves free gymnastics, but be looks ruefully at his right arm' ; th« triceps' and deltoid rise to the immense trapeziums like foot -hills to ths» arete of some great Alp. It is r.ot so big as it was before he worked so 'hard. By practice be> has lost Fame fraction of thoie ♦nineteen' inches. He is not yet at the top of his strength, though his huge scapulee htove never felt the ground beneath "an 1 opponent. . His progress aeross Europe has been one unbroken triumph. HIS CHALLENGE. Hackensc'hmidt offers to take on three mEB — six men — one after the other; he) offers JSIOO to anyone who can -stand- uj> to him for fifteen minutes. Yet has method is so pretty,- Ills •rt'lic-le. deifteanour so goodtempered, a.nd iis use of his' great powers • so controlled that at no moment in Jua per-

formance is there anything unsightly or brubal to bo feared. Such a man raises the great sport of wrestling to the level of any of our great national sports — a level, one may admit, from which some notable performers have regrettably lowered it in the past. Andi all the time his pride and pleasure in himself have nothing to say to the hot, jealous vanity occasionally met with in the ordinary professional. Hercules Ajmself was born 1 , not made, and he cannot '.have been proud in the wrong; way. Speaking of photographs in the studio* of the sculptor-photographer, Miss Marie Leon, where lie was being ta&cn, I inquired what was -his favourite pose — the position in. which he likes best to see himself. / Quick as a flash — for he has much, wife in conveTsation — he replies • v / "On the ground — with, the otner mani underneath!" .->' .