Death in the afternoon

There is a whole school of bullfighting in which grace is developed until it is the one essential and the passing of the horn past the man's belly eliminated as far as possible, which was inaugurated and developed by Rafael El Gallo. El Gallo was too great and sensitive an artist to be a complete bullfighter so he gradually avoided, as much as possible, those parts of the bullfight which had to do with or were capable of bringing on death, either of the man or the bull, but most especially of the man. In this way he developed a way of working with the bull in which grace, picturesqueness, and true beauty of movement replaced and avoided the dangerous classicism of the bullfight as he found it. Juan Belmonte took such of Gallo's inventions as he wanted and combined them with the classic style and then developed the two into his own great revolutionary style. Gallo was as much of an inventor as was Belmonte, he had more grace, and if he would have had the cold, passionate, wolf-courage of Belmonte there could never have been a greater bullfighter. The nearest you come to that combination was Joselito, his brother, and his only fault was that everything in bullfighting was so easy for him to do that it was difficult for him to give it the emotion that was always supplied by Belmonte's evident physical inferiority, not only to the animal he was facing but to every one who was working with him and most of those who were watching him. Watching Joselito was like reading about D'Artagnan when you were a boy. You did not worry about him finally because he had too much ability. He was too good, too talented. He had to be killed before the danger ever really showed. Now the essence of the greatest emotional appeal of bullfighting is the feeling of immortality that the bullfighter feels in the middle of a great faena and that he gives to the spectators. He is performing a work of art and he is playing with death, bringing it closer, closer, closer, to himself, a death that you know is in the horns because you have the canvas-covered bodies of the horses on the sand to prove it. He gives the feeling of his immortality, and, as you watch it, it becomes yours. Then when it belongs to both of you, he proves it with the sword.

When you have a bullfighter to whom bullfighting is as easy as it was to Joselito he ca

One of Gallo's inventions was the pase de la muerte or the pass of the dead one. He used this pass to start his faenas and it has been adopted by most bullfighters as the first pass in almost any faena. It is the one pass in bullfighting that any person who could dominate his nerves enough to see the bull approach could learn to make, yet it is tremendously effective to see. The matador goes out toward the bull and cites him, standing in profile, the muleta, spread by the sword, held in both hands, at the height of his waist somewhat as a baseball player holds his bat when facing the pitcher. If the bull does not charge the matador advances two or three strides and again stands still, his feet together, the muleta spread wide. When the bull charges the man stands still as though he were dead until the bull reaches the muleta, then he raises it slowly and the bull goes by him, usually going up in the air after the muleta so that you see the man standing straight still and the bull going up into the air at an angle, his impetus then carrying him away from the man. It is easy and safe to make because it is usually given in the direction of the natural querencia of the bull, so that he goes by as though going to a fire, and because, instead of a small lure of scarlet cloth as in the natural on which the man must focus the bull's attention, a great spread like a jib is offered to the bull and he sees it instead of the man. He is not dominated and controlled, his charge is merely taken advantage of.

Gallo, too, was a master of gracious passes made before the bull's horns, passes made with both hands, changing the muleta from one hand to the other, sometimes behind his back, passes that started as though they were to be naturals and instead, the man spi

Chicuelo is a present-day bullfighter who possesses much of Gallo's repertoire of working before the face of the bull. Vicente Barrera does them all too, but his nervous footwork and his electric speed of execution give no idea of the pure grace of Gallo or the skill of Chicuelo although Barrera is improving his style and execution greatly.

All this flowery work is for bulls that will not pass or for the second part of a faena, for the matador to show his domination of a bull and his inventive grace. To work only at the head of a bull that will pass, no matter how effectively, gracefully or with what invention it is done is to deprive the spectators of the real part of bullfighting, the man deliberately passing the bull's horns as close and as slowly as he can past his own body and to substitute a series of graceful tricks, valuable as ornaments to a faena, for the sincere danger of the faena itself.

The present-day bullfighter who dominates the bulls most completely with his muleta, who masters them quickest whether they are brave or cowardly and then executes most often all the classic and dangerous passes, the natural with the left hand and the pase de pecho which are the base of sincere bullfighting, and yet is excellent in the picturesque and graceful work before the bull's horns is Marcial Lalanda. At the start of his career his style was faulty, he twisted and corkscrewed with the cape and his naturals were not at all natural but forced, made very much on the bias, and affected looking. He has steadily improved his style, until it is now excellent with the muleta, he has become much more robust in health, and with his great knowledge of bulls, and his very great intelligence he can give an adequate and interesting performance with any bull that comes out of the toril. He has lost most of the apathy that was his first characteristic, he has been gored severely three times and it has given him more rather than less courage and his seasons of 1929, 1930 and 1931 were those of a great bullfighter.

Manuel Jiminez, Chicuelo, and Antonio Marquez are each capable of giving a complete, pure, and classical faena with the muleta when the bull is without difficulty and the man able to conquer his nerves. Felix Rodriguez and Manolo Bienvenida are both masters with the muleta, able to reduce a difficult bull and profit by the candor and bravery of an easy bull, but Rodriguez has not been well and Bienvenida, as I explained in another chapter, should not really be judged until his ability to dominate his nerves and reflexes after his first serious wounding has been proven. Vicente Barrera is an able dominator of bulls with a tricky style in all of the passes in which the bull goes completely by the man, but he is steadily improving his way of working and he may, if he keeps on, become a very satisfactory performer. He has in him the ability to be a great bullfighter. He has talent, a natural sense of bullfighting and ability to see the fight as a whole, extraordinary reflexes and a good physique, but he had for a long time such an overwhelming conceit that it was easier for him to subsidize a press to praise his defects than it was for him to face those defects and correct them. He is at best in the picturesque work at the face of the bull and especially in one particular ayudado por bajo in which he imitates Joselito, where the sword and muleta are held together pointed straight down and the man turns the bull with a slightly ridiculous but delicate lifting motion as though he were with extended hands together stirring a great kettle of soup with a furled umbrella.