Happy San Fermin! If you

Happy San Fermin!

If you are running, bueno suerte!

We celebrated early with our Iberian barbecue. We began at 4pm with tapas and brought the paella out of the oven at 11:30pm.

For the first time ever at one of my San Fermin parties, we actually watched bullfight videos (by the request of others, too). Saw a great performance by Enrique Ponce, in which the bull was granted the rare indulto. Magnificent animal matched with brilliance on the part of the matador! This sort of combination yields breathtaking results. I think that all of the inexperienced folks watching were drawn into the whole thing.

Being with folks who are experiencing the bulls for the first time always makes me think of when I was turned on to bullfighting at the age of 12 in Spain. The first bullfight I went to was in Madrid, and it was a mixed bag. I wasn't immediately gripped by it, but some spark was ignited, since I wanted to learn more about it. In the course of the next week I read Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. The next weekend I could not go to a bullfight, but watched one on TV. It all came together a bit more. The next week I was dragging my parents to Plaza Monumental de Barcelona, where Emilio Muñoz, Paco Ojeda and Espartaco were performing. That did it. I have been an aficionado ever since.

For someone in the United States, being an aficionado involves more reading books, more watching videos, and more email exchanges than actually getting out to the bulls. I like reading about the bullfights, but so far no one has written a satisfactory poetics of toreo. Most books about bullfighting tend towards the overly romantic, often with an Anglo trying to demonstrate that he is the great expert of bullfighting and showing very little knowledge of poetics or aesthetics. I still love Death in the Afternoon, but it falls into this category (with some rather amusing howlers - how Hemingway could have gotten some of the things wrong that he did is amazing).

Even among aficionados there are some crazy ideas. One fellow on the Mundo Taurino list insists all sorts of mystical nonsense about the bull recognizing the inevitability of its death (from a fellow very smitten with post-Endarkenment philosophy, nonetheless), another thinks that the bull has precise control of the horns to the point of practically being able to crochet with the things, and so forth.

A corrective is needed, based on solid science, poetics, and aesthetics. Every so often I think I should give it a go, but I have other projects with higher priority, and the market for such a thing would be minimal. If any of you, dear readers, want to take the task up, let me know, and I will point you in the right direction.