All artists must labor against the inclement will of their materials. The temper of the bull, the action of the cuadro de banderilleros, the mood of the crowd present the common problem of technique. What distinguishes the art of the torero is the immediacy of death. If the dancer slips, he fails and that is all: if the acrobat misses, he lands in a net: if the actor forgets his line, he hears the prompter. If the torero makes a false step, he is dead.
And the corrida will go on without him! for he is never alone. But he is alone with his skill and with his nerve. The slightest trace of haste or sign of fear will spoil the pure line of his style. If for an instant he breaks from the perfection of his pose to save his life, he loses his art. And if in that moment he elects rather to hold to his art, he may not live to reap its glory.
In recent years, two toreros of genius have arisen in Spain. One, Joselito, died on the horns of the bull: and the corrida went on despite the mourning of the nation. Joselito shared with Belmonte the summit of his art. He was an Apollonian classicist. Chance and inspiration were reduced to a minimum. He had control over the brute: but it appeared to be less of hypnosis than of reason. He operated on the bull with so cool an accuracy that the infuriated beast was soothed into an obedient opposition to the torero. Joselito was exact, unostentatious. But when he had coupled with his enemy, his art became ornate. He moved facilely, he gave delicate steps. When he was killed in Valencia, Spain lost the most exquisite if not the profoundest of her tragic dancers.
Nature has aided Belmonte with its abstruse law of compensation for inferiorities. In this abnormally frail body live courage, rhythmic articulation, dionysian gesture. When Belmonte steps out to meet his bull the mind falls into heroic channels. For the head is brooding. And when, as once when I saw him, there is a white bandage across the brow with a touch of blood upon it, the effect is magic.
Belmonte at his worst is an ugly boy vaguely at odds with an unwieldy task. At his best, he is the propounder of rapture. He does not abstract the individuality of the bull like Joselito, and then perform his cold objective art. He measures the foe. He accepts him as he is. He plunges into the bull’s fury. And thence, he rises to his high victory. There is always a moment in Belmonte’s act when he is lost. The crowd gasps. Gone altogether beneath the fury of the brute, he emerges. His body sways in the prepossessive grace of one who has come through death. His art is perhaps greater than that of Joselito because its content is greater. Joselito excluded from his victory the reality of defeat. Psychologically, he crushed his foe first, and then worked on him at ease. Belmonte begins by submitting to the bull’s might. And then, from this submission of the man, from this faltering of the god, he creates a form sculpturally superb.
[26] In the winter of 1924 the Dictator of Spain, Primo de Rivera, on his own initiative conferred the municipal suffrage upon women. They did not agitate for it; and it seems clear that if they exercise this new privilege it will be in the same spirit of compliance with which they accede to all the demands of men.
[27] This statement is not literally correct. The Basques became eminent navigators in the sixteenth century; their American settlements ranged from Canada to the Argentine. Yet, intellectually and spiritually, they remained, as a people, rooted.
[28] The Basque language.
[29] The bookies serve as middlemen between the individual bettors. Each bookie has a little rubber ball with a hole. In this hole, he places a slip of paper declaring the odds of the moment, and by tossing the ball to the man who has laid odds and to the man who has taken him on, the bet is established. The true pelota fan does not wager once: he wagers a dozen times as the game progresses: he concocts an intricate system of varying odds: his mind is on the betting and his balance: he is aware of the game only as the machine that automatically shifts the chances. Indeed, to go to a pelota match and observe the game, and refrain from betting, is so anomalous as to attract attention. The sport is still there: the Basque players enact it: but the Spanish public does not participate.
[30] Born 1870.