In einer eMail vom 7/25/2005 7:55:31 PM W. Europe Daylight Time schreibt
jfarmer@goldsword.com:
Please, _try_ to make it non-political or judgmental.
I'm not entirely sure what the factors involved in strip length changes
were; or even when a formalized strip was introduced; the physical environments
that have shaped fencing would make a great for a study, and adds another
reason why the overwhelming preoccupation of fencing history with Medieval and
Renaissance swordsmanship needs correcting with 19th and early 20th century
research and thinking.....thinking.... But a cautionary note: "Judgments" are
part of thinking and if we weren't "judgmental" we wouldn't be thinking
beings. As for politics, well, sorry, but fencing has always been "political."
It has until recently stood for very explicit public performance of values.
Those values are now mostly implicit. I know that makes some uneasy, I think I
understand what you are asking for, but it is simply not possible.
"Political" doesn't mean fencers always have a big "VOTE SO-AND-SO" on their backs.
It means they might have the equivalent and not know it, and that's bad in
my book.
Now some speculation--and it involves what in the past were public or
political values: The shorter formal piste (here I rely on Walter) is probably an
artifact of the dueling ground and aversion to the retreat. On my own, I
suggest it might also have something to do with the scale of built environments
in the past. The duel was prerogative assumed not just by aristocracies--a
political class if there ever was one--but by the small 19th century political
classes of bourgeois Europe; it was developed and retained by Central and
Eastern European officer corps for explicitly political reasons as well as
implicit ones (to prove they were better than middle class politicians and editors,
as well as the rest of the unwashed! Physical scale of environments--fencing
halls and so on--introduces a whole new complex set of issues.
Longer pistes maybe--the connection's open to a kind of post hoc fallacy
criticism--are a consequence of competition from the early 20th century on.
That competition was nationalist, hence political. It is still very, very
political where I live, not as much as it used to be but it still expresses values
recognized as having political implications.
But does this hypothesis--politics or "culture" aside--mean the longer piste
by itself "ruined" fencing? Certainly not. Richard Cohen makes a case that
competition fencing raised cheating to a new level, too. But I would
suggest--only suggest--that may have driven tactical changes in combination with
other things. It sure doesn't correlate with electrical scoring, since there
were 28-meter strips by the late 20s! I can only offer my plaint above--we
need to devote a lot more time to real historical work on the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, and get beyond exquisite citation of this or that
authority, asking Why? questions.
There's another way to assess strip lengths, and I suggested it. What we
found here--and from observing sport fencers free bouting without juice and
strip (rare here but it happens) as well as our own practice--was that the scale
of a fencing encounter shrinks from the 14-meter standard to about 6-8
meters, usually less than 8, when you don't set up a piste. Not always, but
usually. That's all. Now, you could argue--I do--that this is a "natural" space.
You could also argue or add (two different things) that it also reflects a
diminishment of competitive energies. It qualifies Walter G's brief
assessment in his rule book. It is perfectly okay (whatever that means) to suggest
that for "classical" fencing this might be important today: The more
aggressive sport tactics cannot be accommodated by by a 20-foot strip (6.3 meters).
This is by no means a "historical" connection, a
long-strip-caused-this-in-the-past assertion. It is a
you-can't-do-what-they-do-now-no-matter-how-it-developed-if... proposition. I'll spare everybody the terms from logic. Is
that judgmental? Yes, because we don't want certain tactics. Is it
political? It could be.
Bill Leckie
_flanconade/soestfechten@aol.com_ (mailto:flanconade/soestfechten@aol.com)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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