[ Posted by Janka ]
> Jopa 56 prosenttia suomalaisista on saanut maksumuistutuksen tai perintäkirjeen ainakin kerran elämässään, selviää asiakashallinnan asiantuntijan Intrum Justitian kyselystä.”
> (YLEn uutisista)
Jopa? Miten niin jopa? Tarkoittaako tämä, että lähes puolet suomalaisista ei ole koskaan elämässään kämmännyt yhtäkään laskua? Keitä nämä äärettömän huolelliset ihmiset ovat? Niin nuoria, etteivät ole elämässään saaneet ensimmäistäkään laskua?
[ Posted by Janka ]
I have said it before, but it seems to me that a completely disproportional number of people around me and in the society are not as happy as they should be. And I have said it before, but it seems to me that part of this is due to completely unrealistic expectations: that to be happy one should be cheerful, healthy, and full of energy all the fucking time.
One of the special cases of this kind of thinking is where people know what would help them: they should take it slower, they should have less thing to do all the time, they should concentrate on one goal, they should sleep more. Or, even, they should take their meds, they should be in therapy, they should frigging take the sick leaves offered and not press on. Or, in some cases, they should get off the sick leave already, keep calm and carry on, even when it is tough. The point is, very often people know, on some level, but at the same time they feel that they should not need whatever they think they do.
There are many reasons why one would not act on what one knows. “Knowing” itself is a complex thing, and it is possible to “know” something to be the truth while at the same time still not completely accepting it. What helps with that is time, and thinking about it, and talking about it, until the knowledge really sinks in. But what seems to keep a lot of people back at that phase is the idea that they “should not need to” do whatever it is they need to do.
“I know I would feel better if I slept more, but normal people should really get by with 7 hours.” “But other people can do such-and-such and still have energy for so-and-so, so I should not need to drop one either.” “It is expected of me that I get by without this much help, so I should really not need all this to get by.”
What you need is what you need. What you “should” need does not exist.
[ Posted by Janka ]
First actual content chapter is titled “of fencing in general”. And boy, it’s a long one, with 22 windy paragraps in total. It’s starting to also become painfully apparent that knowing Italian would be useful. The translation seems excellent, but there are always words that are ambiguous, and the inability to go back to the original becomes painful.
1) Men have hands, unlike animals. This is nice of Mother Nature, as then we can make tools, and use swords. Swords are the coolest and must be used with true valor.
2) Hence, swordsmanship is useful for everyone, and especially those who want a military career.
3) The aim of fencing is the defense of oneself (1). This means that everyone who loves themselves or their country should, obviously, study fencing.
4) It also means that in fencing, you should not attack except where you can do so with a legitimate defense(2).
5) Reason, nature, art, and practice are the four things that make fencing happen(3). Nature sets limits to what a human body can do. Reason, the human intellect and will, directs it to actually do the useful things.
6) In the body, things that matter are its size, agility, vigor, and quickness, and accuracy of eyes.
7) Nature sets limits to the physical matter, and also how it can be arranged. Art builds on that.
8) Art regulates nature, and describes in exact fact what could and should happen in each fencing situation.
9) Practice makes it actually happen.
10) Realistically, the body cannot do everything we wish it would. So the art is sort of just a model.
11) Because the human body behaves in a certain way, certain models make sense; such as resting in terza when defending, and attacking in quarta or seconda, the concept of tempo/measure, and the movements of the torso (weight on the left leg for defense, thrown to the right leg for offense).(4)
12) No doubt when people first started bashing each other, they used their fists. With fists, people do these things naturally: rest in a sort of terza, hit in quarta and seconda, and punches go in tempo and measure a lot.
13) Against fists, someone picked up a stick. Then they made sticks from iron. Then all sorts of different weapons. Then they found that the sword is the best.
14) Weapons that are so long that they are out of the natural offense/defense range are not civil at all. Excessively short ones can be used for stealthy murder and hence are prohibited in civilized countries. In fact, in the Republic of Ancient Rome, which was the coolest country ever, all weapons were prohibited except in war.
15) So when soldiers got home from war they put away all the military stuff and went on to do and study and practice peaceful things, and considered each other equals.
16) These days soldiers are a great pain in the arse, especially during peace, because all they can do is fight.
17) Anyway. Swords are the coolest. They work on the range of natural offense/defense and on a straight line, not an oblique one. The further a weapon is away from that natural function, the more barbaric it is. While some of this newfangled stuff is useful in wars, its use leads to all kinds of sin, misery, ignorance, filthiness, and so forth.
18) Now the guy who is taller than the opponent and has a sword that fits his proportions will always arrive to measure first. In some countries, this is partly compensated by making it illegal for people to carry swords that are longer than others. That way, the taller man only has the advantage of his natural height, which is fair enough, as the shorter man might have some other advantage of say quickness or experience. Making the taller man carry a shorter sword would be too much of an indignity anyway.
19) Fencing was invented a long time ago and a lots of cool people in history used to do it. These days we Italians do it best, though more in schools than in war, since we have artillery and such.
20) The study of fencing is an art, not philosophy(5). There’s nothing divine here, nor something that would surpass human understanding. It’s more like civil engineering. It builds passing situations instead of concrete things, though, so it’s cooler than arts that don’t.
21) The materials of the art of fencing are the principles of defending oneself with a sword. It is a complete system, infallible in its context.
22) But enough of this, let’s talk about the principles themselves.
(1) That sentence is actually a direct quote. There’s no paraphrasing it. According to the translator, it is also a pun in 17th Century Italian.
(2) Yay! An actual piece of fencing advice. “Close the line! Close the goddamned line!”
(3) He actually says “efficient causes”. See Four Causes in Wikipedia for Aristotle’s take on causality.
(4) There! The system has been described, we can stop here. For the unenlightened, there’ll be a chapter where he actually explains these terms.
(5) He actually says “an art, not science”. However, the meaning of ‘science’ has changed from those times. What I think Capo Ferro means is that fencing can be understood by human reason, it can be measured, put to words, and executed, same as building a bridge can; we might in fact call that “a craft, not a higher art” these days.
[ Posted by Janka ]
The second introduction is addressed “To the gracious reader”. He starts it by claiming that it is not his “intention to hold you at bay with pompous and splendid words” and then goes on to do exactly that. There are some extremely awesome sentence structures here. Either the author or the translators or both seem to enjoy taking all kinds of liberties with words like “that”, “which”, “who”, and “such”, leading to situations where the grammatical interpretation makes no sense whatsoever and if you abandon grammar, three or four possible ways to read it immediately put themselves forward to replace it.
Anyway, I think what he tries to say is:
Dear reader,
I’ll not bother telling you swordsmanship is awesome; that much is obvious.
Fr. ex. Silvio(1) is a great guy (and not just with swords).
Anyway, swords are the best. Moreover, learning how to use one will also teach you about discipline and honor. Which will be useful, both in general and when using other weapons.
This stuff is complicated and no doubt this book could be clearer and have fewer mistakes.
So I don’t expect everyone will go totally wild over it. But I still do think it’s a pretty good book. Just compare it to what others have written.
My book’s not showy but tries to be clear and I hope I get some credit for it.
(1) Silvio is fully described as the Most Illustrious Signor SILVIO Piccolomini, Grand Prior of the Religion of the Knights of Saint Stephen in Pisa, and General of the Artillery and Master of Chamber of S.A.S. Don’t know who the fuck he is; CF’s writing implies a contemporary and the only one by a similar name a web search turns up seems to have been Pope Pius II, 1405 – 1464, some two hundreds years earlier. But he is “not only endowed with full and marvelous advantage of that of the sword, but also of every other chivalric art, as his heroic actions by the same, to the wonder of all, clearly make manifest”. If those are not “pompous and splendid words”, I am not sure I want to know what would be.
[ Posted by Janka ]
First part of the introduction goes roughly like this, except with ever so many words more, and sentence structures that would make a German philosopher look concise:
Yo Duke.
Here’s a book I wrote.
I dedicated it to your son.
I am sure he will be awesome when he grows up.
Just like you.
Hope you like the book and show it around.
Sincerely,
CF
Apparently (according to translator’s footnote) the Duke’s son did not turn out to be awesome, but quite the black sheep, and in fact ended up dead at 18 in mysterious circumstances, without the Duke minding all that much.
[ Posted by Janka ]
I will now undertake a project to read through Capo Ferro’s treatise “The Great Simulacrum of the Art and Use of Fencing”, from 1610. Not speaking any Italian, let alone 17th Century so, beyond random fencing terms, and not wanting to take the time to learn much now, I will use the translation by Jherek Swanger and William E. Wilson, available here in PDF. The translation does not include figures, but the ARMA facsimile has them.
(I have compiled the translation and pictures into a single PDF file formatted for my Sony PRS-505 reader, but before distributing it I need to obtain permission from Swanger & Wilson.)
To facilitate my learning, there will follow on this blog a series of posts, partly probably informative but more likely mostly hilariously embarrassing and irreverent, of my paraphrasings and WTFs about said manuscript, starting now and lasting for a couple of months. Apologies to the readers who find this utterly boring. For those who understand the inherent and utter coolness of 17th Century rapier, I take absolutely no responsibility whatsoever on any injury (on bodies, minds, pride or otherwise) of people who happen to read this and decide to act based on anything that I say. I have dabbled in the art and I am taking lessons while I read, but hell if I have any real clue what I am talking about.
To first get some idea of what I am doing here, the manuscript is organized as follows:Click the “paraphrasing Capo Ferro” tag to see all entries so far.
[ Posted by Janka ]
Hi I’m baaaack! It was a good vacation, and it was good to come back, and that is as it should be. I have been feeling really good the past couple of weeks, starting from the week before my vacation and still lasting even after all the unpacking and “what the hell is this work thing about again?” experiences. Enough so to have been mentally checking to see that I am not manic or anything, but so far I do not seem to possess megalomaniac thoughts or spend money recklessly or any that sort of thing (let me know if I am just delusional about this).
Some random hints for travelers:
In Iceland:
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