[ Posted by Janka ]
Just saw the trailer to Walt Disney's new version of Dickens's "A Christmas Carol".
Said trailer seems to consist mostly of falling, running, chases, explosions, and hitting people on the head with ghostly things, spiced here and there with abrupt glowing eyes, yells of terror, and witty one-liners.
Words fail me, so I will resort to the short and explosive expression of the new entertainment too: FFS. I'll just re-read the book.
[ Posted by Janka ]
More of the same, just different. To the people who went "Oh? He has a dagger now?" reading the previous: do not blame me, that is how the original reads too.
Daggers, by the way, come they with the sword or on their own, I find awesome and fascinating to look at and to hear about, but quite boring to practice with. Useful, yes, so do not bother giving me the talk about it, but still boring.
12) Of stringering the sword. You stringere for two reasons: to come to measure, or to uncover the adversary. Regardless of whether you do it out or in, high or low, you must always stay on the straight line. Make sure the adversary is moving or staying still so that you know what he is up to, that is, that you have tempo to do so. Usually you stringere in two tempi: first you gain his debole with yours, and then you move in to gain his sword with your forte, at the beginning of his forte. If he disengaged, you can counter-disengage or not, but if you have contact with your debole you must follow it with that of the forte when you step forward.
13) Most useful admonition regarding dominating the sword. We say that you are "dominating" his sword in two cases. First, if you have acquired it with your forte and do not give that domination up while striking. Second after a beat, it is considered in your domination for as long as it is still moving under the force of your blow. So, when you dominate your opponents sword, it either is still (when you have it on your forte) or it is moving (after a beat). You also dominate with the forte when you parry, obviously. Usually, you beat with the debole, to seek measure and time. If you are fighting with a sword alone, you should never attempt a cut when you have him at your forte, though you can cut after a beat if you are back enough. With a dagger in the other hand, it's a bit different, because you can use the dagger to keep the domination while preparing for the cut.
14) Of the disengage and counterdisengage. The disengage (and the counterdisengage) are used to aqcuire measure and tempo, or to exit it. This means, you do them either moving forward or back. When counterdisengaging, you follow the opponents sword and return to the same place you left. Usually you disengage under the opponent's sword, but you can also disengage over it. When going under, you end up with your arm extended and your goal is to stringere their sword, possibly stepping forward a bit. When you go over, you must cede your body a bit to clear their point, and when you come around it place your forte immediately over his sword, and your goal is not just to stringere, but also to strike.
[ Posted by Janka ]
Today for the second time inside a week, a person that is not a close friend asked if they can ask me for advice on a personal matter. As this was a person who I do not even know at all, but who had just read my posts and comments here and there on the interwebs, I find this surprising and frankly bizarre, but what the hell, here goes.
Q. Can I ask you for personal advice?
A. Short answer: yes.
Longer answer:
1) I am not currently legally able to give medical advice. If you have a medical problem that concerns you, or a loved one, or another person you are worried about, please contact a fully-lisenced physician, or your local health care center or equivalent, or an appropriate telephone advice service, or other such source. I can answer general questions about medicine, but I will react very crossly to anyone trying to pass soliciting for medical advice as asking for general information.
2) If you are a friend (loosely defined as someone I have invited to my house or one of my special people online) or a relative, ask away, I'll do my best.
3) If I do not know you, you can still ask, but here's the catch: it'll cost you 25 euros an hour, with a minimum charge of 20. Please email the question to me (that will cost you nothing), and I will let you know if I think I can do it, and how long I estimate it will take.
4) You should be aware that about fifty percent of people that I give advice to get upset and think I am a mean and heartless person. I never give advice intending to be mean, but that's still what happens.
[ Posted by Janka ]
This is turning out to be a bit of a difficult chapter for me, with some descriptions of moves that take me some time to decipher without a sword and a partner. Yes, I could get a sword and a partner and do it e.g. in free training, but as I have this idea of proceeding in order and proceeding a bit most days and doing this during my commute, that is not completely practical. Besides it is probably useful for me to go through sequences in my head based on a verbal description, anyway. Consequently, there will be more parts than two.
Speaking of translating verbal descriptions to action, today in my private class Guy gave me a set exercise by simply verbally going through it while I was catching my breath and he was massaging my arm and shoulder (which did not hurt when he did, which is an improvement), and I got it without really paying any attention to what I was doing. Mind you it was very basic - just a stringere, parry and riposte, parry and riposte on my side - but still, I got it as if there was nothing to it and only in the bus on the way to work realized that it might not be a given that I can follow that sort of spoken instructions.
Anyway, onwards, ho.
(1) He actually uses the phrase "you will go back with the left leg, accompanied by the right", which is a repeating phrase in the text that I cannot invent one interpretation for that would fit all situations, which bugs the hell out of me. It is the "I am not sure if any interpretation I have heard of CF's footwork is correct" here again I mentioned before.9) Of changing from guard to guard. Changing from one guard to another can be done in three ways. "Directly" is when you go from first to second, from second to third, or from third to fourth. "In reverse" is when you move to the opposite direction, that is, from fourth to third, from third to second, or from second to first position. "In exchange" is when you skip one or more positions, ie, go from first to third or fourth, from second to fourth, from third to first, or from fourth to first or second. When changing guards on measure, you need to take care that you are back on your left leg enough(1) to be safe from the adversary.
10) Against those who circle. An adversary can easily gain your sword from the inside by circling. If they do this, disengage quickly and step diagonally towards your left, their right, coming to outside line. Place your point towards their right shoulder. This will highly likely provoke them to try and regain the line, and when they move to do so, you will disengage and strike them with a lunge and thrust in quarta.
11) Against the guard of the left foot. If you find your adversary in low terza with his left leg forward, take also a low terza but with the right leg forward and your point crossing towards your left, their right. This has two advantages. First, it will be more difficult for them to dominate your sword, and they will seek it with the dagger instead(2). Second, it uncovers a bit more of your body, inviting him to pass to strike. This you can parry with your point high and then riposte to their chest with a pass of your own.
Wishing to attack first against someone with the left foot forward, you can encounter them in terza with your sword towards their dagger hand, and hit them in mezzo tempo at your leisure. Or, you can pretend to attack over their dagger, and when they want to parry, disengage under it, finding at the same time their sword with your dagger, and thrust under their arm. Or, you could feint under the dagger, and when he wants to parry, you can disengage and strike him in seconda over the dagger. Note that you can do all these without the pass, but then you need to wait for him to come forward, which he likely will after parrying anyway, and parry and riposte.
Now if the person you are fighting is actually left-handed, and is standing right foot forward, it actually is a good idea to put your left foot forward, and keep your sword withdrawn. With your weapons on the same side, this will convince him that he cannot attack without you being able to defend it.(3)
[ Posted by Janka ]
Because, you know, terms that do not pertain to the use, would have been ever so much more interesting. This is a terribly long chapter, so I will split it into two.
(1) He then describes positions of the arm, not of the hilt. I think this is because it is taken as a given that you do not change your grip from terza when you move the sword around, and so the easiest way to describe the orientations of the sword is to describe where to put your arm. Maybe. The names of the guards are simply first, second, third, fourth, and I am actually tempted to translate them as such, being the hater of mystifying technical terms that I am.Because it is necessary for the scholars to understand the terms that the Masters of fence use in teaching, we have proposed to explain them in the following briefest words.
1) Of the sword. The sword has a forte and a debole, and a true edge and a false edge. Though some divide the blade into three parts, forte, debole, and the middle in between them, or even to more, that's quite useless.
2) Of the guards. "Guard" means a certain orientation of the hilt of the sword(1). When the arm is above the shoulder, the sword is in prima; when it moves to the level of the shoulder, it is in seconda; when it moves towards the knee, it is in terza, and when it moves beyond the knee, it goes to quarta. Of this pretty much all masters agree, but beyond that, it is all a mess: where to keep your arms and legs and body, whether to extend your arm and how much, whether to hold the point high or low or whatever. Also, people give different names to various other positions, naming them high or low or narrow or wide such-and-such guard, until your brain explodes. Sometimes they call terza or quarta counterguards, used to gain the sword, but actually all guards are counterguards in that sense.
3) Of tempo. People talk of four sorts of tempo: single and double tempo, the mezzo tempo, and the contratempo. Single tempo is when I can do something that takes one motion, double tempo takes two actions. Mezzo tempo is something that takes a very short time, not even a full action really, for example when I can strike someone on the advancing, uncovered arm from the wide measure, or strike them on a very narrow measure when they move to do something. Contratempo is when we strike at the same time. It is crucial to realize that any movement and any staying still of the adversary creates some tempo.
4) Of measure. The measure is wide or narrow; wide when I can strike the adversary but only by advancing a foot; narrow when I can strike him by simply reaching forward.
5) In how many tempos one knows to strike. You have a tempo to strike when any of the following happens: he lifts or moves his feet to come forward; you have just parried a strike; he moves from one guard to another without an obvious reason to do so; when he raises his sword; when a blow has travelled past your body.
6) Of the pace and of walking. There are many ways to call the different steps: ordinary, extraordinary, just, half pace, narrow, wide. Steps change depending on the situation, too. You step back and forward, to the side, on the diagonal, with one foot or both. There are even some who after recovering hold one leg off the ground, in order to strike again faster.
7) Of the parries. You parry with the true edge, except in some rare cases. A parry can be on a straight line or an oblique one, up or down, depending on the situation. Take care that you parry with a straight arm! When the parry occurs in two tempi, you should draw your left foot near the right when you parry, and then pass forward on the right to strike(2).
8) Of the feints and of covering the sword. Feint is when you move as if to attack in some particular way and then do the exact opposite. Counterfeints are dones as the counter to the feint. "Covering the sword" is one particular kind of feint, done by covering the adversary's point with your debole when you are in a low quarta; it needs to be done on a straight line(3).
[ Posted by Janka ]
I hear that Google Reader disses my blogs feeds again and mangles several posts into one.
This seems to happen at least to the atom feed, possibly in some cases to the RSS feed, if there is broken HTML in the post itself. Unfortunately in the update something's gotten borked with the markup, so broken HTML happens, especially with the CF posts that have superscripts inside italics inside paragrapgs inside blockquotes, because I have to do some of that manually.
RSS seems to be stabler than Atom. To use that, make sure the URL you use for the feed ends in ".rss", not in ".atom" (or unsubscribe from the feed and resuscribe using this link or the one in the sidebar).
I seriously wish I knew how to completely fix this, but I don't. Apologies for the inconvenince, and please keep me posted when things break, so I can maybe at some point finally figure out what breaks it exactly.
At least the comments should work now. Maybe.
[ Posted by Janka ]
Onwards, ho.
(1) No! I am totally not making that up, you suspicious people! He actually uses a word translated as "delight".1) Keep your eyes on the swordhand of the adversary, because that's the best place to look at to see what he's up to.
2) Of parrying and striking, and voiding the body. When you parry, you must follow it with a strike; when you strike, you should do so with a parry. If you do not strike, avoid their strike. If you parry with the dagger, strike with the sword.
3) The virtue of the unaccompanied sword. The unaccompanied sword is the best. Not only is it the most fun(1), but it's also most useful in teaching you to do the basics properly.
4) Method that one must employ against a bestial man(2). That is, someone without any sensible measure and tempo, who flails blows at you with brute force. You can do two things. Mezzo tempo play to strike him to the arm while he flails about will be explained later. Alternatively, you can evade a little by pulling back so as to make his blow land in empty air, and then immediately stab his chest.
5) Way of becoming a perfect player. Taking lessons is not enough. You must also seek daily to play, and do so with diverse opponents. Practice with those better than you.(3)
6) Of the most secure guard. As I already said in the theory book, terza at the middle of the body is the best.
7) Of the vanity of the feints. Feints are no good, really, because they make you lose timing and measure. If you feint out of measure, what the hell for would I move? If you feint on measure, I can strike you when you take your pose(4).
8) From whom must one learn. There are some people who want to teach as soon as they have learned something. That is not good. Knowing something is not the same as knowing it well enough to be able to teach it.(5)
9) Of gaining the sword. Gaining the sword is of very great importance. Likewise is recovering yours if he has it.(6) You must know three things about this. First, if you disengage, do not do it to throw a full-out cut, because while you are winding up to it he will stab you. Second, if you retreat so that he has to move his right leg to strike you, that movement will create timing for you in which to strike(7). Third, "to stringere" means nothing more mystical but "to gain the sword".
10) Of striking in contratempo(8) I only approve of two contratempo strikes. One is if you are in quarta with your point on your right and he comes to gain the sword, when he moves his right foot to cross the swords, you can strike him, still in quarta. The other is when you are in terza, and he comes to gain it from the outside, you counter-attack in seconda. Both of these can be done with either a lunge or a pass.(9)
11) Of walking. Masters really can't agree on how to step with weapons in hand. I say that when you have to step on the line, it is a good idea to always keep your right shoulder forward, and left foot pointing to the side, and always have both feet move when you take a step.(10)
12) Methods of striking the hand. Whenever the adversary puts his point somewhere away from you, be it too high or too low, or too much to your left or right, you can place your sword towards his hand, and then approach measure taking care your body stays to the back, and once you are on measure strike in mezzo tempo(11) to that hand. When you do, bend your right knee and push your body forward to hit, but at the same time push your left leg back and recover quickly there(12). If you want to strike the dagger hand instead, this same method works.
13) Method of retiring, having struck Whenever you have struck, you must immediately recover. If you have room, it is best to take too passes(13) back, so that you end up back in guard. Sometimes you can take one step, and sometimes you can only bring back the right foot, but if you at all can you should do the two passes.
[ Posted by Janka ]
Now follows the great representation of the use of fencing. And first the difference that is found between the art and the use is explained.
There's a title for you.
I think what this chapter is about is what we would in this day call "the difference between theory and practice". What CF seems to be saying is that while some people think a theory should cover everything, so that anything that happens in a fencing bout can be explained exactly in the terms used in the theory, he thinks that theory should only cover the basics, those things that are true in all situations.
For example, while some masters want to divide the blade into as many as dozen different parts, each part having some use in explaining some particular detail, CF only wants to divide it into two (the forte and the debole), which are the parts that are needed in the description of any and all possible situations of blade contact. Or, while there are also in Capo Ferro's fencing practice a lot of various movements off the line, avoidances, and so forth, he feels they have no place in theory because they are not something without you cannot do if you wish to explain any situation. What you absolutely need is the concept of "the line"; anything off it is a detail that only occurs some of the time.
To put it shortly, he is looking for some sort of "least common denominator", the concepts that you absolutely need to have to talk about fencing -- the ones that no one in their sane mind can disagree about, the ones that are always true, to form his "art" (theory).
In the art chapters he often says that such and such is not necessary, should not be done, is weird and stupid -- only to contradict himself in the use chapters by showing how to do exactly those things. This is usually interpreted as him having an idealized picture of how a fencing match should look like in his head, while not actually even himself doing that, but I think that interpretation might do him an injustice. I think he might be after the idea that you should not confuse the way how you talk about fencing by defining (and having your students memorize) a million different technical terms for, say, each different movement off the line, or each inch-long bit of the sword, when you can as well describe those things by referring back to the basic concepts of the line, forte, and debole. Once the basic concepts are understood, each of those million different things becomes simply a variation of those, and can be explained by every-day words instead of technical terms.
Ok, enough ranting, here's the sentence by sentence. There are no paragraph breaks here in the original (or at least in the translation); I have introduced some at a whim because otherwise it is quite unreadable.
(1) Despite being phrased in that order, I am fairly certain he means that the art is the good order and the practice the confusion, not the other way round.There is the greatest difference between the art and the use, and perchance not less than between reason and luck, between confusion and good order, between knowledge and opinion.(1)
To have that make sense, we must consider what "art" (theory) here means. It means a collection of precepts that are useful and suitable for civil conversation.
The precepts much be such that it is proven they are useful, and not those submerged in the abyss of the dark shadows of falsities and witless opinions.
Theory can't just be made up any which way, but all precepts in it must be infallible and true in all situations. The practice of this theory has much more in it: not just the things that are always true, but also other particular details, and warnings against false things, and so forth. It also takes advantage from all sorts of other disciplines.
To put the theory to practice one needs the help of various other skills and ideas, just like a man who knows his job still needs the help of others to perform it. Yet they should remain separate, just like each person in the team still has their own desk and their own home.
Some teachers do not make this difference between theory and practice, and that makes for a lot of grave errors. Thence it occurs that when teaching, likewise with the pen as with the sword in hand, they are long-winded and so confused and self-contradictory most of the time.(2) Without even laying a foundation of principles that always hold, they try to teach perfection!
But I have managed to break down all difficulty and explain everything in a clear manner. The theory was already condensed to a few principles and examples, and now will follow just a couple of figures that explain the practice. The uncertainty and infinity of particular details I leave to others, who really should remember that they do not teach from real knowledge.
Enough of this, let's move on to some advice and pictures.
[ Posted by Janka ]
Here endeth the first part! After this, we will move onwards to the practice of fencing, which I hope will be more, well, practical. And this one is short, just one paragraph.Of the dagger it suffices to say that it is good for defending oneself in the case where I go forward to strike and do not pay attention so much to parrying. In that case I can use the dagger to brush aside the adversary's attack. Everything has a downside, though, and the dagger's is that in order to use it you need to expose a little more of your left side, and so shorten your measure a bit. You can do all sorts of other things with a dagger too, but pretty much all of those can be done with just the sword.That's it! We're done! Yay.
[ Posted by Janka ]
The whole first paragraph is one sentence in the original. Seriously.(1) Yay for avoidance of technical terms. That's all mine, not CF, obviously.112) Striking is the main means of offense.
To strike, I must have arrived to distance.
I must throw forward my body, legs, arms, everything, as one, smooth motion.
The front foot moves if, and only if, it needs to. If I am late, or the adversary is fast, it does not need to, as the distance is already closed by him.113) Striking can be done in several different ways: either I move and the adversary is still, I am still and he moves, or we both move. He can move either to strike, or to seek measure. When he moves to strike, my measure is that of the fixed foot; when he moves to seek measure, I can strike him on the measure of the advancing foot.
114) I can strike from the inside, in quarta, or from the outside, in seconda. I can also strike high or low. All this depends on what parts of him are exposed to give me measure.
115) Every strike is a parry. If I am on the straight line, at the correct distance, and strike when there is time to do so(1), the adversary can never hit me (neither with a thrust or a cut), because my forte moves in a straight line and will cover my body(2).
116) The edge is not really important. To strike with it, you need to completely move your sword away from any line to the adversary, uncovering your body. Granted you can sometimes make use of a cut, but in those situations you could also have simply used a thrust.
117) Well, except on horseback, where it actually does make sense to cut, because you cannot control your seeking of measure and timing very exactly, but you can wheel your arm about as much as you like.
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