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Matador
- Syracuse University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
86 Matador He killed dying, and he died killing. —Translation of the headline announcing the death of Manolete, August 28, 1948 Are my eyes open, Doctor? I can’t see. —Last words of Manolete The photographs survive. He stands at sentinel’s attention in his suit of lights. His cape encowls him like a crimson wing. Kneeling before the snout or kissing the horn of a bled and broken bull he thought undignified. Instead he faced the black fury of the beast at full strength, steering him from miss to miss until the sacrifice. His art was not to fight but to conduct the bull the way a maestro might conduct an orchestra. With death as close as God or love, he worked his cape like a baton and never moved his feet . . . He never moved his feet. No wonder they revere his melancholy courage to this very day 87 in Córdoba, Madrid and Mexico. And they have reason. Even the ones who hate the spectacle revere the man who braved so much without a backward step. Forget the fame, the mistress and the fortune in pesetas. Can these explain why someone heeds a calling that allows as many victories as possible but only one defeat? What each of us evades until the end, he faced twelve hundred times alone by choice. Twelve hundred times . . . His final bull surprised him even as he stabbed and left him crumpled, gored and bleeding on the sand. That memory is ours to swallow like the bread of sorrow and the wine of contradiction. It shows that valor’s a delaying action after all. If done with grace, we praise the artistry and skill. If not, we say the unexpected is the way that life can always overrule us in the name of life. [18.234.165.107] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:24 GMT) 88 And life can spare. And life can kill. ...