All in the Mind
Musings on modern martial spiritualism

It has become quite fashionable to profess the practice of Fencing as a Martial Art. Hecklers and other disreputable contemporaries situated in the darkened rear of the audience might claim that this is motivated mainly by the desire to mark territory: Emphasize the difference between the Sport and the Art of Fencing-considered to be degenerate forms of purer, earlier systems ravaged by quacks in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Fencing as a Martial Art claims to prepare for encounters with sharp steel-accounting for the actual physiological effects of each action, and the projected repercussions on the outcome of the fight.

This is a departure from the cumulative and impact-averaged scoring used in sports fencing. After all, a flick grazing the foilist cannot be counted the same way as a shattering Prime with the broadsword: In a "real" fight, the flicked foilist may only have a run in his bodice. The primed broadsword man would be bleeding into his eyes like a stuck pig. At best.

"Bang, you're dead!"

There's just a small problem. Encounters posing a genuine threat of serious or terminal damage to oneself are hard to come by these days. (In fact, they may not have been all that frequent in the past, either.) Because each antagonistic encounter requires that a goodly amount of prerequisites are met:

1. Both parties must have made the conscious decision to actively engage. (And if the martial intent is to survive the encounter, running while flinging a wad of dollar bills may be the most successful martial strategy.)
2. They both must be armed. (And where outside Fred Hutchinson's Modern Swordsman do you meet someone schlepping a rapier along....while you happen to have yours handy?)
3. Each party must have made the conscious decision to not use more effective weapons to bring about a fast decision. (A blast of or a slug from even a .22 can spank the heck out of a Squalambroto).

"Only a flesh wound..."

That's a lot of conditions and mutual consensus necessary for a "real" antagonistic and self-defense scenario! And that's the main crux of Fencing as a Martial Art: Defining what constitutes a hit of whatever physiological gravity, determining who's going to have to roll over after receiving a defined number of defined hits, and enforcing all these definitions requires just as much agonistic coordination and cooperation as the measliest foil event.

The opponent is never and can never be an antagonist no matter how much you flog that martial spirit of yours-and thus never can supply the paramount psychological element.

Furthermore, the very concept of Martial Arts is a thoroughly 20th-century notion-heavily tinged by western pop ideas about the Asian systems. In truth, medieval and Renaissance Art of Defence groups closely mirrored the structural and membership make-up of the craftsmen's guilds. Their procedures and mentality survive in modern Germany's Schutzengilden... rather pedestrian associations that use weekly skill practice as a perfect excuse for drinking, passing out titles, and playing politics. Their Fechtschulen, too, were agonistic competitions of skill, were winners and losers were determined by scoring points. (Although the manifestation of these points... bleeding head wounds... certainly were less abstract than a foil hit with right of way...)

The people who spent time and money on learning the arcane secrets of the sword were mostly amateurs with lots of leisure. In past ages, that meant men in solid social positions. Or students who learned the currently fashionable arts as part of a well-rounded education... along with dance, horsemanship, and watercolor lesson.

Civilian western swordplay was part of the Art of Life, a sandbox game of strategy, tactics, poise, and scientific logic-with a tad of manly swagger and the illusion of self-defense capabilities. Only this latter part is shared with a martial art in the modern sense.

Which, of course, should not keep any modern martialist from being called "Grasshopper" as he tries to please the insightful yet unseeing eyes of the Master.

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