I recently aquired two fencing tshirt from Ebay. I couldn’t resist them, they were Too Me.

First shirt reads: I play with swords. I don’t play well with others. This is a warning because I don’t want to hear you crying when you can’t find your arm.

Second shirt reads: Fencing: Stab Your Friends.

Hahahahaha. :o)

I’m also reading a fencing history book, By The Sword. Overall, it’s a pretty good book and if you’re interested in fencing and its history, I’d recommend it. The author has a pretty good simple, tongue in cheek style and covers some interesting things. His prose sometimes lags, but other than that, it’s a good read.

Some interesting stuff:

tsujigiri: The Japanese word that means “to try out a new sword on a chance passerby.”

The Zen of Fencing:

Some think that striking is to strike:
But striking is not to strike, nor is killing to kill.
He who strikes and he who is struck–
They are both no more than a dream that has no reality.

Here we see the writer’s sense of humor after quoting Rouseeau’s account of why he hated fencing:

Rousseau: “I detested the whole business. I found it incredible that anyone could take such pride in knowing how to kill a man…When he [the fencing master who taught Rousseau] wanted me to make a feint attack, he would tell me to look out for a ‘dummy’…When he beat my blade, and my foil jumped out of my hand, he would say with a snigger that this was a ‘break.’…never in my life have I met such an insufferable pedant as this miserable creature with his plumet and plastron.”

Cohen’s comment: Rousseau’s antipathly to dueling may not have been fueled by moral disgust alone.

Photo a post-duel crowd rendering one man holding a saber standing over another man’s body and a foot away from the body…the dead man’s head. The caption reads: A late-nineteenth century saber duel, where one of the participants lost his head.”

Hungarian coach Csaba Elthes on having given his student Peter Westbrook a near-fatal neck injury: “Typical: I create champion; then I kill him.”

Elthes to a teenage student who apparenty offered no promise in the sport: “Go phone your mother. Tell her to come collect you now. There’s no point in teaching you. You never make fencer.”

Elthes on teaching an inept student in front of a small audience that had gathered: “I not only have to put technique into his body. I have to put a brain in his head!”

Student. “Sorry!”

Elthes. “Too late!”

If you are interesting in fencing or are a fencer, Read This Book.

Categories: fencing