Bloody Artistry

By Bill HillmannJuly 7, 2015

Bloody Artistry
LAST JULY a bull gored me and nearly took my life during my 10th year running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. My experiences with the bulls in Spain have deeply moved me and inspired me as an author, journalist, and storyteller.

Of course I am not the only artist who found artistic inspiration in the bulls. Hemingway, Picasso, Orson Welles, Goya, and so many others loved the Spanish fighting bull as well. The question of why the bulls have inspired so many iconic artists led me to seek out recent Nobel laureate in literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, who also has a predilection for observing the bullfight, the bloodiest of art forms.

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BILL HILLMANN: How has corrida, the bullfight, influenced you as a writer?

MARIO VARGAS LLOSA: I don’t know because you are not always aware of the factors that have an influence in your writing, but I’ve been very enthusiastic about the corrida since I was very young. I saw my first corrida when I was eight years old in Bolivia, where my family was living. Since then I’ve been a great aficionado. I enjoy it very much and I write quite often to defend the corrida against its enemies who, as you know, are very numerous in our days. So probably it has a certain influence in the building of my personality — my ideas, my sensibilities — but I am not totally aware of the corrida as a very important aspect of my writing; no, of that I am not aware.

Why has corrida influenced so many writers and visual artists like Hemingway and Picasso?

I think it’s because it’s an art. The corrida is several things at the same time. It’s a sport, it’s a kind of dance because there is choreography, and also it’s a very special kind of art, the only art in which you risk, really, your life. It’s a kind of challenge in which you can die.

I think this is very different and much more intense and risky than painting or singing or writing or composing. Probably this aspect of the art is attractive for so many artists and writers, creative people who are particularly sensitive to the provisional kind of life that we have. To risk life in the creation of something which is art has a very special attraction, I think. So, probably, this is the explanation for the fascination that has existed with so many painters and writers and musicians and dancers.

There’s a lot of fascination with Ernest Hemingway in the United States. Do you feel that Hemingway’s depiction of corrida, particularly in Death in the Afternoon, was very accurate?

There are different interpretations of the corrida. In Hemingway, the sportive aspect of the corrida prevailed. It was a kind of very risky sport for him and this is the aspect for which he is very emphatic, each time that he describes the corrida. But I think that he really understood and was very, let’s say, very familiar with the secrets of the corrida, because for many many years he followed the great matadors. But his interpretation is not the only one. I think there are much more philosophical interpretations. For example, what is happening in France in our days is very, very interesting. The most interesting essays on the corrida in the last few years come from France. There are philosophers, essayists who are writing about the corrida and they emphasize much more the philosophic, metaphysical aspect of the corrida — the traditions of the corrida that they think important are very remote, from Greece and Crete. So I think the corrida, as with every art form, can be analyzed from different perspectives. Hemingway portrayed this sportive aspect, the risk that is implicit in the corrida.

What does the Toro Bravo, the Spanish fighting bull, represent in the corrida?

It is essential, is absolutely indispensable. If the toro is not bravo it’s very difficult to be very successful in a faena [the labor of the bull fight]. This is something that is not sufficiently emphasized — that the Toro Bravo exists because the corrida exists. The enemies of the corrida, people who want to eliminate the corrida, are also enemies of the Toro Bravo. They should know that the disappearance of the corrida will mean the disappearance of the Toro Bravo. The Toro Bravo exists because the corrida exists.

The Toro Bravo is an animal that has the necessity of fighting in its essence and it’s this aspect which I think is absolutely essential for, let’s say, the most mysterious and dramatic aspect of the corrida. How can you sacrifice yourself in order to produce a kind of very transient artistic objective? This is the aspect of the corrida that is similar to the dance. In a dance you produce something that is absolutely moving, beautiful, and at the same time it’s also ephemeral. This is the case with the corrida. But what you are really risking is not only a failure in a corrida but your life. This gives to the corrida this very dramatic and also mysterious aspect.

Is the corrida a ritual sacrifice?

I think that you can associate the corrida with very remote rites in which young people, for example, were obliged to participate in order to be recognized as mature and adult people — they had to risk something. And the toro, particularly in Europe, in the Western world, was the symbol of force, of violence. So possibly this aspect is very ancient in the tradition of the corrida. For this there are so many myths featuring the toro as the primitive and animal force that is opposed to the human being. It’s this contrast that is something that is still very alive in the contemporary corrida.

With passes named Veronica, and other religious allusions in the corrida, does the toro represent Christ in any way to you?

I don’t think so. The origin of the corrida is more ancient than Christianity. It’s very, very remote. It’s ancient Greece, the myth of Europa that is seduced by Zeus transformed into a bull, into a toro. It’s a very old and pre-Christian myth and you have probably in this myth the most remote antecedent of the corrida so I don’t think the association of Christ and the toro is very acceptable. My impression is that it’s much more of this fighting between death and life. Death and life are fighting in a corrida and life and death can be represented entirely by the toro or entirely by the torero [matador]. It depends very much on the talent, the ability, the knowledge, the experience of the torero but also of the toro. But the association with Christ I think is quite forced, not evident in any case.

Are you a fan of the encierro, the running of the bulls, in San Fermin [Pamplona]?

Absolutely, yes, it is a very ancient festivity and it is totally acceptable. It’s a kind of proof of young people to measure their courage, also their sporting vocation, and it’s very colorful. And nobody is obliged to participate if they don’t want to. I think it’s a wonderful festivity and should be preserved and it’s not cruel at all. On the contrary, the toro is absolutely free. You are very brave.

You ran with the bulls yourself?

Once, 35 years ago in Pamplona. It was very exciting. I remember very well the experience; it was very exciting — only once in my life but I’ll always remember it.

What makes José Tomás, who was nearly gored to death in 2010, one of the greatest bullfighters ever?

Many things: First, his talent. He is absolutely extraordinary because of his knowledge of all the secrets of the toro. He is very courageous, he is very elegant and he has this tragic characteristic of certain toreros as was Manolete, for example [a famous, early 20th-century Spanish bullfighter who died at age 30 from a goring]. Belmonte also [Juan Belmonte, also an early 20th-century Spanish bullfighter, who appears as a minor character in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises] — this tragic attitude, fatalism.

And when you see José Tomás, you have the impression that he knows he could die at any moment and that he is prepared to make this extreme sacrifice in order to produce this extraordinary beauty that he produces. I think that he is a very great matador but particularly what is so attractive in him is this tragic aspect, which in his case is so visible, so present during the whole faena.

Why do you remain so passionate about corrida?

Because I think it is a great art. It’s a very different kind of art because you are playing with your life, with your death, in order to produce beauty. And this is something that not only produces pleasure but produces a kind of revelation of what is the human condition. I think this is one of the aspects of the corrida that is very unique. You feel what is the human condition — how fragile life is, how near death is — and all this produces art in the case of the corrida. And I think it is extremely important to preserve something that for centuries has been one of the richest manifestations of the necessity of creation, of creativity in the human being.

What would you say to antitaurinos, to those against bullfighting, in the United States? 

Well, that they should see a corrida before they decide that the corrida should disappear. I think many of the antitaurinos have never seen what a corrida is. Of course, nobody is obliged to like the corrida but you should try to be more objective and try to experience one corrida and then decide. On the other hand, they should know that the Toro Bravo is probably the most privileged in the world because if you have seen how the Toro Bravo is taken care of, the extreme privileges he has all his life before going to the Plaza del Toros, you will see how there is no idea of making the toro suffer. On the contrary the Toro Bravo is un toro bravo who needs to fight in order to express himself, you know. Although in the appearance it seems something different, there is a great love of the toro in the corrida. In the aficionados and in the matadors and in the creators of the ranches there is a great love, a great admiration, a great respect for the toro.

Fortunately, in the United States there are many, many aficionados as Hemingway and Hillmann. I’m very happy that not all Americans are against the corridas.

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Bill Hillmann is an award-winning writer and storyteller from Chicago, Illinois.

LARB Contributor

Bill Hillmann is the author of Mozos: A Decade Running With The Bulls of Spain (June 16, 2015, Curbside Splendor). He has covered the San Fermin Fiesta in Pamplona, Spain for Esquire, Outside Magazine and National Public Radio (for which he won the Edward R. Murrow Award) and his commentary on bull running has been featured on the Today show, CBS This Morning with Charlie Rose, and many other programs. In 2014, during a Pamplona bull run, he survived a near-fatal goring which made headlines worldwide. His fiction debut, The Old Neighborhood, was named Best Novel of 2014 by the Chicago Sun-Times and received rave reviews from BooklistChicago Tribune, and The Week. Hillmann is a former Chicago Golden Gloves champion. He lives in Chicago where he works as a Local 2 union construction laborer.

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