Word: swordsmanship
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...could bandy quips with poets and wits in London and chat about women and food in the local idiom with polygamous cannibal kings in the Congo. He could write with equal authority (if not always total accuracy) on swordsmanship, sex, the source of the Nile or the location of the moun tains of the moon. Fine fencer and linguist, he was also a natural actor and raconteur, a competent artist and something of a poet. He truly exemplified Baudelaire's negative definition of the superior man: he was "not a specialist...
Swords of Bamboo. But Japanese soldiers still practice kendo-the art of swordsmanship-even though no swords are permitted in military services. They use traditional bamboo staves. And a division recruited near Sendai has been lectured by its officers about its predecessor: the tough Imperial 2nd Division that killed 2,200 in the battle for Guadalcanal's Henderson Field. Fully 14% of the officer corps are veterans of the Pacific war, including Army Chief of Staff Yoshifusa Amano, 55, who served the Imperial army in China, Indochina and the Northern Pacific. "Fortunately, the climate toward the forces is getting...
...cozy conversation with Cardinale. "My dear," he proposes tenderly as the bullets buzz about his ears, "you must give me a son." She smiles weakly and replies: "Later, if it's all the same to you." And on the side of spectacle the picture provides plenty of snazzy swordsmanship and some attractive Eastman Color. In the last reel, indeed, the screen divulges an image of luminous splendor: in death the pallid Claudia, swathed in red velvet and shimmering with stolen gems, lies sleeping in the moonlight in a golden carriage, lies sleeping like a princess in a legend while...
...always flailed away with weapons that looked and hefted more like crowbars than épées. By the 16th century, Italian gallants had developed a light, delicately balanced rapier with the sharp point that enabled them to thrust instead of slice with the blade. Thus was born true swordsmanship. It was a century later, at the court of France's Sun King, that the long, trailing rapier yielded to the short-sword, and harmless foils were first used to master the new weapon's swift and deadly skills...
...silk-hosed aristocrats, fencing never really caught on in the leather-stockinged American colonies. "When the settlers came to America," explains Ed Lucia, a top U.S. fencing coach, "they came with an ax, not with a sword." Even today many Americans consider the sport effete-incorrectly, for swordsmanship throughout history has been equated with valor, stamina, agility. Fencing is still dominated by the swordsmen of Europe. Frenchmen have won individual foils in seven of the last 13 Olympic competitions. Italian Olympians have won the last six individual épée gold medals; even more remarkable, the Hungarians have...