The Goring

Plath's The Goring really stuck to me, even before we got to talk about it in class: the  way in which she spoke of the violence of the bullfights that she saw in a manner that might not be quite expected, one way or another:

The Goring Arena dust rusted by four bulls' blood to a dull redness, The afternoon at a bad end under the crowd's truculence, The ritual death each time botched among dropped capes, ill-judged stabs, The strongest will seemed a will towards ceremony. Obese, dark- Faced in his rich yellows, tassels, pompons, braid, the picador Rode out against the fifth bull to brace his pike and slowly bear Down deep into the bent bull-neck. Cumbrous routine, not artwork. Instinct for art began with the bull's horn lofting in the mob's Hush a lumped man-shape. The whole act formal, fluent as a dance. Blood faultlessly broached redeemed the sullied air, the earth's grossness.

I love the way she portrays her dissatisfaction with the bull fights in this poem; not in a way that she was bored with it, but that the "obese, dark faced" picadors and matadors seemed bored with it.  

I felt this dissatisfaction she held with the ceremony of it all without really thinking too deeply until we spoke about it in class- especially considering the line "Instinct for art began with the bull's horn..." What does this have to do with art? We were asked, and it seems that it really has nothing to do with art, in the standard, creative sense- but it led me to ask the related question what does Sylvia Plath define 'art' as, anyways?  

Well, we have evidence in this poem that what the bull does, for Plath at the very least, is art for her, and not what the over-comfortable picador does: cumbrous routine. The picador is comfortable in his place with the bull, when the bull stays away from him and allows itself to be killed. This it not art, nor is it interesting, nor I think is it the true reason behind the ceremonial bullfights, and when a picador or matador is too comfortable in the ring the ceremony looses its meaning, its ritual.  

Art, then, is struggle, is unexpected, is a bull horn in the side, watching an obese picador doing his job for the day turn into a "lumped man-shape." There is nothing interesting or even relevant about bull fights when there is no risk. To put an animal in a cage with one's self to fight, to see which one comes out on top, is to simulate man's fight with nature itself.

Is it a celebration of man overpowering nature, becoming master of what triumphs over it? Which in this day and age is given to the point of irrelevance and thus this ceremony feels arrogant, death for the sake of meaningless entertainment. Which is why the injury (death?) 'redeems' the sullied air, the earth's grossness, the ritual of the fight- the entire ceremony is useless when all that happens is the act of the picador killing the bull ("ritual death each time botched") and not the bull retaliating ("Blood faultlessly broached").