In an article reviewing Kasia Boddy’s book Boxing: A Cultural History the American writer Joyce Carol Oates quotes from that dark, unsettling philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Every talent must unfold itself in fighting.” Nietzsche thought, contrary to prevailing morality, that it was perfectly natural to fight, even to fight to the death, in the service of allowing “hatred to flow forth fully.” Look around the world, Nietzsche’s disturbed and disturbing observation seems frighteningly accurate.
Mankind has had to find ways, if it could, to contain the horrors of anarchy and violence flowing from this natural instinct to fight to the death. There was Homeric art, for instance, which deceives us into thinking that the horrors of war are beautiful and brave and bearable. And thus, also, were devised the stylised contests of sport through which, in the words of Joyce Carol Oates, there gradually “evolves a ritualistic appropriation of uncontrolled violence.” Instead of kill or be killed we simply win or lose a sporting contest. To remove the “contest” from Greek life was, Nietzsche wrote, “immediately to look into that pre-Homeric abyss of terrifying savagery of hatred and the lust to annihilate.”
This is very serious stuff indeed. By this interpretation what we will be witnessing on our screens for the next few weeks is nothing less than the playful enactment of a World War or, perhaps more appropriately, a defanged substitute for universal civil war. And, now I come to think of it, some of the rivalries we watch are likely to come as near to fierce hand-to-hand conflict as you are likely to see without a show of blood. Indeed, the closer it comes to that intensity the greater will be the appeal since there is that in men, and women too (though not, I think, as much), which yearns to look upon a struggle to the death if one’s own survival is not at stake.
So the warriors will be well trained and shadow fighting to the death. That is as it should be. Happily, however, not only the spirit of Homer presides at these games of ancient lineage. Pan, the god of laughter and disaster, is never far away and insists on intervening at these great events, thumbing his nose at all solemnity.
Terry Schroeder, for instance, captain of the US water polo team in 1984 – the god of laughter peeped out on him. Strapping young Schroeder was selected as the model for the 30-feet tall bronze nude statue erected for the Games at the entrance to the Los Angeles Coliseum. He must have been proud, young Schroeder, that his magnificent physique was chosen. But pride soon changed by degrees to blushing shyness at the well-attended unveiling ceremony when he found that the modelling had been done in meticulous detail, everything in 30-foot proportion, from conspicuous top to no less conspicuous toe and, well, tip, for all the world to see and marvel – and tease relentlessly as the Games proceeded.
After all, the Olympics are not only about super-heroes, they are just as much about the also-rans. A few hundred win medals, many thousands simply take part – and, quite often, not very well – like the young boy from Syria one year, you must remember, who was diving in competition with the great Loughanis and all the other experts in perfection and the lad consistently got muddled up on the high board, more often than not landing feet first in Olympic water – but, so what, he would not give up and by the end the cheers for him were louder than for anyone.
The Olympic Games may be a dark metaphor representing death-dealing battle in a tamed and bloodless form. But they also represent the Human Comedy in all its wondrous guises. Declan Hegarty, the Irish hammer-thrower, I remember him with reverence. He must have trained his guts out like all the others but on the day something went horribly wrong. Declan Hegarty, to his despair, found himself repeatedly throwing the hammer the wrong way, scattering officials and spectators far and wide, achieving in the end only the demolition of the surrounding thrower’s cage and not the record distances for which he had trained and striven and hoped and prayed. He too is part of Olympic history.
A great deal will be lacking in the coming weeks if a few Declan Hegartys do not put in an appearance to lighten up proceedings with their frolic amid all the furious striving and succeeding.
