Hors d’Œuvre

Art and Criticism

I received a clipping from a sports newspaper that commented with indignation on the incident of the Amiens Crossing. For Amiens, like all cities where Providence had made a river cross, underwent the ordeal of the Crossing by swimming. The swimmers swam in the river, and on the river sailed the Officials, who encouraged the competitors with their voices and gestures. It must be believed that the Officials had little knowledge of the principles of navigation; for, at a given moment, they all went to the same side of the boat, on the side where something interesting was happening. The boat capsized, and it was noticed that the Officials did not know how to swim. The race was transformed into a rescue event, or more precisely a draft... Then our sports colleague lays down this principle: "The leaders of swimming must know how to swim. »

Everyone should know how to swim, by virtue of this absurd and respectable prejudice that swimmers cannot drown. In reality, it is always swimmers who manage to drown, by a spirit of adventure and excessive presumption. People who cannot swim know that they cannot swim and do not go to places where they could drown…

The example of the Officials of Amiens is instructive in this sense, although it seems convincing in the opposite sense. The Officials of Amiens, in Somme, were rescued safe and sound… But suppose that one of the champions of the event had been seized by a cramp or a congestion; no one would have come to his aid; we would have said to ourselves: "He is a famous swimmer, and we would have let him sink quietly.

The prejudice that an Official, judge, critic in an art or referee of a sport, is skilled in the art he criticizes or adroit in the sport whose performances he assesses, is even more absurd. The practitioner has acquired school mannerisms and undergone a professional deformation that harms the sureness of his eye and the impartiality of his judgment. The Official must be a pure theoretician.

The judge of a criminal court has never practiced theft, fraud, or murder. This is what allows him to render fair judgments. Ab de stereo The music critic would be very embarrassed if he had to compose an operetta. Put a palette and brushes in the hands of an art critic, a billiard cue in the hands of the consumer who comments learnedly on pile-ups, or a horse between the legs of this lawn-dweller who explains how the jockey should have ridden to win "by ten lengths, sir, in an armchair"...

Literary and dramatic critics produce, in truth, novels and plays which are abuses of power and on which it would be cruel to insist... Mr. Dupanloup was a fine gastronome; one day, he wanted to cook eggs in his kitchen; you know what mishap befell him.

As regards swimming specifically, I refer you to military wisdom. When the colonel has decided that the men will go swimming to learn to swim, the sergeant-majors go through the barracks to ask who it is, sometimes, who would like to register as a swimming instructor.

Now the men who register as swimming instructors are always men who have a horror of cold water; they know that the instructor does not bathe; the instructor stays on the shore, and he makes others bathe.

I think I have already told you the story of this military swimming instructor whom I knew in my youth, and who one day fell into the water, while he was holding a student at the end of a string to whom he was orally teaching the art of not drowning. The instructor, who did not know how to swim, nearly perished; but he had shown himself to be such a good teacher that his student was able to pull him out of the water. It was the instructor, of course, who received the colonel's congratulations and the life-saving medal. The same principle applies to everything military.

So, look, the Officials of patriotism, the teachers of heroism, the instructors of devotion... Well, they stay on the shore. But, rest assured, they do not let themselves be forgotten when we distribute congratulations and rescue medals.

G. DE LA FOUCHARDIERE.