More About the Italian Foil
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More About the Italian Foil
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June 1939
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4
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4
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10
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10
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en
MORE ABOUT THE ITALIAN FOIL
A serious-minded amateur coach in a city which has no professional writes to say that the Italian foil is being adopted almost wholesale among the younger fencers there. He feels that it is tending to create much wildness in movements and fears for the welfare of fencing in his city if the trend continues. He asked for more explanation of the differences in the two weapons and Schools. We print our reply and our explanation of some of the technique of the Italian fencers which, though different from the style he learned originally, need not be interpreted as wild, dangerous, or unorthodox.
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Essentially, what is the difference between the Italian foil and its School and the French foil and its School? The weapons vary in the handle, the cross section, and length of the blade. The handle of the Italian foil is of medium length, straight, and with a cross-bar. It is strapped to the wrist to assure its security and to counterbalance the weight of the foible so that the blade itself feels lighter from guard to tip than does the French foil. The Italian blade in cross-section is thinner one way and wider the other way than the French blade. This makes it whippier and more effective for coupes. It is tempered differently, being apparently softer and requiring straightening after nearly every effective attack. This is so because the Italian attacks are stronger than the French attacks and were their blades tempered the same, the Italian foilsmen would go poor buying new blades. The Italian blade is about a quarter-inch longer than the French blade. I do not know why, except that most French blades are made about a quarter inch short of the maximum allowance, whereas the Italians come right up to maximum. It may be because the French blade being heavier is shortened to keep its balance at about 24” from the guard.
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As for the two Schools, they have blended very closely together today. Each has its own pet principle that the other borrows, but each principle is more effective with one weapon than the other.
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The French believe in deception. Their favorite attack is preceded by a true feint into an open line to draw the parry. They endeavor to deceive this parry and lunge to the target. Their game dissolves to a choice of two things, one of which would be wrong and the other right. Essentially, there are only two ways you can parry. You can parry by closing your line with a single parry, or you can parry by holding your original position with a counter parry, which removes the point from threatening the open line. The choice in endeavoring deception, therefore, depends upon the opponent's choice of parry. If you parry with a simple parry, the attacker must disengage back into your newly opened line. The entire attack would be called a one-two. If you use a counter parry, the attacker must deceive and continue his attack in the original line. This attack would be called a double.
This is all very elementary. However, you can count the men who have mastered this game during the last 50 years on the fingers of one hand. The hand must become part of the eye to perceive, and assist in the fractional second allowed by any fast parry. It must be assisted by intuition and experience plus hours and hours of accurate exercise.
The Italian School is also based upon a two-choice premise. Its game is not based upon deception but upon force. They do not attack into air but rather against your blade. They start with a pris de fer, pressing against your blade even to pressing it out of line. You must press back and recover your line or circle under and take their blade on the inside. If you don't do one of these, they press right on to hit you in the line they have forced open for themselves. If you press back, they disengage and allow you to press out as widely as you please while they follow you around and lunge to the target or follow around to catch your foil when it stops, give it a hard beat, and lunge straight in. The first part of this attack is done by stepping forward, closing distance, and not fully extending the arm until their lunge, which follows your particular reaction. (In the French School, the feint of disengage is made with a straight arm well ahead of the final lunge.) Their final extension and lunge, coming late and when they are close to you, makes their attack very strong and results in their blades being bent into corkscrews more often than occurs with the French foil.
There is much more to both schools, both in variety and in principles than I have time or experience to tell you. A good fencer of either School is able to fence the other style too and does so throughout an evening, depending on the type of opponent. But with the above bold explanation of the two schools I can approach a definite answer to your questions more easily.
1: The Italian foil will not tend to accentuate your pupils’ faults. It will not make them wilder in their attacks or in their defense. If anything it will make their defense better for their foil is secure at all times, they cannot bend their wrists and are consequently held into fairly sharp line. The preparation of attack with bent arm is part of the Italian School so that cannot be declared “wildness”. The Italian foil is no good for infighting, so they cannot close and start jabbing as so many do in the French School. The Italian foil in itself limits their wildness.
2: If you want to make a boy into a fencer during a four-year course in school and want to get the best results out of him in the quickest possible time, the Italian foil is your weapon. You may spoil a good French foilsman 10 years hence by doing so but the cold-blooded answer to your question is the Italian foil. I would not bother with the French foil for a girl. Her years of effective competition are much more limited than a boy’s. You must train her for quick results and she has a wrist that is by nature weak and needing the support of a strap. Give her an Italian foil and let her have as much fun out of effective competition in the few years she will find fencing interesting as possible. Her competition will never be as strong and smart as it is in men’s competition and a few tricks with the Italian foil will go far. By the time she would become really proficient with the French foil she will have married and lost interest in athletics.
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There is no doubt but that the Italian foil is spreading in the United States. We have passed the worst of this phase here in New York and some of those who adopted it during the past two years have now returned to their former French foil. No one here is now choosing blindly but is weighing each weapon against his particular style and preference. This is as it should be. Almost all of our girls are now using the Italian foil and I think their fencing has improved as a result of this. I think that this is right for them as I have explained above.
