Jean Lacouture's Afición for Bullfighting and Art

François Zumbiehl pays tribute to Jean Lacouture, a historian and journalist who died in 2015, exploring his lifelong passion for bullfighting. Lacouture's father was a surgeon at the Bordeaux bullring, and his mother was an aficionada, which shaped his early exposure. He first saw bullfighters in the 1930s at the Bouscat arena, comparing them to the Three Musketeers. Lacouture admired matadors like Antonio Ordoñez and Santiago Martín El Viti for their seductive and austere styles, preferring them to dominant figures like Luis Miguel Dominguín. He saw bullfighting as an aesthetic emotion akin to opera, where beauty emerges at the edge of catastrophe, echoing Michel Leiris. Despite his leftist politics, Lacouture defended bullfighting as a popular spectacle blending social classes, originating in the Enlightenment. He acknowledged its potential conflict with 21st-century morals but found solace in literature, advocating for a dry, restrained writing style on the subject. The tribute connects bullfighting to opera, rugby, and writing as expressions of panache.