Fabris is Hard

I felt like I was hitting a dead end in my at-home drilling of Spanish Stuff. So, what do I do? Obviously, the best course to gain skill is to switch tracks at the least sign of an obstacle, the moment that the going gets rough. And fortunately, I got this shiny new reprint of Leoni's Fabris, available right here, right now. And not super-expensive, too.

*****

So, I did that thing I do. I grabbed the book and combed over it until I found something interesting. And what did I find, but a list of theoretical rules for how to fight Single Rapier and Rapier and Dagger while walking forward resolutely. So the first thing I did was chew through this part of the text, and then summarize it for reference.

Seriously, what else would I do?

Here's the my probably-completely-wrong summary:

• Principle 1 is basically the idea of stringere, but there's also a flowchart attached.
• Principle 2 is an interesting thing where you start with your blade in a super high guard with your arm bent, then rotate your body downwards to defend yourself. I can't do it right because I don't have the rotations down well enough, and don't know well enough when I am safe.
• Principle 3 is the idea that you don't really need to adopt a guard until you are beginning to step into your opponent's lunge measure.
• Principle 4 is basically a way of moving in a direction with your body, then using the void you perform to let you defend yourself with your sword.
• Principle 5 is a different way of entering into the concepts of principle 2, but given the different starting point it seems to usually end with extending into your opponent's parry and thrusting through it.
• Principle 6 is the idea that you should start with your arm extended, then bend your arm and put your left shoulder forward to get past their tip, and then stab them.

And here are the dagger rules, though these seem to be more guards than rules.

• The first one is a guard in which your sword is completely horizontal and your dagger points straight up. You are supposed to cross-parry and thrust your opponent.
• The second one is similar, except that your sword and dagger are pointed forward in a way that sort of makes a slice of pie. I already do this stance as one of my standard rotation.
• The third one is an interesting way of matching your sword and dagger in a way that makes them parallel, and puts your dagger's tip at the same place as your sword's tip, and lets you proactively parry with your dagger.
• The fourth one is a weird thing in which your dagger and maybe sword too to point at your opponent's sword. Huh!

And then I immediately attempted to implement them in practice. Again, there's way more in the text - I just wanted to get a quick summary so I could feel what did and did not work about them, to give me a basis for approaching them again in the book.

*****

Well, that didn't go super-well. It went well enough to be interesting - in particular, principle 5 from single went well, and principle 3 from sword and dagger went well.

I need to work on the rest of them. I know for sure that I'm doing them wrong, but I need to read through the manual to figure out exactly how I am doing them wrong. Because this cheat-sheet loses a whole lot of detail, and each section has basically a flowchart for when you should or should not use a particular rule.

Fabris has a different idea of distance and tempo, when compared to Capoferro or Giganti. Or rather, he speaks of long and short tempi, and he speaks of tempi of the body sometimes being shorter than tempi of the hand. Perhaps this is evidence that my "Capoferro wants you to use a lighter blade than Giganti or Fabris" heresy is correct. But without further evidence, I'm not yet going to assume that - rather, I'm going to assume that I am doing something wrong, and beat my head against the problem for approximately two more weeks, after which I will either have gained something out of it or I will abandon it.

Fabris also is an advocate of what some people call "Caminieren" - that is to say, walking fencing. He thinks that you should be walking forward, allowing your body to be the primary means of adjusting your sword's position, while your hand is mostly meant for disengaging and making sure you actually hit. It's fascinating, really.

*****

Since I'm tired, here's a quick few notes:

• Singles principle 2 does work well against Spanish, as expected.
• Dagger principle 4 didn't work super well against Spanish, but that might be because the particular fighter didn't move his arm around that much.
• Dagger principle 3 is great.
• Sword principles 2 and 5 are great.
• Most of the sword principles can be combined with each other, especially sword principle 3.
• I had a hard time with sword principle 1, but I think that's because people are used to seeing that in action. Need to do better with that flowchart, though.

*****

Anyhow, good night, and good fencing.