Highlights

28 December 2023

La Scherma di Spada by Luigi Barbasetti

It has been a long time coming for this treatise to finally become freely available for all, but at long last here is the Italian version of Barbasetti's foil treatise, La Scherma di Spada, published in 1902 by Alessandro Gattinoni of Milan.

Scans

I will omit a summary of its contents today, as it is relatively well-known book in Anglophone fencing circles due to its many republications throughout the years throughout the years. The German from 1900 is also freely available here through KU Leuven.

My cursory comparison of the German and Italian texts showed no significant differences between them aside from the front matter. The German edition contains a dedication to Archduke Franz Salvator of Austria and a preface by Bernhard Dimand, one of the two translators of the book; the Italian version instead contains an introduction from Roderico Rizzotti, who explains that, after having read Barbasetti's original manuscript prior to its translation into German, he felt that work presented a unique simplicity and practicality in its explanations that even the Italian public, who had no shortage of comprehensive foil treatises, would welcome its publication, and thus Rizzotti encouraged Barbasetti to publish his work in Italy. Rizzotti's introduction is followed by the preface from Barbasetti's 1899 sabre treatise Das Säbelfechten, which the Italian editors felt was still relevant and worth providing for the new audience. This preface was not included in the English translations of either of Barbasetti's books.

One minor difference between the two versions is some very small variations in the dimensions of the foil (several parts changing by half a centimetre or so); another difference can be see in the given Italian terms for the advance-lunge. In the German version the term is given in both German and Italian, the latter being pattinando; the Italian version of the text uses both pattinando as well as the noun version of the word pattinaggio, which did not seem to catch on in Italian terminology (although neither did pattinando).

My sincere gratitude to Roberto Gotti and the Martial Arts Museum in Brescia for allowing me to view their impressive collection and share this treatise with readers.

4 comments:

  1. Thank you, Sebastian! This is a very valuable contribution to everyone interested in Barbasetti.

    While Barbasetti remains consistent with the German version of his book, the Italian version does add some minor additional information. The chapter on parries in the lunge is more elaborate, for example. While the German version only provides pictures of the individual positions with a generic explanation, the Italian version gives a detailed description of each.

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    1. Thank you, Christian. That's a great observation!

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  2. This is wonderful. Thank you for posting.

    Do they have an English translation of this by any chance? I can always use a translator app but those only go so far, and a genuine interpretation would help patch up the gaps.

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    1. Second-hand copies of the English edition can be easily found online under the title 'The Art of the Foil'. It was republished way up to the 1990s.

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