Although it has been well over two years since I had an opportunity to talk about Italian fencing in Argentina, my silence on the fascinating history of fencing in South America has primarily been caused by the difficulty in obtaining copies of the relevant works from the early 20th century. To address this drought I present today Horacio Levene's Teoría de la esgrima, a foil treatise published in 1929 in Buenos Aires.
As Levene states in the preface, this book was adopted as the official text of the Argentinian military's fencing and gymnastics school, of which he was the director at the time of publication. Born in 1883, Levene was himself a graduate of the school, first entering its halls in 1901, after which he was posted to several different regiments, military schools, and at one point even a navy frigate, all of which he lists at the beginning of the book along with the civilian clubs he had taught at.1 His diligent work was rewarded in 1923 when he was appointed as the army's inspector of gymnastics and fencing, and three years later he became director of the fencing and gymnastics school itself. In addition to his work on fencing, Levene made notable contributions to the field of gymnastics in Argentina and also wrote a duelling code that saw several republications during his lifetime.2 He died in 1960.
As would be expected, Levene's method inherits much from the father of Italian fencing in Argentina, Eugenio Pini, and it retains a distinctly Italian character.3 Levene mostly repeats much of Pini's particular terminology, such as the term reccoglimento for the envelopment and the distinction between counter and half-counter parries, but includes some of his own modifications, such as the additional parries of 6th (a supinated 2nd) and 5th (equivalent to that used in Italian sabre).
The most unique feature of this treatise is in the second half, which was written almost entirely by Levene's 3rd-year students at the Argentinian military master's school. The first technique is described by Levene, who provides the structure that is then repeated by his students. Each one outlines the tactical applications of a specific technique (or combination thereof) and give notes for the instructor to take into account when teaching it.
The final page of the book refers to synoptic tables of actions that were supposed to follow, but these are missing in my copy. I presume that they were either removed at some point in this book's life, or, alternatively, they were perhaps never present at all. As the title page of the book states, this particular printing was the 'provisional edition', thus there may have been later printings that included the tables, but this is of course mere conjecture. If readers are aware of any other exemplars of this seemingly rather rare book, I would be very interested to know if they differ at all.
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1 Alejo Levoratti and Diego Roldán, "Los batallones escolares de la patria. Estudio comparado de las representaciones sobre el cuerpo y el entrenamiento de los maestros de esgrima del centenario en la República Argentina," Revista História da Educação 23 (2019): 23–4, https://doi.org/10.1590/2236-3459/88977.↩2 Some of Levene's other publications: La esgrima y el duelo: espada de combate (Buenos Aires: n. p., 1914); Duelo: manual de procedimiento (Buenos Aires: Fueyo, 1917); Gimnasia metodizada (Orientación integral humana, 1939).↩
3 See Eugenio Pini, La esgrima de espada (Buenos Aires: Félix Lajouane, 1902). The treatise was subsequently republished in 1905 by Maucci in both Barcelona and Buenos Aires. The Italian version edition is Trattato pratico e teorico sulla scherma di spada (Livorno: Raffaello Giusti, 1904).↩
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