Postby I. Hartikainen » Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:55 pm
Hi Stacy!
Thanks for the good question. To add to what Steve already said (Steve is by far more able to answer in a broad context, I am not much of an expert on di Grassi!), here is a quote from Jherek Swanger's translation of dall'Agocchie (which is the master of whom the exercises in the above videos are from).
32 r:
Lep. I rest with great satisfaction thereof, but certain doubts remain which I’d like you to clarify for me (before we move on), and one of them is this: there are many who say that when acting in earnest one can’t perform so many subtleties as there are in this art.
Gio. What do they mean by “subtleties”?
Lep. They say that one can’t feint, nor disengage, and that there isn’t enough time to perform body evasions and similar things.
Gio. They say such things because one rarely finds men who aren’t moved by wrath or fear or something else when it comes to acting in earnest, which causes their intellect to become clouded and for this reason they can’t employ them. But I say to you that if they don’t allow themselves to be defeated by these circumstances, and they keep their heads, although they may be difficult, they’ll do them safely.
Lep. But what’s the reason for teaching them if they’re so difficult to employ in earnest?
Gio. They’re taught so that courageous men can avail themselves of them in the appropriate occasions. Because one often sees many who were somewhat timid and fearful, yet nonetheless were able to perform them excellently when done in play; but then they were unable to avail themselves of them when the occasion arose in which to do them in earnest.
Marozzo is not my primary source at the moment, I can write more about his take on the subject later on, but staying with the sources I am most familiar with, dall'Agocchie is very clear in that in order to succeed in an attack, you have to initially provoke your opponent to move (to offer a tempo), and feinting is one way of doing this. He even slips one feint in the basic defenses on the above videos (0:17 on the guardia d'Alicorno vid), even though these are supposed to be just demonstration of the most basic principles of defense. Generally, the Bolognese technique base is full of feints, they are really numerous, both for play and fighting with sharps.
On the other hand, it is also made clear, that defending against feints is easy, if you can spot them. Dall'Agocchies usual advice to counter a feint is to not move (I see this as referring to your feet) in order to keep yourself quick to react with a counter either when the opponent is changing the line, or to defend against the next attack in two times. Occassionally there is also double feints (for example: feint a mandritto, feint a riverso but strike with a mandritto).
What is important to remember is that not all the sources from the same time period describe the same theory or the same system, or same preferences. One who is defensive and likes to play very secure may not want to bet everything on a feint, while someone who is of more spirit may very well be willing to risk it. It is also psychology in the end, since in a perfect world (as Capoferro states) the feints should not work - but even that is quite not so simple.
I wonder if anyone has ever experienced that feints did not work in sparring or free play? They do. With sharp weapons, they would work even better, as it _really_ takes skill and a cold head to judge someone's attack as being a feint and not to fall for it. The Bolognese masters were always speaking more of the use of the art than the theory itself. And when they describe the theory (the Anonymous Bolognese has the most of it) they do't speak of the feints (as far as I remember), as their place is not in the theory, but in the use.
I hope this helps, and sorry for not being able to answer, at the moment, more specifically regarding di Grassi.
Yours,
Ilkka
