Author: Huang Qiang (Lecturer, School of English, Beijing University of Foreign Chinese)
In the early stage of human society, winter ice and snow sports in the modern sense are not simply regarded as sports competitions. For human groups living at high latitudes and high altitudes, it is a way of life, a means of transportation, and even a means of war. For example, the biathlon in the modern Winter Olympics is a combination of skiing and shooting, retaining the original war attributes of winter ice and snow sports.
1. Caribbean Islands and "Cool Runway"
In the 20th century, with the establishment and promotion of the Winter Olympic Games, a series of winter ice and snow sports were well known to everyone, and gradually became a fitness program with a broad mass base on a global scale. At the same time, with the increase in public enthusiasm for participation, winter ice and snow sports have also begun to undergo a transformation from sports competitions to cultural and artistic activities. Some legends related to winter snow sports and the experiences of outstanding athletes have been remade into film and television works, which are deeply loved by audiences.
A classic film and television work worth mentioning is Eddie the Eagle, released in 2016, which tells the legendary story of British ski jumper Michael Edwards. The film not only makes more audiences start to pay attention to and participate in winter ice and snow sports, but also vividly shows the sportsmanship of unity and fraternity, fair competition and mutual understanding.
Picture of Peter Bruegel Sr.'s painting The Snow Hunter (1565).
Another film based on winter snow sports is the 1993 feature film Cool Runway. Based on a true story, the film tells the story of four young Jamaicans who overcome difficulties in the hot Caribbean region to form the country's first snow team and participate in the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada. In the film, the four Jamaican youths were originally sprinters, but none of them stood out in the Olympic trials in their home countries. In order to be able to participate in the Olympic Games, the four people had a whim, changed their goal from participating in the Summer Olympics to the Winter Olympics, and formed the country's first ever snow team. Because Jamaica is located in the Caribbean, the climate is hot, and there is no snow all year round, they use grass instead of snow slopes, practice hard, and lock themselves in cold storage to train their hardiness in low temperature environments. In the end, the kung fu paid off, they landed on the field of the Winter Olympics, realized their dreams, and won the respect of others.
This film is not only an inspirational film and television work, it also reflects the development trend of winter ice and snow sports in the past hundred years. In the 100th century, the influence of ice and snow sports gradually radiated from Europe to the world. Taking the Winter Olympics as an example, the third Winter Olympics in 1932 came to lake Placid in New York, USA. 40 years later, the Winter Olympics made their first trip to the Asian continent. In the past 30 years, the participating athletes have gradually expanded from European and North American countries to Asia, Central America, South America, Oceania and even African countries and regions, igniting the spark of ice and snow sports development in many countries without ice and snow. This reflects that ice and snow sports have a growing mass base around the world, and the establishment of this foundation is inseparable from the help of the mass culture industry.
2. Robert Pence and the "Roaring Game"
In fact, before winter ice and snow sports became the new favorite of the film and television industry, it was already a common theme in many literary works. The Scottish poet Robert Pence used curling imagery in Tam Samson's Elegy; the American writer Louisa May Olcott described the speed skating scene in Little Women; the English poet Tor Sergeant wrote about the game as a leisure sport in The Wasteland; Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño's Ice Rink used figure skating as the main background for the plot development in the work; and the British female writer Agatha Christie's "The Problem of Stafford" And the British novelist Ian Fleming's "The Queen's Secret Envoy" has repeatedly depicted snow sports such as cross-country skiing and obstacle skiing. Some writers in their works use the spatial fluidity and speed of ice and snow sports to hint at the "downhill" situation of the traditional European order, while others strengthen the suspense and story tension of their works in describing the dangerous snow chase.
Woodcut print "Fingask Curling Club Championship" (1854) file picture
In 1786, Pence wrote the poem "The Elegy of Tam Samson", which was dedicated to a mason named Tam Samson, who worked at the Kilmarnock Country Sports Club in Scotland. The main reason Pence met and befriended such an obscure ordinary mason was that he was also an honorary member of the Kilmarnock Country Sports Club. According to the Scottish poet Donnie O'Rourke, when Pence went out hunting with Samson, Samson expressed to the poet his desire to be buried in the wilderness at his feet a hundred years later. Although he was ultimately unsuccessful, Pence wrote a memorial inscription on Samson's tombstone in Reicock Cemetery.
At the same time, Pence wrote The Elegy of Tam Samson. In verses four and five of the poem, Pence first describes the coming of winter: "Winter wraps itself in a cloak and binds the pond like a rock." "In winter, ponds and swamps are frozen into glacial lakes in low temperatures, as hard as rocks. It was on this ice that "a large group of curlers laughed." At this point, the poet asks, "What will they put at the starting point?" The answer to this question is self-explanatory. The term "starting point" here refers to the place where curling is thrown in curling, and this group of curlers naturally places granite stones at the starting point.
In the next verse, the poet recalls Samson's past in curling, praising him as the "King of the Core". The "core" here refers to the heart of the camping area in curling. In curling competitions at that time, the distance from the center of the curling thrown by the contestants determined the win or loss of the game. In the poet's recollection, Samson was a good curler. The poet writes that his "arch guard", "throwing" and "interspersing" were all powerful. All three of these movements are common in curling. "Arch guard" is a defensive strategy that places the second stone of oneself before the first stone, so that the first stone is protected from the impact of the opponent stone. "Throwing" is an offensive means of throwing one's own stone to a specific location without touching other stones. "Interspersed" means that the stone thrown by the thrower is interspersed through the gap between the existing curling in the track. Apparently, in the poet's recollection, Samson was quite skilled and skilled in these techniques. It was enough to put him on a par with The 9th-century B.C. King Yahu of Israel. King Yehu was once famous for his chariot attacks, and the stones in Samson's hands seemed to rampage like the chariots under King Yehu's command, with a terrifying momentum, making a "roar" sound on the curling rink. But now, "he's moving slowly on the edge of death." In this sentence, the poet borrows the term "boundary" from a curling game to describe Samson as a stone that has left this world like a stone that has left the boundary. In this part, the poet integrates the memories of the deceased into the curling movement, expressing the thoughts and sentimentality of his friends.
In another poem "Imagination", written in the same year, Pence once again painted vivid scenes of Scottish people playing curling. He wrote: "The sun is over winter, / Curling people stop their roaring game. The poet's "roaring game" refers to curling. From winter to spring, the temperature rises, people who participate in curling have to put away their stones, and there is no longer the roar of the stones on the ice.
Picture of the painting Cassbreck's Curling Competition (1899).
In addition to Pence, the roar of curling can also be heard in the work of other Scottish artists. In his youth, Alain Ramsey, a famous Scottish portrait painter in the 18th century, wrote a poem entitled "To Robert Yard of Devonshire", in which he associated curling with the Scottish winter, in the "snow-covered North Peak" and "the constantly blowing wind", "curling stones / scratching on the flat ice, making a rustling sound". This series of poetic works not only exemplifies the direct relationship between curling and Scotland, but also provides rich fodder for Scottish literary creations aimed at emphasizing Scotland's national character.
Curling originated in Scotland in the 14th century and was one of the most popular winter ice and snow sports in Scotland, especially in the Scottish lowlands. The equipment used in the sport is also made from local materials, using granite boulders from various Scottish lakes and carving them into a flat-bottomed round cake style for sliding and impacting on the ice. The earliest surviving stone in the world dates back to 1511 and is housed in the Smith Museum in Sterling, Scotland. According to Rebecca Staple, director of the Robert Pence Birthplace Museum, the earliest written accounts of curling can be traced back to the early 1540s. At the time, a notary in the scottish town of Paisley told an interesting story: a monk in Paisley Abbey challenged another monk to play a tally to hit a pole on the ice. Subsequently, curling became popular in Scotland in the second half of the 18th century, with a large number of participants and onlookers, and Pence was one of them.
In addition to literary works, curling also appears in some pictorial works of art. The most famous of these is the Flanders painter Peter Bruegel Sr.'s "The Snow Hunter" in 1565. Since then, as Scottish immigrants have migrated and spread across the globe, curling has gradually spread across continental Europe and North America. In 1924, the first Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, incorporated curling into the Olympic Games, making it a performance event. At the 18th Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998, curling officially became a competition in the Winter Olympics.
It can be seen that winter ice and snow sports are gradually surpassing the scope of sports competition and becoming a cultural phenomenon. In the near future, Beijing will take over the baton of the Winter Olympic Games and host a grand event of world winter ice and snow sports that includes more than 100 events. Through these competitions, athletes will show their competitive strength, convey the unique charm and beauty of ice and snow sports to the audience, and perhaps also stimulate a heated discussion about "sports literature" or "literary sports" in the academic community.
Guangming Daily (2022.01.13. 13th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily