M. de Montherlant's novel ["The Bullfighters"] is the first I know to raise bullfighting beyond either mere spectacle or mere study, and to put it in an absolute world of its own, with its own sensations of beauty and mysticism, terror and strength…. [To] read "The Bullfighters" is to drop out of life, to become bullfighter and bull and nothing else, to see Time drop away and immemorial ceremonies dominate and fire the blood. Here is not only the face of the bull and the mind of the bullfighter; here is the soul of bullfighting….

Having lived throughout the book in a merely technical and professional world of bullfighting, one suddenly sees into the soul of the spectacle, into the history of the ceremony, with all its beauty, its passion, its terror, its symbolism of the life force. There remains nothing of the "national sport of Spain" about...