The Circus

The circus is a natural part of the traveling fair. This is a segregated society with its own costumes, pride, and laws. It comprises a population jealous of its special character, proud of its isolation, and endogamous. Its professional secrets are transmitted from father to son. As far as possible, it settles its own differences without resorting to the courts.

Lion tamers, jugglers, equestriennes, clowns, and acrobats are subjected to a rigorous discipline from infancy. All dream of perfecting their numbers to the least detail in order to assure success and— in an emergency— safety.

This closed and rigorous universe constitutes the austere side of the fair. The decisive sanction of death is necessarily present, for the lion tamer just as for the acrobat. It forms part of the tacit agreement that binds the performers and the spectators. It enters into the rules of a game that anticipates a total risk. The unanimity of circus people in refusing the net or cable that would protect them from a tragic fall speaks for itself. It is necessary  for the state to impose such safety devices against their stubborn resistance, but this falsifies the totality of the wager.

For circus people the big top represents not merely a profes­sion but a way of life, not really comparable to sports, casino, or stage for champions, gamblers, or professional actors. In the circus there is added a kind of hereditary fatalism and a much sharper break with ordinary life. Because of this, circus life, strictly speaking, cannot be regarded as synonymous with play.

And yet, two of its traditional activities are literally and sig­ nificantly associated with ilinx and mimicry. I allude to the tightrope and the universality of certain kinds of clowning.

The Tightrope

Sports is the profession corresponding to agon; a special way of courting chance is the profession or rather the denial of a profession associated with alea; and the theater is comparable to mimicry. The tightrope is the profession corresponding to ilinx. In fact, vertigo is not merely an obstacle, difficulty, or danger on the tightrope. The flying trapeze goes beyond mountain climbing, forced recourse to parachute jumping, and those oc­ cupations requiring the worker to do his job high over the earth. On the high wire, the very heart of prowess and the only aim is to master vertigo. The game consists expressly in moving through space as if the void were not fascinating, and as if no danger were involved.

An ascetic existence is necessary to obtain this supreme skill. It involves a regime of severe privation and strict continence, ceaseless exercise, continuous repetition of the same movements, and the acquisition of impeccable reflexes and faultless re­sponses. Somersaults are performed in a state bordering upon hypnosis. Supple and strong muscles and imperturbable self-control are necessary conditions. To be sure, the acrobat must calculate the effort, time, distance, and trajectory of the trapeze.

But he lives in terror of thinking of it at the decisive moment, when it nearly always has fatal consequences. It paralyzes in­ stead of aiding, at a moment when the least hesitation is dis­astrous. Consciousness is the killer. It is disturbing to his som­nambulistic infallibility and compromises the functioning of a mechanism whose extreme precision cannot tolerate doubts or regrets. The tightrope walker only succeeds if he is hypnotized by the rope, the acrobat only if he is sure enough of himself to rely upon vertigo instead of trying to resist it. Vertigo is an integral part of nature, and one controls it only in obeying it.

These games are always comparable to the exploits of the Mexi­can voladores, affirming and exemplifying the natural creativity involved in mastering ilinx. Aberrant disciplines, heroic feats accomplished to no purpose or profit, disinterested, mortally dangerous and useless, they are of merit in furnishing admirable witness, even if not generally recognized, to human perseverance, ambition, and hardiness.

Quote from the book Man, Play and Games (Roger Caillois)