October 3rd, Kuşadası
There is such an old and intimate connection between gymnastics and my life that it extends back to my earliest memories. When I was small, when I was still a nine-year-old child, we were living in Kuşdili. Our neighbor, a musical family, quite famous, had children slightly older than me. These children would somersault all over the large meadow and walk on their hands like the little acrobat boy who had fascinated me extraordinarily one Ramadan evening in Şehzadebaşı.
From the age of four, I would throw my beloved blue-painted hoop—to which I had remained faithful—and my whistle-stick into a corner of the garden, and every evening I would go out to the meadow, my hands empty and enchanted, and watch those children. Finally one day, with the natural shyness and boldness of childhood, embarrassed and hesitant, I asked them to teach me this somersaulting, this walking on hands.
The eldest first refused with the courtesy of “Your mother will be angry, perhaps…” then, unable to resist my insistent and fervent requests, agreed. And as a first lesson, they set about ensuring the flexibility of my waist, which was most necessary, and asked me: “Is your waist broken?…”
I had never heard such a question. Bewildered and frightened, I said “No.”
“Then let’s break it…”
Poor me, stupefied with fear and wonder, as if paralyzed, I writhed and was straightened in their hands for five or ten minutes. Later, the eldest, who resembled a teacher, braced his small knee against my delicate little waist, gave the command “come on,” and the other two pressed hard on my hips and shoulders; a crack in my waist… A heaviness I had never felt or imagined until then… I started to cry. They had apparently repeated this operation on many children before me. Without paying any attention to my tears, they left me with the consolation of “Shh, shh, little boy, it will pass now, don’t cry…” I too came home and hid the pain in my waist with the endurance of a young kitten, so as not to be scolded. This pain did indeed pass; but not within a “now” as my tiny merciless teachers said, but in several weeks…
Again every evening I would become absorbed in watching them on the meadow. As they somersaulted, I was as if magnetized, attracted, involuntarily going to them. Despite my insistent inclination, they would perform their most showy feats, embracing each other’s waists, doing double somersaults, and move away in a mocking artistic mass.
The haughty eyes looking down from the clouds of these little artists older than me wounded my tiny innocent self-esteem; why couldn’t I do like them and… oh, and I had cried while they were teaching me. I thought with my little mind that somersaulting on the first try wouldn’t work. On the first try, it was necessary to hold these delicate legs in the air that this delicate waist couldn’t bear. For this, one had to practice; this wasn’t possible at home, everyone was forbidding me with the warning “Stop, your neck will break…”
In a corner of our garden there was a room converted from a flower bed where our cook and old servant slept. Daytime when they weren’t there was the perfect opportunity… I would immediately open the servant’s half-made bed, place my head on that soft spot with my hands, try to hold my legs in the air, fall, get up again; I wouldn’t tire, wouldn’t give up. I don’t know how many days passed, but now I could keep my hands and head on the ground, my feet up. I immediately ran to the meadow, displayed before those children my insignificant skill which I knew they wouldn’t deign to acknowledge. The child who cried the other day attracted their astonishment today with his poplar-like stance; finally they appreciated it. Then within the hesitant and indifferent friendship that began—because we didn’t know each other’s names—and in a short time, I too learned to walk on my hands and to do four or five somersaults one after another. In fact, in side somersaults I had even surpassed them.
Then they enrolled me in a private school. The gymnasium built together with the school maintained its newness as if it had been made yesterday; only the honorary gymnastics teacher, while teaching the children to form ranks and march in twos, would swing a few times on the new and shiny rings to attract their enthusiasm; then a little speech:
“Gentlemen, if you want to be strong, (showing his biceps over his jacket) to have thick, strong arms like mine, you must do gymnastics. Your arms need to be strengthened so you don’t fall, so you must exercise a lot…”
Contrary to the condition expressed by old-fashioned fathers when enrolling their sons in school—”Director, those gymnastics equipment I saw in the school garden… Please don’t direct the child to such dangerous things, because he won’t become an acrobat”—every evening for about an hour, accident-free gymnastics would be done; arms would be extended forward, down, up, one would sweat, become exhausted.
One day, daring me, I went before the teacher and said, “If you permit, I want to swing, sir.” He was surprised at his lymphatic and delicate student: “But you’ll fall.”
“No, I won’t fall.”
“Have you ever done gymnastics before?”
I answered with care: “Very much, if you order, shall I repeat some of my skills before you?…”
From the teacher’s contemptuous smile came: “Go ahead, let’s see…”
The teacher especially liked it very much. Because at award ceremonies, sometimes in the presence of inspectors from the Ministry of Education, there was a great need for a little artist to prove and demonstrate that gymnastics lessons were really being given at the school.
The teacher, considering this point of view, benefited from me; I was doing the movements he showed very easily. In two years I had progressed so much that I had become the teacher’s assistant. On days when he didn’t come, right after the last lesson I would immediately put on my gymnastics clothes, fasten my narrow and thick belt to my waist, and command all the students, even those in classes above me, with the pride of a commander intoxicated with authority.
“Form twos, hold hands, your feet will all be in line and you won’t laugh.”
The thumb of my left hand hooked to the large, thick ring of my belt, my right arm behind me in the shape of an embodied proud angle, my chest puffed out, I would walk before that childish nature.
“’17’ come on, to the parallel bars, ‘126’ you to the rings, ’49’ you to the ladder…”
Then I would correct everyone’s mistakes, help those who couldn’t lift themselves, and as punishment, make those who were very weak raise and lower two light dumbbells for half an hour…
As my education grew, my training that began with the abandonment of my hoop was also growing, my skills were increasing and multiplying. Even the most old-fashioned members of my family, looking at my body growing with extraordinary speed, believed in the benefits of gymnastics; under a small and beardless child’s face lived the body of a muscular, sinewy young man, my body was running, my age was lagging behind. Years passed, I moved to higher schools, now I was a fierce gymnastics advocate, a persistent athlete.
At that time we had a mathematics teacher. During lessons, whenever he found the opportunity, he would enter into gymnastics and go so far that the eyes of everyone in the class would involuntarily turn to me.
“Gentlemen; never do gymnastics, you will lose your intelligence. You see the wrestlers… they’re all stupid and foolish. I draw your attention to the first, second, third, and most intelligent students in your class; look how weak their bodies are, but in thought, in intelligence they surpass you all.”
And he would claim that this was the case in classrooms throughout the world—with very few exceptions—and to confirm his opinion, he would ask those he mentioned about whether they did gymnastics, and would receive the answer “Definitely not…” During breaks, all the debaters were around me… To respond to this siege, to this attack of questions and claims, I would begin to insult the teacher in absentia with the thoughtless discourtesy of a schoolboy: “What does he know?…” Were the extraordinary famous ones, the wrestlers, those old heroes of the world, their merciless struggles, their bloody competitions all for nothing?… Why hadn’t a smart person like him come out until now and said “this is bad”?
And so on.
With empty chatter without beginning or end on this ground, I would silence the objectors; and to a very intelligent friend who I couldn’t silence and who refuted my defenses with serious and complete objections, I would squeeze his delicate wrists with my strong fists and say “Now shut up, see if you can say anything?…”
The poor thing would be silent. The athletic friends had given this friend the nickname “gymnastics microbe.”
I would grab this gymnastics microbe in free time, in a secluded place, with confidence in converting him—a special term for convincing and making those who don’t do gymnastics accept it—and first try to defeat him by entering into debate with a defeated conversation.
“My dear, please, let’s talk seriously this time. Now I’m always encouraging you to gymnastics, to physical education. I’m not a circus director to imagine a benefit from you; my motive is sincerity and ensuring the future health of an intelligent body like yours.”
“Thank you, but I too am imbued with the same feeling as you, that is, you, with the feeling of saving your health… pity, what a pity that you’re destroying your body, wasting health and life with excessive muscles, superfluous movements. One day will come when you won’t be able to use your head either. With a gradual unintentional stupidity, advancing stupidity, a wrestler’s bestiality will kill your spirituality.”
Our debate would extend for hours, finally I would say:
“A sound mind in a healthy body.”
He would smile: “I confirm: ‘A sound mind in a healthy body… but not in an artificial body that violates and transgresses nature, but in a natural body free from illnesses and diseases.'”
And he would add: “If you think the bodies of those who exercise are healthy, you’re very, very mistaken. With the swelling of one bicep, with the shrinking of another muscle, you call the irregular attack of a growing muscle strength. Bravo to you. Strength is endurance; the exercise done doesn’t increase but rather decreases endurance. Here’s a clear, definitive example for you: The limited days of life of the wrestlers whose bodies we envy, the tragedy of old age of those poor souls…”
I’m a stubborn person who definitely won’t admit defeat… Years passed in training, in an ambiguity of dreams. I would take those who were against gymnastics to Beyoğlu, to the gymnastics club or to large gardens with gymnasiums, and as if as a practical answer before them, I would lift heavy dumbbells, the smallest of which was forty-five kilos. The numerous lessons of the final classes, the unbearable duties didn’t deprive me of training. I was doing my training regularly every evening before dinner, waiting for the arrival of L’Education Critique at the beginning of each month with painful anticipation and regret…
Some time after leaving school life, the question of the effect of training on heart and mind occupied me considerably. As much as a person who isn’t a scientist can read books about science and gather information, I did more; I confirmed that training disrupts the heart’s harmony, because the heart works for natural muscles. Now two biceps that a heart manages are growing extraordinarily, the heart needs to work more for them, the rights of other organs aren’t neglected, weakness in one part, insufficiency in another part… Here’s a heart with disrupted harmony, confused. If only it were just this much… This poor heart also loses its natural shape and created nature with heavy and much movement, grows, just like a bicep grows with heavy movements… It becomes lazy, forgets its duties for the general body, becomes wretched.
As for the effect on the brain: Just as body and physique decrease when mental activity and intellectual occupations increase, when the body is enriched with extraordinary physical occupations and heavy unnatural movements, a slow deterioration of the brain appears, a dullness, a disorder.
My opinion is that it arises from the moderation, the medium of these, and to suggest it, that is, to reduce and regulate the extraordinary intellectual occupations that correspond to the body’s deterioration, and also not to covet that false, artificial, very quickly perishable physique gained equal to the slow deterioration of mind and brain, but to surrender the body to sufficient natural movements.
I desire not to be considered a sickly, weak, puny, objecting gentleman. Gymnastics hasn’t yet betrayed me, because I’m young. I possess biceps, thighs, a chest that could make the most innocent and covetous athlete proud. Together with this possession, I won’t hide the evils that occurred for the declaration of truth.
What I will write will be based on my experiences and studies. Experience—even if wrong—cannot be scorned. No philosophy scorns experience, just as in mathematics, alongside correct hypotheses, there are also wrong hypotheses of the same value that serve the solution of the problem as much as the first ones. The experiences put forward for the manifestation of truth are also like this. Wrongs are as valuable as rights, because they are experience. The value of right is based on wrong, its criterion is that.
Experiences that are likely to be wrong are compared and contrasted with those likely to be right and with each other, and truth manifests!
However, the evils of gymnastics, of heavy unnatural movements, are as well known as the supposed benefits of gymnastics. I’m not the only one claiming this extraordinarily, supernaturally, exclusively. The greatest, most famous doctor, the most capable and renowned scientist of the English, one of the peoples who most observe physical education and bodily movements, criticizes all his countrymen, speaks and thinks about the evil and danger of gymnastics. Nevertheless, aren’t there few things whose apparent imaginary benefits were first confirmed by everyone while their evils, harms, dangers came to light later?…
Ömer Seyfettin
