From Nabokov to Karuhat: The Uses of Style to Overcome Difficulty

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Quote

"When the answer is difficult, scarcely manageable, only style will allow the writer to continue to write, and may produce some of his or her most powerful work. When the answer is too easily had, the writing accumulates excesses of signature."

This beautiful quote from The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction uncovers a powerful observation on the function of style for an artist. What is in question is the way in which Nabokov comes to what really are aporias - difficult crossings - in his writing, discussions of the roots of knowledge or of ethics. It is the particular way in which Nabokov can dive down into some of the most beautiful writing in the English language, only to then surface into parodies of literary styles, or even almost parody of himself. The quote places the leverage point at the level of the difficulty of the answer.

What this opens up is a separable understanding of the uses of aesthetics, of style, itself. The way in which style can be used to overcome doubts, or certain impassible gaps, an aesthetic solution to the next moments of living. It is as if one's style, if fully invested, can briefly give you wings to cross short chasms until you can land on the other side, when the style becomes more grounded, has more footing. What comes to mind, if we allow ourselves to leave literature and enter the traditional Muay Thai ring is the fighting style of Karuhat Sor. Supawan, who may be the greatest stylist of Thai history. What the stylistics of traditional Muay Thai can teach us of the pragmatic role of style is the very firm-footed nature of these brief flights into personalized aesthetics. When you study Karuhat's fights - you can find 32 of them here - especially as he matures as a fighter, you can locate very contested sections of fights where he will almost inexplicably pass into style. He may or may not be scoring, but it is the weightlessness of his ascent, at those very times that feel the most difficult, most uncrossable, that displays the power of style. It is as if, when you do not know what is next, what can be done, you pass into style, almost as if humming the bars of a song you have forgotten the words to, passing into pure melody. And, once alighting on the other side, you return again to the lyrics.

Karuhat's style has many components, techniques, pieces, bars. His side shuffle along the rope, the interruptive trip-out, the snake-charmer's sway, the delay on an already released kick, the syncopated swing step, short popping crosses or hooks, all techniques in a deepseated personal melody. And at a time of great crisis he can pass into style alone.

This Muay Thai Scholar video will give you some reference to elements of Karuhat's Style:

 

While I would consider Karuhat Thailand's greatest stylist, I believe this aesthetic rule, the pragmatism of Style can be found throughout the legendary fighters of Thailand's Golden Age: from Samson's drumming dern, smothering tempos, to Samart's deer-like escapes, nonchalance and unexpected power; from Dieselnoi's early round, wading-in, spider-like defensive rhythms, to Wangchannoi's stubborn heavy hand pressures. Samart, widely considered the GOAT of the sport is a great case in point, himself a great stylist. In fact I believe you can see this aspect of aesthetics in the face of difficulty especially in his two notable loses, against Dieselnoi and Wangchannoi, where you can if you watch closely his appeal to style, which does not quite carry him over - a proof in the negative.

What is most interesting about Thailand's Muay Thai is that while it is one of the more violent sports in the world, it simultaneously is an art, and this dimension of aesthetics is what shows itself in the efficacy of performance. Style, in brief wing-beats, can carry you across brief chasms of doubt, all the while remaining within the physically constrained grounds of an actual fight, full of real material dangers. The transcendent nature of Thailand's Muay Thai, as an art, resides in this aesthetic dimension, which made its Golden Age fighters the best fighters in the world.

As Muay Thai changes, coming under the influence of more commercial, more casual (tourism driven) demands, it is losing its aesthetic dimension. Thai fighters less and less have recourse to individual styles which can guide them across difficulties. Vestigial aspects of Thai aesthetics still remain in the 5th round retreat, the emphasis on defense, the reward of balance, but fewer and fewer fighters have fully developed, personalized style - something also seen in the Thai principle of sanae (charm). The recourse to "techniques" (in particular increasingly memorized combinations), of which styles are more ideally composed, to carry one through difficulties, the dumbing down of styles into practiced singular strikes, is progressively sinking the sport into less expressive states, a movement which ultimately will rob it of its larger meaning and value to the world...its art. Muay Thai is in a certain sense, the literature of fighting. This opens up important questions as to the relationship between the study of techniques, and the development of styles.

The Magician's Doubts quote at top also carries another quality of style, which is that when the answer is easy style can become simply "signature", almost a kind of excess. We see this in actors, perhaps like Di Nero whose inimical style in youth became caricature in older age, how a fighter like Saenchai, whose subtle effects carried him through the stadium ranks, then became pure signature and show vs a pool of requisite non-Thais on Thai Fight, according to his late maturity. At its most ideal a fighter's style in a fight would perhaps weave between these poles, ascending to style during a fight's greatest impasses (witness Ali's rope-a-dope or late-rounds shuffle), but also the signing of fights, in during its easier stretches, in displays of style, the author's signature. And in between these poles, the boots-on-the-ground fighting, by which leads are fashioned or protected, a pragmatism of two bodies in conflict caught in the context of twin aesthetic freedoms.

 

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

This thesis of the aesthetic is perhaps most telling in its (very rare) failure, in the two losses of Samart Payakaroon, the acknowledged greatest fighter of Thailand's Muay Thai. Below are the two fights, he is not at his peak as a fighter in both cases. Unfortunately there is no preserved video from his prime, when he was a regular stadium fighter before he left for boxing. Both of these fights are interesting from the aesthetic question, for you get to see Samart shift into aesthetic attempts to take flight over difficulties...in these cases to have such a flight fail. In the negative you can imagine how such styles must have operated at this time of true greatness, of which we only have eye-witness report:

Dieselnoi vs Samart

 

Wangchannoi vs Samart

 

 

In the negative you can also see Karuhat's failed attempt to climb to victory using the aesthetics of his style in his 3rd fight vs Wangchannoi (a fight he to this day felt like he won), or his early fight vs Hippy. In these negative examples you can see the role of style, as it doesn't-quite-cross the chasm.

Karuhat vs Wangchannoi

After two losses to Wangchannoi Karuhat really set his mind to winning the third fight vs the much bigger Wangchannoi. You can visibly see Karuhat style climbing on him, seemingly to real effect, but the judges ruled it just wasn't enough.

 

And Karuhat vs Hippy

This fight is quite extraordinary, very early in Karuhat's career before he fully matured, in that Karuhat seeks to style climb on Hippy, and Hippy style climbs right back at him.

What I mean by "style climb" in the above are the ways in which Thailand's traditional Muay Thai rewards stylistic displays of being above or beyond the fight, aspects of which are culturally coded (for instance certain body positions (ruup), or qualitative tempos, or musicalities. You can read about the role of dominance in the traditional form of the sport here: The Essence of Muay Thai: 6 Core Aspects Which Make it What it Is. More obviously fighters which employ stylistics are of the more Muay Femeu (technical, artful) variety, though there are distinct stylistics to its counterpart, Muay Khao.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Further afield, here is a discussion of Thailand's Muay Thai in terms of the Aesthetics of Deleuze, especially as it relates to the Western student/fighter in Thailand. This also is a grasping of aesthetics as it is distinguished from ethics, and addresses the idea of Living One's Life as a Work of Art.

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

To help in greater theoretical discussion, The Magician's Doubt's parsing of signature from style. In my discussion above the uses of a fighter's style perhaps would be best understood as a blending of both Michael Wood's "style" and "signature" below:

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Leaving aside the literary for a moment, the relationship between "techniques" and style (& signature) is a meaningful one to explore, especially for the non-Thai who admires the sport and wishes to achieve proficiency, or even mastery. Mostly for pedagogic reasons (that is, acute differences in training methods, along with a culture & subjectivity of training, a sociological thread), the West and parts of Asia tend to focus on "technical" knowledge, often with a biomechanical emphasis. A great deal of emphasis is put on learning to some precision the shape of the Thai kick or its elbow, it's various executions, in part because visually so much of Thailand's Muay Thai has appeared so visually clean (see: Precision – A Basic Motivation Mistake in Some Western Training). Because much of the visual inspiration for foreign learned techniques often come from quite elevated examples of style and signature, the biomechanical emphasis enters just on the wrong level. The techniques displayed are already matured and expressed in stylistics. (It would be like trying to learn Latin or French word influences as found in Nabakov's English texts.) In the real of stylistics, timing & tempo, indeed musicality are the main drivers of efficacy.

Instead, Thais learn much more foundational techniques - with far greater variance, and much less "correction" - principally organized around being at ease, tamachat, natural. The techne (τέχνη), the mechanics, that ground stylistics, are quite basic, and are only developmentally deployed in the service of style (& signature), as it serves to perform dominance in fights. The advanced, expressive nature of Thai technique is already woven into the time and tempo of stylistics. This is one reason why the Muay Thai Library project involves hour long, unedited training documentation, so that the style itself is made evident - something that can even have roots in a fighter's personality and disposition. These techne are already within a poiesis (ποίησις), a making, a becoming. Key to unlocking these basic forms is the priority of balance and ease (not biomechanical imitations of the delivery of forces), because balance and ease allow their creative use in stylistics.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Here is a 6 minute audio wherein a I phrase the argument speaking in terms of Thailand's Muay Femeu and Spinoza's Ethics.