460
ROBERT LOWELL
"It was not manly, 'twas not fighter-like. If he was sure of the
uictory (as he was not), the less said about it the better. Modesty
should accompany the Fancy
[i.e., the fight game]
as its shadow. The
best men were always the best behaued."
This ill perfectly all right
from Hazlitt, in 1821, who goes on in a bit of mythmaking to record
how the boaster Hickman was beaten by Bill Neate in a famous con–
test. Given the history of the sport in the intervening century and a
half, it was unforgivable that the working press should have taken
this tone with their current (champion-in-exile, ill it?). But strangely
enough, the boxing pe.ople and their toadies on the press (by their
assent), in stripping Clay of the title, have made his position morally
unassailable. The myriad ironies of the whole situation need hardly
be listed; not the least of these ill one underlined by recent events in
the Middle East reminding us again that the crescent, under which
Muhammad Ali is being nonbelligerent, frequently resembles a scimitar
in shape rather than an olive branch. But Clay'S being deposed some–
how further authenticated his refusal to
be
inducted, which, in
turn,
gave a shape to his whole career which perhaps no amount of
privileged information (is he really a great fighter? or the best of a
dreadful lot?) could have supplied. The most ungenerous interpreta–
tion of his act would have to admit that, all in all, it
Was
c.ontraindi–
cated for his career. Neither would it be slavish admiration to observe
that, as a free man taking a free man's option, Clay has provided a
better model of American Negro masculinity than he could even
as
a
clowningly problematic heavyweight.
If
the government is so stupid and
tactle~s
as to jail
him,
his pris.on number will in the long run constitute
something much more like the hero's discovery of his name
than
the awkward and improbable Muslim cliches.
Robert Lowell
Refusal to report
to
the army is certainly the most effective
way a young man can protest an unjust war.
