If…

Rudyard Kipling’s stories and poems are still popular today, but he has earned a reputation as a jingoist and a racist, opinions which are challenged through two books,  ‘Kipling and War’, edited by Andrew Lycett, and ‘Rudyard Kipling: Stories and Poems’, edited by Daniel Karlin. These books are certainly on my wish list! I grew up with Kipling, and my children grew up with ‘The Jungle Book’, albeit the Disney version, and as with many writers from a previous time, some of the sentiments and language is no longer acceptable, and in fact is offensive; however who knows what those writers would have written or how they would have written today, it’s really difficult to judge the past by today’s standards, and that’s a debate which can be discussed elsewhere.

Kipling, like many children born to parents living in the far reaches of the Empire, was sent back, alone to England at the age of five, with his little sister aged only three, to stay in a most dreadful boarding house where he was mentally and physically abused by the very person who was supposed to ‘care’ for him. it seems a dreadful arrangement for their parents to have made, but they weren’t alone – many other children suffered the same fate. He went onto a boarding school which was also a difficult place to be, but when he was nearly eighteen he returned to India, to ‘home’.

The tragedies of his life are well-known, as well as the successes. His daughter died in America at the age of only six, and his son was reported missing in action during WWI, ‘missing in action’ meant that Kipling and his wife endured years of hoping that he might be a prisoner somewhere, or wounded and not knowing who he was. Kipling himself endured years of chronic pain from an undiagnosed stomach ulcer, and died in 1936 at the age of seventy.

The Dawn Wind

At two o’clock in the morning, if you open your window and
listen,
You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.
And the trees in the shadow rustle, and the trees in the moonlight
glisten,
And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is
done.

So do the cows in the field. They graze for an hour and lie down,
Dozing and chewing the cud; or a bird in the ivy wakes,
Chirrups one note and is still, and the restless Wind stares on,
Fidgeting far down the road, till, softly, the darkness breaks.

Back comes the Wind full strength with a blow like an angel’s
wing,
Gentle but waking the world, as he shouts: “The Sun! The
Sun!”
And the light floods over the fields and the birds begin to sing,
And the Wind dies down in the grass. It is day and his work
is done.

So when the world is asleep, and there seems no hope of her
waking
Out of some long, bad dream that makes her mutter and moan,
Suddenly, all men arise to the noise of fetters breaking,
And every one smiles at his neighbour and tells him his soul is
his own!

An interesting review of the two books I mentioned can be found here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/rudyard-kipling-the-misfit-poet/

A silly joke, I can’t resist:

Do you like Kipling?
I don’t know… I’ve never kipled…