Kipling read anew
The collected poems of Rudyard Kipling comprise about 500 poems on 850 pages. Many of them are consequently rather long, but all are professional. An author's poems are almost his most personal output, and if you are interested in the soul of a poet you should most of all study his poems.
Few poets have been as wigged as Kipling (1865-1936). You almost get the impression that the whole anglo-saxon world has been ashamed of him. He has been accused of imperialism, chauvinism, populism, racism, fascism and nazism in that order, and few have dared to defend him. If you study his poems carefully it clearly appears that all the accusations and prejudices against him fall flat – none of them holds water.
The negative evaluation is really founded on the failure to understand that Kipling first of all was a journalist. A journalist's task is to render what he sees and hears and experiences as truthfully as possible. Kipling has never failed on that line. As an observer and neutral documentary he is 100% consistent. It was not his fault that the world derailed in 1914, whereafter since 1918 all the values that existed before 1914 turned to the contrary. Kipling is a child of the heroic optimism of the 19th century and assumes full responsibility for actively participating in a creative and constructive world order, which lasted all the way up to 1914. During the war he lost his only son and never even learned where or how – the body was never found. He was only reported "wounded, probably killed". Consequently Kipling didn't write much more after the first world war. Consequently he was judged for what he had written before the war by the completely different assessment of the audience of between the wars. This is unfair to Kipling.
Had he lived for ten more years he most probably had shown the same honestly democratic fervour as Churchill in the second great world conflict. He was of the same generation as Knut Hamsun and Sven Hedin, who also let themselves be carried off by the optimistic universally imperialistic delirium, which went down the ditch in 1914. Hamsun and Hedin remained delirious and continued rushing on in their blind heroic enthusiasm. Kipling lost his only son and fell silent.
Whatever you might think about his unreserved glorification of the British Empire and the cause of its servants and soldiers, you can't avoid the fact that he is unsurpassed as a poet of his kind. His Jungle Books are inimitable and can't be transcended in their magic rendering of the mystery of Indian nature – they are simply uniquely ingenious as stories of nature. You more often than not stumble into suchlike highlights in his production. To the best things he has written belong also his long poems from the last glorious days of the sailing ships and the hardships of their courageous sailors.
You can hardly understand Kipling if you haven't been to India yourself, this unsurveyable mixture of exotic countries and peoples, the paradise of exaggerations, the mysterious home of immoderation, where everything is possible and where life consists of constantly extreme contrasts and surprises. Kipling was born in Bombay, and India formed him and educated him to what he became: a uniquely romantic realist with an intermediary talent to collect and render tangible the overwhelming impressions of the chaotically colourful Indian world without for a moment losing his grip on reality. He is a poet and extreme as such but at the same time perhaps the most realistic of all great poets.
As a child he was severely abused by his family and nearly lost his sight in the process. His sight remained impeded all his life, which might have contributed to the sharpening of his other intellectual senses and talents to a major extent. He who believes everything he sees so deceives himself that he ends up understanding nothing of the truth, while Kipling never misses anything that is hidden behind the appearances.
Essay by Christian Lanciai
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Written on 2009-04-01 at 00:44
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