KIPLING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 67, 20 March 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

KIPLING.

REMEMBERED DT FRANCE. I i A year has passed since Rudyard Kip- ; ling, the great "singer of Empire," j passed away, and if he is certainly not forgotten in his own land, or ever i likely to be, his memory is none the less cherished in France. Of all foreign authors Kipling is the mont quoted in Fiance. •If.'' in the line translation of Andre Mulimit*, is known to every high school boy in France. Kipling appeal* lo Freiidi youth because his philosophy is a philosophy of action, eudca \ our, accomplishment. Kipling suffers in translation, or one might more'accurately say that he miii-. not be translated. Verb coupled with, preposition, which renders English so supple, in almost every ease can only be translated into French by a verb, and thus the jugglery of a Kipling sentence, where one little word towards the end lights up the whole as with a torch, is lost when translated. Mr. Henry Xoble Hall, head of the British Travel Association in Paris, has lectured in French on England and, things English in every part of France, | and his lecture on Kipling far and away I the most applauded never fails to fill ! a hall. ''Souvenirs of France'' has sold by the | thousand in its French translation. "I ] returned to England and to school," j Kipling says, "with the knowledge that J there existed a land across the water I where everything was different end i delightful, where one walked among | marvels, and all food tasted extremely j well." He also wrote, "It was through i the eyes of France that I began to see," and what compliment could be : greater. His poem, "France," written j in 1913, has been described as one of I the finest epics of ell time. ( "The Jungle Book" is among the beet J selling annuals and can be bought in its j French edition in scores of different I forms. It is given as a Christmas present, beautifully illustrated and bound. "Kim" is well known to French boys, and "Captains, Courageous" is a great favourite with them. Few English writers succeeded in catching the atmosphere of France as Kipling did. He had visited every corner of the country, from Grenoble, '■ "with a mountain at the end of every j street," to Flanders in the north, and i Le Canigou in the south-west. Le j Canigou attracted the poet a great deal towards the end of hus life. Set high up among the mountains of the Pyrenees, at the lesser known end of i the chain, towards the Mediterranean,! it was there that he went for a holi- j day every year. From it he could look j across the valleys at the towering peaks i of the Pyrenees, covered with eternal i snow, and his love for the spot perhaps j came from the Indian aspect of the j country, bringing baek 60iivenira of his j youth. "There is a certain little j meadow the sea, under Mount Cani- ; pou. which spring fills with narci---j when she first sets foot in Europe." Kipling lost his only son in France. He left a sum of money to defray the i expense of a ceremony performed every ' night at the cemetery of Loo«. There when the sun goes down, a British ex- , soldier sounds the Last Post in memory of Lieutenant John Kipling and his \ comrades.