RUDYARD KIPLING

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21708, 15 February 1936, Page 17

RUDYARD KIPLING

H JM®“s/tooSbS brick and mud vara. II ST» •gJnSdusky brushwood Hill' -i II the farm the sods call Kipling. f. Lg e t the name of the epigramiL* who wrote that. In an age 31 3W men te deftly summaris ‘ m or even great ones, it prob--1 ™tter. But it serves; Sttint the moral of Rudyard Kir*ll f ?long' divorce from the popular m S£val of his compeers. g: I Clitics’’ come first to mind, the MSf So Stories;” “The Jungle 1 UAftlto ” “Rewards and Fairies, .' i'S’ol Pook’s Hill,” and “Kim,” i’. . nUier J»d SKOnd - hls , I j te i - * M Kipling led a very secluded t'\ «j, to the stranger as £ Zii old condor on its crag. An I Sntance mentioned that he had I become a good deal of a hypochondf dar insisted on showing visitors §■ vJy photographs of his inside. Yet, W. his last collection of short ({■ r r i|g was published, only about % Jouriyears ago. how much there was v in it'rof bone and ’nerve and muscle, i. « opposed to the flatulence and fat rf mist of the admitted “moderns ’! & irwsay that Kipling is an alien to Jelought of to-day. I hate to bell Win k : FQTId Where .“The Spring t ; , Hauling” and the people of “Re- | wards and,fairies” will be out of - nlac& r or ope where the incompar--1 obieltyle If Kipling as a short story ’ writer Wli receive the respect Reserves. Unless, as one is occas- £ ionafiy, though' unfairly, tempted to If' ttinlpa youth of to-day is amateur f“. politiciap and nothing else, Rudyard “ Kipling cannot', be without his P irinept place in the literature of ;,>■ the twentieth, century, just as he u chared the laurels of the late mneteenth century. However, the re- & action against his alleged ]ingos.• W' af understandable enough. i Sickened by the aftermath of a I Jar which for once proved if thoroughly unsatisfactory to all conli a few vultures, modrf em youth insists on suffering loud t and long for, the .imperialistic sms it of iti forefathers. Anything assocI iated with that antiquated imperial's; ism is pufied down, and decried, and m the whole of Kipling’s achievement I is more or less cheapened in youth s I eyes by a few easily-written ballads, P a score or so of phrases, most of : ! them misinterpreted. It is quaint to 1 recall that this. same poet won the disapproval of high places for his < reference to “the Widow of Windsor.” - V Complex But the judging of Rudyard Kip-jM/'flir-since his contemporaries Mgfw-pnt.lv wish to judge him—is IK Inittedly very difficult. There are M flmany rides |K The MpffdsaST£ lines of If BWB're at the aesthete from innumer- ■ le IffM tic* suburban homes. Hundreds uSol i newspaper parodies, both of this lem and of that other fatal mistake, PI •A. fool there was, and his money he spent,” remain in,existence to tweak the nose, of the yotfng' gentleman '■A who want his poetry to be •C utilitarian, And then, halfway t through “"Without Benefit of Clergy,” |f: one comes across the fragmentary % ‘ songjabout the wild plfirhs that grow | in file-, jungle, only a penny a |l. • pound.,-. .Or, in “Rewards and Fairks,” one finds riding across the I? heath the" ghost' 1 of a delicate laughf: ing girl,- who makes the Duke of | Wellington’s' choleric- eye water by singing tius over her spinet; | I haye given my heart to a flower, i? Though I know "it is fading away, | Shoitgh I know it will bloom for an p hour; ■ ■ |. Then leave me to mourn its decay. r Ye atprips and ye whirlwinds that rave k I I- She is all. sfae is all that I have of our parting is near. I „ be more naive? I Yet feadrthe'story, and see if the I M#of;Wellington’s ghost is the I affected by it- And Banysay»’ that Kipling 'was' bom f bla ®€*:**-Kipling might truthfully, If- retorted that Barrie, i *ithffig;black velvets and his little * was born artificial, and v two honest books he i. his life—“ Sentimental | £onii||y£3|id “Tommy and Grizel”— I both him as the complete | {hirospCiptive egotist. How a man $ bom blase' could have painted the I white dewfall, on the English grass, | Jri green-and-gold of Indian jungle, t “6,Bund of bird and beast, and I i™-Perfect love-stories as that of I' and Solomon, in “The ButterI: ®”.Tlbat Talked,” would be a mys- |. tery worth considerable attention, Wwe it founded on fact. But Kipiyas. never blase. He was r enough to love things, li PJPie and dreams, far too wholei,; -eartedly for the security of his own I reputation. Barrie, it would m J®®?’. judged him on the frank I and quick eye of “Plain I From the Hills” and the other } Hawksbee epics. He seems to f ibat the ordinary human boy i Kipling was not much more thn a aoy w ben he began to write i Penetrating stories—reacts in ;; j.. e °* two ways, when first brought Ik with the grown-up frni intrigue, gossip, and frous s elf-possession. Either he goes \ ißmir 1 a fetch-and-carry phase, sc' emerging in a slightly wilted ; t- 1 ? n on the other side, or else, “ a b 11 n(? a schoolboy, he takes it- all, and makes fun. For I illustration, see ShakeI 8 ‘‘Venus and Adonis,” and I leurl the laughing, shrewd, tactI' A,* ®nekespearean boys. Kipling happen to be a fetch-and-f SLi? 01018 man - gave Mrs I w ? ?.b ee her dues, in respect of % and elegance. Otherwise, i' y told the truth, and more f) fcr 1 S to his, elbow, as Mrs Hawksf SLTw would be the first to £ Ke has - given a living gallery f wM«nf?lk, instead of the usual 68 in Poetic amber. p, , ij. rjL*; t Grand Simplicities I-' ’ ihs*J|ng was an adventure for. my I ‘riiS/c’hooldays, as I imagine he L been for thousands on | -• others, despite,- the I Nonces since run up by not an .adventure,. rather into the IlHp'Qf words—great words, used great scene or emotion. IKißtetvv- ■ ■

> imperialist and the Jungle J' Bpokis

(■PSCULLT WBITTZS TOK IHI PBZBS.J [By ROBIN HYDE.]

He did not despise the simplicities of lyric refrain. But the weight of them heaped up like mountains. Rocked by contemptuous surges. . . . So ;and no otherwise, so and no otherwise ■ Hillmen desire their hills ... And, apart from all the words that landlubbers who wanted to be seafarers and adventurers, or seafarers and adventurers with a touch of the poet, in their composition, could make lusty in their throats, there was that low-growing and thorny nature-world of Kipling’s, with its- almost invisible colours. The world of “Kim,” of the Jungle Books and the English fairy-stories which weren’t fairy stories in the common sense of the word, but rather folk-lore; the tracks of Piet and Roman and Dane, scored on and on across the turf by people who forgot to die, forgot to stop leaving and making their impress on the rounded hills arid the sunsets which were not too great to be contained in their hearts . , . because they loved the country wherein these things were seen. Kipling’s most real people were all dreamers, half dreams themselves. The boy of “Kim” sat cross-legged by the old cannon, thinking “Kim, Kim,, who is Kim?” until his whole self *was nothing but a little ring high up in the concentric waves of Indian light. People in his books were not drawn out of relevance to their background. Nature, arrogant and opulent, was lord of the whole. At any time, you could come on a turn of phrase which would make you forget the story for the sheer picture.' In the tale of the Indian ruler who “took the trail for bairagi avowed,” one is haunted by “the wonderful unnamed green of the young rice-fields.” Other phrases, which might appear perfectly commonplace when quoted out of their context, have the same arresting quality when one runs across them in Kipling—junglepools blue as stones, and jungle-trees shaking down light,' and the sides of a jungle animal dark wet from its drinkipg at the pool where Shere Khan lifts a blood-stained muzzle, and growls, “It is my night, and my right.” With human figures, he is the same. He may not furnish them with the complex clicking machinery of thought and. despair which is the dreary result of post-war novelwriting, but intuitively he knows the actions and the dreams which are most their core. He has never put a stuffed animal or a sham man into his books; and may all the Ifttle gods of ’ the writer’s path work abundant magic, that our moderns may be able to say the same in their own declining years. ‘ Imperialist Poet—-and Poet As the poet, he is open to question in some departments. He wrote too much for the fastidious, and too easily for those who like to hear , the faint whirring sound of the invisible grindstone beneath the poet’s nose, or ever a sonnet is ca|ved put and polished. “If” might have.' been a good poem when ’it"*set offrin life, it may even soothe a few troubled breasts to-day; but one can’t yearn over its fate and hope that the year 2000 A.D. may still see its neat lines glinting down from- brass plates—translated, perhaps, by that time, into fluent Esperanto. Some of the ballads are already stale and. outworn; yet, even when Kipling deliberately swathed himself in the mantle of the Imperialist and strode across continents, leaving to scattered communities their poetic links with the Motherland, he could sometimes be both memorable and dignified. I' don’t suppose that for many a long year South Africans will completely get out of their memories that ballad of South Africa which begins, Lived a woman wonderful, May the Lord amend her—- * Neither simple, kind nor true. Yet her pagan beauty drew Christian gentlemen a few Hotly, to attend her. Canada’s dignity is not insulted by A nation spoke to a nation, And a throne made speech to a throne, Daughter am I in my Mother’s house, But mistress in my own; and, to come to New Zealand, are we anxious to part with Broom behind tbe windy town, Pollen of the pine, Bellbirds in the leafy deep Where the ratas twine, Kern above the saddle-bow, Flax upon, the plain— Take the flower, and turn the hour, And kiss your love again. “Otherwise, however, New Zealand is not especially deep in Rudyard Kipling’s debt. His imperialism was a . little humourless where she was concerned, and the farmer of to-day might be more amused than entranced by his toast, To the five-me .1. meat-fed men! To the tall, deep bosomed women. And the children nine or ten! However, to judge Kipling as a poet purely on his imperialistic performances, or on that hymn of college breaking-up . ceremonies, “Recessional,” would be very slovenly criticism. Better to hunt through his red-leather volumes, with their gilded elephant’s head, for the gleams and scraps of verse which will be memorable as long as children run barefoot and grown-ups occasionally take . off their shoes, either because they are on holy ground or simply because the grass is cool and inviting. Kipling’s “Taffy” poems, written to his little daughter, are a remembrance of a valuable and delightful. relationship. As Kenneth Graham s beautiful books were written mainly for the delectation of his son, “Mouse,” who died in adolescence, so many of the “Just So Stories,” and the little poems sandwiched in between them, have Taffy for their lady. But far. oh very far behind, So far she cannot call to him, Comes Tegumai alone, to find The “daughter who was all to him. And there were those pert butterflies, in the garden where Balkis walked among the red and golden lilies, saying, “Ob, my Lord, and the Light of My Days,” to that husband whose wisdom was not at its best when he recriiited so large a corps of unenviable wives and concubines. She was the Queen of Sabaea, ’And he was Asia’s lord — ' And they both of them talked to , butterflies; , " „ . . When they took their walks abroad. -•He did more, in.poetry, than fill in a child’s landscape with little reedy islands. “Ithuriel s Hour, which Joanna Canaan borrowed as

title for her excellent novel of Mount Everest, is an extremely fine poem, though cut from the same plain block of idea that gave him the hackneyed “If.” That “Jungle Book” poem whose refrain is The red mist of doing has thinned to a cloud— He has taken the trail for bairagi avowed, has its own greatness. “The Spring Running” is a prose poem in itself, a story that will; live forever. But it was in a little book, a shilling Kipling, entitled “Twenty. Five Poems,” that I found this poem years ago. I wonder if it is_ supposed to be bombastic and jingoistic? At two o’clock in the morning, it you open your window and listen, v You will hear the feet of the wind who is going to call thfe sun. And the trees in the shadow rustle, and the trees -in the moonlight glisten, , , . Lx And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done. 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, Arid the Wind dies dwn in the grass. It is “day, and his work done. So, when the world is asleep, and : there seems no hope of her wakinc*" ■ Chit of the long, bad dream, “that makes her mutter and moan, . Suddenly all men arise to the noise of fetters breaking— . ... And everyone smiles at his neighbour, and tells him his soul is 1 bis own.