KIPLING AND FRANCE.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 467, 27 March 1909, Page 9

KIPLING AND FRANCE.

It seoms almost incredible that Rudyard Kipling, should be popular in Paris. But it is nevertheless true. There aro a number of Frenchmen who have set themselves to tho task of translating him—men like Robert d'Humioresand Savine and Louis Fabulet. There has just been published in Paris "Oeuvres Choisies de Rudyard Kipling," under tho editorial care of Monsieur Michel Epuy, a collection of some of the most notable things which Rudyard Kipling has done, not by any means a haphazard collection, but intended to illustrate the different aspects of his genius. So, too, French critics have tried to explain to themselves the mysterious force of a writer so alien to their raco in temperament, and one of the best of these critical studies is written by Monsieur Andre Chevrillon, in his "Etudes Anglaises." They even now do not know howto translate him, for thoro are phrases in Kipling so racy of the soil in which he was .bred that it would, indeed, bo a difficult matter-to put them in another tongue. For instance, Kipling wrote a curiously.imaginative little story, under the title of "They," They moaning vaguely unseen, and phantom existences, especially the ghosts of little children which haunt the imagination of a spinster. To find in French the word "Eux" (which, indeed, is a literal translation) gives ono a certain shock, for somehow it strikes an entirely different note. In a similar fashion we havo the well-known anecdotes for children which Kipling called "The Just So Stories." How is this title to bo translated into French? "Contes Comme Ca" does not seem particularly -happy. Wo should imagine that "Contes qui s'Expliquent" is nearer to tho sense of the original—stories which cannot help being what they are, as, for instance, tho humorous account of the cat that walked by himself, to whom all places and times were alike, and who was cleverer than all tho other beasts of the field. Here are facts about tho feline nature which . must be accented as they stand, and I hardly think the suggestion of fancy or niodishness which comes into the title, "Contes Cqmme Ca," is quito appropriate to the occasion.

But now wo come back to tho astonishing I fact that Eudyard Kipling is popular in Paris. Why should ho not bo popular? Well, tho reasons are manifold. -First of all, ho is a savage Imperialist, an intense believer in tho virtues of the Englishman as such; and that particular exhibition of ferocious insularity is not a thing which recommends any writer to foreign readers. In the next place, as an artist there is a note of violence

in him, of crodo barbarity sometimes, which offends the delieato critical perceptions of tho Frenchman. Ho cannot understand tho merciless directness with which Kipling paints his pictures, omitting no detail, however coarse, emphasising rather tho' coarser elements, making his people talk in a barbarous and savago tongue. Of course this quality is obvious throughout Kipling's work, ipu find it in tho "Plain Tales from tho Hills ; you find it even in the nearest approach to a. novel which Kipling ever made, "The Light that Failed." Ho is a realist, and that at least every Frenchman can understand. He is a realist in tho sense that he describes exactly that which he sees heforo him in all its minute and sometimes unsavoury detail. But ho has not always the cold neutrality of tho artist in these matters. Ho sometimes seems to have a preference for what is ugly and coarse and revolting. Tho artist in tho French nature rebels against tho reckless ugliness of Kipling. Probably tho French critic often doubts whether Kipling could possibly bo described as an artist in the sonse in which wo attribute tho term to Robert Louis Stevenson. Kipling is rather a journalist, fond of glaring headlines and obvious sensationalism, a journalist because he gets his high lights with such immediate intuition that all the softer details of his composition are sacrificed to tho strong and salient elements. There is more of the "twopenco coloured" about Rudyard Kipling than there is of the "penny plain," and if wc who read him in England resent it, how much moro will the Frenchman feel that hero is something which is crude, and barbarous, and unfriendly? Monsieur Andre Chevrillon falls foul in a very characteristic passage of Kipling's great hymn, the "Recessional." And that is an interesting point, because it is a little difficult for us to understand why to a foreigner this poem appears "liaissable" (hateful). It is hateful becauso Kipling consciously uses phrases from Scripture in order to produce an effect upon his reader wholly dependent on tho associations evoked by familiar and sacred passages. So at least tho Frenchman thinks, who knows that in England our. whole imagination is carried away, not as we should • say by the majestic rhythm of the Bible, hut by its Puritanical suggestions. Tho "Recessional" is described as an intensely egoistic poem, for it'exhibits the pharisaic Englishman accommodating himself to a. passing mood of modesty which in reality he does not feel. And so the "Recessional" is dismissed as a kind of temporary reaction against tho worship of foroe—a fine thing of course written with dignity and strength, but still enshrining all tho characteristic self-righteousness of tho average Englishman. it is a curious criticism from our point, of view, and illustrates tho practical impossibility- of the two races, the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon, understanding each other. Tho extraordinary thing to us about the "Recessional," when wo have once got over cur surprise that Kipling should have written it at all, is-that it is so simple, so utterly devoid of self-con-scious less. Some voice belonging to the times, it might be, of Cromwell is telling us in gravo and noble accents to beware of national pridp. I once heard a dissenting minister preach on this subject. Ho thanked God that a testimony had como down from some ancient and original elements of tho great, simple Englishmen who had, amongst other things, founded the American Republic— traversing all tho ordinary materialistic conceptions of tho day and upbraiding the degrading roverenco which we extend to money | and militarism'. How such a miracle should lave happened in our present day the Non- ■ conformist minister could not explain. How Kipling, the apostle of Imperialism, could hare written it seemed a still greater marvel. ''The spirit blos'eth where it listeth " was the only solution of the enigma. It is odd ltd contrast a judgment of this kind with the criticism of the Frenchman, starting from such different standpoints,' issuing in such different conclusions.

How then docs Rudyard Kipling appeal to the foreigner? The answer is that in.Kipling there are two quite different selves, and that though from one point of view ho is an impressionist, ,'a realist, ( a journalist, from another point : of;vi<;iv,-, : lie,is l ;,endowed i .with - the, most'remarkabloyimaginatioaiand the.Wutes.t faculty of ''Jhterpfeting ? T which we have witnossed in the present age. There is a dreamer in Kipling, a sympathetic artist, a nature which thrills at the sights and sounds of the East, a sensibility wbich.is inspired by a truly Northern imagination, romantic'and mystical. I take it that .the clever Frenchman understands Kipling by his knowledge, partly of Pierre Loti, partly of Guy ,de Maupassant. Loti revealed to Frenchmen a strange love for and sympathy with alien countries and civilisations. He is full of what they call " exotisme," tho passion for the foreign.' And something of tho samo kind tho Frenchman found also in Kipling when he wrote of India — a keen sense of the novel, conditions, an intimate sympathy, with alien thoughts and ideas. Broadly, however, there is a clear .difference between Kipling and Lbti. Loti lays his whole nature open to tho spell of tho new, old, strange, familiar land in' which ho finds himself. He is entirely receptive to tho_ impressions which crowd upon his sensitivo mind. In his wonderful little study, "Tho Romance of a Spahi," we have the very picture of tho West African coast. Kipling is equally sensitive, equally impressionable; and yet over and over again he reacts_ onhis impressions. Ho is not wholly subjective, not wholly'receptive. He is taking in a.large stock of the things which ha-vo passed before his ej'e and era and mind, and then ho creates something out of the stock, something that belongs.to himself alone. Maupassant also helps to make.,the foreigner understand Kipling. Take, for instance, "The Light that Failed." Hero is a novel which probably would always bo praised more by the foreign critics than by ourselves. The subject appeals-to them; the treatment appeals to them. It had all the hard vigorous intensity of one of Maupassant's pieces, truthful, sincere, and absolutely devoid of commiseration.' What is the theme which Kipling portrays in "The Light that' Failed"? Perhaps wo should be inclined to say that his subject was tho joys and sorrows, .the temptations, the anguish, the despair of an artist. Wo are thinking, observe, of the hero, tho unhappy Dick, who makes such a singular shipwreck of .his life. But with Maupassant in his hand—especially his book "Notre Coeur"—the Frenchman picks out for sympathetic praise tho figure of Maisio, the heroine, a woman incapable of love. For there are such women, as every 'French writer knows, and most psychologists in every country—women who would like to love, to whom love would como as a completion of their nature, and who yet arc prevented by a certain narrowness of disposi-

tion and temperament, a certain ingrained selfishness, from ever being capable-' of that instinctive sacrifice of self on the altar of a

larger passion : which love demands. Maisie no doubt ruined Dick, and it is that side of

tho tragedy engineered by the character ol the heroino which appeals to the Trend reader.

Or, if wo want another explanation,. we discover that tho "Jungle Book" is one of those groat artistic creations which belong to no one country, but appeal equally to all. The life-history of littlo Mowgli has, I think, been translated more than once into French. The charm of the book is that it reads as though it were an ancient genealogical record of something belonging to the primitive life of humankind rather than the work of a modern whoso powerful imagination can embody for him ancestral forces. The "Jungle Book" has, I venture to assert, a universal appeal, for the wondprful rango of characters developed in tho course of the story belonging to the brute creation aro interpreted not so much as a man might interpret them, but as a very clever and eloquent animal might be able to interpret himself. Nothing seems wrong in tho record : there aro no false notes. Mowgli, tho littlo human boy, saved from tjio appetite of Shore Khan, tho tiger, holds his own against all the animals owing to tho mysterious law which makes no animal able to resist the power of tho human eye. But there comes a time when nature, which for the nonce had favoured a certain infraction of those laws which separate human beings from animals, repossesses herself, as it were, of her old secrets. The spring comes, passing like a breath over the wholo jungle, and in that universal passion which in springtime transforms the brute creation into something quite alien from their normal' selves, little Mowgli finds himself alone. Re is an unhappy, little, lost, solitary individual, while all round him the universal shudder of love engrosses tho world like a mysterious dream. And thon Mowgli must needs return to his

kith mid kin, for ho is conscious that ho belongs to another level of thought aiul idea. "There is, perhaps, in the English language no more beautiful page," says the enthusiastic Monsieur Epuy, the latest editor of Kipling in French, of tho "Jungle Hook." In it Rudyard Kipling is no longer an Englishman and writer of talent; ho is an artist of genius belonging to tho whole, civilised world. —Walter Lennard, in tho "Glasgow Herald."