HOW FICTION BEGAN

Hokitika Guardian, 27 August 1926, Page 4

HOW FICTION BEGAN

THE PHILOSOPHY OF Hit • KIPLING. LONDON, July 4. When the shadows lengthen, one contrasts what one had intended to do with what one lias accomplished. That tho experience is universal does not make it any less acid—especially alien, as in my case, one lias been extravagantly rewarded for having done what one could not have helped doing.

This reflection was made by Hr Budyard Kipling at. tho centenary banquet—at tiie New Princes’ Restaurant, Piccadi'ily, W., last night, of the Royal Society of Literature, when the Earl of Balfour, who presided, handed to Mr Kipling the gold medal conferred on him by tho society. “Fiction,"’ said the famous author and poet, “is Truth’s elder sister,” and lie continued :

Fiction began when some mini invented a story about another man. It developed when another man tohl tales about a woman. This strenuous epoch begat the first school of destructive critoi.sm, as well as the first critic, who spent his short but vivid life in trying to explain that a man need not he a hen to judge the merits of ail omelette. He died, hut the question lie raised is still at 'issue. IMMORTALITY ODDS.

All men are interested in reflections of themselves and their surroundings, whether in the pure heart of a crystal or in a muddy pool; and nearly every writer who supplies a reflection secretly desires a share of immortality for the pains lie has been at in holding up the mirror which also reflects himself. He may got his desire. Quite a dozen writers hare achieved immortality in the past 2,0Q0 years. From a bookmaker’s—a real bookmaker’s—point of view, the odds are not attractive, but Fiction is built on fiction. That is where it differs from other arts. Most of the arts admit, (lie truth that it- is not expedient to tel! everyone everything. Fiction recognises no such liar. There is no human emotion or mood which it is forbidden to assault—there is no canon of reserve or pity that need he respected—iu fiction. Why should there lie? The man after all, is not telling the truth. 1 He is only writing fiction. While lie writes it, his world will extract from it just so much of truth or pleasure as it requires for tho moment.

I SWIFT’S TRAGEDY. ■ Take a well-known instance. A man of overwhelming intellect and power goes scourged through life between the dread of insanity and the wrath of bis own soul, warring with a brutal ago. Ho exhausts mind, heart, and brain in that battle; be consumes himself; and perishes in utter desolation, i Out of all his agony remains one little hook, his dreadful testament against his fellow-kind, which to-day serves as a pleasant tale for the young under the title of “GullTver’s Travels.’’ That, and a faint recollection of some bahy-talk in some loveletters, is as much as the world haschosen to retain of Jonathan Swift, Master of Irony. Think of it! It is like tuning-down the glare of a volcano to light a child to lied. So it would seem that fiction is one of the few unsheltered occupations; in that there is equal victimisation on both sides and no connection between the,writer’s standard of life, his output—or his wages. In presenting Mr Kipling with the gold medal, Lord Balfour said that when he first read Mr Kipling’s work he came to the conclusion that a now genius arisen on the horizon; and since that day Air Kipling had given to the world many masterpieces stamped with the peculiar individuality of his own genius.