Rudyard Kipling

He has been my favorite poet since I was about ten. There are many of his poems I am fond of but my favorite is probably “The Mary Gloster.” It is a Browning Monologue, a poem in which a single speaker reveals a great deal about himself in the process of speaking. I prefer it to the ones by Browning I know, such as “My Last Duchess.”

The speaker is a dying 19th c. shipping magnate, a self-made wealthy entrepreneur, speaking to his worthless son. One of the things that impresses me about the poem is the degree to which the poet persuades us to the speaker’s point of view. The son’s interest in “books and pictures” ought to appeal to the modern reader but doesn’t. “Your rooms at college was beastly, more like a whore’s than a man’s” ought to turn the modern reader off but doesn’t. What remains is the picture of a bitterly unhappy old man whose only remaining wish is to be buried at sea by the wife who died when they were both young, the wife whose memory has been the driving force in his life ever since.

Not that he remained entirely faithful to her memory. “For a man he must go with a woman, as you could not understand/But I never talked them secrets, I paid them out of hand.”

Another poem, impressive in a different way, is “Cleared,” ferocious invective against the terrorism of the Irish independence movement. We almost always see that movement from the friendly side, thanks to folk singers such as the Clancy Brothers and poets such as Yeats. Kipling gives us a different point of view.

“Less black than we were painted? Faith, no word of black was said
The lightest touch is human blood and that, you know, runs red.”

Kipling had a very high reputation, especially as a short story writer, early in his career; Henry James described him as the most complete genius he ever knew. He fell out of critical favor later, mostly for bad reasons, people who didn’t like his politics and didn’t bother to read what he had written.

Perhaps the clearest example of the popular misreading of Kipling’s views is the often quoted “For East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,” taken to describe the fundamental gulf between European and Asian cultures. In fact its point is almost the precise opposite, as one can see by reading the rest of the verse, still more clearly by reading the poem.

“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!”

Similarly on race. Kim, his one really successful novel, is set in India. Most of the attractive characters are non-European. The Lama, after Kim the central figure, is a convincing portrayal of a saint — and Tibetan. While there are a few positively portrayed European characters, on the whole the Europeans, both the English and their European opponents, come across as incompetents dealing with cultures they do not understand, sometimes well meaning, sometimes not.

The book obviously regards British rule over India as a good thing but not because of the superiority of the British. For further evidence, consider the two stories (A Centurion of the Thirtieth and On the Great Wall) set in Roman Britain, where the Roman conquerors, positively portrayed, are the imperialists, the British the ruled. Or read The Islanders, where he tears into the British.

I like many of the short stories, especially the historical ones, and have reread Kim many times. But it is the poetry that really sticks. For other examples:

The Palace. “After me cometh a builder/Tell him I too have known.”

The Peace of Dives. An allegory of economic interdependence as a force for peace. If I ever finish my collection, with commentary, of literature that teaches economics, it will be included.

A Code of Morals. The risks of inadequate encryption on an open channel.

Arithmetic on the Frontier. Economics of colonial warfare. “The captives of our bow and spear/Are cheap, alas, as we are dear.” A point of perhaps renewed relevance today.

Hymn of Breaking Strain is evidence that Kipling was a modern poet in a sense in which most modern poets are not.¹ Its central metaphor is the table of breaking strains at the back of an engineering handbook.

Jobson’s Amen and Buddha at Kamakura both show just how far Kipling was from the usual cartoon version of the British imperialist. For another:

All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!

(We and They)

Cold Iron and The Fairies Siege are about the limits of physical force — and so, I suppose, of political realism — while Gallio’s song is an approving description of how an empire deals with religious conflict.

The Last Suttee has one of my favorite examples of the use of meter in storytelling:

We drove the great gates home apace:
White hands were on the sill:
But ere the rush of the unseen feet
Had reached the turn to the open street,
The bars shot down, the guard-drum beat --
We held the dovecot still.

For anyone interested in poetry as craft, Kipling is technically impressive. A sestina is a poem where every verse ends with the same words, their order permuted; Sestina of the Tramp-Royal is written so smoothly that the reader doesn’t notice. The Muse Among the Motors is a collection of parodies of other poets, all about motor cars.

After reading Kipling for most of my life I finally noticed that, in two poems I am fond of, one-syllable rhymes alternate with two-syllable rhymes.

Shove off from the wharf-edge! Steady!
Watch for a smooth! Give way!
If she feels the lop already
She’ll stand on her head in the bay.
It’s ebb — it’s dusk — it’s blowing —
The shoals are a mile of white,
But ( snatch her along! ) we’re going
To find our master to-night.

(Song of the Red War-boat)

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1. Cummings is an exception:

electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.

(’pity this busy monster, manunkind‘)