Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
‘You’re a Better Man Than I Am, Gunga Din!’
One of my favorite authors, Rudyard Kipling, died 85 years ago today. Eighty-five years. Lord, not all that long ago. I’m within two decades of that lived milestone myself. (I’m 66, for those of you who are keeping track, or who’d like to weigh in on what an irrelevant old hag I am.) On that day (January 18, 1936), almost all the members of my family–Mum, Dad, aunties and uncles, grandparents, etc.–who formed my early life experiences and values had been born and were very much alive. I remember them all.
These days, it’s fashionable to criticize, or even cancel, Kipling for his supposedly “racist” views, and because he expressed them in the decades before I was born, in a different time and in a different world. We now live in a world in which the ability to express “black and brown” voices is somehow contingent on the requirement that other, “white” voices be suppressed and deleted. “Better, or worse?” to phrase it in the language that my optician uses when he’s giving me the option to tell him which version of the eye chart might best indicate the state of my failing vision and the need to move towards a stronger prescription.
Easy answer, that.
Worse. Suppression of voices is always worse. And never more so than in an historical context when, for “better or worse” they have already been documented, and, for “better or worse” they are already on the record. How else should we recognize the mistakes of the past than by facing them? How does canceling or deleting them help in that endeavor? Pro tip: It doesn’t. But it does at least remove the pretense that our ideas should engage with intellectual rigor to overcome ideas we may find distasteful, and it makes it easier to proclaim (what I am pretty sure, given human nature, is temporary) victory.
Rudyard Kipling lost a son in WWI. By all current shibboleths, this should give him absolute moral authority in anything he says from that point on. But, no. His ideas aren’t popular from the standpoint of the culturally ignorant.
Poor man. And poor family.
Without further ado, I append one of his most famous poems, one I’ve written about before, and one which the Left would much prefer to cancel. Please let me know if you find it somehow offensive. I’d love to chat.
Published in GeneralIf you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
That is such an inspiring poem, She. Thanks.
There is much to think about and aspire to here.
Sorry, you’ll find no offense here. I love this poem. Maybe you’d have better luck being “cancelled” on Twitter? (It seems to me that recent events have vindicated the Ricochet business model which requires members to pay to participate.)
Interesting essay on Kipling by George Orwell:
https://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/kipling/english/e_rkip
Kipling is a giant for the ages, he will be remembered long after his pygmy detractors are recycled as Soylent Green.
Only by people who will have been forgotten a week after they’ve gone cold. And Kipling will still be with us.
Here’s another Kipling poem, which I think is very interesting and is not too well-known: Tomlinson
I cited this poem in my review of Koestler’s The Age of Longing, a novel which is basically about the western world’s loss of cultural self-confidence: Link
It’s always good to be reminded of universal truths.
Oh wait, you were looking for an argument;-)
I will admit to some discouragement, as my church just agreed to go back to in-person services after cancelling them on 11/16, because of new state restrictions (that the Governor couldn’t apply to churches, separation and all that), when our county had a peak of 186 new confirmed cases COVID, and has been lower every day but two since. The peak on 12/7 was only 113, and you have to go back to before 11/5 to find lower peaks. The total on 1/16 was 13, and they just moments ago started talking about resuming, but not for another three weeks. This, when masks and “social” distancing were always supposed to protect us. So, we’ve already gone along with this two months longer than we should have.
I thought I belonged to a conservative church, but they all seem to readily accept the narrative without any healthy skepticism, or investigation. Easier to do what the “Experts” tell us.
Sorry about kvetching. I guess I just needed to get this off my chest.
Thanks, @She for the poem, it really hits home, not only today, but at this particular moment. Sometimes even I can see God’s timing is perfect.
I think Kipling caught the attitude of society towards soldiers (and the military in general) in “Tommy Atkins”:
And Tommy answers back:
Kipling gets a bum deal from the current generation.
@she, did I ever tell you that I have the complete works of Kipling in 23 volumes?
I did? Let me rub it in. 😉
Nice post as usual.
This one seems timely,
Thanks, all. Yes, so eminently quotable, and so much wisdom and good sense.
I was going through some of Dad’s papers after he died and I found an index card (remember index cards?) with a Kipling poem that I’d never read before typed out on it. That’s when I realized that the title of Dad’s first book, Concerning Brave Captains, was taken from Kipling. The poem is called “Great-Heart,” and was written for Teddy Roosevelt. The title of the poem is taken from a line in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, “The interpreter then called for a man-servant of his, one Great-Heart.” It’s thematically quite similar to “If,” although it’s a retrospective of a life, rather than advice to what I always think of as a young man.
I think it must have had a special meaning for Dad to have typed it out himself and kept it close
There’s a passage in Bugles and a Tiger in which John Masters reflects on Kipling. Masters served with The Prince of Wales’ Own 4th Gurkha Rifles on the Afghan frontier before WWII, in Mesopotamia as things were heating up, and behind Japanese lines in Burma. He was from an old Anglo-Indian family. He disliked some of the ways Kipling wrote about Indians, and yet, when his service brought him to a part of India he hadn’t yet been to, it seemed very familiar to him. It dawned on him that he was in Mowgli country—the Seeonee Hills; he knew that for that to be possible, Kipling had to have been writing from love.
Masters’ own writing about India has been the subject of similar controversy. His novels range from decent to excellent, his memoirs are superb.
So this post and the literate thoughtful responses that followed are the reasons I am on Ricochet! I learned so much in reading this. I didn’t know that Kipling had written a poem about Teddy Roosevelt for example. These sorts of discussions make this site encouraging and satisfying.
“If” is one of my favorite poems and Kipling a huge favorite. He was a man of his era, but also bigger, much bigger, than the era. He will live on well past the demise of these mewling and puking infants trying to take over the country.
Kipling, my most favorite poet ever. I have a book of his poems, but not a full collection.
“The Gods of the Copybook Headings” is another good poem from Kipling
The same gods teach us that two and two make four after we decided not to believe it and hurt ourselves in the process.
Which brings us to another fine Ricochet post of this fine morning.
https://ricochet.com/871940/fighting-for-consensual-reality
My twins, now 11, were introduced to Kipling with “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” at 3, and then again several times later as there is an excellent animated adaptation available. As far as his cancellation goes, I wouldn’t bet on it, “The Jungle Book” is way too valuable a property.
We watched the Sam Jaffe (he’s the star, right?) “Gunga Din” and that was enough for us to check out the poem together.
Nag and Nagiana: Chuck and Nancy.
Thanks. I’ve added this to my reading list.
I saw the dawn come up like thunder outer China ‘crost the bay a few times. Well, close enough.
The poem was turned into a popular song by the American composer Oley Speaks (in about 1900, I believe), and when I was a child, it was still very well-known, and a group of Brits anywhere in the world could conjure up a singalong without too much difficulty just by bellowing out, even remotely tunefully, “OOOOOOOOOONNNNNNN the road to Mandalay-ay!”
Frank Sinatra attempted it (not one of his more felicitous efforts, I’ve always thought) in the late 1950s but the versions I remember and which always bring a smile to my face, and with it, memories of worlds I have lost, are ones like this:
Well, that “racist” wrote the following in The Ballad of East and West:
Gee – race and birth do not matter. Rather character does.
Or in Gunga Din:
and
Again character matters more than race.
Or in The Mother-Lodge
Doesn’t sound like the sentiments of a man who judges people by the color of their skin, does it.
More remarkable is the poem “The Hymn of Breaking Strain,” which he wrote a year before his death. I hope I can write one-half as well when I am that age.
Bingo.
He also wrote a pretty good paean to traditional womanhood, never once mistaking it for subservience or weakness:
I credit Mark Steyn for my admiration of this poem. Even though it’s geographically challenged in context, “The dawn comes up like thunder” is wonderful imagery.
I’m familiar with this poem. Guess where I first saw it?
I love Kipling though I haven’t read all of his work.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the subgenre of books that borrow characters and settings from great works of literature or somehow retell their stories from a different angle. But I’ve had the idea stuck in my head since reading Kim of a novel following a middle aged Kimball O’Hara from the end of WWII into the 60s.
How does a character whose identity is so thoroughly wrapped up in British India deal with independence, partition and break up of the empire, not to mention the cold war? I don’t know, but I want to.
Even as pulp, forgetting great literature, Kipling set up the adult Kim to be a far more interesting secret agent than anything Ian Fleming ever came up with.
If I could reincarnate one author and commission a work that would be it.