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‘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!
I read Puck of Pook’s Hill not long ago. I’m working my way through the complete Kipling. I’m on The Light that Failed now.
I was reading some Kipling poetry last night as bedtime reading. The Sons of Martha is one of my favorites. I’ve never been a big fan of If. Not sure why.
LOL. You’re definitely not irrelevant. You’re just too smart for that. Old, well that’s relative. You’re not a spring chicken, but I don’t consider 66 old. That may be because I’m approaching it myself. Hag? ;) You have said that a few times about yourself over time, and I have formed an image of you as an old crone…lol. Sort of contradicts your avatar of the little girl.
I’ve read some Kipling, mostly his short stories. Quite a few are memorable. He has one achievement in my opinion that should get more recognition. I hold out that Kipling’s novel Kim is an underrated classic. I count it as among the best novels of the 20th century.
My dad, raised in Scotland, attended school until he he was 13, whereupon be joined his older brother in the shipyards.
He was very fond of quoting Rudyard Kipling … I’d be very rich if I had a dollar for every time I heard
I have carried on the tradition by referring to anyone getting me water, or carrying water, or helping me water, as Gunga Din. No one has a bloody clue what I’m on about.
So then I quote my father again: your education has been sadly neglected
Thanks for the vote of confidence, @manny. I remember when I thought 40 was terribly old, although when I achieved that milestone, I didn’t think so anymore…funny how that works. “The old hag” metaphor probably stems from my knitting–the Madam Defarge image. It’s a cross that knitters have to bear, although many “celebrities,” including Julia Roberts, Vanna White (who even has her own line of yarns), Kate Middleton and Russell Crowe(!) are avid knitters. My favorite knitting “personality, though,” is Karen Allen, of Raiders of the Lost Ark fame. She designs and produces rather nice, high-end, knitwear which she sells at her shop in Massachusetts.
The general image of knitters in the public eye is usually something more like this, LOL:
Your Dad was very wise. A long time ago, in a galaxy rather close to home, people believed that making the acquaintance of, and studying, a lot of good ideas and a lot of good writing was the key to becoming a good thinker and communicator oneself. That premise wasn’t contingent on years of advanced education or attending university; it was baked in the cake from the start. Thus did a Canadian fisherman with an eighth-grade education regularly best Dad in good-natured competitions when they’d try to one-up each other with quotes, some of them miles long, from English and American poetry. It was a shared experience in which two very different men could find common ground and enjoy a rapport. Sadly, that’s all gone now, and we’re left with what? Modern “music” which, for the most part, I can’t even quote here because the lyrics are simply too filthy, and they’re illiterate to boot. Or modern discourse which, we’re daily adjured, must become less and less particular and specific in its formulation, lest by including one group we are perceived to have excluded another, or by remarking favorably about one class, we are assumed to be disrespecting the rest.
I live in the McGuffey school district (yes, that McGuffey). A review of any of his readers, all of which were designed for children in what we now call K-12, makes the above point pretty well. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to find that I wrote a post about William Holmes McGuffey, here: Quote of the Day: The Cat is on the mat.
Well, get busy! This sounds like a fabulous idea to me.
I haven’t read them, but would guess the racism charges stem somewhat from some phrases/words Kipling uses. From the George Orwell essay mentioned in David Foster’s comment #4: “Kipling describes a British soldier beating a [CoC] with a cleaning rod in order to get money out of him”.
I waded through Orwell’s essay and came away with overall impression he considers 1) Kipling an extremely talented, vulgar, brutish ‘jingo imperialist’ unique to his era, and 2) Kipling’s writing both sensitive and insensitive; suitable for and suited to the middle class masses.
My own opinion is whatever Kipling was/was not, his writing stands on its own. I don’t really give a rip whether Orwell or those of like mind consider it poetry or just ‘verse’, anyone who can write “If” has beauty in their soul.
“Bugles and a Tiger” and “The Road Past Mandalay” I have(and REALLY like) and periodically reread. I would like to find a copy of his post WWII auto biography. I also wish he had lived long enough to have a follow on or two for his last book – “Man of War”(also REALLY like). I have also read a number of his other novels. John Masters was(is) always a good read…
The passage in The Road Past Mandalay in which he describes giving the order to kill his unit’s wounded because the Japanese were so close and the unit had to move fast to stay out of Japanese hands is heart rending.
Not all books reward rereading, these do.
I remember having just turned forty and sitting at my desk and hearing Pink Floyd’s “Time” and for the first time the lyrics hit me and I felt frozen.
One always feels one misses the starting gun (at least I did) but for the first time in my life I felt at that moment one day closer to death. The memory has been forever engrained into my consciousness. Every time I hear that song, the memory of that moment at my desk comes back. Now, years later, that second part of the song, which is almost another song, (“Home,,,I like to be here when I can”) gives me a certain comfort. Perhaps I didn’t get to say or do everything I meant to say or do in life, but I am at home. i am at peace with it all.