The Paradox of Rudyard Kipling - I (Discussion of Poems)

Hello friends, we are in the middle of the series which is on 20th century poetry and we have covered a large number of authors already and we have to cover a few more and for today's discussion we have Rudyard Kipling as a poet and he is known as a fiction writer as well as a poet and he wrote about India quite a great deal and since he has that famous quotation or to his credit that the twin shall never meet that that particular thing you know comes from Kipling and for that reason he was criticized widely by the India lovers, by those who believed in Indian nationalism and all those things but then he was also a true genius in the sense you know that he could see things which others could not and as Professor Richa Bajaj will tell us he lived a kind of paradox and you can say that what is there the opposite all also of it in the possibility of his covering remains and it is that which has to be unravelled and uncovered so that you know the true essence of Rudyard Kipling as a poet. Of course most of us know him for his novel Kim which is a good description of India and particularly the GT road you know which he travels and he has lots of things to say about India and he's a very honest author. You can disagree with him, you can criticize him, you can also feel sometimes disgusted by what he says but then he makes a point and in that pointedness you know lies his relevance to us. So without more discussion about Kipling myself I request Professor Richa Bajaj who teaches English Hindu College Delhi University to please begin the discussion, make a few points. Thank you, thank you Professor Bajaj. So yes I'd like to introduce today Kipling as a poet although primarily he was a journalist and he worked in India in fact as a journalist. He was born in India and he's a short story writer we know that too but he's also a poet and today we look at his some of his poems and discuss how Kipling's verse you know projects his sort of projects this kind of contradiction that is there in him as a literary man. So and to understand that I think it's important we also understand his life and journey in the sense that his immediate background in a way has a lot to do with you know how he finally is able to talk about the various themes in literature including the East and the West and I'll focus on these before I actually also take up one of his well-known poems called If. So we'll have a discussion around the poems of Kipling today but before we do that I'd like you to understand how Kipling what is the kind of historical background that he had and the context that defines the man. So in a way you would know that Kipling of course was born in India he was born in Bombay in colonial Bombay that is or Victorian Bombay if you'd like to call it in 1865 and spent his early years in the country before he was being actually sent to England for further education in 1871. So the first six years of his life were actually spent in Bombay with nannies as help he heard their rhymes nursery rhymes he imbibed all that was Indian there and in fact in one of you know the places he says that well we with the nannies we always conversed in the vernacular but when and the nannies would tell him now it's time to go to mama and papa to speak in English and he said that then one had to translate that vernacular into English into this kind of and that kind of hesitation that came along with it. So already you can see as a young boy of six he's grounded in Indian reality he his language is that of the vernacular the language that he learned with the nannies around him and felt a kind of a hesitation when speaking English when he had to go to mama papa he says that I had to speak in English. So in something about of myself he actually his autobiographical he talks about this episode of his life so the most important years of his life you know the growing up years he spent here in Bombay and then he in 1871 he was sent to England. Now when he went to England there also he stayed with you know some an aunt a couple who was they were distant relatives and he stayed with them while his parents stayed back in India. His father was an artist and you know he in Bombay he was the principal of the school of art here and so he stayed on with Kipling's mother. Kipling and his sister they both returned to England and stayed with you know this couple relative and he says that he had the most harrowing experience over there again referring to those years that were searing for him in many ways that he could not you know this this phase was most miserable phase of his life. So the kind of you know the kind of I'd say alienation from the family because a larger role had to be played or because his parents chose to stay in India this is a kind of a grudge that he bears but also understands the plight of young children having to stay without parents and this this gets somehow reflected also in his works I'll speak about it when when we talk about his poem but you know he stayed there in England got his education but soon enough it was evident that you know his parents didn't have enough money to send him to Oxford on scholarship so they decided to get him a job and he returned to India in 1882 and secured a job as an assistant editor and at a Lahore newspaper the civil and military gazette where he learned to hone his skills and contributed to the stories and verses in the paper so this is a very interesting period when he's working as an editor he's reporting he's also writing fillers so in a way his journalistic skills get honed in this particular period later from Lahore he moved to Allahabad where he joined the parent company of the same paper it was a larger paper it was called the pioneer and it is in this period where he also wrote more editorials and this is the period when he also begins to write and publish short stories you know and he's become a famous person so he gained fame as a short story writer and poet at this particular time when he was in Allahabad and then he decided that maybe it's time for him to go back to London and build his literary career because London was the literary hub in England and in he decided in 1889 to leave India and go to London so but the point is you can already see the stints that he kept making you know of coming keep he keeps coming back to India then feels restless enough to leave it because he sees he wants to see the world outside so and when he reached England he you know there were already publishers who wanted to publish his stories and poems by 1890 he had already become a kind of a famous figure and a lot of people say that 1819 is actually the Rudyard Kipling year because that's when his stories and poems are read and he's appreciated for them and in 1892 he published a collection of his songs and poems which were titled the barrack room ballads and other verses and that also established him as a promising young poet so this kind of journey that he had you know and he almost has this kind of a relationship with England which is more like a love-hate relationship because he did not really feel like he spoke from a point of view of a national poet but he always felt a sense of foreignness a sense of outsider in England and the similar relationship he had in India he was an insider being an outsider and in England he was an outsider in his own place so there is this kind of a restlessness that you see in Kipling vis-a-vis his relationship with his mother country so to speak that is England and the country that he was born in so there is this and you could view him as an Anglo-Indian poet but not many people talk about that angle they look at him as a British poet primarily also because the kind of conscious choices he made to speak on behalf of British imperial power and you know the venture as such but having said that he again he you know he was traveling around the world he decided to leave England he moved around the world you know when he got married with his wife he they moved to America and he stayed for a very long period in America and this is the period when his children were born and he he loved his place there in fact they built a place which he and the name that he gave to that house was Nolakha you know again he was so inspired by the Mughal you know architecture in India and let's not forget his father was a teacher of art so you know how he he kept returning in one way or another to his Indian sort of bringing or Indian roots you could say and again as living in America he could also see both Britain and India from the outside so it was a very interesting period also an American sense of resilience and stoicism enters his work and he sees life you know from that point of view as well so I think it's a very interesting he's more like a cosmopolitan poet who's you know globetrotting all the time but he's he's in different places and finally he rests in you know he he finally decides to retire in England and he dies in Sussex but the whole point that he's born in Bombay and dies in Sussex tells you that you know this and living out and also remember that Kipling is a writer who's lived half of his life in the 19th century and the other half in 20th this is also the period that the during at the turn of the century for British empire this you know he's able to see the rise of the British empire but also the decline because very soon you know when he died he dies in 1936 I mean his period is from 1865 to 1936 1865 when India is you know very officially under the control of the British rule you know and has you know the Victorian sensibility the Victorian Bombay sensibility is already present there 1936 we just sort of say nine years before India becomes independent right so he has already seen this kind of a journey of the British empire vis-a-vis the colonies and you know how the rose to fame and the whole kind of you know white man's logic that he builds on also diminishes by you know towards the end of his life so in many ways he is a writer if you want to understand the history of a period if you want to understand the east and the west or Britain's relationship with its colonies and Britain's relationship with both America and India I think he's an author that you could constantly go to to build your own understanding of the period how would you look at it? Well you've already given a very useful background to the sensibility of this writer because he is as you say a cosmopolitan genius a cosmopolitan sensibility he was he's born in India and and he also spends most of his time early time here he goes to England as you say as an outsider and that is the paradox that I had in mind in the beginning itself and I think that gives him a vision which is internationalist vision even though he has his preferences or he may love-hate relationship is one thing that he has with India and that is to be kept in mind and I would also call him and I would like you to react to that whether he's a literary historian because he's talking about the locale where he spends his time either in Bombay or or in India in general in Lahore in Allahabad you say or he is so much you know a lover of detail that he carries his the architecture of India to America where he uses it for his own house and he he's an Englishman but he realizes that much later and not successfully either so I think it's a very complex personality and that will make him a very interesting poet also because you know remember that you know when he stays in England with his aunt so the period that he stays in India is you know he he really is fond of that period and he when he speaks of India and writes about India he's full of enthusiasm almost like a childlike curiosity that he has an evident in the jungle book you know the book that he's really known for the attain the the book attained literary acclaim you know and brought him success instant success which was published in 1894 the jungle book and the second version of it and post that he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1907 so you find that he has a very childlike curiosity and a sense of enthusiasm zeal when he's speaking of India but in England I almost felt like he had to pick up the mantle of being an Englishman because when he stayed with these relatives of his he didn't have a good life there you know he was always in a miserable condition so I think that imagine you know I read somewhere that he took he accepted awards from other countries but didn't you know denied awards from England what explains that if he's an imperial poet that when his own country tries to reward him he you know denies it he rejects the whole idea of taking any award from them but when he's awarded outside elsewhere he is happily enjoying that kind of victory and reward no no this kind of ambivalence in his writing also would be I think affecting his selection of characters selection of details and in poems you know his voices with whom he identifies with those other people he might criticize or at least he maintains distance with all this is going to be very interesting yeah and you know like a kind of a critical appreciation of his one finds that that you know he's appraised as a kind of an imperialist you know and there is this person Seedy who in the Nobel prize for literature in 1907 commented while during this you know in this article he said that you know as an imperialist a citizen of the worldwide empire he is responsible for drawing tighter the bonds of union between England and the colonies this is what the this critic had to say about Kipling that you know he was an imperialist really and a citizen of the worldwide empire you know carrying the word of the empire after this rally perhaps he was the one who carried forth this kind of a role and so but he he was also has been criticized for instance by E.M. Foster who saw Kipling you know big vital empire discourse as jingoistic and limited and propagandist so there is a sense of you know the while he was praised for having an inwardness towards India that other writers lacked at the time and you know furthering the cause of the empire there were others who were equally critical for about him like Dan Jacobson actually pays a kind of an exasperated tribute to Kipling when he says that you know he's a poet I cannot abide yet cannot stop reading you know so you cannot agree with this poet and yet you love the work of this man so he has a sensitive mind and he's reacting very honestly but you know his views one doesn't like and therefore one says that well his descriptions are good and they are irresistible but his treatment of them is imperialistic yes I was actually reminded of Balzac you know in many ways who had political affiliations of the conservative kinds but when he came to writing then he completely shred them to pieces this entire conservative mindset and the aristocracy which he otherwise supported politically when it came to literature and his you know creative process he actually showed the hypocrisy of that particular class that he actually you know felt for that is because you know these writers they already have a double personality the real personality which which shows there in their works and the social personality where they're different right so that's so in a way I felt a similar strain in Kipling and it is also available in his critical appreciation in this in this sense so you know Kipling I think and and very interestingly more importantly I'd say Kipling appears more ironical about the imperialist dream of England and America in his poetry and you know in his ballads and lyrics he projects various shades of human endeavor and relationships so I thought that this is something which is peculiar to his poetry you know which where he's able to look at the hypocrisy or also of the white man's burden and you know this is something this is a poem of him which is absolutely under there's a lot of controversy around this poem which is titled the white man's burden it was written in 1899 and in fact you know first sent to Roosevelt in America it was written in the America American background also now this is a highly debated poem and you know very variedly understood but Kipling speaks about the enterprise of the conquest of these colonies but also shares the predicament of the white man's burden then and he I thought that you know as against what it has what has been really said I thought that he actually holds up the mirror to the colonialists in many ways and you know who have to who live with a sense of pride but actually it is perhaps a sense of selfish achievement so I thought that these undercurrents were present in the poem the white man's burden and I'd like you to I'd like to quote from the poem so maybe you can understand this better and this is from the poem itself it says take up the white man's burden and I've skipped certain portions to take you to that particular point take up the white man's burden he goes into various layers and he says to seek another's profit and work another's gain you know and then he further adds take up the white man's burden to wail the threat of terror the the irony cannot be missed you know in these lines that you to wail the threat of terror you take up the white man's burden and to seek another's profit and to work another's gain to you take up the white man's burden he's pointing out a kind of complexity he doesn't know where to take his stand and and base it there yeah also whose profit are you talking about you're talking about to seek another's profit you know maybe it is the profit of the people of the land so you take up the white man's burden to seek somebody else's profit you know which means that you are gaining from the resources of the colony and gaining profit which actually does not belong to you and you call it the white man's burden so I thought it very ironic in that sense and to work another's gain right so you are actually another's gain is something that you you're making your own gain and his prejudices you know about England about India and about America would be always working you know when he wrote because these will be at cross crisscross and they'll be at cross purposes and he may not be knowing what to exactly say and project right so in a way I thought that you know he's always seen as somebody who is prejudiced against India but in poetry it's in these such moments I feel is very much also prejudiced against England in that sense I wouldn't say prejudice but he's able to see the selfishness of the endeavor he say even when he's saying this is the right way forward and you know he may be saying that you know it is the white man's burden to civilize the world and to you know to add to give bring light where there is all darkness and America should also be doing that what England has already done that could be one of the ways in which we look at the poem but I also read an undercurrent which was completely opposite where we said that where it looked absolutely ironic that the white man's burden cannot be to seek another's profit what kind of a burden is it you call it a burden but you are actually taking seeking somebody else's profit and to wail the threat of terror you take up you call it the white man's burden take some more lines from the poem he says and I quote take up the white man's burden send forth the best you breed go bind your sons to exile to serve your captives need unquote now what kind of a is it not ironic here I actually saw Kipling himself here because remember Kipling has been sent to exile back in England now going to England is exile for him you know how the situation is reversed his father is exiled when he is in India he is furthering the cause of art here by being the principal of this art college here sends Kipling to England and then is that exile for him because his parents are in India so isn't India England exile for him then because he's been forced to be he's only known India as his life and world right and the kind of absolutely he has divided loyalties loyalties even when I think on the surface it is very clear he tries to make up by on the surface being very pro England but actually as a poet I thought that he was just speaking on behalf of a sensitive individual and who would who would see the right wherever it felt and he has the capacity to identify with with the opposite with the person yes he's able to see both he's so I think he's that's why I would like to actually call him an Anglo-Indian poet because he's able to see both the Englishman's perspective and the Indian's perspective here for instance even here if you see that you're saying take up the white man's burden send your the best you breed right as if it's you're sending them as martyrs to another world go bind your sons to exile to serve your captives need so you're send you know what so he's actually questioning the whole logic to serve the captives once who are the captives the colony people right so the fact that he uses not knaves or barbarians he's calling them captives which means you have made them captive to serve your captives need you are sending your sons to exile so it's it's a kind of a double wrong yes that you first you are you think you are helping serving the captive but you are remember he's a captive you're not giving him the choice right and secondly you're sending your sons to exile from their families they are forced to live elsewhere so I thought it was a kind of a double critique on both England and on England in fact and he sees violence for what it is it's a violence to the personality of the person who either sent out or is kept as captive captive exactly and the violence done by Britain yes so I thought that it was you know you're binding your sons to exile why would you want who would want to do that so it is at one level wrong that one you're sending your own people away from the land from England and exiling them and two you are also doing another wrong to the captives who you who you think you are serving their need so I thought this kind of abandonment and misery that Kipling himself faced you know when his parents sent him to live with an aunt as they lived on in India gets reflected in these lines as well and take and then he is able to look at the white man's perception you know and take taking this forward and talking about the colonized he says you know who is a child he says your new caught sullen people half devil half child and giving brings in the colony's perspective also when he says the silent sullen people shall weigh your gods and you so they are going to judge you they are going to weigh your gods and you the silent sullen people he understand the colony's perspective is silent and sullen and therefore opens the opportunity for someone like Edward Said later you know who'd come up with the idea of the silent orient in that sense so I think Kipling has already made the ground and I think this poem for me is very ironical throughout even when it seems to talk about the white man's burden it is actually talking about the hypocrisy view of the system and also how you think it is the white man's burden but the silent people of the colony actually weigh you and your gods so what do you want what do you make of weighing you and your gods yes yes truly and friends in this part of the lecture professor Richa Bajaj has talked about Kipling's background and the background that you know worked towards forming his personality and his sensibility and that there are many ifs and buts there are many opposites there are many paradoxes that that are lying you know deep into his mind and these have been partly explored and I think in the following discussion a short while from now we'll be discussing more closely yet more closely the poem that he wrote or a particular poem can be taken up for detail and and that can you know tell us about his overall literary you know point of view so we come to the end of this discussion partly thank you and we will very soon get back to take up other issues connected with Rudyard Kipling's poems thank you