Sunday, April 13, 2003		Books

If Kipling’s ideology was easy to define…
Manisha Gangahar

Rudyard Kipling: The Complete Verse
Natraj Publishers, Dehra Dun. Pages 704. Rs 495.

THE ideology of Kipling, who went from being a Freemason to being an imperialist, has always been difficult to define. As a Freemason, the idea of a community undivided into classes or sects was the ideal social order that Kipling was attracted to. A secret bond that tied together ‘brothers’ following higher principles of existence and working for the common good fascinated Kipling. However, his attitude towards the developments of his age was paradoxical, as it kept oscillating between the liberal and the Euro-centric ideology. If one cannot deny the reflections of the ideology of the Freemasons in his works, whether it is poetry or short stories like Mother’s Lodge and Banquet Night, it is equally difficult to overlook the streaks of imperialist ideas in many of his works.

Kipling’s Complete Verse brings together the poetic works of the "literary sensation", as Ruskin Bond calls him in his foreword to this edition. It presents the varied and diverse forms of poetry which Kipling wrote in order to bring forth his own understanding of the world around him. His early poetry comprises a collection called Departmental Ditties, among which The Last Department celebrates death —"wait awhile, till we attain/ The Last Department where nor fraud nor fools,/ Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again." The poem expresses Kipling’s comprehension that death liberates an individual from worldly ties. Gradually Kipling experimented with ballad-writing and quite excelled in this area with Mandalay and The Ballad of East and West. While the former depicts Kipling’s desire to familiarise himself with the exoticism of the East, the latter seems to exemplify the poet’s endorsement of the East-West dichotomy with the phrase: "east is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet". Furthermore, his poem Recessional, with lines like: "Wild tongues`85Or lesser breeds without the Law`85" adds to his reputation as a imperialist, with the poem White Man’s Burden serving as the final nail in his crucifixion as a racist.

The question of his cultural hybridism has always vexed critics. For Salman Rushdie he is a "personality in conflict with itself, part bazaar-boy, part sahib". Nevertheless, the aesthetic sensibility of the acclaimed genius cannot be denied, especially when one reads poems like If. It deals with the issue one’s faith in oneself —"If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you" — and at the same time has a moral theme in it — "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/ And treat those two imposters just the same". The later poems produced by Kipling seem to be preoccupied with the theme of pain and suffering, especially after the death of his only son John. In Hymn of Breaking Strain he, initially, displays his scepticism with regard to God’s "justice towards mankind" but eventually the belief is refurbished with the conviction: "We know Thy ways are true--". Apparently, Kipling’s verse caters not only to the literary people but also to the average reader who merely reads for pleasure and delight. The range of his poems, from ballads to hymns and from short, witty verses to philosophical renderings, offers an individual’s perspective towards life. The very fact that the complete verses of the great poet have been made available in a single paperback edition is reason enough to be grateful to the publishers.