{"id":31509,"date":"2017-12-30T05:30:05","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T10:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=31509"},"modified":"2020-04-20T09:13:54","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T13:13:54","slug":"on-this-day-december-30-1865","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=31509","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Rudyard Kipling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI worshipped Kipling at 13, loathed him at 17, enjoyed him at 20, despised him at 25, and now again rather admire him.\u201d
\n\u2013 George Orwell, 1936<\/big><\/p>\n

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\nRudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India on December 30, 1865.<\/p>\n

Orwell’s progression of reactions to Kipling is a pretty common one (that is, if you don’t dismiss him outright, or refuse to read him on principle). Kipling defended the indefensible, in many cases, and was trumpeting the cause of Empire literally in the “moment before” Empires started collapsing (“like flan in a cupboard,” to quote Eddie Izzard) around the globe. Maybe Kipling sensed the coming collapse. Who knows. I’m sure someone knows. I’m no scholar, just a fan of much of Kipling’s poetry and prose. I’m a curious woman. I want to know how other people thought in other times. I want to understand context. I realize my own time is just one time. I also realize that we – in our own time – as not as “enlightened” as some think, congratulating themselves for how much better we are than those who came before. Please. You can only feel that way if you haven’t read all that much history. Kipling is great for all of this, because he did not write about Empire in a once-removed way. He was in the thick of it. <\/p>\n

But I am not only interested in Kipling for his historical relevance, or to argue with his ideas. I’m interested in him as a writer, and what he did as a writer.<\/p>\n

Kipling inspired a generation, many of whom broke away totally from his example. The generation that came after Kipling’s was the generation that saw the destruction of Empire in the first World War. <\/p>\n

But my “way in” was not academic, was not historical at all. My “way in” – so strong it was almost an obsession – was the Chuck Jones animated cartoon version of Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi<\/i>, shown on television when I was a kid, narrated by Orson Welles. I LIVED that story and LIVED for re-runs of it. I was so afraid of the blinding yellow close-ups of that cobra head my parents would tell me beforehand when it was coming so I could hide my eyes. To be honest, it still freaks me out. <\/p>\n

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\nThe opening paragraph of Rikki Tikki Tavi<\/em>:<\/p>\n

This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the tailor-bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice; but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting.<\/p>\n

He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry, as he scuttled through the long grass, was: ‘_Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!_’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And let’s not forget Donovan’s song on the subject:<\/p>\n

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