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Fun with Kipling
Mar. 19th, 2003 11:55 amWe talked about Rudyard Kipling and his poetry today in my "British Imperial Imagination" class. The immediate vociferous reaction was negative, which surprised me a bit. But I was more surprised at how much I countered that. I never knew how much I like Kipling.
I love the rhythm and the rhymes in his poems. The cockney accent seems to bother everybody else, but I don't mind it--and can read it well enough to preserve the rhythms and rhyme intact, which I like--and the poems that reminded me of drinking songs are just fun.
He has a poem that says, "the female of the species is more deadly than the male." How can you not love that? I pointed this out to one of the people who was complaining about him. "That's true," she said. "But I still hate him." (In another class, for which I actually had to read that poem, someone in the class realized that you can sing it to the tune of..."The Beverly Hillbillies," I think. It was quite funny.)
Apparently Kipling liked--even idolized--sports, either despite or because of the fact that he couldn't play them well because he had bad eyesight. Gee, that sounds kind of familiar... So maybe I like him because he's like me.
He's complicated. He never seems to have anything good to say about the British Empire, but he's still totally pro-imperial. He's not idealistic, he knows the problems of empire, and still thinks it's worth it.
He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907 or something--the first British person to win it, we were told.
Brad, the professor, asked us, "Who was the first American to win, can anyone tell me?"
Silence. Then, "Albert Einstein."
"The first to win for literature," he reminded us.
But I had a different problem with this. "He wasn't American! He was German."
"But he emigrated here," the girl said. Sheesh.
Silly professor, always trying to keep it on task, repeated, "The first to win for literature."
"T.S. Eliot," someone said. (I don't think he's American either, perhaps since I studied him in a Brit lit class. The one where I learned the correlation between Kipling and the Beverly Hillbillies, actually.) I think our prof said it was earlier than T.S. Eliot.
"Mark Twain." The Nobel Prize didn't come along until after Mark Twain.
"Edgar Allan Poe." No, Edgar Allan Poe was even earlier than Mark Twain.
"He's a bit of a local hero," Brad told us. I had no idea who he could be talking about, but was about to be enlightened. After a small conflict about whether it was Sinclair Lewis or Upton Sinclair, I think we decided on Sinclair Lewis, who is apparently from Sauk Centre (which is like an hour from here, it's where you go to get on the freeway if you want to go to St. Cloud or the Cities...or Columbus, Ohio, for that matter).
"I didn't know he was from Sauk Centre," I said.
"It's what he wrote Main Street about," said the girl who'd said Einstein.
"I've never read Main Street," I replied.
"I started to," said the lady who'd said Edgar Allan Poe. "It was really boring." (Seems appropriate enough, since Sauk Centre, or at least the drive there from Morris, is famously boring.) Then she said something about gophers and stuff, which was drowned out by the silly professor making us talk about Kipling again.
I love the rhythm and the rhymes in his poems. The cockney accent seems to bother everybody else, but I don't mind it--and can read it well enough to preserve the rhythms and rhyme intact, which I like--and the poems that reminded me of drinking songs are just fun.
He has a poem that says, "the female of the species is more deadly than the male." How can you not love that? I pointed this out to one of the people who was complaining about him. "That's true," she said. "But I still hate him." (In another class, for which I actually had to read that poem, someone in the class realized that you can sing it to the tune of..."The Beverly Hillbillies," I think. It was quite funny.)
Apparently Kipling liked--even idolized--sports, either despite or because of the fact that he couldn't play them well because he had bad eyesight. Gee, that sounds kind of familiar... So maybe I like him because he's like me.
He's complicated. He never seems to have anything good to say about the British Empire, but he's still totally pro-imperial. He's not idealistic, he knows the problems of empire, and still thinks it's worth it.
He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907 or something--the first British person to win it, we were told.
Brad, the professor, asked us, "Who was the first American to win, can anyone tell me?"
Silence. Then, "Albert Einstein."
"The first to win for literature," he reminded us.
But I had a different problem with this. "He wasn't American! He was German."
"But he emigrated here," the girl said. Sheesh.
Silly professor, always trying to keep it on task, repeated, "The first to win for literature."
"T.S. Eliot," someone said. (I don't think he's American either, perhaps since I studied him in a Brit lit class. The one where I learned the correlation between Kipling and the Beverly Hillbillies, actually.) I think our prof said it was earlier than T.S. Eliot.
"Mark Twain." The Nobel Prize didn't come along until after Mark Twain.
"Edgar Allan Poe." No, Edgar Allan Poe was even earlier than Mark Twain.
"He's a bit of a local hero," Brad told us. I had no idea who he could be talking about, but was about to be enlightened. After a small conflict about whether it was Sinclair Lewis or Upton Sinclair, I think we decided on Sinclair Lewis, who is apparently from Sauk Centre (which is like an hour from here, it's where you go to get on the freeway if you want to go to St. Cloud or the Cities...or Columbus, Ohio, for that matter).
"I didn't know he was from Sauk Centre," I said.
"It's what he wrote Main Street about," said the girl who'd said Einstein.
"I've never read Main Street," I replied.
"I started to," said the lady who'd said Edgar Allan Poe. "It was really boring." (Seems appropriate enough, since Sauk Centre, or at least the drive there from Morris, is famously boring.) Then she said something about gophers and stuff, which was drowned out by the silly professor making us talk about Kipling again.