Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865, Bombay - January 18, 1936, London) was a British writer and poet. He is the author of stories, children's stories, novels and poetry. Some of his most popular works are the collection of short stories The Jungle Book (The Jungle Book 1894), the spy novel Kim (1901), the short story "Tthe Man Who Would Be King", 1888, originally published in the volume The Phantom Rickshaw, or the poems «Gunga Din» (1892) and «If»— (translated into Spanish as «Si...», 1895). Several of his works have been made into movies.

Kipling refused the national poetry prize Poet Laureate in 1895, the UK Order of Merit, and the Knighthood of the Order of the British Empire three times. However, he accepted the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature, making him the first British writer to receive this award, and the youngest Nobel Prize winner to date.

Biography

Childhood

Cerro Malabar. Bombay view in the 1860s.

Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India, the son of Alice Kipling and John Lockwood Kipling. His mother was a lively woman and a great writer.

Her father, Lockwood, was a British Army officer and an expert sculptor and potter, who taught architectural sculpture at the newly founded Jeejeebhoy School of Art and Industry in Bombay. The couple had traveled to India in early 1865., they had met two years earlier at Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, England. The place where Rudyard was born still stands, on the campus of the Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art, that house is now the residence of the dean.

Map with Kipling locations in India.

When Kipling was six years old, his father sent him and his younger sister, Trix, to the social home known as Lorne Lodge in England, to be educated there for the next six years. That home was in Southsea (Portsmouth), and was in charge of Captain Holloway and his wife. Not having his parents around, he felt lonely and abandoned, which he would remember as a sad childhood in his autobiography Something About Myself, published after their deaths in 1937. The two children, however They had relatives in England whom they could visit, thus spending every Christmas month with their maternal aunt Georgiana and her husband, the artist Edward Burne-Jones, at their home "The Grange" in Fulham, London, which Kipling called " a paradise that I truly believe saved me." In the spring of 1877, Alice Kipling, her mother, returned from India and removed the children from Lorne Lodge.

In 1878, he entered the United Service College, a Devonshire school, created especially for the purpose of educating the children of those officers without great wealth. During his time there, Kipling also met Florence Garrard, with whom he fell in love; he drew inspiration from her for the character of Maisie in her first novel, The Light That Goes Out (1891). Towards the end of his time at school, he was certain that he lacked the intellectual capacity to win a scholarship to Oxford, and that his parents did not have the resources to finance his studies, so his father got him a job at Lahore (Pakistan) where he was the director of the Lahore National Art Collection and guard of the Lahore Museum. Kipling was assistant editor of a small local newspaper, The Civil and Military Gazette. He set out for India on September 2, 1882, and reached Bombay on October 20 of the same year.

Approach to literature

The Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, which Kipling called "My first lover and truest love," appeared six days a week throughout the year except Christmas and Easter. Kipling worked long and hard for the editor, Stephen Wheeler, but his urge to write was unstoppable. In 1886, he published the first collection of his verse, Departmental Cantinelas . That year there was also a change of editor, as Kay Robinson took over, who allowed greater creative freedom, and also asked Kipling to write short stories, which would be included in the newspaper.

First edition Tales of the hills (1888).

At this time, in the summer of 1883, Kipling first visited Simla (present-day Shimla). Kipling's family subsequently visited Simla annually, where they asked John Lockwood Kipling to paint a fresco in the local Christ Church. On the other hand Rudyard continued to visit Simla every year from 1885 to 1888; That city meant a lot to the writer, since he appears in many of his stories written for the Gazette .

Back in Lahore, approximately thirty-nine stories appeared in the Gazette between November 1886 and June 1887. A significant portion of those stories were included in Tales from the Hills , Kipling's first prose collection, which was published in Calcutta in January 1888, a month after his twenty-second birthday. In November 1887, he was transferred to a sister newspaper to the Gazette , but more important: The Pioneer , in Prayagraj, in the United Provinces. But his desire to write was not satisfied and grew frantically; over the next year he published six collections of short stories: Three Soldiers, The Gadsbys Story, In Black and White, Under the Deodar, The Ghost Ride-a-Rikisha, and Wee Willie Winkie, with a total of 41 stories. In addition, as a correspondent for The Pioneer in the western Rajputana region, he wrote many sketches which were later collected in Letters of Marque and published in Of a Sea to another .

In early 1889, The Pioneer relieved Kipling of his post due to a conflict. For his part, Kipling had been thinking more and more of his future; he sold the rights to the six volumes of his stories for £200, and Tales from the Hills for £50; In addition, he received six months' salary from The Pioneer . He decided to use this money to return to London, the center of the literary universe in the British Empire.

On March 9, 1889, Kipling left India, traveling first to San Francisco via Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. He traveled to the United States writing articles for The Pioneer , which were also collected in From one sea to another . Kipling was a prolific writer. Already in 1890 he was considered a notable in English letters.

He began his American tour in San Francisco, then went north to Portland, also was in Seattle, Washington; then he traveled to Canada, visiting Victoria and Vancouver, returned to the United States and visited Yellowstone National Park; she went down to Salt Lake City, then east to Omaha, Nebraska, and Chicago, Illinois; then she stayed for a while in Indian Village, on the Monongahela River; he finally went to Elmira, in upstate New York, where he met Mark Twain, after which he crossed the Atlantic, feeling intimidated by his presence, and returned to Liverpool in October 1889. After that, he made his world debut. London literary house, which received it with great acclaim.

Portrait of Kipling by John Collier (c. 1892).

London

Several of Kipling's stories had been accepted by some London magazine editors. Kipling found a place to settle in which he lived for the next two years, during which he published the novel The Going Out Light ; and also met Wolcott Balestier, an American writer and editor, who collaborated on the novel Naulahka. In 1891, on the advice of his doctors, Kipling undertook another sea voyage to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India. However, he put off his plans in order to spend Christmas with his family in India, but when he heard of the sudden death of his friend Balestier due to typhoid fever, he decided to return immediately to London.. Before his trip, he telegrammed Wolcott's sister Caroline.Meanwhile, in late 1891, his collection of short stories from the British in India, Life & # 39;s Handicap .

Marriage and honeymoon

On January 18, 1892, at the age of twenty-six, Rudyard married twenty-nine-year-old Carrie Balestier (sister of his late friend Wolcott) in the City of London. The newlyweds planned their honeymoon, in the United States (including a visit to the Balestier family's ranch near Brattleboro, Vermont) and Japan. However, when the couple arrived in the Japanese city of Yokohama they discovered that their bank Assuming their share of the loss, the New Oriental Banking Corporation had gone bankrupt, and they returned to Vermont, in the United States, where they rented a small country house near Brattleboro for ten dollars a month, with Carrie pregnant with her first child.

United States

Kipling locations in the United States.

In this cabin ("the cabin of bliss"), Josephine, the couple's first child, was born on December 29, 1892—her mother's birthday was her 31st, and Kipling's was her 30th. month-. It was also in this little house where The Jungle Book saw her first sunrise.

With the arrival of Josephine the cabin outgrew, so the couple bought ten acres on a rocky slope above the Connecticut River, where they built their own home. Kipling named the house Naulakha after Wolcott and his collaboration on the novel of that title, and this time the name was spelled correctly.

During his isolation in Vermont, in addition to writing the Jungle Books, he also wrote a collection of short stories, including the works: Work Days, and a novel called Intrepid Captains (1897). His poetic creations were Siete mares and Baladas del barracón , as well as “Mandalay” and “Gunga Din”. He enjoyed writing the two Jungle Books —both masterpieces of imaginative writing—and he also enjoyed the correspondence he received from many children about his work.

On October 19, 1894, Kipling served Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, a Thanksgiving dinner at his Brattleboro home. In gratitude, Doyle gave him golf lessons during his visit, and the following year the two writers played a game together.

In February 1896, the couple's second daughter, Elsie, was born. At this time, the marriage relationship was more joyful and spontaneous.

In that same year, a legal battle began with Beatty Balestier (Carrie's brother), over the parcel that Kipling owned and which had been purchased from Beatty; he alleged that there were irregularities in the purchase. This dispute ended in the courts, which found Kipling right. In May 1896, a drunken Beatty physically threatened Kipling in the street.The incident led to Beatty's arrest, but Kipling's privacy had now been completely destroyed, so he decided to leave the place. In July 1896 he hastily packed up his belongings and left the United States.

The Empire

Cover The Book of the Jungle.

Back in England, in September of that year, he settled in the town of Torquay on the Devon coast. At this stage in his life he was already a famous man, and in the previous two or three years he had been making more and more political statements in his writing. He had also begun work on two poems, "Recessional" in 1897, and his work "The White Man's Burden" (1899) which would create great controversy when published; it was considered as propaganda in favor of imperialism and the British Empire. The following year, the family moved to Rottingdean, Sussex, where his first son, John Kipling, was born.

He was a prolific writer—it was never easy to catalog his work. During his stay in Torquay, he also wrote Stalky and Co. , a collection of stories in which he recounts his college experiences. According to his family, Kipling enjoyed reading aloud the stories of Stalky and Co. and himself laughed out loud at his own jokes.

In early 1898 he and his family traveled to South Africa for the winter vacation. With his reputation as The Poet of the Empire he was warmly received by some of the most powerful politicians in the Cape Colony, including Cecil Rhodes, sir Alfred Milner and Leander Starr Jameson. In turn, Kipling cultivated his friendship and his admiration for these men and his politics was born. Back in England, Kipling wrote poetry in support of the British cause in the Boer War, and on his next visit to South Africa, in the early 1900s, he helped start the military newspaper The Friend. (The Friend) for British troops in Bloemfontein.

On a visit to the United States, she and her eldest daughter Josephine contracted pneumonia from which Josephine later died on March 6, 1899.

In 1901, he began collecting material for another classic children's work, Kim, and Just so Stories for Little Children, published the following year.

Around 1906, a new type of stories began, since the environment was conducive, due to the lush forests that surrounded the house and the atmosphere of tranquility that was breathed. He begins this small stage with the children's story "Puck of Pook's Hill" ("Puck of Pook's Hill").

For his entire life, Rudyard Kipling had refused the Knighthood (which would name him sir Rudyard Kipling), or the Order of Merit, the highest honor bestowed on a subject. English. Another award rejected by Kipling was the Poet Laureateship (National Poetry Prize). However, in 1907 he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature, despite the repudiation of some English liberals, who had their hopes that the prize would go to writers like Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, or Algernon Swinburne. The award ceremony was held in Stockholm on December 10, 1907.

The Swedish Academy, in awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature this year to Rudyard Kipling, wishes to pay tribute to the literature of England, so rich in poetic glories, and to the greatest genius in the realm of the narrative that this country has produced in our times.

In 1909, he wrote Actions and reactions; in 1910 Rewards and Fairies ( Goblins and fairies ) which includes his most famous poem, "If". It is said that Kipling was based, to write this poem, on the qualities of two of his great friends, Cecil Rhodes and Jameson. In collaboration with Elsie Kipling he composes a play called The Harbor Sentinel, which was premiered in London, but had only a few performances.

At the beginning of the first decade of the XX century, he alerted, first his king, George V, and later to the other nations, that a great war was approaching, and that it would affect the whole world, for which reason it was necessary to prepare the armies and be alert. His prediction, although it was not wrong, was not understood, and was only taken as an exaltation of the patriotism that characterized Kipling.

But World War I broke out, and their only son, John Kipling, had to enlist in the army. John, a second lieutenant in the Expeditionary Force, died at the age of 18, in the first battle he took part in, the Battle of Loos, on the Western Front. Rudyard Kipling, aware of the humanitarian action of the Spanish Crown Office for Captives, contacted King Alfonso XIII by letter in search of the whereabouts of his son, to no avail. His body was identified in 1922. The family was shocked, they couldn't believe that they had already buried two of their three children. Since John's death, and until his own death, Kipling begins to develop a gastric ulcer. With anger in his blood for the loss of his son, he publishes articles of war, collected in two small texts under the names The New Army in Training (The New Army in Training) and France at War (France at War). These texts were censored, due to their ironic content against the military strategies of the Triple Entente.

In 1917, and with the death of his son still on his mind, he joined the War Graves Commission, a commission established in 1917, which was in charge of processing the arrival of corpses of combatants, to bury them with all the corresponding honors and to maintain the graves in the future. In this work he personally meets and becomes close friends with the King of Great Britain, George V. The same year he publishes A Diversity of Creatures, a collection from stories written before the start of the war and two stories from the year 1915; one of them, "Mary Postgate", published in Nash's Pall Mall Magazine, also considered one of the best of her short stories.

Between 1919 and 1930, he continued to publish stories and short stories, most with World War I themes, such as the collection Thy Servant a Dog, a creative series of short stories that consisted of the life of a English country family, seen from the point of view of the family dogs. This is Kipling's last creative work, as his latest publication, Limits and Renewals, is a kind of incriminating document against some writers.

Death and legacy

In the last years of their lives, Rudyard and Carrie continued their hobby as a newlywed couple: traveling, well, they were alone again, since their only living daughter, Elsie, had married George Bambridge, captain of the irish army. The trips helped both to forget a bit about their health conditions.

Finally, as a result of internal bleeding, Joseph Rudyard Kipling died on January 18, 1936, leaving behind an enormous legacy of five novels, more than 250 short stories, and 800 pages of verse. Considered "The Writer of the Empire", a title that always flattered him, and that accompanied him unconditionally in his last days of life, perhaps the English would never have known so much about colonial life if this writer had not meddled a little more in the life of what is considered "one more colony" of the growing British Empire.

He decided, along with his widow, to be buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, a place reserved for the most illustrious members of the British Empire, who lie next to kings and queens.

In 2012, in recognition of his interest in natural science, a new species of prehistoric crocodile was named Goniopholis kiplingi, after fossils discovered in the UK in 2009. In March 2013, his complete works were published in three volumes, including fifty unpublished poems by the writer.

“A defenseless island”

Kipling Sauvstic Cross.

Many of the older editions of Rudyard Kipling's books are said to have a sauvastika 卍 printed on their covers, a symbol associated with an image of the Hindu elephant-headed god, Ganesha; but the possibility that Kipling was a sympathizer of the Nazi movement that used the swastika 卐 or swastika (for the Greek letter gamma Γ) whose arms are bent clockwise has been dismissed. Kipling used sauvastika for the ancient Indian meaning of good luck and well-being. With the arms counterclockwise, the cross is called a sauvastika and not a swastika.^{[citation needed]}

Even before the Nazis came to power, Kipling ordered the engraver to remove it from the printing block to avoid being thought to support them. Less than a year before his death, Kipling gave a speech (entitled "A Defenseless Island") to the Royal Society of St George, on May 6, 1935, warning of the danger of Nazi Germany to Britain.

Places named in his honor

There are three cities in the United States, and one in Canada, named after Rudyard Kipling: when a railroad was being built along the north shore of Lake Michigan, the managing director (an admirer of Kipling) asked if two cities could be named after him; hence the town names Rudyard and Kipling. There is also a town called Rudyard, in Montana. During the first decade of the XX century, when Kipling was at the height of his popularity, a town in Saskatchewan received the name of the Poet of the Empire. But he only kept this name temporarily, later being renamed "Kipling" because another district already had Rudyard's name. The welcome sign located at the entrance to the city represents a scroll and a feather on which "Kipling" is written, to symbolize his writing career. In the city there is a residential complex for retirees that bears the name of Rudyard Manor.

Works

Cover Three soldiers.

The most important works of Rudyard Kipling are:

Screen Adaptations

• 1915: A Fool There Was, mute feature based on Broadway's homonymous piece written by Porter Emerson Browne (1879-1934) which was based in turn on Kipling's poem The vampire (The Vampire). The film was directed by Frank Powell and featured, among other actors, Theda Bara and Edward Jose (Theda Bara)ca. 1880-1930), both unaccredited.
• 1936: The brave marine (Отважный моряк), short film of cartoon produced by Soyuzmultfilm and directed by Víktor Smírnov (Виктор Смирнов) that is adaptation of the tale «How the Whale Got His Throat was made» (“How The Whale Got His Throat”) from the collection Just So Stories (1920).
• 1936: The little elephant (Слонёнок), short film of cartoon produced by Soyuzmultfilm and directed by A. Schekalin (A. 简体екалин) that is adaptation of the story "The Elephant's Child", also from the collection Just So Stories.
• 1937: Intrepid captains (Captains CorageousVictor Fleming. With the performance of the infantile star Freddie Bartholomew and Spencer Tracy, he made an Oscar for the latter, for his characterization of Manuel, a Portuguese fisherman.
• 1939: Gunga Din, film based on the poem of the same name.
• 1942: Jungle Book, directed by Zoltan Korda (1895-1961) and produced by Alexander Korda, with a duration of 108 minutes and based on the first Book of the jungle.
• The novel Kim has been taken to the screen twice. The first adaptation was Kim from India (1950), film directed by Victor Saville (1895-1979), with Errol Flynn among the actors; and the following adaptation was that of John Howard Davies: Kim1984 telefilm with Peter O'Toole.
• 1967: The Book of the Jungle, cartoon film produced by Walt Disney and directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, with a duration of 78 minutes.
• 1967: The little elephant: short film of cartoons produced by Soyuzmultfilm and directed by Yefim Gamburg (Éфим Гамбург, 1925-2000).
• 1975: The man who could reign (The Man Who Would Be King), film based on the homonymous story of Kipling, directed by John Huston and with a duration of 129 minutes. He had four candidatures for the Oscar Awards.
• 1993: They, based on short story Traffics and Discoveries and with Patrick Bergin (n. 1951) and Vanessa Redgrave as leading actors.
• 1994: Disney's Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, based on Book of the jungle, was directed by Stephen Sommers and produced by Edward S. Feldman and Raju Patel. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. On the other hand, the film The Jungle Book 2 It's the sequel to the movie. The Jungle Book 1967, but it is not based on the work of Kipling.
• 2006: My Boy Jack, dramatic telefilm based on the homonymous theatre piece written by English actor David Haig (n. 1955), led by Brian Kirk and Daniel Radcliffe as the main actor. He deals with Kipling and the penalty for the loss of his son John (1897-1915), fallen in the battle of Loos, World War I. The title of Haig's work is that of a 1915 Kipling poem.
• 2016: The Jungle Book, led by Jon Favreau, remake live-action from the original 1967 film.

Predecessor: Giosuè Carducci

Nobel Prize in Literature 1907

Successor: Rudolf Christoph Eucken