The Life and Works of Rudyard Kipling: A Journey Through Successes and Controversies

In questo appunto di letteratura inglese si descrive nel dettaglio la biografia di Rudyard Kipling con descrizione anche delle sue opere letterarie.

What was Kipling’s childhood like between India and England?

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, in India, in 1865 but his parents were English. As a matter of fact his father, John Lockwood Kipling, was a sculptor and a potter who wanted to open an Art school with his wife Alice MacDonald in this subcontinent.
Here Rudyard grew happily and peacefully while it was served by indigenous servants.
In 1871 his sister Trix and him moved to the Holloway’s house in Southsea so that they could attend elementary school in England.
In his autobiography “Something of myself” and in some short stories like for example “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” he remember this time as the worst and traumatic experience of his life since he missed his parents and the Holloway were so strict with him and his sister. By the way, the distance from his parents was shorten every Christmas because Kipling’s aunt Georgina and his husband, an artist himself too, Edward Burne-Jones, let the children meet their parents at Fulham.
per ulteriori approfondimenti sull'infanzia dello scrittore vedi anche qui

Residence in England, his first love and employments

In 1877 Rudyard and Trix started to live again with their parents in England and the following year Rudyard attended the United Service College which was created to give son’s officials a great education without spending too much money.
In this context he met and fell in love with Florence Garrard.
After he completed the College he was believed by their parents not enough intellectually prepared to go to study to Oxford so his father took Rudyard with him to Lahore where he started to work as head director of a local newspaper.
per ulteriori approfondimenti su questa fase della vita vedi anche qui

His creativity starts coming out

In 1886 he became a Masonic lodge Hope and Perseverance’s adept.
In 1889 he undertook a trip among Burma, China, Japan, Chorea, the USA, right trough the Atlantic Ocean in order to arrive to London. Here he collected the notes written during his experience and then wrote and published “From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches” and “Letters of Travel”. In 1890 he also published his first novel called “The Light that Failed” with which he started to be famous and to make acquaintances with H. Rider Haggard and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
In 1892 he married Caroline "Carrie" Starr Balestier but during their honeymoon Kipling’s bank declared bankruptcy and they had to move to Vermont where Caroline’s family lived.
In this period Kipling started to write children stories like the well known “The jungle book” and “The second jungle book”.
In 1897 he published “Captains Courageous” and the next year he travelled through Africa where he met Cecil Rhodes. In this period he tested himself in the writing of some poems like “The White mans Burden”.
per ulteriori approfondimenti su questa fase della vita dello scrittore vedi anche qui

The white man's Burden by R.Kipling (1899)

This poem by Rudyard Kipling is a celebration of colonialism as a duty and a burden for the White Man. It was written in 1899 on occasion of the US's occupation of the Philippines but it was intended for all White colonizers.
The poet exhorts the Europeans to go and annex new territories and help the natives become civilized.
The idea behind the poem is that the European model of civilization is superior to the indigenous one and that Western civilization and technology are a gift to the colonized and something the White Man is responsible for.
The White Man has to educate, civilize and uplift the people of the colonies to the level of the people of the motherland.
No reward is to be expected, the English should not call upon their own glory but try to protect and defend their colonies from the rival world Powers or the threats of home rebellion (ll.9-16).
The natives are described as 'sullen, silent, half innocent and half wicked' (see ll.7 and 8). They seem a little dumb and they do not recognize the gift the Europeans are providing. So, they are ungrateful for what is granted to them.
However, the natives are never asked whether they want to be civilized because the White Man thinks they are not even conscious of their rights, they are less than human.
per ulteriori approfondimenti sulla poesia vedi anche qui

His career between ups and downs

In 1907 he won The Nobel Price for Literature with “The jungle book” and his fame reached the peak. Although, when First World War broke out, because his name was linked with the Imperialism, he started to struggle to be appreciated by the readers and intellectuals.
For this reason he worked as war correspondent and joined the Sir Fabian Ware's Imperial War Graves Commission.
He also had to face his son’s loss due to Battle of Loss in 1915.
When the war finished he continued to be a correspondent all over Europe and he also obtained the task to write the script for the film Without Benefit of Clergy which was directed by James Young in 1921.
And then, between 1922 and 1925, he was the dean of the St Andrews University.
He died in 1936 because of a perforated duodenal ulcer at seventy years old.
per ulteriori approfondimenti su "the jungle book" vedi anche qui