English literature at the end of the 19

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, on December 30, 1865, in the family of John Lockwood Kipling, a professor of architectural sculpture. At the age of six he was taken to England and educated at an English College in North Devon. In 1883 he returned to India and became sub-editor of the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette. At the age of 21 he published his first volume, a small book of verse "Departmental Ditties". A year later his "Plain Tails from the Hills" introduced him to the public as a story-teller. Before he was twenty-four he had already published six small collections of stories, which showed his remarkable talent.

From 1887 to 1899 Kipling traveled around the world and vis­ited China, Japan and America. During this period he wrote his most popular works: "The Jungle Book" (1894-1895), "Captain Courageous" (1897), "Kim" (1902), "Just so Stories"( 1902), "Puck of Pook's Hill" (1906) and "Rewards and Fairies"( 1910).

The best and most beloved of Kipling's prose works is The Jungle Book". It was intended for children. In it Kipling depicted the life of wild animals, showed their character and behavior. Each chapter of this book began with a poem and ended with a song.

The main character of this work Mowgli is the child of an Indian wood-cutter. He gets lost in the jungle and creeps into a lair of a wolf. The mother wolf lets him feed together with her cubs and calls him Mowgli which means frog. Mowgli has many adventures and finally returns to the society of men.

"The Jungle Book" shows that man is a curious animal. I le is the weakest and at the same time the strongest animal in the world. Kipling wants to show that in an uncivilized society power­ful animals triumph. The weak animals submit to the power of those who are stronger. This is the law of the Jungle, it is the law of the world. Kipling regrets that the same law of the Jungle ex­ists in a civilized society too. He wants to see man as a good and noble being.

Rudyard Kipling was one of the rare writers who were equally strong in prose and in verse. His best-known volumes of verse are "Barrack-room Ballads" (1891), "The Seven Seas" (1896), "The Five Nations' (1903). One of his best poems "If was dedi­cated to his son. The poem reads like a lesson in patience, self-possession and quiet fortitude:

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; Sf you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools. Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew-To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue. Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you. but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it. And - which is more- you'll be a Man, my son!

Kipling returned from America to England and lived in a little Sussex village. During the South African war (1899-1902) Kipling supported the policy of British expansion. His belief in empire and his admiration for force damaged his literary reputation. But still he was highly appreciated as a talented master of fiction and poetry. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He is the first Englishman and the first writer who has received this prize.

The death of his son during World War 1 affected him strongly

and made him almost silent. His works of later period "Mary Post­age" (1915) and "The Gardener" (1926) evidently show his ha­tred of war.

A great artist and realist, Rudyard Kipling, died on January 17, 1936 when he was at work on a collection of autobiographical notes. The notes were published a year after his death under the title "Something of Myself'.