Nobel Prize for Literature
Rudyard Kipling (born in Bombay, British India, December 30, 1865 and died in London, January 18, 1936) was a British writer.
His books for young people have enjoyed unfailing success since their publication, notably The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), Stories like that (1902), Puck, lutin from the hill (1906). He is also the author of the novel Kim (1901), poems (Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), and You will be a man, my son (1910) are among the most famous) and short stories, including L 'Man who wanted to be King (1888) and the collection Simple Tales from the Hills (1888). He has been considered an "innovator in the art of the short story", a precursor of science fiction and one of the greatest authors of children's literature. His work demonstrates a talent for storytelling that has expressed itself in various forms.
From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, Kipling remained one of the most popular authors in the English language. Writer Henry James wrote of him:“Kipling touches me personally, as the most complete man of genius I have ever known. In 1907, he was the first English-language author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the youngest to have received it (at 42). Subsequently, he refused to be knighted.
However, Kipling has often been considered a "prophet of British imperialism", in the words of George Orwell. Controversy over prejudice and militarism allegedly present in his work spanned the entire 20th century. According to literary critic Douglas Kerr:
“He remains an author who inspires passionate reactions of rejection, and his place in literary and cultural history is far from firmly established. However, at a time when European empires are in retreat, he is recognized as an incomparable, if not controversial, interpreter of the way the empire was lived. This, added to his extraordinary narrative genius, gives him a force that we can only recognize. »
Childhood
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was the son of Alice Kipling, née MacDonald (en) and John Lockwood Kipling (en), sculptor and professor at the Jejeebhoy School of Art and Industry in Bombay; his parents had just arrived in India, and met in England, in Staffordshire, near Lake Rudyard (in) - which they gave the name to their son. According to Bernice M. Murphy5, “Kipling's parents considered themselves 'Anglo-Indians' and their son must have done the same, although he had spent most of his life outside India. This explains why complex issues of identity and national allegiance mark his works of fiction. »
James Tissot, The Calcutta (Portsmouth), 1876.
Those days of "darkness and harsh light" spent in Bombay and described wistfully in Baa Baa Black Sleep (1888) and Something of Myself (1935) ended when Kipling was six years old and was sent to England as tradition dictated at home. the British employed in the colonies. Indeed, the latter generally feared that prolonged contact with Indian servants would permanently modify the personality of their offspring, would “indigenize” them (“go native”). Rudyard and his three-year-old sister Alice (known as Trix) took the boat to England, in this case to go to Southsea, Portsmouth, in a host family who boarded British children whose parents resided in India. Both children grew up under the guardianship of Captain Holloway and his wife at Lorne Lodge for the next six years. In his autobiography, published more than sixty years later, Kipling evokes this period with horror, wondering not without irony whether the mixture of cruelty and abandonment he suffered with Mrs. Holloway had not precipitated the outbreak of his literary talents.
“If you interrogate a child of seven or eight about his daily activities (especially when he falls asleep), he will contradict himself quite satisfactorily. If every contradiction is pinned down as a lie and reported at breakfast, life is not easy. I had to endure quite a lot of bullying, but this was deliberate torture, applied religiously and scientifically. On the other hand, it forced me to be very careful of the lies that I soon had to concoct and I suppose that this is a good basis for a literary career. »
Trix was treated better than Rudyard, for Mrs. Holloway saw in her a good match for her son. However, the two children had relatives in England with whom they could stay. At Christmas, they spent a month with their aunt Georgiana (Georgy) and her husband, the painter Edward Burne-Jones, at their home in Fulham, London, "a paradise from which I truly owe having been saved" according to Kipling. In the spring of 1877, Alice Kipling returned from India and removed the children from Lorne Lodge.
“Time and time again thereafter, my beloved aunt asked me why I never told how I was treated. But children do not speak more than animals because they accept what happens to them as decided from all eternity. Moreover, abused children know exactly what awaits them if they reveal the secrets of a prison before they are actually released. »
In January 1878, Kipling entered United Services College, Westward Ho! in Devon, a school founded a few years earlier to prepare boys for a military career. His early days at school proved difficult, but he eventually made lasting friendships, and those years provided him with material for the collection of schoolboy stories, Stalky &Co., published years later. During this period, Kipling fell in love with Florence Garrard, a fellow student at Trix in Southend where his sister had returned. Florence will serve as a model for Maisie, the heroine of Kipling's first novel, The Fading Light (1891).
Towards the end of his time at school, it was decided that he did not have the necessary qualifications to obtain a scholarship which would have enabled him to go to Oxford University. However, his parents did not have the means to finance his higher education11. Kipling senior therefore procured a job for his son in Lahore12, where he was director of the Mayo College of Art and curator of the Lahore museum. Kipling was to work as an assistant at a small local newspaper, the Civil &Military Gazette. He sailed for India on September 2 and landed in Bombay on October 20, 1882.
Youth trips
Lahore's Civil and Military Gazette, which Kipling would later call "my first mistress, my first love"8 appeared six days a week from January to December, with a one-day break at Christmas and a another at Easter. Kipling was hard pressed by the editor, Stephen Wheeler, but nothing could quench his thirst for writing. In 1886 he published his first collection of poetry, Departmental Ditties. That same year saw the arrival of a new editor, Kay Robinson, who gave him greater artistic freedom and offered Kipling to compose short stories for the newspaper.
Meanwhile, in the summer of 1883, Kipling had traveled for the first time to Shimla, a famous hill station which had served as the official summer capital of the British Raj since 1864:six months a year, the viceroy and the government settled there, making the city "both a center of power and pleasure". Kipling's father received the order for a fresco there which was to adorn the Church of Christ. Rudyard and his family vacationed there every year from 1885 to 1888, and the town featured regularly in his Gazette stories. The worldly sociability of the colonial high station is described with an often critical and ironic look, particularly with regard to the perpetual love game that was deployed there, according to him, between idle Britons.
“Holidays in Shimla, or whatever resort my parents went to, were a month of pure bliss, where every golden hour counted. The journey began in discomfort on the road or rail. It ended in the cool of the evening, with a log fire in your bedroom, and the next morning (with the prospect of thirty mornings still to come!) a morning cup of tea, brought by your mother, and those long conversations where you were all together again. And then you had time to work on all the crazy or serious ideas that crossed your mind, and God knows if there were any. »
A Freemason, Kipling was a member of Hope and Perseverance Lodge No. 782 in India, received on April 5, 1886. He received a dispensation from the Grand Master of the District of Punjab allowing him to be initiated before the age of 21 and was then exalted Master Mason in the Lodge of Marque Fidélité, then elevated to the rank of Mariner of the Royal Arch in the Lodge of Ark Mariner of Mount Ararat no 98.
Back in Lahore, Kipling published about forty short stories in the Gazette between November 1886 and June 1887. Most of these stories were collected in Simple Tales from the Hills, his first collection of prose published in Calcutta in January 1888, when he had just turned twenty-two. But the stay in Lahore was coming to an end. In November 1887, he was transferred to Allahabad, to the offices of The Pioneer, the Gazette's big brother. Kipling continued to write at the same frantic pace, publishing six collections of short stories within a year:Soldiers Three, The Story of the Gadsbys, In Black and White, Under the Deodars (Under the cedars of the Himalayas), The Phantom Rickshaw (The Phantom Rickshaw), and Wee Willie Winkie (Little Willie Winky), a total of 41 short stories, some of which were almost already short novels. Moreover, as a correspondent in the western area of Rajasthan, he wrote many posts which were later collected under the title Letters of Marque and published in From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel (D'une mer à the other, travel letters).
Early in 1889, The Pioneer withdrew Kipling's contributions following a dispute. The writer, meanwhile, began to think about the future. He gave up the rights to his six volumes of short stories for £200 and a paltry royalty, and the rights to Plain Tales from the Hills for £50. Finally, he received six months' salary as notice of dismissal. He decided to use this money to finance his return to London, the literary capital of the British Empire.
On March 8, 1889, Kipling left India, heading first for San Francisco, stopping at Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. Then he crossed the United States writing articles for The Pioneer which were also to appear in the collection From Sea to Sea. From San Francisco Kipling traveled north to Portland, Oregon; then Seattle, Washington. He made a foray into Canada, visiting Victoria, Vancouver and British Columbia. He then returned to the United States to explore Yellowstone National Park, before returning to Salt Lake City. Then it headed east, crossing the states of Omaha, Nebraska and stopping in Chicago, Illinois. From there he traveled to Beaver, Pennsylvania, on the banks of the Ohio to stay with the Hills. Professor Hill then accompanied him to Chautauqua, then to Niagara Falls, Toronto, Washington D.C., New York and Boston. He met Mark Twain in Elmira (State of New York), in front of which he felt very intimidated. Then Kipling crossed the Atlantic to land in Liverpool in October 1889. A few months later, he made his remarkable debut in the London literary world.
Literary beginnings
Rudyard managed to get several of his short stories published in journals and found a room in Villiers Street, near the Strand, where he lodged from 1889 to 1891. When he published his first novel, The Light That Extinguished, he began to suffer from depression. He then met Wolcott Balestier, an American writer, who also worked as a literary agent. Together they wrote a novel, The Naulahka. In 1891, on the advice of the medical profession, Kipling embarked on a new journey which took him from South Africa to Australia, then to New Zealand and India. But he gave up his plan to spend Christmas with his family when he heard the news of the death of Wolcott Balestier, who had just succumbed suddenly to typhoid fever. He decided to return to London immediately and sent a telegram to Wolcott's sister, Carrie Balestier, asking for her hand. The young girl, whom he had met the previous year and whom he was very close to, accepted. Meanwhile, towards the end of 1891, appeared in London an anthology of short stories on the British presence in India, Life's handicap.
Wedding and honeymoon
On January 18, 1892, the wedding of Carrie Balestier (29) and Rudyard Kipling (26) took place “at the height of the flu epidemic” which raged in London, “to the point that the undertakers lacked black horses and had to content themselves with brown horses. The ceremony took place in All Souls (All Saints) Church, Langham Place, and it was Henry James who led the bride down the aisle.
The newlyweds decided to take a honeymoon that would take them first to the United States, where they would take the opportunity to meet Carrie's family in the state of Vermont, then to Japan. Unfortunately, upon their arrival in Yokohama, the young people were badly surprised to learn that their bank, the New Oriental Banking Corporation, was in default.
American stay
Making up for bad luck, the young couple returned to the United States and rented a small house near Brattleboro, Vermont for ten dollars a month. Carrie was pregnant with their first child.
“It was furnished with the simplicity of an era that did not know hire-purchase. We acquired a huge second or third hand boiler which went into the cellar. To accommodate eight-inch-diameter tin pipes we generously had our thin floor pierced (it's a miracle we weren't burned in our beds at least once a week that winter) and lived extremely, egocentrically happy. »
It was in this house, nicknamed Bliss cottage (the villa of perfect happiness) that their first child, a daughter, Josephine, was born “on the night of December 29, 1892 under three feet of snow. Her mother's birthday falling on the 31st and mine on the 30th of the same month, we congratulated her on this spirit of timing. It was in this cottage that Kipling first had the idea for what would become The Jungle Book:
“My office was seven feet by eight and from December to April the snow piled up to the windowsill. I happened to have written a story about forestry work in India where I was talking about a child raised by wolves. In the silence and expectation of that winter of 1892 I felt memories of Masonic lions surge from the magazines for young people I read as a child, and here is a sentence from Rider Haggard's novel Nadia, the Lily (Nadia le lys) combines with the echo of this narrative. Once the idea is clarified in my head, the pen does the rest, and I just have to watch it begin to write stories about Mowgli and the animals that would make up the Jungle Book. »
After Josephine was born, the cottage became too small, and the Kiplings bought ten hectares of land from Carrie's brother, Beatty Balestier. It was there, on the side of a rocky hill overlooking the Connecticut River, that they built a house that Kipling named "Naulakha" in honor of Wolcott. Naulakha, which literally means "nine lakh" (or nine hundred thousand rupees) in Hindi, was the name given to the necklaces of queens in North Indian folk tales, a "priceless jewel", according to the translation that gave Kipling some.
This retreat in the heart of Vermont, along with a “healthy and clean” life, sparked Kipling’s imagination. In the space of four years he produced, in addition to The Jungle Book, a collection of short stories (The Day's Work), a novel (Captains Courageous) and numerous poems, including the volume of the Seven Seas (The Seven Seas). The collection of poems entitled Barrack-Room Ballads, which contains two famous pieces, Mandalay and Gunga Din, appeared in March 1892. He took immense pleasure in writing the two volumes of The Jungle Book, a masterpiece of poetic imagination , and to respond to the abundant mail from its young readers.
The writer's life was occasionally interrupted by visits, including that of his father, John Lockwood Kipling, who came to visit after his retirement in 1893, and that of the British writer Arthur Conan Doyle who landed with his golf clubs for a forty-eight hour stay during which he gave Kipling an intensive golf lesson Kipling seems to have taken a liking to golf, which he occasionally practiced in the company of the local pastor, going as far as to use red balls when the ground was covered in snow. Unfortunately playing in the snow was not easy:“the drives knew no limits; the ball could slide two or three kilometers down the slope and end up in Connecticut”. All testimonials point to his love of nature, especially the colors of fall in Vermont.
In February 1896, the Kiplings had a second daughter, Elsie. According to several biographers, their relationship at that time no longer had the joyful and spontaneous character of the beginnings. The two spouses remained faithful to each other, but their marriage was in a rut. In a letter to a friend who had just become engaged, Kipling offered this pessimistic view:marriage taught "the hardest virtues, humility, self-control, and prudence."
Two incidents would chase Rudyard Kipling's family from Vermont. The first was related to the international political situation:in the early 1890s, Great Britain and Venezuela were in bitter dispute over the course of Guyana's border. The United States had repeatedly offered to arbitrate, but in 1895 the American Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Richard Olney raised his voice by claiming the right for his country to arbitrate a dispute concerning the American continent (the argument of 'Olney was based on the Monroe Doctrine). This declaration irritated the British and within weeks the incident took on the proportions of a real crisis, with each side threatening to come to arms. The episode would paradoxically strengthen cooperation between the two countries but, at the height of the conflict, Kipling felt distraught at the rise of anti-British sentiment in the United States, especially in the press. He wrote that it was like “being threatened with a carafe in the face in the middle of a convivial meal”.
In January 1896, he made the decision, according to his official biographer, to put an end to this "life in the good air" and to leave the United States to seek his fortune elsewhere.
Back to Devon
Returning to England in September 1896, the Kiplings settled in Torquay on the Devon coast, in a house on the side of a hill which looked out to sea. Kipling did not like this new residence whose orientation, he claimed, made its occupants sad and depressed, but during his stay he was very active socially and literaryly.
Kipling was now famous, and his writings showed a growing interest in politics. He had begun writing two poems that were to spark considerable controversy when published, Recessional (1897) and The White Man's Burden (1899). The latter was conceived as a series of advice to the United States which had just taken control of the Philippines, but it is commonly seen in a broader perspective of reflection on Western imperialism. Some saw it as a simple hymn to the glory of British imperialism, others read it as a plea for an enlightened imperial policy, driven by a sense of duty, in keeping with the Victorian ethos. Still others read them in the second degree, believing they saw in these poems an ironic indictment of the way in which imperial politics was managed. In any case, it cannot be perceived as the anthem of a triumphant imperialism, insofar as it expresses a certain concern about its future and the judgment which will subsequently be passed to it.
Kipling's output was varied and prolific during this time in Torquay. He thus wrote, in addition to poems, Stalky &Co., a collection of stories based on his years of boarding school at the United Services College in Westward Ho!. Its young heroes display a disenchanted and cynical view of patriotism and authority. Kipling's family members later reported that he liked to read aloud to them the adventures of Stalky and company, and that he often had the giggles when he read the more comical passages.
At the beginning of 1898, Kipling and his family went to South Africa for the winter holidays, a stay which was to become a tradition until 1908. of Cape Town's most influential politicians including Cecil Rhodes, Sir Alfred Milner and Leander Starr Jameson. For his part, Kipling cultivated their friendship and became a fervent admirer of the men and their politics. The years 1898–1910 were crucial for South Africa, with the Second Boer War (1899–1902), the ensuing peace treaty and the birth of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Back in England, Kipling wrote poems in support of the English cause in the Boer War and during the stay in South Africa in 1900, contributed to the creation of a newspaper, The Friend (L'Ami), intended for the British troops of Bloemfontein, the new capital of the Orange Free State. His contribution to the newspaper did not last more than two weeks, but it was the first time that he took up the journalist's pen again since he had left - more than ten years earlier - the team of The Pioneer of Allâhâbâd .
It was in Torquay that Kipling began collecting ideas for another classic children's book, Just So Stories for Little Children. The book appeared in 1902, another of his greatest bestsellers, Kim, having appeared the previous year. On the sidelines of these romantic works, Kipling participated in the debate on the response that England should bring to the development of the German war fleet; he wrote a series of articles during 1898, which were later published as A Fleet in Being.
In 1899, during a stay in the United States, Kipling and his eldest daughter Josephine contracted pneumonia to which the little girl succumbed.
The peak of the literary career
Kipling was at the height of his fame in the first decade of the 20th century. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for the power of observation, the originality of invention, the vigor of ideas and the remarkable narrative talent which characterize the works of this world-famous writer. The awarding of the various Nobel Prizes dates back to 1901 and Kipling was the first English-speaking laureate. During the ceremony which took place in Stockholm on December 10, 1907, the permanent secretary of the Swedish academy, C.D. af Wirsén, associated in a vibrant tribute Kipling and three centuries of English literature.
"The Swedish Academy, in awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to Rudyard Kipling this year, wishes to pay tribute to English literature, so rich in various glories, as well as to the greatest genius that this country has ever produced in the field of narration. »
The literary crowning achievement of this success was the publication of two collections, one of poetry and the other of stories, Puck of Pook's Hill in 1906 and Rewards and Fairies in 1910. The latter contains one of his most famous poems, If, translated in French by André Maurois in 1918 with the title Tu seras un homme mon fils. In 1995, a BBC survey ranked this exhortation to self-control and stoicism as Britain's favorite poem.
Kipling sympathized with the positions of Irish Unionists who opposed home rule. He dated Edward Carson, a Dublin-born leader of the Ulster Unionists, who formed a militia of Unionist volunteers, the Ulster Volunteers, to fight what he derisively called Rome Rule (the dictatorship of Rome, referring to the church Catholic) in Ireland. Kipling composed the poem Ulster around 1912, where he sets out this point of view. The poem evokes the day of September 28, 1912 in Northern Ireland, during which 500,000 people signed the Ulster Covenant.
The First World War
Kipling's reputation was so intertwined with the optimistic ideas that characterized late 19th century European civilization that it inevitably suffered from the discredit into which these ideas fell during World War I and the post-war years. One of his first contributions to the war was to participate in the Bureau of War Propaganda, he circulated along the battle lines and was struck by the atrocities against the Belgians. Kipling himself was hit hard by the war when he lost his son, Lieutenant John Kipling, killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915. He wrote these lines
“If anyone wants to know why we died, / Tell them:because our fathers lied. »
It is possible that Kipling felt a sense of guilt for helping to get his son into Irish custody of the British Army, when the young man had been discharged because of his myopia.
This drama is one of the reasons that pushed Kipling to join the commission created by Sir Fabian Ware, the Imperial War Graves Commission (Imperial War Graves Commission) today Commonwealth War Graves Commission, responsible for the English war cemeteries which dot the western front line and found in all the places where Commonwealth soldiers were buried. Kipling notably chose the famous phrase, “Their name shall live forever”, taken from the Bible and inscribed on the memorial stones of the most important burials. It is also to Kipling that we owe the inscription "Known of God" on the tomb of the unknown soldiers. Kipling also wrote the history of the Irish Guard, the regiment in which his son served. Published in 1923, the work is considered one of the most admirable examples of regimental history. Finally he composed a moving short story entitled The Gardener which recounts visits to war cemeteries.
As the car had meanwhile become extremely popular, Kipling became a motoring columnist for the written press, writing enthusiastic accounts of his travels in England and abroad, usually in the company of a chauffeur.
In 1922, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto asked Kipling, whose prose and poetic work contained several references to engineers, to help him devise the details of an oath and a graduation ceremony for engineering schools. Kipling enthusiastically accepted and proposed what would become the Engineer's Rites of Commitment, a ceremony that takes place across Canada today; new graduates are notably awarded an iron ring which symbolizes their duties vis-à-vis civil society.
In the same year, Kipling was elected rector of the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he succeeded J. M. Barrie. This function ended in 1925.
The end
Kipling continued to write until the early 1930s, but at a slower pace and with less success. He died at Middlesex Hospital in London following a haemorrhage caused by a peptic ulcer on January 18, 1936, two days before the death of George V, at the age of 70. Son décès avait d’ailleurs été annoncé de façon prématurée dans les colonnes d’une revue à laquelle il écrivit :« Je viens de lire que j’étais décédé. N’oubliez pas de me rayer de la liste des abonnés. »
Les cendres de Kipling reposent dans le Poets’ Corner de l’abbaye de Westminster, aux côtés d’autres personnalités littéraires britanniques.
Œuvres principales
Le Livre de la jungle (1894)
Le Second Livre de la jungle (1895)
Histoires comme ça (1902)
Tu seras un homme, mon fils (1910)