Kipling’s Myths of Love and Death

238 Pages·1989·24.248 MB·English

by  Nora Crook (auth.)

KIPLING'S MYTHS OF LOVE AND DEATH
Also by Nora Crook
SHELLEY'S VENOMED MELODY (with Derek Guiton)
Kipling's Myths of
Love and Death
NORA CROOK
Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20440-3 ISBN 978-1-349-20438-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20438-0
©Nora Crook 1989
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 978-0-333-45482-4
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1989
ISBN 978-0-312-03173-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
To the Five who told me to read Kipling and read Kipling
with me
Keith Kim Lisa Rick Ted
Mox adparebat idolon
'And how think you of the Seven Devils?' the Abbot went on. These melted
into convoluted flower or flame-like bodies, ranging in colour from
phosphorescent green to the black purple of outworn iniquity, whose hearts
could be traced beating through their substance. But, for sign of hope and
the sane workings of life, to be regained, the deep border was of
conventionalised spring flowers and birds, all crowned by a kingfisher in
haste, atilt through a clump of yellow iris.
('The Eye of Allah')
Little words are sometimes of great import in cases of history as well as of
law. Evagius tells us ... that in the Emperor Leo's reign, Constantinople
was set on fire by a malignant and wicked Devil in the shape of a woman
... or by a poor woman at the instigation of the Devil.
(Robert Southey, 'If', Omniana)
Nobody seems to have understood what I mean by most of the stories I
write.
(Rudyard Kipling, as reported by Thelma Cazalet Keir)
Contents
List of Plates viii
Note on Texts ix
List of Abbreviations x
Introduction and Acknowledgements xi
A Brief Kipling Chronology xviii
1 The Significance of the Sahiba' s Forefinger 1
2 Aunt Judy, Ruskin, Carlyle 22
3 Pigs, Serpents, Cannibals, Bats and Bees 41
4 Kipling and Dante (I): 'Mrs Bathurst' 61
5 Kipling and Dante (II): Home and Friends 87
6 Kipling and Chaucer: Mary Postgate 111
7 Kipling and Swinburne: 'A Madonna of the Trenches' 148
Appendix I: Hector Macdonald 172
Appendix II: Kipling and Blake 174
~~ 1~
Index 202
Vll
List of Plates
la. 'The Labyrinth' (from Ruskin, Fors Clavigera), read by Kipling
at school.
lb. Phyllis and Demophoon, E. Burne-Jones (Birmingham City
Museum and Art Gallery).
2a. 'I do 'ope you 'aven't changed your mind' (The Windsor
Magazine, Sept. 1904, 383).
2b. 'The false-toother was tattooed on the arms and chest' (The
Windsor Magazine, Sept. 1904, 386).
3a. Gustave Dore, Pl. 38, The Inferno of Dante Alighieri.
3b. Brigadier-General Sir H. A. Macdonald, in L. S. Amery, The
Times History of the War in South Africa, vol. 111 (1905) p. 370.
4. "'Lo!" he exclaimed, "Lo! Dis'", Gustave Dore, Pl. 73, The
Inferno of Dante Alighieri.
5. Old Man Kangaroo, Yellow Dog Dingo and the Great God
Nqa (Just So Stories, p. 93).
6a. 'Bard! Willingly would I address those two together coming',
Gustave Dore, Pl. 15, The Inferno of Dante Alighieri.
6b. 'Wait till our flying corps gets to work!' ('Mary Postgate').
The 'dire Erynnes', Pl. 27, ibid.
7. 'Behemoth and Leviathan' from Blake's The Book of fob,
reproduced in Gilchrist's Life of Blake, 1, p. 336.
8. Painted Jaguar, the Tortoise, the Hedgehog and the Armadillo
(Just So Stories, p. 117).
viii
Note on Texts
Citations of Kipling's prose works and of the verse included in
them are based on the Macmillan Pocket Edition, which has the
same page numbers as, for example, the red-cloth 'Elephant's
Head' volumes of the Uniform Edition (1899-1938), the Library
Edition (1950) and the Centenary Edition (1965), though there are
variants in spelling and punctuation. I have used the authorised
edition of Abaft the Funnel (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1909) and
Haining (see List of Abbreviations) for collected prose not appearing
in the above editions. For most other verse, I have used The
Definitive Edition of Rudyard Kipling's Verse (Hodder and Stoughton,
1940).
Chaucer references are taken from The Riverside Chaucer,
ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Quotations from John Ruskin are taken from The Works, ed E.T.
Cook and A. Wedderburn, 39 vols (1903-12). Quotations from
Swinburne are taken from Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works, 2
vols (Heinemann, 1924).
ix