As Britain's first Nobel Prize winner for literature, Joseph Rudyard Kipling's life was closely connected with the British Empire, and most of his works permeated a strong sense of empire. Therefore, Kipling won the "" "Imperial Poet" and "Imperial Drummer". However, times have changed, his explicit imperial stance has left him out in the cold, and his name has gradually become unfamiliar. Since the 1990s, with the rise of post-colonial cultural criticism, after nearly a hundred years of silence, the academic community has once again become interested in Kipling, and Kipling's name appears frequently in various academic journals. In 2007, in order to commemorate the centenary of his Nobel Prize, the United Kingdom specially filmed the film "My Son Jack" based on his autobiography.
Retracing Kipling's life experience and creative career will undoubtedly help us understand his imperial complex entangled in love and pain.
Kipling was born in Bombay, India in 1865. At the age of 6, his parents fostered him with relatives in England. At the age of 12, he entered the United Service Academy, a boarding school for the children of British overseas, dedicated to colonial education. Here Kipling received rigorous discipline training and instilled imperial consciousness. After graduating at the age of 17, Kipling returned to India and worked as a reporter and assistant editor in Lahore's "Military News" and "Herald" in Allahabad. During this period, he traveled all over India, inspected the customs and customs, and gained a more direct and profound observation and understanding of the life of the British in India. Since then, he has embarked on the road of writing.
In 1889, the little-known Kipling left India and returned to England to focus on writing, ready to go big. Set in India, he writes diligently and publishes short stories almost every day. His works are full of exotic subject matter, provide readers with new tastes, and have a strong appeal to British natives. His writing style is concise and concise, fresh and natural, which is in sharp contrast with the sluggish and decadent style of writing at the end of the century, so he is very popular with readers, and Kipling soon became a "rookie in the literary world". In 1892, Kipling married an American girl, Caroline, and settled in Vermont, New England. Once enjoying the country life and the joys of being a father, his creative pace slowed down. Children's literature "The Book of Manglin" (1894) and its sequel (1895) were among the few achievements at this time. Even if Kipling did not create any other works, these two are enough to make him famous. The Book of the Wild Forest tells the happy life of Mowgli, an Indian boy who grew up in the forest, living in harmony with animals. The story narrates animal stories in an anthropomorphic way, which is kind, lovely, lively and philosophical, showing the author's rich imagination and extraordinary depiction ability. These stories have made Kipling a favorite author for children in many countries. At the beginning of this century, my country introduced the cartoon "Mowgli's Tale" adapted from this book, which was all the rage.
In 1896, Kipling and his family returned to England from the United States to settle. In 1897, the United Kingdom held the 60th anniversary celebration of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, and the whole country celebrated. Kipling wrote the famous "Long Exit Poem" in response to the occasion, showing his loyalty and love to the monarchy and the empire; at the same time, he seemed to have realized that, Like the Roman Empire, the glory of the British Empire will come to an end. He expressed some concern about the fate of the empire after reaching its peak of strength: "Cities, thrones and regimes / In the eyes of time, / Like blooming flowers, / Soon they will wither."
In 1898, gold mines were discovered in the settlement area of South African Boers (descendants of the original Dutch colonists), and Britain took the opportunity to provoke the Boer War. Kipling used his reputation to actively raise funds, write poems to boost morale, and traveled to the front lines in South Africa. There, he had a close relationship with the colony's governor, Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes was a strong advocate of colonial policy and an outstanding empire-builder in the eyes of the people at the time. Later, the well-known Rhodes Scholarship was established in his honor. Kipling's association with Rhodes further reinforced his imperialist belief that "the white man is on a mission to educate the black man." Kipling was convinced that whites, as a "superior race", had an inescapable responsibility, and the purpose of colonial policy was to "bring the gospel of light and progress to people in dark and backward areas."
Historians believe that the Boer War was an important turning point in the fate of the British Empire. The British expended staggering military and financial resources far out of proportion to the Boers, and it took more than two years to finally conquer the Boers. During the war, for the first time, the United Kingdom sent a war correspondent to the battlefield to report in person. The heavy casualties and the brutality of the war were first presented in the domestic media. The trend of domestic public opinion gradually turned, and the voice of reflection on the justice of the war appeared. Behind the ostentation and smugness that has been compared between the British Empire and the Roman Empire, this connection is also a disturbing reminder of the ultimate fate of the Roman Empire. No empire in history has finally escaped the fate of decline. Will Britain be an exception?
In 1899, the war between the United States and Spain for colonies was coming to an end, the United States occupied the Philippines, and Kipling wrote the famous "White Man's Burden". Poem: He urged the United States, like Britain and other European powers, to shoulder "the white man's burden" to govern "a newly plundered, half-devil, half-children." U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was vigorously promoting the policy of "speak softly, stick in hand", and this poem greatly appreciated. His affirmation of the poem shows that literature and politics, poets and rulers, mainstream ideology and imperial policy have been symbolically merged, making Kipling a well-deserved interpreter and spokesman for imperialist policy.
The first 10 years of the 20th century were Kipling's most glorious years, he wrote a large number of influential works, including the novel "Kim", and in 1907, with "observing, imaginative, powerful, narrative. Excellence" won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kipling was not only the first British writer to receive this honor, but also the youngest Nobel Prize winner in history. At this point, Kipling's literary reputation reached its peak, and was widely regarded by the public as a "national poet" and an "imperial prophet".
Since then, Kipling's poor health, severe vision loss, and excessive public duties have slowed his creative pace. He has made numerous public speeches dedicated to reviving the patriotic fervor of his fellow citizens, warning of the challenges posed to Britain by the rise of Germany. After the outbreak of the "World War I", he did propaganda work for the War Committee, and worked tirelessly. He fanatically carried out war propaganda, gave speeches, and urged young people to join the war. His son, Jack, was fascinated by Kipling's idea of "a good man should serve the motherland" since he was a child, and actively signed up to join the army. Both applications were rejected due to Jack's high degree of myopia. Kipling used his fame and prestige to do everything possible to send his son into the army. The day after Jack's 18th birthday, he disappeared from the battlefield. Kipling tried every means to inquire about his son's whereabouts, and finally got the news of Jack's death. Kipling had high hopes for his only son since he was a child. When his son was 12 years old, Kipling wrote the inspirational poem "If" for him, which was later widely read. Between the lines of the poem, there is deep love and earnest expectation for his son.
As time passed, Kipling, instead of being relieved of his son's death, became more and more unforgettable. Two years after his son was declared missing, he penned an epitaph: "If someone asks why we lost our lives in the war. / Because our elders deceived us."
In the following years, Kipling still insisted on writing, but there were a few traces of sadness and resentment in his works, casting a shadow of despair and melancholy, most of which radiated from the depths A kind of melancholy and heavy, lost the lightness and humor of the past. In addition, after the war, the British declined gradually, and the colonial independence movement was surging, causing people to reflect and criticize the colonial behavior. The lingering sense of empire in Kipling's works, and his status as the spokesperson of the empire, have caused him to encounter unprecedented criticism, his works are no longer popular, and his name is gradually forgotten.
Throughout Kipling's life, we can't get around his lingering love for empire and his reluctant imperial dream. However, his imperial complex is not simple love, but the entanglement of love and pain: love for the British Empire, pain for the fate of the empire that has no choice but to fall.
Hidden beneath his praise for the idealization of the empire was his deep concern for the fate of the empire, and his grief over the decline of the empire's power. Kipling exposed bureaucracy, decadence and corruption in the British colonial government in many of his works. Many stories in "Ordinary Stories in the Mountains" describe the life scenes of the colonists: the sun-singing warbler sings and dances, feasting and feasting; everyone is jealous and intriguing: everywhere is full of glitz and shallowness. In reflecting the stories of British soldiers, on the one hand, he idealized the depiction of these soldiers, and on the other hand, he also exposed their bloodshed and brutality. For example, in "On the City Wall", the British army defending the city saw the rioting of the Indians, and they were delighted and looked forward to a massacre: the artillerymen expected to bombard the city and raze it to the ground; the officers hoped to take advantage of the chaos to kill shed its own Indian creditors. A whole bunch of beasts and scoundrels! Relying on such officials and soldiers, what is the sacred responsibility of white people? What is it about bringing the light of civilization to the colonists? Kipling's deep concern for the colonial rule of the British Empire is a disgrace to the mission of individual colonists The grief came to the fore!
Kipling's feelings for India are also intertwined with love and pain: on the one hand, he has a sense of closeness and deep nostalgia for India; on the other hand, he criticizes India's "backwardness, Dirty and barbaric". It can be said that throughout his life, he missed India, which does not contradict his love for Britain. Before he was 6 years old, he lived with Indian servants, and he first learned Hindi; after graduating from middle school, he worked in India for 7 years, and became famous for his first test of writing and ink. A happy childhood and a fulfilling journalistic career gave him a special affection for India. He has expressed his love for India many times. The opening of his autobiography "Talking About Myself" means: "Give me the first six years of childhood in my life, and everything else can be taken away"; on different occasions, he referred to India as the It is "home". He was in awe of Indian culture, fascinated by its uniqueness, strangeness and mystery. No wonder some critics believe that ideologically, politically and morally, Kipling was an agitator of Western colonialism, but culturally, he was an Indian. He is not only passionate about the British mission to rule India, and regards it as "the biggest jewel in the Queen's crown", but also deeply intoxicated by the Indian culture, caring about every plant and tree there.
What Kipling dreamed of all his life was the power and prosperity of the British Empire, and he spent his whole life shaping the image of the empire in his mind. The anxiety about the fate of the British Empire and the sorrow over the actions of individual colonizers expressed in his later works still reflect his love for the empire. He has worked hard for his beliefs all his life, and instead of accusing him of being a "colonialist", it is better to say that he
is an "idealist". In that particular era, how many patriots were able to clear the relationship with the expansion of the empire and escape the entanglement with the fate of the empire? Perhaps, the love and pain that accompanied him throughout his life were just the "collective unconsciousness" of millions of people in the same era Focus on reflecting it!
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