If – A Poem by Rudyard Kipling

Looking at why work persists despite the negatives is a far better practice than looking for negatives to belittle work.

But because (Kipling) identifies himself with the official class, he does possess one thing which ‘enlightened’ people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility. The middle-class Left hate him for this quite as much as for his cruelty and vulgarity. All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our ‘enlightenment’, demands that the robbery shall continue. ...

Although he had no direct connexion with any political party, Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists. He identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition. In a gifted writer this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality.

Great text by Orwell. Especially with the idea that Kipling’s outlook is pre-fascist, and that we should understand, read and criticize him only in that way.

Of course, it would also work for TS Eliot.

    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:

    And you, my father, there on the sad height,
    Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
    Do not go gentle into that good night.
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Was hal!

You think he foresaw and disapproved of universal basic income?

It's quite a decent poem and it lends itself to being read out loud. You can fiddle with the rhythm, volume and all sorts. Basically, it is extremely malleable, which is probably not a Eng Lit term but it works for me.

It also has quite a formidable message.

Not saying that interpretation is correct, just what my take away was.

"If" has loads of points that can be inflexed, emphasised or whatever and you can play with volume and rhythm too. Its extremely malleable.

It's a pretty decent poem.

“Sixty seconds’ worth of distance run” is alluding to the fact that running long distances is tough. And you force yourself to do “just one more minute” to keep on going.

So when you are facing the longest minute of your life you make yourself keep on going; the unforgiving minute is one in which you push yourself, because you know that you have to - but you also know that most likely you have to push yourself for one more minute again and again.

So what Kipling is saying is “if, when - despite things being tough - you can force yourself to keep going, even though you know the next minute might be as tough, or even tougher…”

"sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—": cram every second within that precious minute with as much life as you can.

You only get one shot with your life. Make it count.

Other interpretations in this thread are also valid. Part of why it is one of my favorite poems.

More extended discussion on this passage in the poem:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/298659/in-rudyar...

Rustle it up for all of the original verses and then set it to a faux sea shanty. Tik Tok will wet itself.

Was hal.

Look beyond the cover.

In fact, the connection between the poem "If" and colonialism is even more direct:

> To take one example, Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If…’ (1895), which acts as a guide to manhood for his son, takes inspiration from colonial administrator Leander Starr Jameson, presenting him as the ideal man.

Source: https://projects.history.qmul.ac.uk/thehistorian/2017/05/12/...

Edit: the point is, it is very unsurprising that the author of The White Man's Burden would also have written this particular poem.

But lets not pretend that it is some off-the-rails racist screed. We still do try to export our cultural values to developing nations (e.g. women's education to Afghanistan, or elimination of FGM in Africa) and are sometimes resented for it. We should be pushed to champion those kinds of causes, even if they are thankless.

Now those cultural values certainly aren't spread in a vacuum; they are usually accompanied by other less-benevolent forms of imperialism. Exploitation isn't what Kipling is calling for; he is certainly racist, but he is trying to be benevolent.

As a counterpoint, may I suggest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Man%27s_Burden as a variation on the theme.

Take up the Black Man's burden -- Send us the best ye breed!

Anyone up to a response to "it", ie. son's response to father?

Whether he’s a poet or not is simply a matter of semantics, and also not relevant to the poem “If”. There’s also this quote in the link you provided:

> there appeared in one of our magazines a poem by Rudyard Kipling, the greatest poet of England at this time

For example, Kipling wanted to end sati (widows burning to death) because it was against his “white man’s” values, today we would be just as against it snd do whatever we could to stop it (probably mostly with soft power) in the name of women’s rights.

Either way, the reduction of someone who lived a full and rich life, an enormously popular and Nobel Prize winning writer to “well, actually he was problematic” is not healthy.

How's that working out?