A Wonderous Poem

Din Din Din!

The author C.S. Lewis commenting on the writings of Rudyard Kipling once said, “Our author gives us no rest: we are bombarded with felicities till they deafen us. There is no elbow room or leisureness. The fault of which I am here accusing Kipling is one which only a great artist could commit” (Quotable Lewis 363). Reading the poem “Gunga Din” by Rudyard Kipling the word bombarded describes exactly the way I felt. I was bombarded by the words, bombarded by emotions, bombarded by the most poignant of images. This was different from the romantic poetry that had come before. It created an image that was not complete through excessive words but that gave a vivid image through word choice and a focus on “the thing”. This was much more attune to the values of the modernist movement that came soon after. Though Kipling’s poem “Gunga Din” is considered a romantic poem of the Victorian Age it is actually in line with the standards of the Modernist literary movement on a stylistic level.

The modernist movement had three tenants according to Ezra Pound that guided the way their poetry was to function and be written. Those tenants were, “1. Direct treatment of the ‘thing’ whether subjective or objective. 2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome” (Pound). Rudyard Kipling was alive during the founding of this movement and had preceded them in his writing “Gunga Din” by only twenty or thirty years. This poem shows that that in regards to these literary elements Kipling displayed similar values. Talking about Pound’s diction and reasons behind his word choice we are given a history by Donald Lyons saying, “he writes with laconic sobriety and decorum self-contained freeverse lines informed by Greek patterns--is here miraculously supple and delicate. In lines like "When we set out, the willows were drooping with spring,/ We come back in the snow," we see technique at the service of something significant” (Donald 4).

Looking firstly at the second point regarding using no needless words Kipling was an avid believer. He said in advising Augusta Tweddell by letter, “Read the Bible ... and see how much can be said in how few words." "There is any amount of loose slipshod English in the world and its influence has affected my style incurably, but do you avoid it” (Park 3). Kipling does not do himself justice. He would revise and revise until all the words that were in the poem were to the right point. This is evidenced in lines 68-73 from “Gunga Din”,

'E carried me away

To where a dooli lay,

An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.

'E put me safe inside,

An' just before 'e died:

"I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din (Kipling).

In these lines the reader is given words that excite the imagination to create an image of this situation. You are not fed all the smells and sounds and feelings of the moment. In fact the words chosen are extremely impersonal and unfeeling. No, you are simply presented an image of this “water boy” and the image of duty and nobility that he is as he dies.

There is then the other two points by Ezra Pound regarding “direct treatment of the thing” and its musical sound not meter. Clara Park wrote in her essay “How Kipling Taught Me to Write” tells of what she loved about Kipling,

“I was left to the irresponsible pleasures of pure language, its pricks and tremors and rumbles and runs and full stops. And yet it wasn't wholly pure. It wasn't music. It was words, hung together by something more than their several rhythms; mysterious sounds offering even a child glimpses beyond sound, into meaning. None of Kipling's contemporaries, seemingly, could be more remote from him than James Joyce. And yet they are uncommonly alike--for it is not at all common, even for writers with weak eyesight, to experience the world through sound” (Park 5)

She was taken by the words that came together not just for the sound of the thing but for something that goes beyond sounds and rhythm, meaning. As a reader she was looking into “the thing” rather than just a circumstance or story. This is what the Modernists were trying to ultimately accomplish themselves. They were trying to more beyond the look, meter, and rhythm of the thing and get to the image and the meaning. I do not think it is coincidental that Park mentions James Joyce in as being related to this tradition. Joyce was a famous author within the Modernist movement whose works such as “Ulysses” and “The Dubliners” both show this story form reliance on meaning and image over story and lyrical beauty.

Rudyard Kipling exemplified Modernist literary elements in his writings and acted as a bridge between the romantic and modern schools. He was found to have abided by the modernist call for precise word choice. He was also one that dealt with the issue and the “thing” at hand while emphasizing the musical nature and of a word instead of its metronomic qualities. Rudyard Kipling was a man filling in a very difficult gap of poetic history and on that did so with a public appeal that is a testament to his professionalism and richness of imagery. Readers have since returned to battle again and again seeking to lose themselves in the roar of Gunga din, din, din!

Works Cited

Kipling, Rudyard. "Gunga Din" 100 Best Loved Poems. Ed. Philip Smith. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. 76-78. Print.

Lyons, Donald. “A Major Minor: Ezra Pound’s Poetry”. New Criterion. Volume 17, Issue 10. 1999. Web.

Martindale, Wayne, and Jerry Root, eds. The Quotable Lewis. Carol Stream, Il: Tyndale House Publishers, 1990. Print.

Park, Clara. “How Kipling Taught Me to Write”. The American Scholar. Volume 4 Issue 72. Autumn 2003. Pg. 5 Web.

Pound, Ezra. “A Retrospect.” Heath Anthology of American Literature: Volume D. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2010. 1402-1403. Print.