Joseph Rudyard Kipling – angielski prozaik i poeta. Zdobył światową popularność wierszami o brytyjskich żołnierzach służących w koloniach oraz przygodowymi opowieściami zaliczanymi do klasyki literatury młodzieżowej. Uchodził za piewcę imperializmu, dostrzegał jednak wartości kulturowe ludów podbitych. Ukazywał kolonializm jako posłannictwo białej rasy, której powinnością jest krzewienie zasad europejskiej cywilizacji. Lata młodości spędził głównie w Indiach, które są egzotycznym tłem jego najbardziej znanych utworów: powieści Kim oraz opowiadań fantastycznych Księga dżungli. W licznych artykułach i wystąpieniach okolicznościowych komentował najważniejsze wydarzenia polityczne na świecie. Jego niezwykle poczytna twórczość budziła skrajnie różne oceny krytyków. W roku 1907 został wyróżniony literacką Nagrodą Nobla „w uznaniu przenikliwości, oryginalnej wyobraźni, śmiałych pomysłów i wybitnego talentu narracyjnego”. Wikipedia
„Zawsze staram się widzieć w każdym jego najlepsze strony – to mi oszczędza wielu kłopotów.”
I always prefer to believe the best of everybody. It saves so much trouble. (ang.)
Źródło: A Second-Rate Woman w: The Works of Rudyard Kipling http://books.google.pl/books?id=xWcJi8irIZ8C, wyd. Forgotten Books, 2008, s. 249.
I never made a mistake in my life at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards. (ang.)
Źródło: The Education of Otis Yeere w: The Works of Rudyard Kipling http://books.google.pl/books?id=xWcJi8irIZ8C, wyd. Forgotten Books, 2008, s. 203.
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool. (ang.)
Źródło: Three and — an Extra
„Miłość jest jak robota piórkiem, musisz iść w tył lub naprzód; nie wolno ci stanąć w miejscu.”
love's like line-work: you must go forward or backward; you can't stand still. (ang.)
Źródło: Światło które zagasło http://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=152755, Wydawnictwo Polskie 1928, s. 127, tłum. Józef Birkenmajer.
I keep six honest serving-men;
(They taught me all I knew)
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Where and Who. (ang.)
Źródło: The Elephant's Child w: Just So Stories, wyd. Garden City Pub. Co., Nowy Jork 1912, s. 83.
„Hulajmy, panowie wojacy,
przeklęci stąd do wieczności,
niech Bóg się zlituje nad nami,
hej, ho, hej!”
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah! (ang.)
Źródło: Gentlemen-Rankers
Księga dżungli
Źródło: Bracia małego Mauli, s. 7.
„Każdy pies śmiały jest na własnym śmietniku.”
Księga dżungli
Źródło: Bracia małego Mauli, s. 11.
I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. (ang.)
Źródło: mowa w Royal College of Surgeons, 14 lutego 1923 r., cyt. za A Book of Words http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/BookOfWords/surgeonssoul.html.
„Wielbłądom osty, wołom zaś paszę dał Sziwa,
A karmiąc swe dziecię, matka czuje się szczęśliwa.”
Księga dżungli
Źródło: Tumai, przyjaciel słoni, s. 208.
„Och, Wschód to Wschód i Zachód to Zachód, i nigdy się nie spotkają.”
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.
Źródło: The Ballad of East and West.
„Kobiece zgadywanie jest o wiele dokładniejsze niż męska pewność.”
A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty. (ang.)
Źródło: Three and — an Extra
„Samica gatunku jest bardziej zawzięta niż samiec.”
The female of the species is more deadly than the male. (ang.)
Źródło: The Female of the Species
„Ale to już [jest] inna historia.”
But that is another story. (ang.)
zapożyczone od Terencjusza.
Źródło: Władysław Kopaliński, Słownik wyrazów obcych i zwrotów obcojęzycznych, Warszawa 1989, s. 81.
Księga dżungli
Źródło: Łowy węża Kaa, s. 84.
„Jeżeli możesz wyjść naprzeciw triumfowi i nieszczęściu — i traktować je na równi!”
If you can meet with triumph and disaster — And treat those two impostors just the same! (ang.)
Dwuwiersz z poematu „If” stanowiący motto i memento umieszczone na bramach prowadzących na kort centralny Wimbledonu i w Forest Hills.
Źródło: Zbigniew Dutkowski, T – jak tenis, red. J. Lis, wyd. I, Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, Warszawa 1979, s. 70.
Often misattributed to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Źródło: As quoted from “Interview with an Immoral,” Arthur Gordon, Reader’s Digest (July 1959). Reprinted in the Kipling Society journal, “Six Hours with Rudyard Kipling”, Vol. XXXIV. No. 162 (June, 1967) pp. 5-8. Interview took place in June, 1935 https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/pdf/KJ162.pdf
Kontekst: Looking back, I think he knew that in my innocence I was eager to love everything and please everybody, and he was trying to warn me not to lose my own identity in the process. Time after time he came back to this theme. " The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
Prelude, Stanza 1.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886)
“He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”
The Finest Story in the World http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/ManyInventions/fineststory.html (1893).
Other works
Źródło: Many Inventions
Kontekst: When next he came to me he was drunk—royally drunk on many poets for the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors.
“There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake,
Or the way of a man with a maid”
The Long Trail http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/volumeXI/longtrail.html, Stanza 5.
Other works
Kontekst: There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake,
Or the way of a man with a maid;
But the fairest way to me is a ship's upon the sea
In the heel of the North-East Trade.
“A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.”
Źródło: Plain Tales from the Hills
“No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.”
For All We Have and Are, Stanza 4.
Other works
Kontekst: No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all—
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?
The Secret of the Machines, Stanza 7.
Other works
Kontekst: But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!—
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth—except The Gods!
“I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.”
A Dead Statesman
Epitaphs of the War (1914-1918) (1918)
Kontekst: I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch”
Stanza 4.
The Second Jungle Book (1895), If— (1896)
Kontekst: If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!
Letter to L. C. Dunsterville, September 1916. Quoted in Lord Birkenhead, Rudyard Kipling. London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978 (p.271).
The Gods of the Copybook Headings, Stanza 1 (1919).
Other works
Kontekst: As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
The Secret of the Machines, Stanza 7.
Other works
Kontekst: But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!—
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth—except The Gods!
In the Neolithic Age, Stanza 5 (1895).
The Seven Seas (1896)
The Law of the Jungle, Stanzas 1 and 2.
The Second Jungle Book (1895)
Kontekst: p>Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the Law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.</p
"Fiction", speech to the Royal Society of Literature, June 1926; published in Writings on Writing: Rudyard Kipling (1996), ed. Sandra Kemp and Lisa Lewis, p. 80 http://books.google.com/books?id=-AQStA5QMjwC&q=%22elder+sister%22&pg=PA80
Other works
The Ballad of East and West (1889).
Other works
Kontekst: Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
Stanza 4.
The Second Jungle Book (1895), If— (1896)
Kontekst: If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!
“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”
Źródło: The Collected Works
“We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”
Źródło: The Light That Failed
“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”
The Law of the Jungle, Stanzas 1 and 2.
The Second Jungle Book (1895)
Źródło: The Jungle Book
Kontekst: p>Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the Law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.</p
“I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.”
The Cat that Walked by Himself.
Just So Stories (1902)
Źródło: The Cat That Walked By Himself
