Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) - English poet and writer, short story writer. All over the world his numerous poems are known, as well as the best work "The Jungle Book". In 1907, he became the first English writer to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. He was often called the chameleon man, Kipling's life was so developed that he always seemed to find himself between two worlds - a white man, but born in India; he was the hope of a family and at the same time an abandoned child; a storyteller who "praised British imperialism."

Fabulous childhood

Rudyard was born in British India, as the colonial possession of the British was called in South Asia. It happened in Bombay on December 30, 1865.

His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was the head of the Bombay School of Applied Arts, had the title of professor, was a great connoisseur of Indian history, and later worked in Lahore as the prestigious director of the Museum of Indian Culture. Also, my father was fond of decoration and sculpture.

Mom, Alice Kipling (MacDonald), came from a famous English family. Alice was so creative that they even said about her: "Mrs. Kipling will never meet boredom in the same room." She wrote essays that were published in local newspapers.

John and Alice met in England, a romantic meeting took place near Lake Rudyard near Birmingham, after him they decided to name their son.

The Kipling family was very friendly, and the boy grew up as an absolutely happy child. Until the age of six, he was raised by a nanny, originally from Portugal, and Indian domestic servants. Rudyard was so cute that everyone pampered him and never punished him for anything.

The servants put the boy to bed, sang lullabies and told stories in Indian, so he learned to speak it earlier than his native English. True, then he received a strict order from his parents, having dressed after sleep, he had to communicate with dad and mom in pure English. And then he had to quickly restructure his thoughts in his mind from the local dialects in which he thought and dreamed.

The servants affectionately called the boy Riddy. The Hindu took him with him to the service at the local temple, where the child loved to look at the smiling Indian Gods in the twilight. And with a nanny, he loved to go to the Bombay fruit market.

And in the evenings, Riddy and his younger sister with the servants went for a walk by the sea, he liked to sit in the shade of huge palm trees and listen to the wind rustling their leaves and catching waves from the sea. The tree frogs sang, the sun was setting behind the horizon, and Arab ships sailed across the pearl sea, where on the decks the boy looked at Persian merchants dressed in bright clothes.

Even then, this whole magical fairy-tale world firmly settled in the child's mind of six-year-old Rudyard, forming talent in him and predetermining his future fate. Many years later, Kipling said his famous phrase, which became an aphorism: "Tell me what you were like when you were six years old, and I will describe to you the rest of your life."... No wonder then the hero of many of his wonderful stories was a charming boy, mischievous and clever, whom everyone loved.

Training

In all Anglo-Indian families, it was customary to send children to study home in England, so that they receive a decent education and get rid of the Indian accent forever. But the Kiplinga parents made an extremely unfortunate choice. According to the ad, an English family was found, where little Riddy was given to be raised. Holloway's widow did not understand that the child in front of her was unusual, she poisoned him as best she could.

Any slightest offense resulted in humiliation, beating, severe punishment with locking in a dark closet. All this left an imprint on Rudyard's performance at school, he did not shine in his studies. He learned to read very late, for this he received bad grades, which he tried to hide all the time, anticipating what the punishment would be. One day he decided to take a nasty step, hid his report card for a month and said that he had lost. When the deception was revealed, he was beaten with a poker, and the next day he was sent to school with a sign "Liar" on his back.

Having learned to read well, it was only in books that he began to find joy. Rudyard read them voraciously - fairy tales, adventure, travel stories, teen magazines. Strict Holloway did not like this child's hobby, and she began to take books from him. The boy's nerves could not stand, he fell seriously ill, lost his sight for several months, he began to suffer from hallucinations.

In 1878, my mother came, took the child from this hell and put him in a closed paramilitary college. Here they trained officers in the army and civil servants for India. For the army, a sick teenager was not suitable, he himself would not become an official for any money, but here they gave a good education, and Rudyard overtook lost time, doing science.

College education was inexpensive, the Kiplings were quite within their means, and their acquaintance ran the institution. So Rudyard graduated from his studies successfully and at the age of 17 he returned to India.

Creative way

Young Kipling arrived in Bombay, where his father had already prepared a job for him. In the "Civil and Military Gazette" the guy began to work as an assistant editor.

Rudyard began writing stories while still in college, which influenced such a choice of a future profession. The father read the works of his son, therefore he found a place for him in the publishing house.

In 1883, the newspaper published Kipling's first story, The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows. It was a sensation, because the author was not yet 19 years old.

Further, his literary career developed rapidly. He signed a contract with the Pioneer newspaper, where he was hired as a correspondent. The period of Kipling's travels and travel sketches began. He traveled all over Asia, England, America, Burma, Japan and China. But, along with essays for the newspaper, Rudyard himself began to notice in himself a rare talent for an inventor.

In 1890, his first novel, The Lights Out, was published. This was followed by poems "The Last Song of Honest Thomas" and "Ballads of East and West." Kipling gained popularity, and in England he was even nicknamed the literary heir to Charles Dickens.

on another occasion, during his stay in the United States, an American children's writer asked Kipling to write a book about the Indian jungle. He was overwhelmed by childhood memories, and for the plot Rudyard took a folk story about how a little boy was raised by animals. A wonderful tale of how humans and animals coexisted, resulted in The Jungle Book in 1894 and in The Second Jungle Book in 1895. They contained only good, light, eternal - reason, courage, human dignity and friendship. Kipling invented the name for the boy himself. This is how the human baby Mowgli ("frog") appeared, which is now known and loved all over the world.

After the success of Mowgli, Kipling decided to devote his life to creativity for children, whom he loved very much. One after another came out his works:

collections of poems "White Theses" and "Seven Seas";
the story "Brave Seafarers";
children's book "Fairy tales for no reason";
his best work is the novel "Kim";
Pak from the Hills;
"Awards and Fairies".

In 1907, for his vivid imagination and outstanding talent, Rudyard Kipling was the first among the British to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. At the time of receiving the award, he was 42 years old, Kipling became the youngest writer to receive the Nobel Prize, his record has not yet been broken by anyone.

Then the First World War began, Kipling's son died, Rudyard himself suffered from gastritis - all this left an imprint on the writer's work, his writing activity decreased. In 1923, the book "The Irish Guards during the Great War" was published, Kipling wrote it in memory of the regiment where his son served.

Personal life

In January 1892, Kipling married the sister of his colleague, American publisher Walcott Balestier, with whom Rudyard worked on the novel "Nawahka". During the honeymoon of Rudyard and Caroline, the bank in which Kipling kept his savings went bankrupt. Left without a livelihood, they went to America to stay with Caroline's relatives. At the end of 1892, the couple had a daughter, Josephine. They lived in America for four years.

Following Josephine, the couple had a girl named Elsie and a boy named John.

In 1899, grief struck the family. Kipling himself and his eldest daughter Josephine fell ill with pneumonia. Rudyard was in critical condition for a long time, and the little girl could not cope with the disease. Kipling was not immediately told about Josephine's death, fearing that such news would kill the writer, who had just begun to recover from an illness, but was still too weak. This loss Kipling endured hard, little Josephine dreamed of him everywhere: in the children's room, in an empty place at their family table, in different corners of the shady garden.

During the First World War, Kipling's son John was killed. This happened in September 1915, John was part of the Irish Guards, after the Battle of Los he disappeared. The body of the young man was not found, and the father and mother had a long glimmer of hope that their son was alive, perhaps he was captured by the Germans. During the war, Rudyard and his wife worked in the Red Cross, after the end of hostilities, Kipling became a member of the Commission on War Burials. For four years, he tried to find out what happened to his son, but in 1919 he made a statement that he recognized the death of John.

Near Kipling himself, gastritis, which tormented him for a long time, developed into an ulcer. On January 18, 1936, the writer developed intestinal bleeding, Rudyard died. He was buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.

Studios

Igor KLEKH

Igor Yurievich KLEKH - prose writer, essayist; laureate of literary prizes, including those named after Yuri Kazakov.

Little "iron Rudyard"

Have you heard what happened to good old poor England?

It burst like a balloon or a fable toad when they tried to pull the island onto the globe. Everything was OK while Britain was the “ruler of the seas”, after Spain with Holland, and when it came to land management, the islanders were unable to cope with continental metaphysics (hence its historical rivalry with France and staunch rejection of any land power - be it Germany with Russia or China with India). The British attempt to rule the world turned into the cultivation of strife that eventually destroyed the Empire, over which the sun never set.

On the verge of its decline, the British Empire gave birth to two prominent figures - its belated ideologue Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) and its last pilot, Winston Churchill (1874-1965), who survived its downfall. The irony of fate is that both became laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature - the first before the First World War, in 1907, and the second after the end of the Second World War, in 1953. And this is true: empires come and go, leaving only a long mark in the memory - literature. Churchill was involved here to understand the scale of the era and the caliber of the people who came to celebrate it and see it off.

But let's turn to Kipling - and start with his biography. Let's try to consider the figure of fate hidden behind the facts and understand why Rudyard Kipling became what he became. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was a pre-Raphaelite-influenced decorator, sculptor and draftsman. These English forerunners of Art Nouveau, Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, Secession, and our "World of Art" rejected European painting, starting with Raphael. Their work was dominated by line and flowing outlines, rather than color, lighting and perspective, and the emphasis was on an exotic plot and exquisite craft. Roughly speaking, it was the Grand style of decorative arts, addressed to the propertied class.

It is curious that father and son Kiplinga will become co-authors of a joint work - a luxurious literary and artistic publication "Man and Beast in India." But first, John Lockwood must decide to leave England and open an art and craft school in Bombay - in order to become a successful artist from a poor artist and feel that he belongs to the caste of masters. For a metropolitan, this was the easiest and most reliable career.

Rydyard was born in Bombay into a family of English colonialists, just six years after the suppression of the Sepoy uprising, when the rebels were executed by tying them to the muzzles of cannons. Nevertheless, the first six years of his own life forever remained in Kipling's memory and consciousness as a stay in paradise: an eternal summer in a big house, where parents, Indian servants and pets all loved and adored their little master, who managed to master the local dialects just as well. than native English. Reflection of this idyllic side of childhood, lost paradise, is found in more than one work of Kipling for children and adults (who does not remember the fairy tale "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"?). But the “karma” of little Rudyard was such that after him six years of hell and five years of purgatory awaited him - and India had absolutely nothing to do with it. A custom was adopted in empires - more precisely, a savage method was invented: to excommunicate children from their parents in order to raise faithful servants from them within the walls of closed educational institutions - cruel, strong-willed and at the same time obedient. Nothing special or new: in the same way, from time immemorial, the Indians have been breaking the will of immature elephants, turning them into working elephants, obedient to their master (Kipling has a wonderful story about this, "Moti Guj, the Rebel").

Guided by custom, the parents themselves sent the young Rudyard with their younger sister to England to a distant relative who agreed to take other people's children into foster care. And she turned out to be a prude with sadistic inclinations, which was not at all uncommon in Protestant and Catholic countries (suffice it to recall the images of tormentors of children, all sorts of hypocrites, in autobiographically colored films of great European directors - Bergman, Fellini, Buñuel). This period of life in the “House of Despair” was reflected, apart from his autobiography, only in one story by Kipling with the telling title “Ma-uh, black sheep ...”. Apparently, life experience was too traumatic, where physical suffering from punishment looked like sheer babbling against the background of mental torture and sophisticated bullying. What could the boy think? Only - that his relatives betrayed him, abandoned him, punished for some unknown reason, and this is already irreparable in a hated world that knows no mercy.

A relative drove eleven-year-old Rudyard to mental breakdown when she made him go to school with a “liar” sign on his chest. He fell seriously ill, almost went blind, and, perhaps, would have died if the maternal instinct had not suddenly awakened in his mother. She came to England, took him and his sister from a relative for rehabilitation, rented a house in the countryside for three months.

And when the children had time to believe that “now we are mothers again”, she sent Rudyard to a men's school - with iron discipline, corporal punishment, hazing and other traditional vices of closed educational institutions (for example, James Joyce, for example, in the novel “Portrait of an Artist in youth ”describes how this very future artist in a Jesuit college comrades dunk their heads in the toilet). For a small, puny and short-sighted book Kipling, staying within the walls of a male school was not much easier than being raised by a relative. But, oddly enough, he came out of here as a fully matured statesman, who recognized the rationality of the corporate spirit, faceless social structure and organized violence, which reliably protects the members of the corporation from the amateur terror of any distant relatives. As a young man, Kipling joined one of the Masonic lodges, and made the glorification of the imperial spirit and the prosperity of the British Empire his religion.

Since the family did not have the funds to continue their education in the metropolis, Rudyard had to return to his small homeland - not to Bombay, but to Lahore in the north of the country, where his father was now in charge of the local art school and the museum of Indian art. A capable, educated and ambitious young man became a correspondent and a regular contributor to the Lahore Civil-Military Gazette and the Allahabad Pioneer. After six years of heaven, six years of hell, and five years in purgatory, Rudyard now faced seven fat years of intense journalistic and literary work. By the end of this period, all English-speaking India read him, he published collections of stories and poems here, which were sold on all the railways of the country. His reports, stories, poems were read in Simla, the summer residence of the Viceroy, from where he ruled India for most of the year. The prestige and competence of the young Kipling was appreciated by the British so high that the Commander-in-Chief, Count Roberts of Kandahar, consulted with him on some difficult issues.

The meeting with the forgotten homeland freed Kipling from the lingering nightmare of his school years and awakened the forces that were dormant in him. Having plunged headlong into the maelstrom of Indian life, he turned from a bookworm into a gambling journalist, a prolific writer, and then a prince of English-language Indian literature. Kipling is experiencing an unprecedented creative surge (only in 1888 he published five large and small collections of stories!) And swears before our eyes. And all because, being forcibly pulled out of his environment at the age of impressions and returned to it at the age of action, he was able to see his homeland with a “soapy” look - from the inside and from the outside at the same time. This life somersault and focus of perception allowed Kipling to become an ideal “tool” for describing India. From the pages of his works, everyday characters poured onto the reader, who acquired flesh, blood and voice thanks to Kipling: doctors, detectives, engineers, British officers and soldiers (in his famous "Barracks Ballads" and marching marches such as "Dust", in stories) , colonialists and their children drinking intoxicated in an alien climate, outwardly uncomplaining Indian mistresses and servants, even beasts - real (as in the story about the killer orangutan "Bimi") and fabulous (as in two "Jungle Books", which have become golden classics of world children's literature , - is it a joke, a man alone, out of his head, created a whole mythology, animal epic!).

Journalism taught Kipling to express himself briefly and clearly, without sticking out his “I”. And India taught that it cannot be understood by reason - not that it was so complicated, but simply arranged on other grounds (and Kipling defined this civilizational confrontation more energetically than anyone else, in the immortal lines “West is West, East there is an East, and they will not leave their places ", but immediately proposed a forceful and therefore incorrect solution to the problem:" But there is no East, and there is no West, that a tribe, homeland, clan, // If a strong with a strong face to face at the edge of the earth is getting up? ”- in a romance very similar to a thug's“ Ballad of East and West ”, in Russian translation by E. Polonskaya).

From this sense of the ambiguity of life in its most elementary manifestations and focus on the borderline experience, Kipling's best stories grew, having a tremendous impact on short story masters around the world. In them there is no enumeration with oriental exoticism and journalism (as in the early stories and essays of Kipling), there is no pathos (inherent even in his best poems), but there is a lot of rude, to the best of the cruel truth of everyday life, vitality and specific bitterness, which makes one suspect the author of the presence of wisdom not conveyed by words.

With all the difference in temperaments and circumstances of life, Kipling in his short stories turns out to be something close ... to our Chekhov. A focus on the fact of life, brevity and noble simplicity, both were taught by newspaper work. Both introduced into fiction a lot of characters, types, estates that were not previously admitted to it, voiceless, which made a stunning impression on contemporary readers. And in the best stories of both, something most important remained behind the words - in the subtext, as they will call it in the twentieth century.

It is interesting that Kipling and Chekhov, one might say, crossed paths. This, of course, is not about a personal meeting (and what could they say to each other ?!), but about the figures of fate. With a difference of a year, both took a semi-circular journey in opposite directions.

Thirty-year-old Chekhov put himself to the test frontier experiences on a journey through Siberia to the convict Sakhalin - and got fed up exotic experiences and an unforgettable experience when returning home across three oceans. Finding almost no reflection in his artistic work (because a passion for exoticism, exploitation of extreme situations and pathos are characteristic, as a rule, of provincials, marginalized and infantile), this acquaintance with the huge, inhuman, dangerous and wonderful world allowed Chekhov's talent to achieve a complete maturity. And it is noteworthy that a century later, not Rudyard Kipling, but Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, is the most beloved writer of the British after Shakespeare, who have long said goodbye to their own Empire, somewhat shrunken, somewhat matured.

By the age of twenty-four, Kipling felt that he was cramped in colonial India, and his ambition was not satisfied. He wanted the same loud fame in the metropolis, and he went to conquer it. Unlike Chekhov, he was already a fairly wealthy journalist and writer (since in the 19th century, the British had the highest literary fees in the world - the empire was richer and there were countless educated readers). Nevertheless, Kipling agreed with the Allahabad “Pioneer” to publish on its pages a report on his journey - from India through Burma, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States to England. From these correspondences the book of travel prose "From Sea to Sea" was formed, a magnificent example of a genre so beloved in the Western world. The chapters about the Japanese tea ceremony, about visiting the famous Chicago slaughterhouses are just small literary masterpieces.

And from India, Kipling left forever and never returned to it - in life, but not in creativity. India was his home, undying love, synonymous with life and death - and he cut it off at a stroke! - while the rest of the world was a foreign land for Kipling, even good old England (or maybe it was she). The metropolis soon gave him everything that he so passionately desired: worldwide fame, wealth and power over people (this miserable substitute for love).

HG Wells, who himself became the idol of the reading public in the first third of the twentieth century, recalled: “Perhaps no one has yet been so frenziedly raptured at first, and then, with his own help, so inexorably overthrown. But in the mid-1890s, this small man in glasses, with a mustache and a massive chin, gesticulating vigorously, shouting something with boyish enthusiasm and calling for action by force, lyrically reveling in the colors, colors and aromas of the Empire, made an amazing discovery in the literature of various mechanisms, all kinds of waste, lower ranks, engineering and jargon as a poetic language, has become almost a national symbol. He amazingly subjugated us to himself, he hammered ringing and persistent lines into our heads, made many - including myself among them, albeit unsuccessfully - to imitate himself, he gave a special coloring to our everyday language. "

This recognition allows one to imagine the power of the spell and the magnitude of Kipling's fame after moving to the metropolis. Although the native British always treated him as a stranger and an upstart, and even worse - as an Anglo-Indian (there was such a word then), that is, partly a barbarian. Having taken the place of “the main national poet” after the death of Alfred Tennyson (who composed the motto of our Komsomol members: “Fight and seek, find and not give up!”), Kipling at first himself would have liked to gain fame in the metropolis, but to settle in some other place. A spontaneous attempt to settle in North America, where he even managed to get married, failed. Vermontans were shy about their eccentric neighbor, riding his bike like a boy, but always dressing for dinner. He parted with his wife, his daughter died, his wife's relatives tortured him with lawsuits. In South Africa, too, it did not work out - the house he bought there Kipling left behind as a summer residence. In the very center of London he had an apartment, but there was no life, so he bought himself a country house in southern England and turned it, in full accordance with English tradition, into a gloomy fortress in which time stood still. Among the well-meaning and loyal British, his authority remained indisputable.

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About fitzerstvo tried to imitate the valiant and brutal heroes of his soldier and sailor stories and songs, the children adored his fairy tales, but the cultural elite very soon lost interest in him, after the Anglo-Boer War and such poems as "The White Burden" they turned away, and with the outbreak of the First World War war began to trample. And she had every right to do so. Kipling's son (also karma) died at the front, which did not temper the patriotic fervor and muffled the war cries of the "iron Rudyard". One can imagine how those who were destined to serve as “cannon fodder” or, at best, become “the lost generation”, hated his imperial “courageous” bravado in the trenches. Writer of this generation, Richard Aldington, summed up the sobering obsession of Kipling's loyal readers: "It really meant serving as a resigned ass when kicked into hell."

How much restrained rage towards the belligerent short man in these words of the front-line soldier! Characteristically, a similar sobering happened with Kipling's translator in Soviet Russia Konstantin Simonov at the beginning of World War II: “On the very first day at the front in 1941, I suddenly fell out of love with some of Kipling's poems once and for all. Kipling's military romance, everything that, bypassing the essence of poetry, bribed me in him in my youth, suddenly ceased to be related to this war, which I saw, and to everything that I experienced. All this in 1941 suddenly seemed distant, small and deliberately tense, like a breaking boyish bass ”.

In the perception of Kipling in Russia, the ebb and flow of interest in his work is an extremely interesting topic. Back in 1916, a twenty-volume collection of his works in Russian translations was published. They read them, imitated him, Gumilyov, Babel, Bagritsky, Tikhonov studied with him, the same Simonov, Paustovsky, Gaidar, Zhitkov - you can't count them all.

In the thirties before the war, this “bard of imperialism” was published and republished here like no one else. There was interest from below, and an order was issued from above: a cruel and active time wanted to make heroism the norm of life, so that they would not be afraid of death and had something to patch holes. Meanwhile, we had our own tradition of treating borderline experience and exoticism, completely devoid of colonial romance - sober, truly courageous and truly poetic. With Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time", with Tolstoy's military and Caucasian stories and novellas (Kipling was a great admirer of Tolstoy), with Kuprin's army tales, with "The Lord from San Francisco" and other stories by Bunin, it is only at a stretch to put a number of dozen short stories Kipling, on the strength. However, this is already a lot.

In fact, Kipling has long turned into a writer for children and teenagers - these will always read him. At the stage of maturation, it is very important for us to deal with a black and white picture of the world, constantly measure ourselves against each other, become infected with the team spirit and dream of adventure. But part of Kipling's creative legacy retains its lasting value for an adult. Some very unpleasant, archaic and cruel truth about life and the structure of our world is contained in his best works.

Even with the colonial pathos, the situation is not so simple. We somehow too frivolously strive to forget or even not know at all about the monstrous customs of the not so long past.

On the mass human sacrifices among the Mayans and Aztecs (until the conquest of their kingdoms by the Spaniards, the priests continued to open the chest with obsidian knives and rip out the living heart from tens of thousands of captives with their hand, they worked tirelessly all day, the altars were in growths of caked blood and the stench stood, as in a slaughterhouse - the cruel conquistadors did badly from the spectacle that opened up to them), about the general cannibalism in South America and on the islands of Oceania (who was Robinson afraid, and who ate Cook ?!). German fairy tales, in which children were left in a dense forest, or Russian folklore, where old people were lowered on bast sleds into a snowy ravine at the end of a long winter, these are not “oral folk art”, but echoes of terrible everyday memories. Roughly the same was the norm in rural Japan as early as the middle of the 19th century. Not long before the birth of Kipling, the British in India managed, if not to eradicate, then at least to prohibit the ceremony of self-immolation of widows ...

You can continue the list or object and argue endlessly, but critics of the vices of Western civilization would do well not to forget about all this. Kipling was not a hypocrite - he called violence violence, cruelty - cruelty - which already appeals to a serious reader. In addition to real colonialism, he was extremely critical of the narrow-minded and hardened colonialists. Kipling promoted "smart" imperialism, hoped for the emergence of a new, "healthy" youth (she appeared ... in Germany and the Soviet Union) - but he allowed himself only in journalism, poetry manifestos and heroic ballads. Declarations are inappropriate in fictional prose - therefore even Kipling's spy novel "Kim" is considered by the Hindus themselves to this day one of the best books written about India. Fortunately, in art, in fiction, only this is taken into account over the years: is it possible and necessary to read “this”? The reader of the "adult" Kipling can be convinced for himself that he will have an exciting and serious reading, which does not happen very often.

And in life - what in life? Kipling, who for a long time outlived his glory, was buried in 1936 by the British "establishment" - the prime minister, bishop, admiral and general, and even a few old friends. There were no colleagues, readers, or the public at all. And only when the writer stopped bothering everyone with his sermons, and his ashes rested next to the ashes of Dickens in Poets' Corner in the cemetery of Westminster Abbey, those around them woke up and woke up. For more than half a century, there has been a discussion in Britain: how to separate the “good” Kipling from the “bad”? And what is the mystery of the vitality of his art? And where does such power of enchantment come from?

There is no doubt that Kipling himself would not have been able to answer these questions.

Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay. When the future writer was five years old, his parents decided to send him to an English boarding school.

After 7 years, he was sent to study at the Devon School. It was there that young Kipling began to write short stories.

The father, impressed by the talent of his son, identified him as a journalist in the editorial office of the "Civil and military newspaper".

His works began to be published and sold in 1883.

The beginning of the creative path

In the second half of the 1980s, the young writer undertook a tour of the United States and Asian countries as a reporter. His travel essays have gained considerable popularity. In 1888-1889. six books with stories by Kipling were published.

In 1889 Kipling settled in England. After the release of his first novel, "The Lights went out," the aspiring writer began to be called the "second Dickens."

The flourishing of creative activity

In London, Kipling got acquainted with the American editor W. Balestier. Around the same time, the writer creates such wonderful works for children. , like The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book.

In 1897, Kipling's story “The Brave Navigators” was published. In 1899, while in South Africa, Kipling became acquainted with the symbol of British imperialism, S. Rhodes, and wrote one of his strongest novels, Kim. Another great children's book, Tales of Old England, was written around this time.

Political activity

The entire biography of Kipling testifies to him as a strong, but restless nature. The writer was actively interested in politics. A brilliant analytical mind allowed him to “predict” the coming war with Germany. As a supporter of conservative views, he has repeatedly spoken out against the gaining strength of feminism.

At the end of the war, Kipling became a member of the War Burial Commission. In 1922 he met King George V. The monarch and the writer had warm and sincere relations for many years.

Sickness and death

Kipling continued to write until the first half of the 30s. XX century. Unfortunately, his new works were not as popular as the early books he created at the dawn of his creative activity.

In 1915, the writer was mistakenly diagnosed with gastritis. After suffering from constant stomach pain for years, Kipling soon learned that his ulcer was actually progressing.

Rudyard Kipling passed away on January 18, 1936, in London. He was buried at Westminster Abbey. According to critics, the writer made an enormous contribution to the treasury of British culture.

Personal life

In 1892, Kipling married W. Balestier's sister, Caroline. They had two children. A short biography of Rudyard Kipling includes many tragic moments. His daughter died of pneumonia in 1899. His son John died during the First World War.

Other biography options

Kipling was the youngest Nobel laureate for literature. At the time of the award, he was only 42 years old. This record has not been broken so far.
Kipling worked only with black ink. According to critics, the reason for this "eccentricity" was the writer's poor eyesight.
In 1885 Kipling became a member of the Masonic lodge. He enjoyed the experience and dedicated several poems to his work in the lodge.
The writer suffered from insomnia until the end of his life. It developed against the backdrop of his mistreatment at the private boarding house where he lived as a child for six years.

Kipling Rudyard Joseph (1865-1936) - the famous English storyteller. The paradoxical world of Kipling's fantasies excites the imagination and amazes with its originality. Great tales, which are read by more than one generation of children around the world, narrate both about distant exotic countries, in small fairy tales, and in legends from knightly times, in a collection. And absolutely all children know the famous about the boy "frog", the wise python Kaa, the cunning panther Bagheera, and the evil tiger Sher Khan.

Mowgli - The Jungle Book

First Jungle Book

Second Jungle Book

Tales of old England

Little fairy tales

Why does the whale eat only small fish?

How a hump appeared on the back of a camel

How folds appeared on the skin of a rhinoceros

How the leopard became spotted

Why does Porcupine have such a hairstyle

An old kangaroo's request

How armadillos appeared

How the first letter was written

How the first alphabet was composed

Sea crab that played with the sea

A cat that walked on its own

The moth who stamped his foot

The story of the Tegumay taboos

Tales from five continents

Biography of Kipling Rudyard Joseph

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (eng. JosephRudyardKipling; December 30, 1865 - January 18, 1936) - English writer, poet and short story writer.

Kipling was born on December 30, 1865 in the Indian city of Bombay. His father, a prominent specialist in the history of Indian art, was the director of the museum; mother came from a well-known London family; both grandfathers were Methodist priests. He received the name Rudyard, it is believed, in honor of the English lake Rudyard, where his parents met.

The first years of his life in the biography of Kipling were very happy. An Indian nanny taught little Rudyard to speak Hindi, introduced him to Indian fairy tales about animals. At the age of five, he moved to England, where he lived and studied in a private boarding school.

But at the age of 5, together with his sister, he went to study in England. For 6 years he lived in a private boarding house, the owner of which (Madame Rosa) mistreated him, punished him. This attitude influenced him so much that he suffered from insomnia for the rest of his life.

At the age of 12, his parents put him in a private Devon school so that he can then enter the prestigious military academy. (Later, about the years spent at the school, Kipling will write an autobiographical work "Stalki and Company"). The headmaster of the school was Cormell Price, a friend of Rudyard's father. It was he who began to encourage the boy's love for literature. Myopia did not allow Kipling to choose a military career, and the school did not give diplomas for admission to other universities. Impressed by the stories written at the school, his father finds him a job as a journalist in the editorial office of the Civil and Military Gazette, published in Lahore (British India, now Pakistan).

Kipling becomes a reporter and journalist in India. After that, in the biography of Joseph Rudyard Kipling, travels to Asia, USA, England begin.

Kipling's works are gaining great popularity. For the first time, Kipling's short story was published in 1980 ("The Lights went out").

Having settled in London, Kipling gets married. But soon, due to material shortage, he moved to relatives in the United States. It was there, in the biography of D. R. Kipling, that his most famous works for children were written: The Jungle Book (first and second books).

In 1899, the writer returned to England, in the same year he traveled to South Africa.

Two years later, Kipling published one of his most successful works - the novel "Kim". Among other famous works of the writer: "Pak from the Hills", "Awards and fairies".

In 1900, as a special correspondent at the headquarters of the English army, Kipling traveled to South Africa, where he witnessed the main events of the Boer War.

In Africa, he began to select material for a new children's book, which was published in 1902 under the title Fairy Tales for No reason ( Just So Stories).

In 1907, Kipling became the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature "for observation, vivid imagination, maturity of ideas and outstanding talent for storytelling." In the same year, he received awards from the universities of Paris, Strasbourg, Athens and Toronto; also awarded honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Durham universities.

Literary activity is becoming less and less intense. Another blow to the writer was the death of his eldest son John in the First World War in 1915. Kipling and his wife worked in the Red Cross during the war. After the war he became a member of the War Burial Commission. It was he who chose the biblical phrase "Their names will live forever" on the obelisks of memory. During one trip to France in 1922, he met the English king George V, with whom he later became a great friend.

Kipling continued his literary career until the early 1930s, although he was less and less successful. Since 1915, the writer suffered from gastritis, which later turned out to be an ulcer. Rudyard Kipling died of perforation of an ulcer on January 18, 1936 in London. Buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Among the works of Rudyard Kipling - poems, short stories, short stories, fairy tales, novellas, novels: "Department Songs" (1886; collection of poems), "Simple Stories from the Mountains" (1888; collection of short stories), "The Light went out" (1890; novel; Russian translation, 1903), Songs of the Barracks (1892; a collection of poetry), The Jungle Book (1894; stories about Mowgli), The Second Jungle Book (1895; stories about Mowgli), The Seven Seas (1896; collection of poems), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), "Kim" (1901; novel), "Just Tales" (1902), "Five Nations" (1903; a collection of poems), "Pak from the Hills" (1906; collection "Historical Tales"), Awards and Fairies (1910; collection of "Historical Tales").

By the middle of the writer's life, his literary style had changed, now he wrote slowly, carefully, carefully checking what he wrote. For two books of historical stories "Pak from the Pook Hill" (1906) and "Awards and Fairies" (1910), a higher structure of feelings is characteristic, some of the poems reach the level of pure poetry. Kipling continued to write stories collected in the books "Ways and Discoveries" (1904), "Action and Reaction" (1909), "All kinds of beings" (1917), "Debit and Credit" (1926), "Restriction and Renewal" ( 1932). In the 1920s, Kipling's popularity declined.

His best works are "The Jungle Book" ( The jungle book), "Kim" ( Kim), as well as numerous poems.

The rich language of Kipling's works, full of metaphors, contributed greatly to the treasury of the English language.

Joseph Redyard Kipling(eng. Joseph Rudyard Kipling - / ˈrʌdjərd ˈkɪplɪŋ /; December 30, 1865, Bombay - January 18, 1936, London) - English writer, poet and short story writer.

His best works are The Jungle Book, Kim, and numerous poems. In 1907, Kipling becomes the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the same year, he received awards from the universities of Paris, Strasbourg, Athens and Toronto; also awarded honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Durham universities.

Kipling's works are characterized by a rich language full of metaphors. The writer has made a great contribution to the treasury of the English language.

Biography

Childhood

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, British India, the son of John Lockwood Kipling and Alice (McDonald) Kipling, a professor at the local art school. He received the name Rudyard, it is believed, in honor of the English lake Rudyard, where his parents met. The early years, full of the exotic sights and sounds of India, were very happy for the future writer. But at the age of 5, together with his sister, he went to study in England. For six years he lived in a private boarding house, whose owner (Madame Rosa) mistreated him, punished him. This attitude influenced him so much that he suffered from insomnia for the rest of his life.

At the age of 12, his parents put him in a private Devon school so that he can then enter the prestigious military academy. (Later, about the years spent at the school, Kipling will write an autobiographical work "Stalki and Company"). The headmaster of the school was Cormell Price, a friend of Rudyard's father. It was he who began to encourage the boy's love for literature. Myopia did not allow Kipling to choose a military career, and the school did not give diplomas for admission to other universities. Impressed by the stories written at the school, his father finds him a job as a journalist for the Civil and Military Gazette, published in Lahore (British India, now Pakistan).

In October 1882, Kipling returned to India and took up the job of a journalist. In his spare time, he writes short stories and poems, which are then published by the newspaper along with reports. His work as a reporter helps him to better understand the various aspects of the country's colonial life. The first sales of his works began in 1883.

Writing career

In London, he meets the young American publisher Walcott Balestier, they work together on the story "The Naulahka". In 1892, Balestier dies of typhus, and shortly thereafter, Kipling marries his sister Caroline. During the honeymoon, the bank where Kipling had savings went bankrupt. The couple had money left only to get to Vermont (USA), where Balestier's relatives lived. They live here for the next four years.

At this time, the writer again begins to write for children; the famous The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book were published in 1894-1895. The poetry collections The Seven Seas and The white thesis have also been published. Two children are soon born: Josephine and Elsie. After a quarrel with his brother-in-law, Kipling and his wife returned to England in 1896. In 1897, the story "Captains Courageous" was published. In 1899, during a visit to the United States, his eldest daughter Josephine dies of pneumonia, which was a huge blow to the writer.

In 1899, he spent several months in South Africa, where he met Cecil Rhodes, a symbol of British imperialism. The novel "Kim" is published, which is considered one of the best novels of the writer. In Africa, he begins to select material for a new children's book, which comes out in 1902 called "Fairy tales for no reason" (Just So Stories).

In the same year, he buys a country house in Sussex (England), where he remains until the end of his life. Here he writes his famous books Puck of Pook’s Hill and Rewards and Fairies - tales of Old England, united by the elf storyteller Puck, taken from Shakespeare's plays. Simultaneously with his literary activities, Kipling begins an active political activity. He writes about the impending war with Germany, speaks in support of conservatives and against feminism.

World War I time

Literary activity is becoming less and less intense. Another blow to the writer was the death of his eldest son John in the First World War in 1915. In 2007 British filmmakers made a television film "My Boy Jack" about this (directed by Brian Kirk, starring David Haig and Daniel Radcliffe). Kipling and his wife worked in the Red Cross during the war. After the war he became a member of the War Burial Commission. It was he who chose the biblical phrase "Their names will live forever" on the obelisks of memory. During one trip to France in 1922, he met the English king George V, with whom he later became a great friend.

The era of travel

In the mid-1980s, Kipling began touring Asia and the United States as a correspondent for the Allahabad newspaper Pioneer, with which he was contracted to write travel essays. The popularity of his works is rapidly increasing, in 1888 and 1889 6 books with his stories were published, which brought him recognition.

In 1889 he made a long trip to England, then visited Burma, China, and Japan. He travels across the United States, crosses the Atlantic Ocean and settles in London. He is beginning to be called the literary heir to Charles Dickens. In 1890 his first novel, The Light That Failed, was published. The most famous poems of that time were "The Ballad of East and West", as well as "The Last Rhime of True Thomas".

The last days of a writer