Posted on 09/02/2018 2:01:16 PM PDT by Twotone
It is often said that we should worry about the world we are leaving to the younger generation. I am a bit more worried about the poor world, given the state of the younger generation who will soon have custody of it. Last week, for example, the students of Manchester University have decided that Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” is not suitable for their college because he was raaaaacisst. Of course. They have replaced his poem with some vapid drivel from the serially overrated Maya Angelou. It might have been better if they’d simply rewritten Kipling’s verse, adapted it for modern times. I tried to help out in the Sunday Times today:
If you can self-define as something you’re not,
And crawl into victimhood, however well-bred
And spew out tendentious sub-teenage rot
And wear a vagina on top of your head,
And whine like a ninny, inside your safe space,
When the real world intrudes on the crap you’ve averred,
Then apply to our college – we’ll give you a place,
(For about £30k). And you’ll get a third.
I loved Kipling - poet & novelist. It caused me to have an affection for other countries & a respect for other cultures. Why do people today not understand that? He may have been speaking from his own culture, but he understood (& I think, sympathized) with other cultures.
Nor can poetry be translated to another lanquage.
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Ummmm.... I can think of several great French poets whose works translate beautifully into English. One might start with Beaudelaire.....
Sums up Kipling's attitude toward many of the Indians and Sepoys he met, even though he's been damned as an imperialist.
"Under the Deodars" and "Tales from the Hills" echo similar sentiments.
Is a parody really rewriting? I don’t think so.
bookmark
It will be a new poem.
Go back to your HS English class...every word used has it's meaning and useage by the author.
Love the Kipling ‘rewrite’!
Leave Kipling alone!
From another article...
“While the poem If contains no reference to race, students claim the poem is still offensive because much of Kipling’s other works are about colonialism.
During his lifetime, he was described as respectful of Indians, but Kipling was also known to have held common prejudices that were rife in late-Victorian Britain.
In modern times, his work has often been criticised for attempting to legitimise the British Empire presence in India, dehumanising people of colour.
His most controversial work is his 1899 poem The White Man’s Burden, which has been criticised in modern times for advocating colonialism and for portraying other races as inferior.
The poem is about the Philippine-American War, in which he invites the US to assume colonial control of the Philippine Islands from Imperial Spain.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6815426/rudyard-kipling-poem-if-racist-jungle-book/
Which goes to show how stupid modern readers are. White Man’s Burden is a sarcastic tome pointing out the foolishness of America in getting involved in colonialism. Does this really sound like encouragement?
Take up the White Man’s burden —
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper —
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard —
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: —
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”
The complete Kipling for .99 for kindle:
What rhymes in one language will not when translated to another.
The effort to try and hold previous generations to modern day view points is a sign of laziness or delusion
Snowflakes are everywhere.
That's why it takes a fine poet to translate poetry. They enter into the spirit of the poem and make it come alive in the other language; it can't be done mechanically.
“The left wants to replace real history with with something along the lines of Mao’s Little Red Book that we’ll all be forced to memorize and obey.”
They are well on their way with mass public shaming, character assassination, and destroying the businesses and careers of people who don’t toe the party line. Things are way out of hand, and the right doesn’t seem to get it or know how to fight it.
Many classic hymns in English have originated in German.
The music stays but a new song is written related to the original...it is a new poem put to the same music.
Lyrics are a whole different thing than prose poems; and hymn lyrics especailly need to hit a middling skill level for the sake of a congregation of nonprofessional singers, so hymn lyrics must often be rigid in their rhyme scheme. Translating rose poems has greater latitude.
I simply get the feeling that any deviation from a strictly literal translation would bother you enormously; but it’s not possible to avoid rearranging word order and idiomatic expressions from one language to another to convey the meaning holistically.
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