Dear members of Kipling Society,
excuse me for intruding, but I'm Russian, and I enjoy R.Kipling's
poems and prose, and since you are mentioning Russia's
attitude toward Kipling, I'm eager to say several words. Kipling's
"Mowgli stories" and other stories for children are very popular in
Russia, there are very good cartoons based on these stories. I
remember that when, as a child, I was reading Mowgli stories, my
mother told me that the author was a great poet, but in Russia we know him mostly as the author of tales for children. It was perhaps then that my interest in R.Kipling was aroused. There are not many
translations of Kipling's works published in Russia, and personally I
prefer reading in original, because Kipling's style seems
untranslatable and unimitable to me. That is why I'm aquainted only
with a part of Kipling's works. It seems to me that Russians had
always great interest in his works (I've read essays on R.Kipling by
several eminent Russian writers, and there was a group of poets in the beginning of 20 century who seemed to have taken and developed
Kipling's ideals; and in a book by a modern Russian author I've met
quotations from "Barrack room ballads"), but somehow in Soviet period he was not favoured
and his poems were considered "ideologically wrong".
If anybody is willing to get any further information on the point,
please don't hesitate to contact me.
Best regards,
Maria Bulakh
from Russia, Moscow
PL> Good to hear Alastair Wilson's report of Kipling in the news. Here's
PL> another example found by my husband Peter.
PL> The Economist of 21 July 2001 includes a section called 'A survey
PL> of Russia'. On page 17, their reporter writes: 'In a teacher training
PL> college in remote Syktyvkar, the unannounced arrival of a British
PL> journalist in an English class provokes a lively and well-informed
PL> discussion of Rudyard Kipling's novels.' From an earlier article, it
PL> appears that the reporter was directed to Syktyvkar because there is a
PL> flourishing forestry business there. Never having heard of the place, we
PL> looked for it in the Times Atlas and an old Soviet-era Atlas SSSR in
PL> Peter's library. Very roughly speaking, we located it thus. Draw a line
PL> south-east from the Arctic port of Archangel and it will meet the Urals
PL> around Sverdlovsk, or Ekaterinburg, where the Tsar and his family were
PL> killed. Draw another line north-east from Moscow, and the two lines will
PL> intersect about halfway. There or thereabouts is Syktyvkar.
PL> In Kipling's house, there are many mansions. From old numbers of
PL> the Kipling Journal, it seems that the Mowgli stories were approved of by
PL> Stalin's regime; under Brezhnev, some of the Puck series were translated,
PL> while Russian versions of Kipling's poems (especially the Barrack Room
PL> Ballads) had a wide following. Peter and I met while serving with the
PL> British Embassy in Moscow in the 1950s. I remember a Russian asking me if
PL> it was true that Kipling wrote prose, as her boyfriend insisted he was a
PL> poet. Not long after the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan, the Society was
PL> sent a copy of Soviet Literature that quoted translations of both 'Shilling
PL> a Day' and 'Ford o' Kabul River.' Both, from the reports one reads, have
PL> proved prophetic.
PL> It's good to know his memory is still alive out there. May it
PL> help them in difficult times. Lisa Lewis
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