I might add to this fascinating debate that as a practising short story
writer and occasional editor, editors change things frequently to meet
their own understanding of what looks, reads or sounds best. An
occasional word change here and there, that appeals to an editor, is
rarely referred back to an author for confirmation.
As an editor it can also be a nightmare to refer previously published
stories back to writers with some minor changes (largely typos in their
text that previous editors missed) only to have them say I really should
have written this bit in a different way and that bit. Can I have
another month to do it?
In my World's Classics edition of "Plain Tales from the Hills" there is
a wonderful essay at the beginning of the book simply called "Notes on
the Text" by Andrew Rutherford the editor of the edition (formerly
Regius Professor of English at University of Aberdeen.) He talks about
the many changes that were made to the stories over the years in various
editions. Some he has corrected, but he does make his own changes to
Kipling's work.
In defence of his editorial "meddling", Rutherford states: "In general I
have sought to incorporate his (Kipling's own revisions of the original
text) where these seem significant or useful, while rejecting them if
they seem merely arbitrary or disruptive of an aesthetic effect already
achieved. I have thus employed a measure of subjective editorial
judgement, for which I make no apology." And as a result we do not have
what Kipling believed was definitive, but some mix between what Kipling
and Ritherford wanted at some point many many years apart. We certainly
in this edition do not have the stories as originally published.
What this suggests is that Kipling like any other writer would
constantly seek to improve his stories, in his own mind, with every new
edition. And editors would always exercise their own judgement as to
what they would accept and what they wouldn't.
To return to "Sea Lullaby" and the change between "where" and "when" I
do not believe is a simple typo. It may have been a conscious decision
by Kipling at one point or one of his editors, who may or may not have
discussed the change with him. Or remembering back to the technology of
the time it could possibly have been the person who lined up the print,
and a misreading in a dimly lit room. But as "when" has occurred more
than once it seems unlikely.
Personally I prefer "when" in that line. It sounds better to my ear,
even though I accept the arguments that "where" is more consistent with
the rest of the structure.
These discussions are always very interesting and quite captivating, but
it is worth bearing in mind what the aim of this level of dissection of
Kipling's work could possibly be. Is it about trying to capture the
original work of Kipling as he wrote it? That is, what was in the
original manuscript that was submitted for publication. Or about
capturing the Kipling as the mature writer who edited and re-edited his
work for each new publication.
Either one may not be the best in my opinion. It's the first time a
story enters reading market; the first time it is published by anyone
and has been put in front of the public as readers.
As a person who has worked as an editor and studied Indian history and
languages, I would personally prefer Kipling's Indian stories as they
were originally published the very first time.
cheers
Geoff
Brisbane, Australia
On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 13:25 -0800, Kipling Hedley wrote:
> The 1992 Folio Society edition of The Jungle Book, based on the 1908
> edition in which the illustrations by the Detmold brothers first
> appeared in book form, has "there soft be thy pillow".
> Game, set, and match.
> Regards,
> Kipling Hedley
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 18:01:06 +0000
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Kipling's poem "Seal Lullaby"
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Perhaps the analytic emphasis should be less on printed text variants
> that the rhythm of the poetry.
> In Seal Lullaby Kipling uses a variety of techniques, including
> alliteration and internal rhyme. The latter has an example, two lines
> on from the one under discussion: "The storm shall not wake thee, nor
> shark overtake thee", so that I feel sure Kipling's intention would
> have been to pair where and there in the same way. Not only does this
> serve the poetry better but the choice of adverb makes more sense. So
> I am with John Lamb's penultimate paragraph on this and wholly agree
> with him on the need to read the work aloud to arrive at the natural
> solution. But then I suppose this poops the bibliographer's party!
>
> Brian Payne
> Norwich
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 20:10:41 +0000
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Kipling's poem "Seal Lullaby"
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Dear Mr Lamb,
> May I congratulate you on your fascinating and thorough research of
> "Seal Lullaby". I will post it on our mailbase and copy it to David
> Alan Richards, a vice president and our representative in the USA.
> His bibliography of Kipling's works is to be launched next week. As
> this is a copyright issue he may be the best person to comment, when
> he has the time.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Cc: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 5:42 PM
> Subject: Kipling's poem "Seal Lullaby"
>
>
> Dear Ms. Keskar,
>
> I am writing concerning a prior correspondence between you and
> a colleague of mine, one Peter James (PJ) Livesey. To refresh
> your memory, this concerned textual disagreement among printed
> sources of Rudyard Kipling's poem Seal Lullaby, which I am
> given to understand first appeared in print in the August 1893
> edition of the British magazine National Review. In some
> sources, one line of the poem reads, "Where billow meets
> billow, then soft be thy pillow;" while in others it reads
> "Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pilow;".
>
> Unaware of PJ's inquiry to you, I had been doing some research
> on this very topic. He recalls that you cited a 1901 edition
> of The Jungle Book as a source for the word "then" being
> authoritative. As it turns out, google.com has an enormous
> online collection of digitized books - not text files made
> from scans that were passed through an optical character
> recognition algorithm mind you, but actual photographs of
> individual pages. Their search capability is quite extensive
> so that one can, for example, look for all books in their
> collection published between 1893 and Kipling's death in 1936
> that contain a specific phrase. When searching for the phrase
> "then soft be thy pillow", a total of eight different relevant
> books turns up in that period - Human Documents:
> Character-Sketches of Representative Men and Women of the
> Time, by Arthur Lynch and published by Bertram Dobell of
> London in 1896, an 1897 edition of The Jungle Book, Volume 47
> of the Ohio Educational Monthly (1898), a book entitled
> Psychology for Teachers (1901), Kipling compilations from 1919
> and 1928 and two others. When searching for the phrase "there
> soft be thy pillow", there are about forty unique relevant
> citations, including editions of The Jungle Book from 1894,
> 1895, 1899 and 1920; various collected works of Kipling from
> 1894, 1899, 1902, 1919 and 1936; and Volume 12 of Book News
> (1894).
>
> If you care to have a look at these yourself, the URLs in
> question are
>
> http://books.google.com/books?lr=&num=100&as_brr=0&q=%22there
> +soft+be+thy+pillow%22&btnG=Search
> +Books&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=1&as_miny_is=1890&as_maxm_is=12&as_maxy_is=1936
>
> and
>
> http://books.google.com/books?lr=&num=100&as_brr=0&q=%22then
> +soft+be+thy+pillow%22&btnG=Search
> +Books&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=1&as_miny_is=1890&as_maxm_is=12&as_maxy_is=1936
>
> In books published since Kipling's death, I found "then" in
> what appear to be about fifteen different sources. One of
> these is an historical photographic reprint edition of
> Psychology for Teachers cited above. A couple of the most
> recent state that they obtained the text from public domain
> Internet sources. Several of the rest have the look of
> low-budget, limited-run, soft-cover editions that may not have
> been afforded the editorial wherewithal to detect, let alone
> question such a small difference. By contrast, I found
> several times as many volumes that used "there", including
> Kipling compilations and editions of The Jungle Book from
> 1937, 1940, 1942, 1948, 1969, 1985, 1986, 1989, 1994, 1999,
> 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2008.
>
> This is in no way conclusive because there are certainly other
> editions and possibly even direct instructions from the author
> himself of which I am unaware. However, it does seem that
> most of the versions published both during Kipling's lifetime
> and since his death have used the word "there" in the line in
> question. That initially led me to wonder whether there might
> have been a typesetting error in 1897 that was subsequently
> corrected in some editions and reproduced in others.
>
> The earliest source that I have found using "when" is,
> curiously, Lynch's book in 1896. As I very much doubt the
> 1897 version of The Jungle Book used Lynch as a source, I can
> only conclude that either there must have been an even earlier
> printing of Seal Lullaby that used "then" or else two people
> made the same change quite independently of one another. The
> sources that I have seen that use "where" prior to 1896 were
> all printed in the United States. This may be because
> google.com has gotten much of its collection from University
> libraries in the US, or it may be that US editions are somehow
> more likely than UK editions to use "there".
>
> Kipling was very precise with his choice of words and the
> preceding phrase,"Where billow meets billow" is consistent in
> every version I have seen. Given the parallel construction
> with the following phrase, it seems to me to make more sense
> that both phrases would refer to a common spatial location
> established by the use of the word "where". In other words,
> Kipling has the mother seal saying something along the lines
> of, "may your pillow be soft in the place where the billows
> meet". For me, at least, that works much better than, "may
> your pillow be soft at the time where the billows meet". Had
> Kipling wanted "then soft be thy pillow", would he not have
> started with "When billow meets billow"? In either case,
> agreement within the phrase goes hand in hand with a natural
> internal rhyme. For an author whose poems all but demand to
> be read aloud, matching "there" with "where" seems to me the
> preferable choice.
>
> I would be very interested to know of any sources that you may
> have prior to the 1901 edition that PJ mentioned, particularly
> British sources. International copyright violations were no
> less rampant in the late 19th century than they are today and
> it is possible that a word of no major consequence might be
> changed here and there by an unscrupulous publisher intending
> to provide themselves a legal loophole. Alternatively, it is
> possible that a minor error happened during the rush to
> typeset the second or third printing of a very popular book.
> Whatever the cause, I would like to hear your own views on the
> discrepancy. Thank you for your time on this matter. I very
> much appreciate any light that you may be able to shed on this
> issue.
>
> Sincerely,
> John Lamb
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Not got a Hotmail account? Sign-up now - Free
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Not using Hotmail on your phone? Why not? Get it now.
|
