 |
 |
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Nov 15, 2007, at 5:48 PM, Alastair Wilson wrote: > I am convinced that the poem "My Boy Jack" has been too closely > linked with the death of Kipling's son, John. > As Jim Wise has pointed out, the poem was first published as a > prefatory poem to Destroyers at Jutland, the third section of Sea > Warfare - first appearing in the Daily Telegraph on October 19th > 1916 (Martindell's Bibliography). I would agree that the poem is clearly not `about' John Kipling in a literal sense. John is not `Jack', nor did he die at sea. I'm very interested in the context Mr. Walker pointed out, which makes a lot of sense. However, it is worth considering that ``My Boy Jack'' -- much more so than ``Common Form'' -- _is_ a poem about a father finding solace after his sons death in pursuit of a noble cause -- the same noble cause in which John Kipling died. So if we are to look for a clue as to Mr. Kipling's opinion in the context of ``the books [he] left behind'', it surely is a good place to start. There's a very interesting discussion of (the play) ``My Boy Jack'' and other fictional treatments of John Kipling's death in Dorothea Flothow's paper[1] from this year's conference in Kent -- recently highlighted by George Simmers in his excellent "Great War Fiction"[2] blog. [1] http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_kent_flothow.htm [2] http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/ - -- Jim Wise [log in to unmask] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin) iD8DBQFHPd/vq/KRbT0KwbwRApKfAJ9+H3vbn3uoQ6OH37CQ11BIcKgCmQCfVfgv Ie6XNA5NVKL+jAVHd5Q8pak= =bcb2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----