379954

Rudyard Kipling and France (Continued)Author(s): Arnold H. RowbothamSource: The French Review, Vol. 10, No. 6 (May, 1937), pp. 472-479Published by: American Association of Teachers of FrenchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/379954 .

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THE FRENCH REVIEW

RUDYARD KIPLING AND FRANCE

ARNOLD H. ROWBOTHAM

(Continued)

This was possibly the case with Kim, which was published in Fabulet and d'Hurnibre's translation in 1902. The work had first appeared in an American magazine, McClure's and the cool recep- tion it had received on this side of the Atlantic was re-echoed by no less a journal than the London Times, a strong supporter of the imperialistic philosophy of the author. The conservative critic of the Revue des Deux Mondes saw in it "l'oeuvre d'un 6crivain qui se fatigue."20 It pleased the lovers of the exotic, however, and Abel Chevally calls it "une ceuvre d'une puissante po6sie... vaste et fiddle peinture de tout un peuple. .. merveilleux tableau vivant de l'Inde."21 It must be noted that it was the exotic writers like Pierre Mille, Ary Leblond and Robert d'Humieres who were the first Kipling enthusiasts in France. The fact that Kipling really did not know and appreciate the soul of India, as certain critics have pointed out, had no effect upon these enthusiasts, some of whom had actually visited India.

But if there was a difference of opinion regarding Kim this cannot be claimed for Stalky and Co. which was translated in 1923.22 "Quelle monotonie dans Stalky et Cie," writes Henri Bordeaux,23 and even the critic of the Mercure doubts whether any Frenchman could read the book to the end.24 Critics agreed that it was incomprehensible to the average Frenchman. This is not surprising. Most of Kipling's English tales are not generally appreciated by people outside the Anglo-Saxon countries and none of his stories have such a restricted appeal as this tale of English schoolboys, in spite of the fact some will agree with Richard La

20 T. de Wyzewa, "Un nouveau roman de Rudyardi Kipling" Revue des Deux Mondes, Oct. 15, 1901.

21 Le roman anglais de notre temps. (London, 1921), Chap. viii. 22 Stalky et Cie, tr. P. Bettelheim et R. Thomas, Mercure, 1903. 23 Correspondant, Dec. 25, 1907. 24 Mercure XLVI, 478.

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Gallienne that it is the best school story ever written.25 Even the humor rings false to the uninitiated.

But if Stalky et Cie failed because of its localized character, La lumibre qui s'iteint succeeded for the opposite reason. The book had been published by Lippincotts Magazine in 1891 and had appeared later in feuilleton in Figaro. The story had in it much that was akin to the work of the French novelists of the seventies and was therefore peculiarly acceptable to the French reading public. Critics agreed that this story of Dick Heldar's blindness

proved: that Kipling could handle something besides the exotic. They saw in the story of the hero's misfortunes the beauty of classic tragedy; the appeal of literary qualities which are universal. Melchior de Vogii6, not always a lenient critic, asserts that this novel alone is sufficient to place the author among the famous writers of all countries and of all times.26 Even the obvious bru- tality of certain parts of the work could not take from it the last- ing quality of its beauty. For Frenchmen it remains the most classic of Kipling's works.

A number of volumes of the short stories of Kipling have appeared in French translation from time to time. Among the most generally admired are L'homme qui voulut tre roi (The Man who would be King), the title story of a volume published in 1901; Les batisseurs des ponts (The Bridge Builders), title story of a volume published in 1902; La plutL belle histoire du monde (The Finest Story in the World), title story of the volume published in 1900; Le retour d'Imlay (The Return of Imlay), title story of the volume published in 1907; and Sans ben6fice de clerge (With- out Benefit of Clergy).

In this choice of favorites there is perhaps little which differs from the choice of Anglo-Saxons. One notices a definite preju- dice in favor of tholse stories in which Kipling deals with objective things objectively. The method of psychological analysis which French writers were using so successfully was foreign to the best

25 Could anything be more antipodal to the French spirit, for example, than the tale The Flag of their Country. A few years ago the writer gave to a group of Chinese students of English literature the story The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat (A Diversity of Creatures, 1917) and they found it completely unintelligible. 26 Revue des Deuzx Mondes, May, 1901.

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THE FRENCH REVIEW

of Kipling's art. It is for this reason, perhaps, that such tales as "They," in Traffics and Discoveries, "An Habitation Enforced", in Actions and Reactions (the latter volumes translated by Fabulet and Jackson, and published in 1911), were not appreciated.

When the Great War broke out Kipling's genius, which had lain dormant for a number of years, flickered again into life. His tales of the Fleet published as Sea Warfare were translated by Cl. et J. Ritt in 1916. They came to the French reading public not only as the works of an ally describing the warlike activity of a common cause but also as the words of an artist who was heart and soul a friend of France. In spite of the sympathy shown by Kipling for the French cause, however, he will be remembered in France as elsewhere for his earlier stories, and particularly for two works: the Jungle Tales and The Light that Failed.

That part of the writer's work by which he was best known to the English-speaking world, his poems, has naturally, been more or less of a closed book to the French reading public. Kipling's poetry is known to them chiefly through a eulogistic article published by Andr6 Chevrillon in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1920.27 The writer examines the poetry in its social and political background. As in his article published twenty years previously, Chevrillon portrays Kipling as the spokesman of the English race; the voice, sometimes the prophetic voice, of the British people. In his poetry also the French critic sees the English writer as a "professeur d'energie." He is a call to duty, a "professeur de conduite." The critic's summary of his poetry is eloquent and discriminating. He speaks of the strident music of the verse: "Ses vers sonnent comme des coups de marteau frappes a puis- sants bras nus de forgeron." He praises the strange harmony of the words: "pouvoir des longues syllabes soutenues, le vague, in- fini bruissement de la consonne allit6ree; la valeur, enfin, du der- nier mot qui prolonge cette rumeur en 6voquant aussi les grands tonalites de la Bible." Nowhere, perhaps, has the subject been more brilliantly expounded. Next to an adequate translation of the poems themselves (a task almost impossible to achieve, according

27 A. Chevrillon "La Poosie de Rudyard Kipling", Revue des Deux Mondes, April 15, May 15, 1920.

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to French critics) this exposition of the poet's art is most satis- factory and enlightening.

One cannot leave the subject of Kipling's poetry without mention of the tribute of that great French poetess, the late Comtesse de Noailles, who, in a poem addressed to her English compeer, greets him as:

"Celui qui d'un elan natif et volontaire Joint au Nord obstin6 l'Orient des mysteres A la fois actif et songeant".28

The Comtesse de Noailles praises Kipling as the eternal poet, the thinker who leads his people and who is the supreme expression of the soul of his race; a poet, like Shakespeare who is above all "le consolateur."

French literature is notoriously weak in the novel of adventure.29 For this reason the French have always shown a keen interest in foreign works of this genre. This accounts for the popu- larity in France of writers of adventure stories from Fenimore Cooper, through Wells and Stevenson, to more modern novelists such as Jack London and even writers of Far-Western story tellers such as Bret Harte and James Oliver Curwood. There is nothing surprising, then, in the interest shown in France in the adventure stories of Kipling.

Did this interest have any repercussion on the works of his French contemporaries? The question of literary influence is at best a difficult one. The debt of one author to another is often a subconscious one, something which has insinuated itself into his writing without his knowledge. It cannot of course, be claimed that Kipling has had that extreme importance on the French novel which was exerted by a chosen few, such as Scott and Richardson. There are, however, a few writers whose debt to the English no- velist is more or less obvious. Among these the most noticeable are the Tharaud brothers, Pierre Mille, Claude Farrere, and Andre Maurois.

28 Comtesse de Noailles: "A Rudyard Kipling"' (Revue de Paris, Dec. 1, 1921). 29 Even the term roman d'aventures has been appropriated to designate

quite different literary genres: the romances of the seventeenth century and of the Middle Ages.

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THE FRENCH REVIEW

The Tharaud brothers, Jean and J&rome, are interpreters of French colonial life as Kipling was that of India.30 Their exoticism is, like Kipling's, of the objective type. The literary influence of the English writer on these two brothers is to be found in the story Dingley, I'illustre ecrinvain. Published in 1906, this book is, therefore, one of the earliest reactions in French literature to the influence of the author of the Indian stories. It deals with a supposed incident in the life of the writer Dingley (who is Kipling himself), in which the authors have interpolated a keen but sym- pathetic satire of British imperialism. The Englishman is repre- sented in a dual role: as a philosopher of imperialism and as the national representative of that philosophy. The book is shot through with references to situations and characters in Kipling's books. It gives evidence not only of the authors' knowledge of his novels and poems but also of their ability to understand and appreciate them. The authors are impressed with the cocksureness of the British conception of the White Man's Burden but, even while condemning it, they pay unconscious tribute to the element of grandeur in this conception of imperial duty.

Pierre Mille has several points of comparison with his English counterpart. He was also an interpreter of the French colonial life, although he lacks the ardent imperialism of the English writer and is more successful in penetrating the minds of his characters. In Barnavaux he has created a sort of French Mulvaney. As one reads the Barnavaux stories he is conscious of the author's debt (in spite of obvious differences) to the chronicler of the English Tommy Atkins.31

One of the important representatives of exoticism in modern French literature, Pierre Mille, has had a long and varied expe- rience covering a number of different countries and peoples. He spent two years in England at the time when Kipling was being discovered by the Anglo-Saxon world. From this residence, we

30 Their chief contributions to French colonial literature are La fete arabe, Rabat, Marrakech. 31 See, for example, the chapter: "Barnavaux, g&xnral" in the story Sur

la vaste terre (Paris, 1915), about the nun who dressed in soldiers' clothes to help repel an attack. The last lines suggest Kipling "Three months after the Ambatoumalza affair, after I'd) been sent back to Tananarive I was re- duced in rank for misbehavior. But that's another story l" (English version, Barnavau.t, London, 1915, p. 126).

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presume, came his interest in Kipling as well as that Anglophilism which is apparent in his works.

As an exoticist he is chiefly significant as a recorder of racial facts and differences, but in the manner rather of Gobineau than of Kipling. Without the limitations of an exaggerated nationalism he observes and classifies. But, like Kipling, he brings to his task a sense of humor; a more persuasive, a deeper humor perhaps, than the Englishman's but one which, in a similar way, adds to the vividness of his characters. Like Kipling, too, Pierre Mille is above all a master of the short story.

Claude Farrere, one of the best known of modern French story tellers was for many years an admirer of Kipling. A fellow officer and friend of Pierre Loti, Claude Farrere has continued the Loti tradition in French literature in a number of exotic stories. But it is to Kipling, and not to Loti that he owes his cult of energy. His novel of adventure Thomas l'Agnelet, gentilhomme de fortune, a story closer to the English model of the tale of adventure than anything else to be found in French literature, is a kind of apotheosis of an almost brutal energy such as is to be found in Kipling in his most extreme manner. The striking stories of

Futmres d'Opiums remind us often of Kipling's Indian stories and

poems, such as The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows (translated by Fabulet and d'Humieres and published in the Revue Blanche, De- cember 1, 1900), although this work can scarcely be said to contri- bute to the cult of energy. Even while noting the possible influence of Wells one cannot fail to conclude that without Kipling's tale, "As easy as A B C" (A Diversity of Creatures) Claude Farrere's story Les condamns d mort (1920) might not have been written. In both stories universal disaster is averted in true Wellsian manner, by use of a death-dealing ray.32 The chief character of La Bataille, probably Farrere's best known work (at least in this country) is a slightly Gallicized English officer who has the same class consciousness as the English public servant of Kipling. There are of course many elements in Claude Farrere's work which cannot be found in the English writer, notably his erotic sensuality

32 On p. 155 (Eng. tr.) we find the following remark of the narrator. "It is excellent for one man to die, if needs be for the multitude--wrote the great Rudyard Kipling."

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THE FRENCH REVIEW

(Kipling in general avoids the love motif) but nevertheless a care- ful examination of his stories will convince the reader of his debt to Rudyard Kipling.

To the Anglo-Saxon reading public probably the best known man of letters since Anatole France is Andre Maurois. His books on English themes have brought him a wide recognition every- where where English is spoken. He brings to a study of English literature a clearness and a charm which is typically Gallic, and an understanding which is refreshing in these days of hyper-nationalism. It is not surprising to find in his novelistic work an influence of Rudyard Kipling. He has told us that he became ac- quainted with the Englishman's works as a boy of thirteen and has described his meeting with the author of Kim thirty years after this first initiation into his works. The books which most clearly show the influence of Kipling are Les Silences du Colonel Bramble, and Les discours du Docteur O'Grady. These volumes are the pro- duct of the author's experiences in the trenches where he served as French liaison officer with the British army. Maurois's pictures of the British officer and soldier are, therefore, based on expe- rience. Nevertheless the book is redolent of Soldiers Three, Mine own People and other Indian stories. Maurois's Englishman is the Englishman of Kipling in his devotion to duty, his aversion to emotionalism, the rigidity of his customs, his desire to play the game and his habit of "seeing things through." The most evident debt to Kipling in the book is to be seen in the incident of Mlle Heninghem, the gate keeper of Hondezeele, whose puritan morals have been shocked by the repeated sight of the ablutions of certain British soldiers dressed as were the Kipling Tommies whentheytook the town of Lungtungpen (Les Silences du Colonel Bramble, Chap. XVIII). Her protest goes from bureau to bureau and from official to official, until it comes to Bramble who returns it with the mar- ginal comment: "Noted and returned" and thus closes the incident. Reading the story one is inevitably reminded of Kipling's satire of bureaucratic red tape "To be Filed for Reference," in Plain Tales from the Hills.33 No French writer has understood better

33 The interpolation of poems between the chapters of Les silences du Colonel Bramble is also reminiscent of Kipling. I suspect the goat incident in Chapter XXIII, another satire of official stupidity, owes much to Kipling.

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the spirit of Kipling's soldier (which is indeed the spirit of the modern Englishman) than has Maurois.34

Today in France, as elsewhere, Rudyard Kipling is remembered as the writer of those stirring stories which took Europe by storm in the effete nineties. The spirit underlying his imperialism is, we like to think, a thing of the past, which will gradually be forgotten, but readers of literature in all countries will never forget his con- summate art as a short story writer.

We have mentioned only the most obvious examples of Kipling's influence in France, but they are probably sufficient to show to what extent the author of the Jungle Books represents that stream of contact between the two countries which has through the cen- turies been of such mutual benefit and which has served to enrich the literature of both.

University of California, Berkeley.

34 Among the modern writers who owe a debt to Kipling we should probably mention IAopold Chauveau, a doctor who has written a numnber of children's stories. His books, notably Petit potsson devenw grand, Histoire du poisson-scie et du poisson-mnarteau, Les cures merveilleuses du docteur Popotame are delightful stories of animals, owing much to La Fontaine and Rabelais but even more, perhaps, to the Just so Stories of Kipling (Histoires comme ca, translated by Fabulet and d'Hcmieres, Paris, 1903). His portraits of animals are pervaded by the comic spirit, but they think and act often like humans and they have the same scorn for the human race as is to be found in the Jungle Stories.

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379954

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