> “Even if one is required to say ‘I passionately believe that water would certainly wet us, as fire would certainly burn,’” he wrote in his resignation letter, “the routine affirmation of one’s beliefs as a precondition of making a living constitutes compelled speech and corrupts everyone who participates in the performance.”
An echo of how Rudyard Kipling was recently stripped out of Roald Dahl's Matilda because the idea that people might enjoy his literature has become offensive.
The referenced poem is, aptly enough, on the theme that reality will still be there regardless of what your ideology says.
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
- "The Jungle Book" and "Riki Tiki Tavi" were very popular
- The controversial pieces like "The White Man's Burden" weren't translated until after Kipling's death
Also, "The White Man's Burden" is viewed with a bit of distance. Few in America remember the context in which it was written, and that context is as important as the text of the poem if not more so. It was an argument for America subjugating the Philippines. Mark Twain wrote a poem to counter imperialism and that argument. Later Americans managed to both defeat the Philippines and cancel both poets :)
It does rhyme in translation! And yes, there is a lot of hard work in taking a poem from another language, adapting it to not only not sound weird but also preserve as many of the little connotations of words, and then also making it rhyme. I admire a good translation as much as the original.
I'm curious about the rhyming in Russian poetry. Latin poetry doesn't rhyme (it's defined almost entirely by the patterning of long and short syllables; word stress exists in Latin but isn't relevant to poetic meter), and my Latin teacher explained this by reference to the fact that, Latin inflection being what it is, it would be extremely easy to rhyme. So easy, apparently, that nobody ever even tried.
It is my impression that Russian is heavily inflected in much the same manner as Latin. So - do Russians feel that certain rhymes are "cheap" or otherwise unworthy? Is it common in poetry to rhyme e.g. one verb form with an identical verb form in the rhyming line, or one noun case ending with the same noun case ending? Any distinction between "high" poetry and vulgar or vernacular poetry?
(For what it's worth, my instincts for English poetic rhyming are:
- Rhyming a word with itself is Poor Form. It's still Poor Form if you rhyme a word with a homonym of itself.
- Rhyming an inflectional suffix with itself doesn't work in the terms I just stated. The suffix is free to participate in a rhyme, but it can't supply the entire rhyme. So rhyming "being" with "seeing" is fine, because "be" and "see" rhyme and it's permissible to continue that rhyme into "being" / "seeing", but rhyming "being" with "doing" can't be done, even though -ing and -ing are the same syllable.)
>Do Russians feel that certain rhymes are "cheap" or otherwise unworthy?
Yes. Rhyming verbs with verbs is considered so basic only novice poets do it. I'm pretty sure there are some examples of such rhymes being used in classic poetry, but they are always used in extreme moderation. This is because they are very easy to construct. So easy in fact, they are mostly not used in children's limericks.
An echo of how Rudyard Kipling was recently stripped out of Roald Dahl's Matilda because the idea that people might enjoy his literature has become offensive.
The referenced poem is, aptly enough, on the theme that reality will still be there regardless of what your ideology says.
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
(There are other verses: https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_copybook.htm )