I must admit I find the modern backlash against colonialism to be somewhat ridiculous; as if colonialism were something new, something purely European, something malicious and unnatural. What else has mankind done since it rose in Africa but displace its neighbors? What else does any animal do bu...
Dongeng yang kereeen. Meski masa kecil sering didongengi wayang dan hantu-hantu lokal, dongeng karya Rudyard Kipling tetaplah manis. Terlebih diterjemahkan oleh penerjemah favoritku Maggie Tiojakin dan Staven Andersen sebagai sang ilustrator pemanis sekaligus membuat hidup buku (Mereka sudah beke...
Last time I read The Jungle Book was years ago, to my son, when he was a preschooler. I didn’t remember much before I started this read. It might be that I only read him selective stories, because my memory of the stories was sketchy. Mowgli – aye, all of them, even the ones included in the other...
In a really roundabout way, Kipling is responsible for you crying at Bambi (I didn't cry, I was just confused. The subtlety of the gunshot of camera didn't register. I spent the rest of the movie thinking Bambi's dad had gained sole custody. I was kind of stupid kid sometimes.) The Jungle Book is...
Originally published on my blog here in July 2001.Few of Kipling's fictional stories contain much of an autobiographical element, despite his frequent use of the first person. In this collection of stories, the school and some of the characters are based on his own experiences; Beetle, in particu...
The Foreword by Roger Burlingame is most helpful to the understanding the context of this collection of stories. Some of Mr. Burlingame's insight comes from having met Kipling. Kipling was a visitor to Mr. Burlingame's childhood home as Kipling was a friend of his father's. Mr. Burlingame points ...
Night and the liquor was in their heads — They laughed and talked no bounds, Till they waked the keepers on their beds, And the keepers loosed the hounds. ...
During that time, Mrs Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly, experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London. She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient Sussex (’t’s softening to ‘d’s as one warmed) when the bus brought Mrs Fettley from thirty miles...
Five miles west of Chachuran lives Bubbling Well Road, and the house of the gosain or priest of Arti-goth. It was the priest who showed me the road, but it is no thanks to him that I am able to tell this story. Five miles west of Chachuran is a patch of the plumed jungle-grass, that turns over in...
Jean Ingelow.2 Once upon a time there was a Man and his Wife and a Tertium Quid.3 All three were unwise, but the Wife was the unwisest. The Man should have looked after his Wife, who should have avoided the Tertium Quid, who, again, should have married a wife of his own, after clean and open flir...
