| "If—" | |
|---|---|
| byRudyard Kipling | |
.jpg) ADoubleday, Page & Co. edition from 1910 | |
| First published in | Rewards and Fairies |
| Publisher | Doubleday, Page & Company |
| Publication date | 1910 (116 years ago) (1910) |
"If—" is a poem by English poetRudyard Kipling (1865–1936), written circa 1895[1] as a tribute toLeander Starr Jameson. It is a literary example ofVictorian-era values.[2] The poem, first published inRewards and Fairies (1910) following the story "Brother Square-Toes", is written in the form of paternal advice to the poet's son,John.[3]
"If—" first appeared in the "Brother Square Toes" chapter of the bookRewards and Fairies, a collection of Kipling's poetry and short-story fiction published in 1910. In his posthumously published autobiography,Something of Myself (1937), Kipling said that, in writing the poem, he was inspired by the character ofLeander Starr Jameson,[4] leader of the failedJameson Raid against theSouth African Republic to overthrow theBoer government ofPaul Kruger. The failure of thatmercenarycoup d'état aggravated the political tensions between theUnited Kingdom and the Boers, which led to theSecond Boer War (1899–1902).[5][6]
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son![7]
As an evocation of Victorian-era stoicism, the "stiff upper lip" self-discipline that popular culture rendered into a British nationalvirtue and character trait, "If—" remains a cultural touchstone.[8] The British cultural-artifact status of the poem is evidenced by theparodies of the poem, and by its popularity among Britons.[9][10]
Kipling himself in the last year of his life took wry note of the poem's ubiquity:
Once started, the mechanisation of the age made [the verses] snowball themselves in a way that startled me. Schools, and places where they teach, took them for the suffering Young—which did me no good with the Young when I met them later. ('Why did you write that stuff? I’ve had to write it out twice as an impot.') They were printed as cards to hang up in offices and bedrooms; illuminated text-wise and anthologised to weariness. Twenty-seven of the Nations of the Earth translated them into their seven-and-twenty tongues, and printed them on every sort of fabric.[4]
In 1931, Elizabeth Lincoln Otis wrote "An 'If' for Girls" in response to Kipling's poem. Otis's poem was published in the anthologyFather: An Anthology of Verse (1931).[11]
T. S. Eliot included the poem in his 1941 collectionA Choice of Kipling's Verse.
In India, a framed copy of the poem was affixed to the wall before the study desk in the cabins of the officer cadets at theNational Defence Academy atPune and theIndian Naval Academy at Ezhimala.[12] In Britain, the first verse is set, in granite setts, into the pavement of the promenade inWestward Ho! in Devon.[13] The third and fourth lines of the second stanza of the poem: "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / and treat those two impostors just the same" are written on the wall of the players' entrance to theCentre Court at theAll England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, where theWimbledon Championships are held.[14] These same lines appear at theWest Side Tennis Club inForest Hills, New York City, where theUS Open was played until 1977.[15]
The Indian writerKhushwant Singh considered the poem "the essence of the message ofThe Gita in English."[16]
Charles McGrath, a former deputy editor ofThe New Yorker and a former editor of theNew York Times Book Review, wrote that when he was in school, "they had to recite Kipling's 'If—' every day, right after thePledge of Allegiance."[17]
Pablo Neruda—like Kipling, a Nobel laureate—found a framed ornamental copy of the poem near theDuke of Alba's bedside in thePalacio de Liria. However, his view was not favourable, and he referred to it as "that pedestrian and sanctimonious poetry, precursor of theReader's Digest, whose intellectual level seems to me no higher than that of the Duke of Alba's boots."[18]
In theBBC's 1996 nationwide poll, "If—" was voted the UK's favourite poem, gaining twice as many votes as the runner-up.[19]
The boxerMuhammad Ali was known to carry the poem in his wallet throughout his life as a guiding principle.[20]
In 2006, the French philosopherOlivier Rey saw "If—" as an example of paternal tyranny, in which the father imposes a list of impossible conditions on his son.[21]
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If public domain audiobook atLibriVox
