Counter-Currents
2,469 words
Rudyard Kipling is out of favor, in large part because his work was so politically and racially incorrect. One of his suppressed poems is “The Burden of Jerusalem,” which is considered “anti-Semitic.” Indeed, several of his poems have social or racial themes that render them verboten. His books even had swastikas—Aryan Indian symbols—in both right- and left-facing orientations on their covers or title pages.
In “Mr. Eliot’s Kipling,” a review of T. S. Eliot’s edition of A Choice of Kipling’s Verse in the Left-wing Nation magazine in 1943, Jewish chauvinist Lionel Trilling expressed disdain for Eliot’s admiration for Kipling, and drew analogies between the two poets. He also accused Eliot of anti-Semitism.
In a letter written from Jerusalem to his only surviving child, Elsie, Kipling reportedly observed that “many races are vile but the Jew in bulk on his native heath is the Vilest of them all.”
“The Burden of Jerusalem” exhibits the same non-sycophantic attitude. Consequently, it was suppressed for many years. Kipling’s widow made the decision to withhold the poem from publication. (The fact that it disparages Muslims did not bother anyone.)
English poet, novelist, and short story writer Rudyard Kipling was born to English parents in Bombay (due to the demographic and psychological implosion of the white race, it is now called “Mumbai”) in 1865. (His mother was of Scottish descent.) In addition to his high literary reputation during his lifetime, he was one of the most popular writers in England in both prose and verse. Buried in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey next to Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, Kipling’s cousin, Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, was a pallbearer at his funeral. Over the course of his life, Kipling lived in India, England, and, for four years, Brattleboro, Vermont. (His wife was American.)
He won the Nobel Prize in 1907 at 42, and remains the youngest recipient of the Literature Prize. He was sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship, the Order of Merit, and a knighthood, but declined all those honors.
Kipling used swastikas in the published versions of his books
In the early 1940s copies of “The Burden of Jerusalem” were circulated among Anglo-American elites through the auspices of Sir Alfred Webb-Johnson, a physician who attended Kipling during his final illness. Kipling’s widow entrusted copies of two unpublished poems to Webb-Johnson, “Burden” and “A Chapter of Proverbs” (which contains no discernible censor-worthy material).
Webb-Johnson deposited copies of the poems in the British Museum and gave others to Prime Minister Winston Churchill (which was placed in the Churchill Library, Cambridge), President Franklin Roosevelt (placed in the Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York), and Queen Mary (placed in the Library at WindsorCastle). (Source.)
Churchill also sent a copy of “Burden” to President Roosevelt, bound between blue-and-gold covers. In his October 17, 1943 cover letter, Churchill wrote, “I understand that Mrs. Kipling decided not to publish them in case they should lead to controversy and it is therefore important that their existence should not become known and there should be no public reference to the gift.”
Again, a reading of the two poems proves that “Burden,” not “Proverbs,” was what frightened everyone.
The late Christopher Hitchens published the two poems in an anti-white book he wrote, Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies (1990), pp. 86–93, which is where I first read them. He reissued the book with a new preface in 2004 as Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship.
Hitchens said he unearthed the poems and correspondence at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park in 1988. About Churchill’s October 17, 1943 letter to FDR Hitchens wrote, “This is practically the only communication from Churchill, in an entire file of correspondence which extends in print over three volumes, to which Roosevelt made no reply or acknowledgement of any sort.” (p. 93)
This is untrue. FDR wrote letters to both Churchill and Dr. Alfred Webb-Johnson dated October 25, 1943.
In the letter to Webb-Johnson FDR said, “I had read ‘The Burden of Jerusalem’ before and I could understand why Mrs. Kipling thought it would be best not to publish it. Nevertheless, it is a gem.”
To Churchill he wrote, “Dear Winston: Those two little books are gems—and I can well understand why they should not be made public at this time. Perhaps ‘The Burden of Jerusalem’ should wait until you and I are strong enough to carry Ibn Saud to Jerusalem and Dr. Weizman [sic] to Meca [sic].”
Again, this was 1943. How ultra-sensitive the “leaders of the Western world” were! Compare Kipling’s mild, inoffensive poem to the inexpressibly vile anti-white messages that pour daily into the impressionable minds of hundreds of millions of people the world over—including elites, alien and native—through television, motion pictures, songs, and video games—not to mention books and poems!
Be honest. Who really rules?
Swastika on Kipling book cover, 1929–1930
It should be noted that despite the frequent invocation of Biblical motifs (primarily Old Testament?) in Kipling’s work, he apparently was not a Christian. The Bible and its cadences were a literary, not a sacred resource for him. Moreover, he was a Freemason, and Freemasonry is incompatible with orthodox Christian belief, Protestant or Catholic.
Since most of us are no longer versed in our Christian heritage, it is necessary to explain the Old Testament background of the narrative, which traces Jewish and Muslim myth/history from the Hebrew patriarch Abraham to the present day.
Abraham or Abram is mythically regarded as the founder of Judaism, the progenitor of the Hebrew race through his son Isaac, and of Arabs through his son Ishmael, Isaac’s half-brother.
As recounted in Genesis, Isaac (later the father of Jacob and Esau) was the only son of Abraham and Sarah. He was born after Sarah was too old to conceive. Following Isaac’s birth, Sarah grew jealous of her servant Hagar, Abraham’s concubine, and cruelly drove Hagar and Ishmael (Hagar’s son by Abraham), into the desert to die.
However, through God’s grace they survived. Today, Ishmael is honored as the forefather of the Arabs by Muslims who esteem him as Jews do Isaac. Consequently, the use of the name “Ishmael” to mark a social outcast, common in Judaism and Christianity (e.g., the famous opening line of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael”), is unknown in Islam.
In the final stanza of the poem, the narrator blames Abraham for the age-old strife between Arabs and Jews:
Yet he who bred the unending strife,
And was not brave enough to save
The Bondsmaid from the furious wife,
He wrought thy woe, Jerusalem.
Immediately following the poem I’ve provided brief, conventional definitions of terms within it, in the order of their appearance, which might be unfamiliar. With such background, the meaning of Kipling’s text is self-explanatory. To be clear, I don’t take most Old Testament “history” of this kind literally. I lean heavily toward Old Testament minimalism. (More detailed summary here.)
THE BURDEN OF JERUSALEM
But Abram said unto Sarai, “Behold thy maid is in thy hand. Do to
her as it pleaseth thee.” And when Sarai dealt hardly with her
she fled from her face.
Genesis 16:6
In ancient days and deserts wild
There rose a feud—still unsubdued—
Twixt Sarah’s son and Hagar’s child
That centred round Jerusalem
(While underneath the timeless boughs
Of Mamre’s oak ‘mid stranger-folk
The Patriarch slumbered and his spouse
Nor dreamed about Jerusalem.)
But Ishmael lived where he was born,
And pastured there in tents of hair
Among the Camel and the Thorn—
Beersheba, South Jerusalem
But Israel sought employ and food
At Pharaoh’s knees, till Rameses
Dismissed his plaguey multitude,
With curses, toward Jerusalem.
Across the wilderness they came
And launched their horde o’er Jordan’s ford,
And blazed the road by sack and flame
To Jebusite Jerusalem.
Then Kings and Judges ruled the land,
And did not well by Israel,
Till Babylonia took a hand
And drove them from Jerusalem.
And Cyrus sent them back anew,
To carry on as they had done,
Till angry Titus overthrew
The fabric of Jerusalem.
Then they were scattered North and West,
While each Crusade more certain made
That Hagar’s vengeful son possessed
Mohammedan Jerusalem.
Where Ishmael held his desert state
And framed a creed to serve his need—
“Allah-hu-Akbar! God is Great!”
He preached it in Jerusalem.
And every realm they wandered through
Rose, far or near, in hate and fear,
And robbed and tortured, chased and slew,
The outcasts of Jerusalem.
So ran their doom—half seer, half slave—
And ages passed, and at the last
They stood beside each tyrant’s grave,
And whispered of Jerusalem.
We do not know what God attends
The Unloved Race in every place
Where they amass their dividends
From Riga to Jerusalem.
But all the course of Time makes clear
To everyone (except the Hun)
It does not pay to interfere
With Cohen from Jerusalem.
For ‘neath the Rabbi’s curls and fur
(Or scents and rings of movie-kings)
The aloof, unleavened blood of Ur,
Broods steadfast on Jerusalem.
Where Ishmael bides in his own place—
A robber bold, as was foretold,
To stand before his brother’s face—
The wolf without Jerusalem.
And burdened Gentile o’er the main,
Must bear the weight of Israel’s hate
Because he is not brought again
In triumph to Jerusalem.
Yet he who bred the unending strife,
And was not brave enough to save
The Bondsmaid from the furious wife,
He wrought thy woe, Jerusalem.
Mamre’s oak: An oak tree on the West Bank regarded as “Abraham’s tree” since the 16th century. It was situated in a grove where Abraham several times resided.
The Patriarch: Abraham
Beersheba: Spot where Abraham resided for many years, and from which he sent Hagar and Ishmael into the desert to die. It was the southern limit of Palestine in Biblical times. Thus: “South [of] Jerusalem.”
Rameses: Egyptian pharaoh, a reference to the Jews’ expulsion from Egypt as described in Exodus.
Jordan‘s ford: The crossing of the Jordan River by the Hebrews, leading to the subjugation of Canaan (Palestine).
Jebusite Jerusalem: The Jebusites were a Canaanite tribe dwelling at Jebus (Jerusalem) before its conquest by the Hebrews.
Kings and Judges: The period of Jewish hegemony described in the Old Testament books of Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. The kingdom split into Israel and Judah during this period.
Babylonia took a hand: The northern Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BC, the southern Kingdom of Judah to the Babylonians in 586 BC.
Cyrus sent them back: Following the fall of Babylon to the Aryan-Persian Cyrus the Great in 539 BC, Persia financed the return of Judean exiles to Jerusalem, where a Jewish province was again established.
Titus overthrew: Future Roman emperor who destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. (In real life, the pagan Titus had a politically powerful Jewish mistress, Berenice!)
Scattered North and West: The Jewish diaspora after the fall of Jerusalem to Rome.
Each Crusade: The medieval Christian crusades in the Middle East.
“Hagar’s vengeful son,” Ishmael, etc.: At this point in the poem, Arabs and Muslims collectively, not the original man.
Hun: Germans
The aloof, unleavened blood of Ur: Beneath their modern-seeming exterior, Jews’ ancient, vengeful hatred still burns.
This year “The Burden of Jerusalem” was finally published with more than 1,300 other poems in a new book: Thomas Pinney, ed., The Cambridge Edition of The Poems of Rudyard Kipling, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). “Burden” can be found in Volume III: Uncollected Poems.
Cambridge University Press states that this three-volume set is the first complete edition of Kipling’s poems, many of which had never been published before.
Every authorized text of the collected poems, from original periodical publication to the final edition in the author’s lifetime, has been collated to produce a full record of the author’s additions, deletions, and alterations. A note to each poem provides a record of publication and, where possible, information about its occasion and context. Through its completeness, its record of changes, and its notes, the edition provides a new basis for the study and appreciation of Kipling’s poetry.
Poetic Structure
Readers uninterested in the technical aspects of poetry can skip this section. But whenever I particularly like a poem or, as here, examine it in detail, I like to know something about its formal properties. What is the poet doing?
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an analysis of “The Burden of Jerusalem” online, and so had to do it myself.
The first complication is the form of the poem. I’ve used the format presented by Christopher Hitchens. In addition, an American Kipling collector who owns a typescript copy of the poem, and has published a bibliography of Kipling, describes the typescript copy in the British Library as consisting of “seventeen 4-line stanzas,” which is consistent with the pattern I’ve followed.
But the structure shown in a Web version of the poem looks very different. Most but not all stanzas are 7 lines long, and are markedly dissimilar, graphically, to the 17-4 version. It would be nice to know which format was used in the new Cambridge Edition, but I have not seen it.
Anyway, “Burden” is a 17-stanza narrative poem consisting of 4 lines each. So each stanza is a quatrain. I would classify “The Burden of Jerusalem” as a variation of the long ballad (hymnal, Horatio) measure.
Like most English-language verse that isn’t free verse, it is “accentual-syllabic” in nature. In scansion, an unstressed word or syllable is marked with a small “u” above it, a stressed one with “/”. Each line of a poem is divided also into an appropriate number of “feet.”
Here, each line has 4 feet (so, tetrameter), each of which is an iamb—a 2-syllable foot in which an unstressed syllable precedes a stressed syllable. Thus, the poem is written in rhymed iambic tetrameter.
Due to the vagaries of Word and WordPress formatting, it is convenient to illustrate this form by using a scanned line from another poem, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”
Iambic tetrameter: the 4th line in the final stanza of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”
If you examine the fourth line in the final stanza (ignore the other lines)—”I took the one less traveled by”—you will see the metric pattern employed by Kipling in “The Burden of Jerusalem.” The small vertical lines divide the phrase into four feet, the stress marks above the syllables mark the accentual pattern. It is an iambic tetrameter line.
Kipling’s rhyme scheme (I hope this formats properly on the blog) is:
a
b b
a
é
The first and third lines of each stanza rhyme.
The second line of every stanza contains an internal or midline rhyme:
“There rose a feud—still unsubdued—”
“Of Mamre’s oak ‘mid stranger-folk”
Finally, I arbitrarily use “é” to symbolize the repeated word Jerusalem. “Jerusalem” is the last word in the fourth line of every stanza of the poem. These lines aren’t refrains, nor does Jerusalem rhyme with other words. It is simply repeated.
20 comments
Even the likeable Israeli Jew film maker Yoav Shamir (https://counter-currents.com/2012/01/interview-with-yoav-shamir/) lets his false guard of “tikkum olam” slip by classifying white South African apartheid leftists as “heroes” (…Helen Suzman, Beyers Naude, et al).
As a racially-aware white South African let me tell you straight up that these so-called “white struggle-heroes” are not seen as such by my people here today, even the more stupid Saffer whites are beginning to wake up (those who have not been murdered by blacks yet) but rather, these leftists are now seen by your average Saffer white as “verraairers” …or traitors.
By any chance, do you know when he wrote the poem? He refers to (the Hun) as being in opposition to Jews. I’m wondering if he wrote it after Hitler took power in 1933,
You point out that although it disparages Muslims, that didn’t bother anyone. I guess the same can be said of the Germans, whom he refers to as “the Hun.”
According to Wikipedia “Less than one year before his death Kipling gave a speech (titled “An Undefended Island”) to The Royal Society of St George on 6 May 1935 warning of the danger which Nazi Germany posed to Britain.” Although I consider Wikipedia very unreliable, if this is true, I wonder what made him “anti-German.” Historian David Irving has debunked the viewpoint that Hitler ever had any intention of attacking England and in fact even offered an alliance with England. Perhaps Kipling was affected by propaganda in the English newspapers. Or maybe it was a carryover of the anti-German attitude from WW I, because Hitler had not yet had his friendly meeting with the English King yet in 1935 and I don’t believe he made his offers of friendship yet, as a didn’t feel the need to until Churchill and the Jews began whipping up hatred of Germany after 1936 when British Jews bribed Churchill with a huge check.
I am uncertain of the poem’s date. Kipling died in 1936.
I read a 2007 online discussion about the poem by members of a Kipling society. They were unable to pin down the date. They mentioned a trip he’d made to Palestine (perhaps in the early ’30s, I’m not sure), and seemed to associate it with that event.
I believe the new Cambridge Edition provides a date, because in the Table of Contents many previously unpublished poems are tagged “undated,” but this one is not.
Kipling was anti-German during WWI. I’d want more reliable information than the Wikipedia quote for his later views, but it is quite possible that he retained an anti-German outlook.
You never knew about Hitler. The Germans maintained a list of Britons to be arrested and detained in the event that they invaded the UK.
Of course, Britain, the US, and the Communists maintained similar lists of Germans. And those lists were eventually used.
I can’t help but think that ‘the list we Germans maintained of Britons to be arrested and detained in the event that we invaded the UK’, was a list with English who most here on Counter Currents would deem as traitors.
I should clarify my statement. After England and France declared war on Germany, starting the war in the west (they both were the first to declare war on Germany in WW I also) and after Hitler made repeated attempts to contact the English thru his diplomats and he was continuously spurned (Churchill forbade his people to speak to German diplomats) and then finally Germany’s third most powerful figure Rudolf Hess (think of the US Secretary of State Clinton, Kerry, etc.) made a daring solo flight to Scotland, parachuting out of the plane in a desperate attempt to tell the English Germany did not want war with them and then the English imprisoned this man, who tried to stop the war, for the rest of his life. And after Churchill continuously had his bombers deliberately drop bombs on German civilian areas, then Germany began thinking of attacking England and occupying the country.
Germany did not have the luxury England and the USA did. When both England and France declared war on Germany, they couldn’t wait for all of England’s and France’s troops to be amassed on their border, with knowledge American troops would probably come soon too. So they attacked in May 1940.
David Irving discussing “Churchill’s War”. Granted David Irving is only one historian, but I believe he has done more to correct the historical record than anyone else and he has paid a terrible price for his fight for the truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Db_5F7uxt4
Controversy aside, Kipling is a literary giant (what controversy by the way?). He and his work rank very high in my book.
Thank you Mr. Hamilton for this reminder of Kipling. After I read this I looked him up in my university Norton anthology of English Literature (revised 1962) and there were only three of his poems in it. Then I checked my son’s volume (1973) which he used in the early 2000’s and Kipling in not even mentioned. So he has been systematically vanished for representing the Imperial Britain. I was educated in a humanist point of view regarding literature and got really confused with this post modern stuff. Luckily I found a book called Literary Theory a guide for the perplexed by Mary Klages in which she gives an overview of structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, Marxist, Althusser, Bakhtin , Foucault, race and post colonialism and Baudrillard, Lyotard Deleuze and Guattari. I have not studied these people, but it was enough to get a grasp on what is happening at universities, especially in English Literature, and its denigration. So instead of close readings and trying to figure out what an author is talking about, students are taught through a lens of a theory that is more than likely way out in left field and really has nothing to do with identity, culture and society. Personally I think the lens of philosophy and history would be more appropriate. I mention this book as shortcut through the confusion. I did not check to see how many belonged to the Jewish tribe.
I own several of the Norton Anthologies. Their introductory and supplemental notes and annotations are among the best I know of. Whenever I find a used copy I don’t already own I buy it.
In fact, I was using their annotation method as my model when I supplied definitions for possibly opaque terms in the poem immediately following it. I didn’t use footnotes within the text like they do, but I was imitating them. I find their annotations extremely helpful.
In my Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2 (5th ed., 1986) (the 1st ed. of that volume was 1962), a short section on Kipling is included, and it is not overly political. So some volumes in the series still had a Kipling entry 27 years ago.
But your point is certainly correct. I saw several Kipling experts mention in interviews that he was out of favor because of his political views.
I am coming late to this post on Kipling, and his poem, and am enjoying this expose of modern criticism of our older ideals. This poem is the best explanation of why Jews and Arabs are mutually hostile; it places the blame way back to two hostile tribes living in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, and binds it into the Bible by way of explanation. Jews and Arabs are definitely ‘brothers’, two tribes divided by religion now, but originally divided, I would guess, by their ‘farming vs. herding’ and ‘hunter-gatherer’ lifestyles. The Jews settled on the fertile coast and its valleys, while the Bedouin tribes (as we know them today) continued to follow their herds (until they struck oil!). Both are diametrically opposed to Western European life, and view us as enemies, for a myriad of reasons. I don’t know how to get any of this across to our fanatic Christians still occupying a huge role in America, and still supporting Israel in all its ways. Reading and understanding this poem, as critically explained here, would be a great start.
“But all the course of Time makes clear
To everyone (except the Hun)
It does not pay to interfere
With Cohen from Jerusalem.”
This verse is misleading. True that Germany lost because the machinations of the “Cohen from Jerusalem” resulted in fighting a war pretty much alone.
But how better has US and UK done 60 years after the “Hun” tried to fix the Self-Chosen problem? They are both on their way to demographic, racial, cultural and moral collapse; thanks to the machinations of “Cohen from Jerusalem”.
A more realistic verse should be:
“But all the course of Time makes clear
To everyone (except the Anglo)
It does not pay to suck
to Cohen from Jerusalem.”
The Brit still wins, because his words fit the meter and rhyme.
Kipling died in 1936. The war had not occurred. Kipling was no doubt alluding to German anti-Jewish sentiments, however.
I am not talking about meter and rhyme but about history and our future. If Kipling were alive today he would agree. The Anglo sucked… and lost.
I don’t know, Henry.
I haven’t read Kipling since I was a child but the remembrance of the word ‘Hun’ made me smile.
Really, I think, it’s influenced by the superiority complex that came from being a Citizen of the British Empire; to look down on the Imperial Reich, as it was, as being second rate to England in terms of territory. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a petty attitude to have, perhaps it can be seen as sportsmanship with a degree of hubris, Athens and Sparta perhaps?
I don’t think Citizens of the Empire such as Kipling would have been so quick to dismiss his Nation, but I do think that had he witnessed yet another unnecessary world war fought in Europe, brother against brother, that he would have drawn his pistol and popped Churchill like a balloon.
It pays the bastards in the short term though. Squander it all for a bit of false comfort.
“I have loved Kipling since I was a child,” said Putin
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/fed-up-with-putin/?_r=0
Indeed, our President quotes Kipling, or refers to his works occasionally.
Kipling was quite popular writer in the USSR, at least very well-known. We even studied him at school [stories for kids and some poems].
A good intro to proper scansion can be found here:
http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/tsteele/TSpage5/meter.htmlhttp://instructional1.calstatela.edu/tsteele/TSpage5/meter.html
The link did not work for me.
However, a Google search led to “Introduction to Meter and Form” http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/tsteele/TSpage5/page5.html
There there are links to two separate pages, the first of which is no doubt the one you are referring to:
“Introduction to Meter”
“Introduction to Rhyme and Stanza”
Thank you for these.
I’m surprised more musicians haven’t turned Kipling’s poems into songs. There a dearth of these and I don’t think this one is particularly great, but it shows what can be done by those who can get past “If.” Smuggler’s Song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Uk1oeuuppk
The last verse carries the import of the poem. Kipling is suggesting that if Abraham had been more assertive with his wife Sarah, then the division between .jew and Arab could have been avoided. In truth, Ishmael was his first born son so maybe it is Ishmael’s people who were the chosen ones.
In addition, there is a subliminal criticism of how Jewish men are dictated to by their wives. This is clear in the lines ‘ And was not strong enough to save, the bondmaid from the furious wife , HE wrought thy woes Jerusalem! Kipling was clearly pinning the tail directly on the donkey – Abraham!
I attempted to post this to FB, but the swastika showed up at the top, and that would never pass the censors over there. No matter how ancient and credible that insignia is, nor how many times its origin has been explained, it is verboten – period. It’s as if someone smeared excrement on the “Mona Lisa”, not obscuring it completely, but the Louvre kept it hanging as is, despite the smell and ruination of much of the delicate beauty.
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