Rudyard Kipling's India between folklore, terror and wonder

In the "Anglo-Indian Tales of Mystery and Horror", Kipling places himself in the position of Western observer and narrator of an 'other' and atavistic culture such as the Indian one, which if necessaryΒ reveals itself to his eyesΒ as a mirror of ours.


di Marco Maculotti

"East of Suez, some say, the direct control of Providence ceases: there man is entrusted to the authority of the gods and demons of Asia and the Providence of the Church of England exercises only an occasional, reduced surveillance if they are English. "(From R. Kipling," The mark of the beast ")

Raise your hand if you don't know the literary works of Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936): fromΒ The jungle book (The Jungle Book, 1894), aΒ Kim (1901), theΒ Brave captains (Captains Courageous,Β 1897) toΒ Puck the elfΒ (Puck of pook's hill, 1906), his adventure novels and his poems dictated one of the most important literary currents at the turn of the two centuries, which in Italy expanded above all thanks to the immense prolificacy of the Veronese Emilio Salgari. For our part, here we want to make some considerations on a collection of stories by Kipling,Β Anglo-Indian tales of mystery and horror, published by Theoria Editions (Rome-Naples, 1985). The 13 stories that have converged in this anthology cover a time band that goes from 1885 to 1893.

Screenshot 2018-11-11 at 20.33.45.pngRudyard Kipling's India, where he was born (in Bombay) in 1865, is the colonial one of the last decades of the XNUMXth century: the India of the English imperialist domination, therefore, but also of the numerous tribal divisions, castes, cults linked to the variegated world of Hinduism and, therefore, still indelibly marked by the element of folklore, of "superstition", of beliefs whose origins are lost in the abyss of history. And, of course, folklore is often tinged with mysterious, terrifying, even horror, or, to use a term dear to HP Lovecraft, abominable.

The introduction into our world of intelligences and laws otherΒ - and here we refer not only to ghosts, unsolved spirits, demons andΒ djinn, but also to the episodes of clairvoyance, of dream vision, of possession and exorcism - can only cause a frightening dismay in those who come across them, especially if, as in all Kiplingian stories, it is a matter of a western observer. A fear that grips deeply, of which Kipling gives his personal definition in the story "My true ghost story":

"Do you know what fear is? Not the usual fear of injury, physical pain or death, but the abject, thrilling terror of something you cannot see, the fear that makes your mouth and half your throat dry, the fear that makes your palms sweat and swallow empty to keep the uvula functioning? This is Fear, a form of great cowardice, and one must have tried it to be able to appreciate it Β»

NeΒ "The Road of the Bubbling Well"Β - one of the most suitable stories in this collection to understand the Kiplingian "terror" - even "Weird" nuances can be glimpsed ante-literamΒ (except, of course, for ETA Hoffmann, the only and true forerunner of the "Uncanny"): here the horror is caused by an abandoned well in the middle of a wooded gathering, and in particular by the echoes coming from it, which slavishly repeat all the statements of the narrator, and by the sinister giggles that echo in its surroundings. "The villagers told me that the patch of vegetation was full of demons and ghosts, all in the service of the priest, and that men, women and children had entered it and never returned." Here they are already recognizable, in nuce, the supernatural horrors of a Lovecraft [1] or a Machen [2], as well as those "disturbing paradoxes" much sought after by Thomas Ligotti [3]Β and already analyzed by Jentsch [4]Β and Freud [5]Β a century earlier.

Rudyard_Kipling_three_quarter_length_portrait
Rudyard Kipling.

The suggestions suffered by Kipling "settler", narrator and observer in contact with the most atavistic and profound India oscillate between wonder and the most unspeakable terror, passing through the most varied sensations of dismay, confusion, disbelief - not so much in the face of the "superstitious" practices of the natives as with regard to their actual and clearly visible consequences, something unheard of for a "Western" mentality. In this way, Kipling unearths, exhuming them, archetypal aspects that Western man has put aside, denied, hidden behind the fragile paradigm of Cartesian rationalism: the "mythical forces" mentioned by Ernst JΓΌnger [6], or those "panics" of James Hillman [7].

READ MOREΒ  Blood Metaphysics

Contact with a worldΒ otherΒ how is the South Asian one has the power to awaken these dormant forces in the deepest interiority of Western man and to free them, with all the positive and negative consequences of the case. This happens, for example, ne β€œIl Duncan Parrenness's dream ", a dream story on the theme of the double. Here, the narrator appears in a dream, after a night of excess, his future "self":

β€œβ€¦ And I, Duncan Parrenness, who was afraid of no one, was seized with the deadliest terror that I believe a human being has ever had the lot to know. "

That is to say the encounter with the Other-Self, which is not simply the other-from-self (the indigenous), but the "dark", "bestial" or "irrational" part that the Western observer knows of have in itself, despite the secularization and the protracted illusion of magnificent and progressive: the so-called Jungian Shadow. This recurring theme of the terrifying encounter with the Other is even more evident in itΒ β€œThe brand of beast", where one of the characters, after having dishonored and profaned the statue of Hanuman in the temple dedicated to the monkey-god, falls victim to an atavistic curse that causes a sudden and abominable metamorphosis that closely resembles the lycanthropy of the Eurasian tradition:

β€œFleete could not speak, he could only growl, in all respects like a wolf. The human spirit must have succumbed during the day, ending up dying in the sunset light. Now we were dealing with a beast that had once been Fleete. "

The aforementioned curse was caused by a disturbing temple priest, referred to by the narrator as 'the Silver Man' by virtue of the physical deformations he exhibited:

β€œIn the cold it was he was completely naked and his body glistened like polished silver, because he was what the Bible calls 'a snow-white leper.' He had no face; in fact, the leprosy, which he had to suffer from for years, was now in a very advanced state. "

Although in the end the abject enemy and the hateful curse are defeated, the suspicion remains that what happened to the protagonists has changed them forever, not in the external aspect as in the case of Fleete-werewolf but in the abysmal depths of their soul. , bringing to the surface a "dark" side, under-human and dis-human, which they did not know they had and who will "mark" them for the rest of their lives: this being, in the final analysis, the real "curse of Hanuman" - which is then, on a more general level, the "crisis" experienced by "Western" man in the encounter with culturesΒ otherΒ who, unlike him, had not yet abjured the aforementioned "mythic" and "panic" powers.

kipling
Rudyard Kipling in his study.

The territory of the Indies, yesΒ other in a geographical sense from the point of view of the English "settler", it becomes other also from an ontological perspective, creating a dichotomy between the "civilization of science and reason", which is obviously the Anglo-Western one, and the "indigenous culture" which is not - mind you - neither the absence of a "civilization" nor a previous ("pre-logical") phase of Western "rational civilization". On the contrary, as he remembered Mircea eliade, a civilization like that of pre-colonial India can only be said to be traditional, organic in its structure and integrating in its multiple levels the visible as the invisible, the natural as the supernatural, the profane as the sacred [8].

It is also for this reason that it is not permissible, despite what some say more by hearsay than anything else, hastily label Kipling as a "racist": while not ignoring some of his pro-imperialist positions, in his works he is always noticeable a sense of wonder if not of admiration for cultures other, which he does not limit himself to sketching using commonplaces and prejudices, but rather investigates with the thirst of the true man of knowledge, of the explorer of other times. The Anglo-Indian tales of him are teeming with terms of the Indian language, some of which refer to the wisdom and esoteric doctrines of Hinduism, always used in a timely manner and never inappropriately, just to "exoticize" the narration a little. To put it in the words of Joseph DeLorenzo, Rudyard Kipling:

Β«He has well understood and artistically exposed the value of the East, also showing how and when there is no longer a difference between East and West. "

He records the customs of the natives, marriage as well as religious ones, and inserts them in his stories to ensure that they are truly cataloged as "Anglo-Indian tales": not, therefore, simply stories set in India and written by an Englishman, but rather stories that draw their lymph from the ancient narratives and beliefs of the deepest India, which the English "settler", author, narrator and protagonist, far from being able to understand in all their mythical coherence, cannot help but register, between wonder and dismay, and deliver to readers as an escape from a too arid world and rational. In a story ("A viva voce") the narrator summarizes this observer position by stating laconically:

β€œI have lived long enough in this India to know that it is better not to know anything and I can only tell how it went. "

And it is from this mythical way of framing the world that the stories and beliefs of folklore are born, in India as in any other part of the world.; and Rudyard Kipling must have known this well, since during his life and his literary production he was also interested in corpus folklorist who had to concern him more closely, namely that of the British Isles. Two of his best-known works can be ascribed to this trend,Β Puck of pook's hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910), published in the years in which the Nobel Prize for literature (1907; the youngest ever winner).

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Drawing_of_Rudyard_Kipling

Often, on the other hand, the archetypal and symbolic universes of folklore are recalled all over the world: there is no great structural and thematic difference between the corpus of popular beliefs of a pre-Christian Briton and that of a native of pre-colonial India. A topos which recurs in both areas, in Celtic sagas as in Indian folklore, is that ofsupernatural object capable of opening up worlds and "magical" possibilities: it serves as a narrative device to the Kiplingian taleΒ "IlΒ Bisara di Pooree ".

This is a mysterious artifact that appears to the eye as a silver box, studded with rubies with an eyeless little fish in dark walnut wood inside, wrapped in a cloth of gold; indeed, it is a very ancient amulet, passed from hand to hand over the centuries, which gives its owner the power to conquer the soul of the beloved (or the beloved). There is only one, essential condition: the Bisara must be stolen, stolen by deception, from the previous owner. Coming into possession of it in other ways (through sale, donation or accidental discovery) would lead to the ruin of its owner in exactly three years. For this reason, in order to preserve humanity from the terrifying power of the artifact, its last owner has hidden the Bisara of Pooree around the neck of a rented nag, in the middle of a necklace of blue beads against the evil eye. With these premises, the narrator can reasonably declare that:

Β« All kinds of magic are things of yesteryear, abandoned now, except in India, where nothing changes, despite the thin shiny sheen that people call "civilization" Β»

Another tale ("In the house of Suddhoo ") introduces us to the sinister figure of an engraver, residing in the basement of the house from which the title, which soon turns out to be, to the horror of the narrator, a sort of psychic healer dedicated to necromancy practices. Suddhoo, who owns the house, begs for his help in healing his son: he will get what he wants, albeit at a heavy price. The character of the engraver is therefore halfway between the healer, the "genie of the lamp" and the Devil who in the Western tradition asks for a "blood pact", with the consequent "loss of the soul" of his interpellant.

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In "My true ghost story"Β Kipling engages in the genre of "haunted houses", beautifully adapting the topos from the Western tradition to Eastern folklore, in which ghost stories abound, under the most varied and omnicompresive forms of characteristics that in the traditional Western corpus are connected to other types of "visitors from Elsewhere", such as feral entities and evil spirits. Thus in the opening words Kipling gives the reader a general overview:

β€œThere are ghosts in India that take on the appearance of fat, cold, greasy corpses, and lurk among the trees along the roadside waiting for a traveler to pass by. Then they pounce on his neck and don't let go. There are also some terrible ghosts of women who have died in childbirth. They wander along the paths at dusk or hide among the corn near a village and use a seductive lure. But responding to their invitation is sure death in this as in the other world. They have their feet turned back so that all sensible men can recognize them. "

Every village, every district, every post office existing in India at the end of the nineteenth century has its own disembodied guest: the narrator will notice it firsthand in the act of falling asleep when, in the absolute darkness, he realizes that he is unable to mistake that a game of billiards is in progress in the adjacent room, which will go on all night, throwing him into total confusion. It is, once again, the "uncanny" stricto sensu, an experience that terrifies not because it is particularly frightening in itself, in its individual components (visual, auditory, etc.), but because it is the spy who is in the presence of a "something"Β out of place, of an acting agent unlike what might be expected, of a phenomenon that opens unknown scenarios that are not dependent on the known laws of physics.

Connected to these "disturbing" suggestions it is pureΒ "To alive voice", in which we speak more specifically of survival of the soul need communication with the deceased; topics treated very well, after a few years, by a colleague of Kipling, the Austrian Gustav Meyrink [9]. The i leitmoiv of the ghost stories of the Far Eastern tradition, especially Japanese, and nevertheless we can glimpse the protective wing of a Master of the genre which was Edgar Allan Poe, starting from the topical sentence, with which we want to conclude this brief discussion:

Β« Perhaps those who know what the soul is like and where the limits of the Possible lie will explain this story Β»


Note:

[1] See FUSCO, Sebastiano:Β Lovecraft, or the inconsistency of the real; SCARABELLI, Andrew:Β Beasts, men or gods: HP Lovecraft's alien cults; MACULOTTI, Marco:Β β€œOniricon”: HP Lovecraft, the Dream and the Elsewhere; on AXIS mundi

[2] See MACULOTTI, Marco: Arthur Machen and the awakening of the Great God Pan; on AXIS mundi

[3] LIGOTTI, Thomas: The conspiracy against the human race; the Assayer, Milan 2016

[4] JENTSCH, Ernst: On the psychology of the uncanny, 1906

[5] FREUD, Sigmund: The uncannyin Essays on art, literature and language; Bollati Boringhieri, 1991

[6] Junger, Ernst: At the wall of time; Adelphi, Milan 2010

[7] HILLMAN, James: Essay on Pan; Adelphi, Milan 2008

[8]Β ELIADE, Mircea: The sacred and the profane; Bollati Boringhieri, Turin 1991

[9]Β See MACULOTTI, Marco:Β Gustav Meyrink at the frontiers of the occult; on AXIS mundi